Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind (Excelsior Editions) Review

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Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind (Excelsior Editions) ReviewFirst off I will say that I am not a fan of boxing, despite the important historical and cultural impact that personalities in the sport such as Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis had during the last century. I've read too much about the corruption, hype and brutality that unfortunately has dogged certain segments of the sport since - well, the beginning of human history. However, from the whimsical cover to the final page, "Blows to the Head" is a beautiful, winning and openly personal meditation on the sweet science that convinced me how pure and fulfilling boxing can be in the right hands (no pun intended), and how life-affirming and positive it is for one incredible woman. Binnie Klein "turns over stones" and finds her "out of the box" self as she describes her fascinating personal journey of mind, body and spirit by taking up boxing at an age when many people are considering slowing down and working on Sudoku puzzles as a lifestyle.
Through a variety of compelling anecdotes, the author relates in intimate detail her rigorous training full of blood, sweat and tears with an amazing boxing coach whom she originally discovered through an AARP article, and who becomes a part-Angelo Dundee and part-shaman to her. However, this book contains a lot more layers in addition to describing a woman's personal heroine-quest accompanied by Everlast gloves. With incisive humor and a unique perspective, she relates how she spied a pair of boxing gloves on a wall, and among other circumstances those gloves not only helped to open up to her a luminous new world of personal fitness, strength, and colorful personalities, but also a new-found interest in history and her family's genealogy. Those gloves also become an invaluable metaphorical aid to confronting some of the demons of her past - and present.
As entertaining as the book reads as a memoir and family history, it's also an absorbing history of boxing and athletics, feminism and empowerment, and the struggles of Jewish immigrants to America in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Klein describes fantasy "interviews" with historical Jewish boxing luminaries such as Benny Leonard, Barney Ross and Daniel Mendoza. These gentlemen come alive on the pages as courageous, brilliant, charming and sophisticated, and they shatter all dismissive preconceptions and negative stereotypes about boxers being a bunch of palookas. However, even more empathetic are the descriptions of the ever-supportive relationships within the author's contemporary new universe. Klein and her readers joyously uncover the positive impacts that her coach, other female and male boxers, and children from contemporary American immigrant societies at a local community center discover in opportunities to build self-confidence through activities like boxing. It's both astonishing and encouraging.
I can say wholeheartedly that this book is one of the most enlightening, witty, and captivating reads I've had in a long time. And while this might sound trite, perhaps the book's greatest message is this: don't be afraid to try new challenges no matter what your age, condition, gender or station in life is, and despite what other people say about what you do. After all, if you're not open to new experiences, the fun in life you're missing is probably your own!
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Ultimate Warrior Workouts (Training for Warriors): Fitness Secrets of the Martial Arts Review

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Ultimate Warrior Workouts (Training for Warriors): Fitness Secrets of the Martial Arts ReviewThis book is probably deserving of a 5 star review but for me and what I was hoping for it lacks. I'll start with the positive stuff. As you probably know Mr Rooney spent two years travelling the world to what he considered the best martial arts gyms in the world could be and have been useful in a MMA context. You have know arguments from me here. He's definitely attended most of the gyms that I dream of attending. Kodokan, Fairtex Bangplee, University of Iowa just to name a few, giving the background on each. He has photos demonstrating the conditioning exercises used at these gyms by himself and by members of the gym. All good so far. He gives information on nutrition for a fighter and information on cardio training. He also refers back to his first book a lot which I don't have problem with considering what I paid for this book I would happily buy his first. I already use his dynamic work out from the first book which i got indirectly from my old muay thai coach (who happens to have a few world titles) and highly recommend it. And to top it off he gives you a six month program to follow to get you into peak condition for MMA. Excellent stuff. Also I like the quality of the book itself. Nice glossy pages.
Now for the bad stuff. I study sport exercise so my views are based on what I was hoping for in this book. Mr Rooney does not give how the exercises he has chosen are used by the respective gyms in the context of their programs. Say for example with the muay thai section he doesn't say when yodsanklai would use the chin up variations in his program i.e. If he has separate sessions for conditioning or he does them before or after pads, reps, what a sample template for training at the gym would be etc. Another gripe he doesn't break down the science of his program. I know for someone like him he shouldn't be giving everything away but this is what I'm interested in and its highly unlikely that I'm going to be able to get his Parisi Speed School gym to do an internship with him any time soon. I live in New Zealand and can only dream. And to be honest with a bit of research I'm sure it would be possible to work this out. Also highly doubt this book is targeted at the trainer as much as the fighter. Back to supertraining for me.
All these bad point aside this an excellent resource for those interested in the fitness aspect of MMA. A six month program from Mr Rooney is worth more than the price of this book, and the extra information on the various martial arts is a bonus.Ultimate Warrior Workouts (Training for Warriors): Fitness Secrets of the Martial Arts Overview

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Championship Streetfighting: Boxing As A Martial Art Review

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Championship Streetfighting: Boxing As A Martial Art ReviewNed Beaumont has written a practical no-nonsense book on how to use boxing as a method of self-defense and exposes the myths surounding Hollywood fight fantasies. Some other reviewers find his critique of Asian martial arts to be too one sided and there may be some truth to that. However, as one who has studied both TKD and Jujutsu and Boxing I can say that some of the points he makes are valid. Even if boxing is not you're combat art of choice you can still learn a lot from Championship Streetfighting and the author's take no BS attitude is a breath of fresh air in the self defense literature scene.Championship Streetfighting: Boxing As A Martial Art Overview

