Reflector Rumbles
Mike Tyson meets YYC Cycle
By Kourtney Meldrum, Staff Writer, & Brendan Stasiewich, Sports Editor
“We’re revolutionizing the fitness experience in Calgary.”
Or so says the Rumble Boxing’s website, Calgary’s newest club inspired boxing studio.
But are they really? What do they do to deserve that five star rating on Facebook? With all the hype we decided to put the 17th Ave studio to the test. It’s safe to say they didn’t disappoint.
You start out in a dark room with coloured lights, the music is blaring, surrounded by sweaty bodies, but no, this isn’t just another night on the town.
Walking into Rumble we felt intimidated by its ridiculously cool looking appearance matched with our lack of boxing experience, but the staff were willing to help and answer every question. As we wrapped our wrists, boxing gloves sitting beside us and the music blasting through from the class going on before, we felt seriously excited to hit some heavy bags and get a killer workout in.
Walking into the group class area is something else — a room with 36 heavy bags, dim and color changing lighting and pop music playing. We put on our boxing gloves and look in the mirror feeling like a total badass.
Our motivator, Amanda goes through the moves to be incorporating into the combos during the class. The warm-up begins and we’re feeling pretty good. Definitely starting to sweat but it’s manageable.
Starting out the class you feel a little bit like Rocky Balboa, ducking left and right, making swipes at the heavy bag. In reality it’s probably a good thing that the bag doesn’t hit back.
Having a motivator that makes you want to work hard is one of the most important parts of any group class. If Amanda is a testament to the staff at Rumble then they can expect a lot of sweat to be dripping onto the floor of their brand new studio. You just don’t want to let her down.
All of a sudden the music changes tempo, Amanda becomes your biggest enemy. “Jab, jab, jab jab”, she says along to the beat of the music. “Cross, cross, cross, cross.” Alright. This was more than we expected.
Honestly at this point none of your punches look like anything she taught you at the start of class, and they’re definitely not matching the tempo of the music anymore. And we were just getting started.
Amanda constantly dropped us into a squat position too, sometimes holding it and sometimes going into a quick jump squat. In fact when I write the word ‘jump squat’ I think I can still feel my hamstrings tighten up just a little bit.
You end up just telling yourself that the pain is almost over, drenched in sweat, small tears possibly falling from your eyes but you know it will all be worth it. Finally Amanda relieves you of your pain, and in your head you thank her — she’s your best friend again.
Until the next exercise proves to be even harder than the last.
Half an hour into the workout Amanda is hardly even worrying about your elbows dropping a little bit, encouraging everybody to push as hard as they can. “We don’t quit here” she says as you throw punches until your arms literally feel like they might fall off.
After about forty-five minutes of this we realized we were in the home stretch, the final song comes on. Since pacing yourself no longer applied, you can see everyone in the class giving all they could to burn those few extra calories, and work those arm and leg muscles just a little bit more. And then… Finished. The pain for the day was over.
Was it hard? Yes. Rumble lived up to their guarantee of giving a good sweat. But as much as we say we hated every minute of the class — that’s probably a good sign that it was an A+ class. As much as the cardio hurt, it was fun getting to systematically hit a bag as hard as you could for close to an hour.
One question came to our mind as we walked out of the studio into the cold Calgary air: “When should we book another class?”
