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If
you’re a regular listener of Monster Radio RX 93.1, you
surely would be familiar with Rico Robles—that sporty DJ
who hosts All Access every 6 to 10 p.m., Mondays
to Saturdays, and who makes all those interesting sports
commentaries—about the National Basketball Association
(NBA), among others.
Well,
besides being one of Monster Radio’s hottest DJs on air,
and a former resident of the Pinoy Big Brother
house, Robles’s also a hottie in person—slim, trim,
good-looking—and, hear this: a true-blue athlete.
Much as
he’s enthusiastic and authoritative about the NBA,
Robles’s main thing is boxing. He loves the sport with a
passion and pursues it relentlessly with a regimen that
is as constant as night and day. In fact, he rises each
day at 5 a.m. to run. Then he goes back to sleep at
7 a.m., wakes up
midday,
and hits the ropes from 2 to 6 p.m.. At 7, he pursues
the life that you and I are more familiar with. Doing
Monster stuff on air.
****
Robles
is perhaps one of the many who have embraced boxing as
their thing of the moment. But unlike many, Rico’s
pursuit of the sport is long-term. He’s a focused,
solitary warrior on a mission that he aims to keep
pursuing just because and no matter what. The sport is
probably in his blood, he says. He has an uncle in
Bataan who competed in barangay and provincial fights,
although he did not make a career out of boxing.
He feels
the same keen spirit of competition, gets excited about
hopping into the ring and testing himself: feeling his
body, mind and spirit merge to become the efficient
fighting machine that it is. Yup, feel it hum, and
experience the spiritual rush. Be in the zone.
“That’s
why they call it the sweet science,” Robles says. “It’s
a sport that will really inspire you and challenge you.”
Unlike other sports where you can get tools and up your
chances of winning or achieving, boxing is all about
yourself. It’s all about your skills and your
discipline. Hindi mo pwedeng dayain ang boxing.
It’s all you.”
****
Robles
says he started training in 2006, on the very first day
that the Elorde Gym opened in Pasig. He hasn’t stopped
to this day. Now he even teaches the sport—to kids,
foreigners—“It’s a great way to keep your body in
shape,” he says. “It helps you lose weight, it gives you
a good cardio workout and it’s a great de-stresser.”
“Boxing
works on your personality a lot,” says Rico. “When
you’re new, you’re trigger happy. Then, through the
years, you mellow down. You become more precise. Less is
more. Accuracy na ang labanan. Not so much
power.”
Despite
his high energy-personality on air, Rico says boxing has
made him “quiet, patient, with a more relaxed approach
in life.”
****
But
physically speaking, boxing has its invaluable
attributes, too. “It is a superior workout along with
developing an invaluable skill. A boxing workout is the
perfect combination of cardiovascular and muscle
training. You’ll burn more calories, build more stamina,
develop and tone more muscle in a boxing workout than
you will with any other training method,” says Dr.
Joseph Estwanik, sports-medicine specialist.
“A
boxing workout is the best of all worlds…unlike running
and biking, which do little for the muscles above the
waist, boxing works both the upper and lower body. And
because it uses many muscle groups, it is less likely to
cause overuse injuries.”
Roy
Wallack wrote the following piece about boxing in Men’s
Fitness in August 2002:
“To
discover what all the fuss is about, I went mano-a-mano
with a 100-kg bag for one week and learned what so many
others before me have already discovered: Boxing
delivers a peerless total-body workout—which you don’t
need to attend a class to get.”
Boxing
alone? At home? It’s not as silly as it seems. No
sparring partner is needed, and the equipment
requirements are elementary: a bag, gloves, jump rope,
timer and music. And you’ll get a workout that doesn’t
miss a spot: a 1,000-calorie-an-hour cardio bomb on a
par with running, and a superb all-body tuner that
builds shoulders and forearms and works legs, hips, abs,
upper back, triceps, biceps and lats. (Want to blast
your delts? Try holding 14-ounce gloves at chin level
for two rounds.)
Moreover, a boxing-based workout offers you an
opportunity to develop real-life skills during a cardio
session, to learn the sweet science that many men think
they should know, something that buoys their sense of
their own manhood.
For
others (okay, for me), it’s a chance to unleash their
inner Ali, to trash-talk the hapless heavy bag with jabs
like “You dumb gorilla!” or the Sonny Liston-inspired
“I’ll beat you so bad, you’ll need a shoehorn to put
your hat on!” In fact, as home workouts go, I’d say that
boxing might just be The Greatest.
****
So, just
how do you get started on boxing? Rico says, “Before you
do anything else, consult a doctor. Make sure your body
is fit to work out, then learn the basics. Boxing takes
a lot of patience. There’s no short cut to it. The more
time you put to it, the more you become a better boxer.”
“Buy
quality equipment to avoid injury: entry gloves [Twins,
Fairtex, Windy—about P2,000], competition gloves [Cleto
Reyes, Winning, Top 10—about P5000], and do some real
training.
“Lastly,
train smarter rather than harder, lead with speed,
follow with power and pray.”
And, may
I add, think out of the box? |