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Becoming the Natural: My Life In and Out of the Cage Review

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Becoming the Natural: My Life In and Out of the Cage ReviewPerhaps no one personifies the face of MMA more than Randy Couture. "The Natural," "Captain America" and "Old Man" are perhaps a few of his better known nicknames. His mixed martial arts career spans the explosive popularization of what was once a fringe sport into its mainstream position currently.
Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz have all launched their own autobiographies over the past year. Now "The Natural" adds his. Couture provides an absorbing narrative of a working class kid from the Northwest who became a teenage father, got involved in wrestling and showed a quick aptitude for it. As his Greco-Roman career wound down and his Olympic dreams receded, the UFC was just appearing on the horizon and -- almost as an afterthought -- Couture was talked into entering one of the competitions. He quickly distinguished himself as a formidable warrior in the octagon.
Most readers will know the major story lines from then on: the bouts with Vitor Belfort, Tito Ortiz and the three matches against Chuck Liddell. Other memorable bouts are the improbable victories over Tim Sylvia and Gabriel Gonzaga.
One remarkable aspect of Couture's career has been his sheer longevity, competing on a world class level well into his 40's, often fighting guys a decade younger. No rocking chair for The Natural!! I would have been interested in hearing his "secret" for staying competitive so long.
What all these MMA guys seem to have in common is complex relationships with their fathers, often absentee fathers or fathers with (often alcoholic) baggage. No exception here.
Another feature they often seem to have in common is keeping it in their pants. Fidelity is an issue as the MMA guys often freely philander and, well, "dip their wicks" in various inviting female inkwells. Couture traces the rise and fall of Marriage #1, Marriage #2 and the rise of Marriage #3 to Kim Couture. Having hit the marital trifecta, he is well on his way to an octet! Which woman will truly be The One, since they all seem to get traded in for a newer model after a few years. (Are the 2009 models out yet?)
Guys like Couture keep divorce lawyers fully employed.
Couture has always come across though as a regular nice guy with his head screwed one and this memoir is consistent with that impression. It's impossible to dislike the guy. He gives you his side of the developing feud with the UFC brass and the ups and downs of his personal relationship with the ever polarizing Dana White.
As "Becoming the Natural" ends, the reader is left to wonder if Couture's career has had the final coda written. Legal and contractual constraints may do what few opponents have been able to do inside the octagon - defeat Randy Couture. By the time he clears away his legal dispute with Zuffa, will Father Time overtake his willingness to engage? Will the ring rust and erosion of skills allow Couture to compete, especially against the likes of Fedor Emilianko? After seeing Fedor demolish Tim Sylvia on July 19th, it's tempting to give "The Natural" no shot at winning such a match, but the old man has proven me and many others wrong before. One bets against Randy Couture at his peril.
MMA fans will relish this autobiography of an extraordinary athlete - Randy "The Natural" Couture!
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Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms Review

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Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms ReviewShadow Boxers is a miracle of a Father's Day gift. Not without a fight, however, will pop hold onto the book--not while his wife and children are around to read it and, of course, look at it.
The universal appeal of Shadow Boxers owes much to its balanced tone, primal subject, and powerful contributors. Here are writers contending in their own prize rings--Esquire, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Time Magazine, Harper's--for trophies as big as the National Book Award and The Best American Sports Writing. Katherine Dunn, especially, packs a mean punch; again and again she finds your solar plexus before you've finished her first paragraph. (A sample: "One day many years ago, I rode my press credential into a busy boxing gym and was shocked to see a hard-punching monster known as Frankie `The Preacher Man' doing push-ups in the ring with his year-old son sprawled on his back. Amid the din of ringing bells, drumming speed bags, and smacking leather, the baby slept, his long lashes fanned across the chubby cheeks, rocking in the smooth rise and fall of his father's powerful shoulders.")
The photographs alone are worth the cost of admission. Jim Lommasson approaches his subject with the hard-hitting nostalgia of Annie Leibovitz, alongside whose photos of bluesmen, rockers, and gospel singers these fighter shots necessarily belong. Indeed, Pottery Barn has yet to make the coffee table worthy of holding Lommasson and Liebovitz's rock-solid studies of two deep-dyed national passions: Shadow Boxers and American Music (Random House, 2003).
Shadow Boxers opens with a foreword by heavyweight champ Joe Frazier (sole inspiration of the beef-punching scene in Rocky) and features a brief but vivid history of boxing gyms.
The ensuing essays abound with keenly observed ironies about the noble science (e.g., "The game is brutal, but its core is strangely gentle"; "It's dawned on me over the years that there is less macho posturing in boxing gyms than in the average corporate boardroom"), and with crisp details (e.g., the memorable description of Larry Holmes' "jump jab," and the sketch of a city gym in Portland, Oregon, where "a speed bag hung several feet above a wooden pallet, which was used to help children reach the leather punching bag"). So, too, do the essays abound with sharp personal accounts (e.g., a Golden Glove champ who "never weighed more than 140 pounds" and who first entered the gym owing to his girlfriend's parting shot: "you're not man enough"), and with touching accounts of young hoods meeting the coaches who might not only change their lives but save them.
To read Shadow Boxers is to feel the strange warmth, the beckoning glow of boxing gyms, those shabby sanctuaries where individuals can still find a devoted mentor, a group of brothers and sisters, a path toward redemption.
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