Full disclosure, I’ve been boxing for many years and I am obsessed with it. I’ve been into martial arts and boxing since I was a kid — I’ve been a black belt in TaeKwonDo since I was 15. I say all of this to let you know that I am fairly well versed in the space, so my review is an educated one.
This year the Coco & Cowe team (Coco, Pilar and myself) have committed to trying out new workouts twice a month — don’t judge us. I know that’s not a lot, but seriously nailing down time to make this happen is a feat in and of itself, I promise you. Anywho, when we decided to do this, I obviously wanted to go to a boxing class because it’s my fave. I was at an event not long ago where I’d heard of Drop Boxing. It’s a brand new Boxing gym that combines strength training with boxing, and the branding is gorgeous — not to mention it was founded by a lady boss (hey Lara!), which naturally I loved.
On a Friday night at 5:30pm, we headed over to the gym, which is just south of Queen and Spadina, to get our sweat on at their “Full Body” class. The facility is goregoussssss. It’s mostly white, with hints of black and the staff was super friendly.
I brought my own gloves with me, and I brought extras for Coco and Pilar too — the Drop Boxing team were kind enough to provide them both with wraps as well. As a side note, you don’t have to have your own gloves, they do have them for rent and purchase should you so choose. But if I’m keeping it one hundo, which I always do, you can never ever convince me to put my hands into community boxing gloves. That’s a firm no from me.
So we all got ready and went into the room, which was dark, like night club dark and had water bags on one side and weights with standing platforms on the other (FYI water bags are a type of heavy bag, in case you were wondering). One of my favourite parts of this was the music — it was FIRE. In my opinion, high energy music while boxing is essential to keeping the energy right.
Drop Boxing is a 50 minute workout that startes with a 5 minute warmup, 4 rounds: 2 on the bags and 2 doing strength training and ends with a 5 minute cool down. Since we were up first on the bags, the round starts with boxing combinations that are displayed on a big screen at the front of the room. On the screen are the numbers 1 through 6, which indicate each punch you should be doing during your set.
- 1 is a jab
- 2 is a right cross
- 3 is a left hook
- 4 is a right hook
- 5 is a left upper-cut
- 6 is a right upper-cut
So you might see a combination that looks like this: 1-2. 3-2. 5-2. aka jab — right cross — left hook — right cross — left upper-cut — right cross.
If I’m being honest, this is not my preferred way of boxing and if you’re a beginner, you may have a hard time with this. Some people love this method, I’m just not one of them. I find it much easier to just be told to do a left hook, rather than a “3”. All that said, the rounds on the bags are still my favourite part of the workout. It’s hard work and I love to rage on that heavy bag.
Once your round on the bags is finished, you switch sides to the strength side (taking off your gloves of course) and you get your sweat on in a different way. During this round we did a circuit of different strength exercises that ranged from jump-squats, to pushups, to reverse curls and a whole bunch of other great full body exercises.
P.S. If anyone doesn’t know, Coco is a pushup gangster and she slays pushups like nobody I’ve ever seen, AND she does it on her toes, not her knees. I digress.
The class is pretty much 2 rounds on the bags and 2 rounds on strength training, each round lasting about 9 minutes or so, with 1 minute of rest in between. At the end of this class you will be dripping with sweat and who the hell doesn’t love a good sweat, amiright?
All in all, if you’re looking for a HIIT class that will get your heartrate up and get you all sweaty, this is defintiely the class for you. If you’re looking to improve your formal boxing technique, this is probably not the class for you and you might want to explore a more traditional boxing club if that’s your goal. Either way, committing to bi-weekly team workouts is something that “sparks joy” as Marie Kondo says.
Leave your comments below on where you think we should go next!
Until next time,
Cleo