It's a gorgeous evening in Denver, Colorado. My friend Lauren and I lug our oversized gym bags out of her beat up Volvo station wagon. Lauren Sugihara is a striking girl, with exotic looks and an hourglass figure. I could be a tattooed version of sporty spice. On the outside we may look like your average girls, getting ready for a weekend spin class. We are wearing sports bras and our hair is in ponytails, but as we get ready to workout we pull out hand wraps, shin guards, boxing gloves and mouth guards from our bags. Our gear smells like a guy's locker room. We carefully remove our jewelry before warming up. I chat with Lauren about work and life as we wrap our hands and several minutes later we are kicking and punching each other in the head. This is our idea of fun. In fact, I flew from Los Angeles to help Lauren train for an upcoming fight. She's had two amateur Muay Thai fights and with some more ground work hopes to fight MMA soon. Most people wonder why nice girls like us would want to hit each other in our spare time, let alone step in the ring or cage and put our pretty faces on the line, but this is what we train for and for many of us it's what makes us feel truly alive.
The week before my training trip to Colorado I received a call from Kim Couture, wife of the 5 time UFC Champion Randy Couture. She was in Hollywood for an autograph signing tour with Randy and wanted to train with me to help prepare for her upcoming fight on ESPN Friday June 20 th. Kim started training last October and will be making her pro debut. I was happy to assist. I jump at the chance to spar other female fighters. It's hard to find training partners similar in weight and experience, for women it's even harder. Kim and I train hard, spar, tag each other with hard shots to the face, legs and body, then hug, shower and go out for lunch. Over chicken salads I learn that Kim is a country girl at heart, a caring mother, an on point business woman and a loyal wife.
Training with these two beautiful and talented women got me thinking about women and fighting. Women fighters are breaking the mold. Many are like Lauren and Kim. They are attractive, intelligent, successful women. Some have never been competitively athletic before discovering their love for fighting. They run businesses, raise kids, and they have never been in a street fight. There is a unique duality to these women; a side of them that only comes out in training. Women are not often encouraged to play sports in high school. They are told it's not okay to punch, hit and shove. Fighting doesn't come natural to most girls. So why with all the social norms against them and when they have so many other roles to play, do these women choose to fight?
There's not much money in female fighting, at least in the beginning. I often spend much more money on training, supplements and medicals than I ever make on a fight. So what drives us? Kim says, "The more people tell me I can't or shouldn't be doing something, the more it drives me to not only do it, but to achieve it!" For me I love the physical rush of training, I love that it's hard; I love the mental journey of preparing for a fight and the adrenaline of a victory. Lauren says she loves to fight because she is simply, "More happy doing it than not."
I train personal fitness clients for a living and I also teach a women's Muay Thai program in Hollywood. I recently ask my girls why they like to train. They used words like challenging, focused, fun, intense, physical and different to describe training. One girl jokingly commented she just wanted to look good naked. All the girls in class that night have never fought, so when I asked them if they would want to fight in the future 4 out of 5 surprised me and said yes. Some said they wanted the challenge, a way to test their skills, another said it would make her husband proud. My youngest student, who is 18, grinned sheepishly at me and said she wants to fight because she wants a trophy.
I take a good look at my girls; I wonder how many of them really will fight someday. I wonder how many of them will last through the training. It's not that they can't do it. They can! I truly believe that anyone can train like an athlete, but having the dedication and the drive to follow through is a different story.
The girl who said she wouldn't fight said it's because fighting is scary. She's right. It is frightening and it's not easy either. Someone once told me it takes three qualities to make a great fighter: skill disciple and conviction. Training is all about discipline. The good female fighters I know train like the guys do, many people don't take us seriously and that makes us train harder. We sweat until we feel like we might pass out, we spar, and we get bruised and sore and wake up the next day to do it again. Lauren and I talked about how there is little room for a social life in our worlds. She's at a receptionist desk for 8 hours Monday through Friday. She's also a DJ and a playmate model. I start training clients starting at 7am and am often teaching until 9pm. We both train 2-3 hours a day ourselves so all we have energy for at the end of the day is a shower and some food. It's not glamorous by any means. It's me on the couch with packs of frozen peas on my shins, rubbing arnica gel on my sore neck and eating chicken and veggies. It's a simple, beautiful life to me. I don't see it as making sacrifices, I'm just living.
The physical challenge doesn't bother us. It's the mental challenges that Lauren and Kim said were most difficult to deal with, the conviction part. Lauren tells me she struggles with confidence but relies on the faith that her family, trainers and friends have in her. Kim feels similar, saying "(My greatest challenge is) being aggressive. I have to turn it up a lot in training more than my personality is used to. Also being confident in my own skills and letting it all go in there (is a challenge)." I can relate. When I first started fighting I had 70% discipline, 20% skill and 10% conviction. It's only after 6 years of hard training and winning a few more fights than I've lost that I feel those percentages are more even.
I think for many female fighters confidence builds more slowly than men. We worry how our technique will look. We focus on honing our skills; we want to be taken seriously. Aggression and confidence come when we feel comfortable with our knowledge. From my experience women always want to figure things out and make it look perfect. For this reason there are some sharply skilled women out there in the fight world. Some may not be packed with muscle or bursting with fierce energy, but they have the mechanics to fight and as their records build so does their conviction.
Whether or not you agree that women should fight, there is one thing you can't argue about when you watch a women's match. They are incredibly intense. They are just as competitive and power driven as men in the ring. Female fighters put it on the line and fight hard. Some fight for the love of it, some fight to prove others wrong, some fight to gain confidence and self respect and every single one of them dreams of wearing a big, shiny championship belt around their waist.
Kim Couture just fought on Friday Jume 20th (ESPN 8pm)
Lauren Sugihara fights in Colorado in July.
Roxy Richardson fights July 19th at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula, CA.
www.roxyfit.com
Photo credits:
Smokin' hot picture of Lauren are courtesy of Lauren's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/msvicious
Picture of Roxy demonstrating a left body kick with Lauren for students of Gym Riki courtesy of Dan Raabe www.gymriki.com
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