To Box or Not to Box...?

That is the question..

Sorry in advance for a rather rambled and senseless post.. I can't quite get my thoughts clear in my head so getting them to make sense in writing is not going so well!

Those of you who were on twitter on Thursday night might already know but Mike got pretty badly injured during sparring and was in A&E for a painfully long time on Thursday night whilst I was under strict instructions to wait at home. He got his eye socket fractured and will probably need surgery. I'm so upset, angry and frustrated about it all because it shouldn't have happened. The club and coaches made a number of mistakes or poor judgements which lead to it. I've put them in a list to try and attempt to keep some readability!

1. Uncontrolled sparring - they stand there and let boxers go all out to try and knock each other out. IMO this should not happen in sparring.. I'm quite happy to do hard sparring but just trying to hurt someone for the sake of hurting someone is not teaching either boxer anything. You should be trying things out and learning in sparring not just throwing knock-out shots.
   
2. Before it happened Mike had just done a full 2hr session including 3 x 3 minute rounds with someone who was 20kgs heavier than him who had also had 10 bouts to his 1.. Does that sound like fair sparring? - It could be if it was controlled but not going all out.
   
3. Then they put him in with a boxer who had just walked in having skipped the rest of the session. Mike had already said he wasn't feeling good and had been cooled down for 10 minutes. The coach was pushy to have him go in so Mike felt like he couldn't really say know. Other boxer tries only to knock people out when he is sparring. Not working on skills just trying to hurt. Nothing said by coaches = Mike gets his eye socket fractured.
   
4. Not really related to Mike's eye but another example of bad coaching, they put in inexperienced boxers for the full 3 rounds who just end up getting beaten up for 3 rounds.
5. They put in people who they haven't seen spar before without properly monitoring it, or testing them out on someone who they know won't be hurt.
6. On the way to the hospital coach tells Mike this is their 3rd broken bone in a matter of months.. Erm what? No boxing club I have been to has ever had a broken bone in sparring whilst I've been there and these have had three in a matter of months. Cue alarm bells. Something is not right with this clubs sparring...

So now I have a poor boyfriend with a swollen face who can't eat properly 'cause his jaw is all messed up and painful. It doesn't look as bad as I expected it would, when I was waiting at home while he was in A&E I was so worried I'd get upset when I saw the damage. He said if you run your finger along the bone you can feel the missing bits but I haven't been brave enough to do that!!

To be honest, all of this makes me wonder about boxing. As soon as he rung me from hospital and told me what had happened I started questioning if I wanted him to go back in the ring and my thoughts were absolutely not too risky. So then I started thinking well if you're that worried about him do you want to step back in the ring and the honest answer is I'm not sure. I feel like we've had loads of bad luck with boxing, every time we're at a club something goes wrong.. Maybe someone up there is trying to tell us something. I don't know what we're going to do right now.

I'm really angry about the way things happened at the club I feel like they've been really irresponsible, not just with Mike but with the other boxers who have been injured. Some of them had not been going for very long and to be sparring so hard you get a broken bone when you're a new boxer just doesn't seem right to me. Mike thought the sparring I got there a few weeks back should have been stopped. Whilst I was saying I could cope with it even though I was being overpowered he felt it shouldn't have been happening as I wasn't really able to learn anything from it in the last round as all I could do was try to cover up...

What would you do? Would you say enough is enough, it's not working out? I don't know.. If Mike does have to have surgery he probably won't even pass his medical to box anymore so that might answer our questions anyway. I'm so frustrated and angry about it. I wouldn't be if it was an accident but there are clear signs of irresponsibility and negligence from the coaches which we would have seen had we been there longer but I didn't expect the sparring to be that hard everytime... When you try a new club they always seem to spar you hard to test what you're made of so we thought that's what they were doing in our first session and not that it was the norm..

We have been going back and forth with our thoughts.. we're not sure if we want to quit.. It would leave a big hole and I'm not sure what we would fill it with! I guess we might try another combat sport but I don't really feel that attracted to martial arts and MMA seems far more aggressive to me than boxing... What to do, what to do...

Enough of my confused ramblings though, remember the 100 burpee challenge I mentioned in my partner workout post? We did it today! But before we started the burpees we checked our max push-ups to do the 100 push up challenge which Luke recommended to me. My max has gone from 30 to 15 and Mike's is now 30.. guess we've been slacking in the push-up department!

The 100 burpees went ok... Except for Mike beating me by 4 seconds! Dammit! He finished in 6.25 and I did it in 6.29... I was thinking... Would people be interested in doing a 100 burpee blog challenge? Maybe set a base time and see who can knock off the most time in a month? Or set a base number of how many you can do and try and improve on it. Would anyone be up for that? It will build good leg strength... I can hardly walk up or down the stairs after doing it a few hours ago which must be a good thing.. kind of!

I also managed my first lot of the push-up challenge after I'd recovered a bit from the nasty burpees (not selling this 100 burpee challenge very well am I..?) the first week calls for 5 sets, 10, 12, 7, 7, max(12). So today I've done 63 push-ups...not bad, not bad!

Anyway, I'm going to go chill out and watch some tv before bed.. I've had this post in my draft folder all day and I don't think I can make it make any more sense!! Hope you're all having a good week!