Saturday, March 01, 2008 Quijano: 100 days to train a boxer By Jingo Quijano
It arrived via air mail. All the way from Surrey, B.C., Canada. It was ring-bound and 189 pages from cover to cover. The author Jovencio “Ben” Bornia wrote a dedication, “Keep your punch as sharp as your pen” on the green cover.
That same night, I burned the midnight oil and devoured the book “100 Days To Train A Boxer”
In the preface, Ben starts with a backgrounder on fighting and punching techniques and discusses Kinesiology, the physiological study of muscular movement.
The astute boxing scholar that he is, Ben argues, “Boxers are made, not born. Everybody has the natural make-up of a good potential prize fighter. Our instinct is like any other living thing capable of reacting for self-preservation…. However, you can only learn so much from what you see, hear, understand, imitate, and participate in. So much so that you can only learn when you are properly guided by a knowledgeable coach…just as what you will learn from this training manual.”
CREDENTIALS. Just who is Ben Bornia, you might ask? Ben taught Sports medicine, Physiology of Physical Exercise and Applied Kinesiology at the Southwestern University from 1979 to 1989. He also served as coach for the SWU Varsity Boxing team, SWU Olympic Standard Weighlifting Team, and did some training work for Manitoba’s (Canada) amateur middleweight division. He is also a proud member of the Coaches Association of British Columbia.
But we don’t have to look that far to verify Ben’s credentials. Locally, his boxing students were Juanito Ablaca, a former world flyweight championship contender and now a trainer for some of our top boxers, and also Brix Flores who is a Philippine Team boxing coach.
PHASES. The book is divided into different phases: Phase I (General Preparatory Training Period), Phase II (Skills Specificity Training) Phase III (Pre-competitive training) and Phase IV (Mental Preparation).
If you have been following this column for some time, you might have read that I have taken up boxing as a form of exercise and also for research purposes.
So what piqued my interest were the drills that Ben features in his book. My favorite is the one for shadow boxing. Ben writes: “Shadow boxing, which is the most basic in skill-polishing exercises, are preparatorily done thus simulating the scenarios of what are most likely to occur in the real game situation…
As a boxing student, what you have extensively learned from the fundamentals in boxing put the techniques, tactics and strategies together into a complex skill of movements. Mentally rehearse it all in shadow boxing. Thus, making it into a simulated offensive and defensive move.”
What came to mind while I was reading this portion was what the prolific Dennis Canete of ALA Gym confided to me when they were holding auditions for the boxing show “Idol”. Since most of the hopefuls were literally picked off the streets, some of them didn’t even know how to shadow box.
Mind you, shadow boxing is not as easy as it looks. To the untrained eye, it looks like the fighter is just showing off his moves and punches, but actually, like Ben puts it, “…punching techniques develop its timing, speed and accuracy and flow of movements through consistent practice in shadow boxing.
JUDGE NOT A BOOK... Ben does the illustrative drawings himself. But while there might not be a Michelangelo in those strokes, an Angelo Dundee definitely lurks between the lines.
It's probably not for everybody, as Ben envisions it as a reference book for boxing coaches, fitness and boxing enthusiasts, and police and military personnel.
But it’s a pleasant and informative read, one which you can get only from an author who is a master of his craft.
The book is not printed locally, but if you’re a good Last Rounder and promise to return it to me and not wait before I sue you for it, then email me and I might let you borrow it.
And because I am not a public official, bribes such as several cold last rounds are, of course, highly encouraged. Otherwise, contact the man himself at sborniap@shaw.ca
THE LAST ROUND. It’s on lovely couple Simon and Nelrose Timmins. Cheers!
