ANNOUNCEMENTS

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ANNOUNCEMENTS 2

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Saturday, February 24, 2018

Personal Training Is Working

   ENTRY 410


This week's entry was supposed to be my annual "Guide To Boxing In Toronto". However, as you can see it is not ready.
I had decided to make this year's guide more comprehensive and even include photos. Therefore, it is going to take longer than expected to collaborate everything and then compile it here.

I will take this opportunity to discuss my boxing plans for the near future and about my current training. Which is what this blog is supposed to be about.

I will also be discussing other projects that I am working on right now.


I BROKE THE LAW AND DIDN'T KNOW

If you remember last week's entry, I spoke about the legal demise of the Ontario Boxing Association. 
Since that law passed in 2015, and I joined the OBA in 2016 and competed under their sanction twice during that time, it means that those were illegal bouts. Then technically those two bouts don't count and are removed from my record. I am down to seven bouts from nine.
That means that I am still in Novice division for a bit longer and there are advantages to that. 
Currently there are more opponents in Novice and it also means that I can still take advantage of the 90 second rounds. Once I move to Open I go to two minute rounds.
Besides, I am trying to forget that disaster of being part of that (crappy) OBA organization.

Remember back when I was under stress contemplating my move from Boxing Ontario to the Ontario Boxing Association.
It turned out to be a bad decision. 
Sometimes those things happen in life. We choose a different door, and we find a mess behind it, and the door we came from closes and locks, so we are stuck in the mess.
Fortunately for me, the Boxing Ontario door did not lock and I was able to re-enter.

My relationship with Boxing Ontario is one of Love-Hate, in case you haven't already figured that out.
Overall, I like Boxing Ontario except that sometimes they do things that piss me right off.
Like the stunt they pulled at the Brampton Cup. That was a waste of my time, and I think you all know about how I feel about time-wasters. If you want to screw around and waste your own time that is your business, but don't waste mine.


PERSONAL TRAINING WITH ASSISTANT COACHES

One thing that I enjoy (sort of) about my current boxing club is that I get personal sessions with a coach. Not THE coach, but A coach.  
Once a week, usually Thursday, I get about an hour (sometimes a bit more) of boxing technical with one of the assistant coaches.
The session generally includes target pad work, supervised shadow boxing, supervised bag drills, and several minutes of core conditioning. On top of that I still do my usual 30-45 minutes of cardio.

Currently I am still working on the "on the toes", plus a couple of interesting new techniques that I am trying to fit into sparring.  Coach also noticed that after a while I tend to drop my guard. The hands start to drop. 
Well, that is because I am freaking tired after over an hour of "on the toes", cardio, and shadow boxing.
He told me that it doesn't matter, If I drop my hands in the ring, I will get knocked right the "F" out.
There is a difference. I'm not in the ring for over an hour. Only 90 seconds.
Although, I totally understand his objective. He's trying to build endurance.
It is not easy. 
As a matter-of-fact, ESPN ranked boxing as the most difficult sport as far as stress and strain on the athletes. 
ESPN GRID OF MOST DIFFICULT SPORTS
Taking into account that I am in my 50's and can still do this training says a lot.
I don't care what anyone says. I am very proud of what I can do and what I have accomplished. In addition, my boxing skills are getting much better. Thanks in part to the personal training sessions.
I really can not wait to get into the ring again.
I really want to get onto a Stockyards card and have a Stockyards boxer as my opponent. 
I don't know why, but that is one of the things on my Boxing Bucket List.
Getting into the Golden Gloves was also on there, check off that one.

My Boxing Bucket List (so far):
  • Golden Gloves
  • Brampton Cup
  • Stockyards boxer as an opponent
  • Local club card representing Xtreme Couture (any opponent)

SPARRING IN OTTAWA A POSSIBILITY THIS SUMMER

I have not told coach yet but there is a Master at the Beaver Boxing Club in Ottawa who really wants to meet me in the ring. 
The problem is that he is outside of the age allowance as per Boxing Ontario rules (more than 10 years older), so we can not compete. However, we can spar,
I was planing a trip to Ottawa this summer anyway, so I am going to try to arrange a couple of sparring sessions at Beaver.
I will of course need the permission of both coaches, but I really don't foresee any problems.

Another place I would like to spar is at the Cabbagetown Club. 
He has a Master who has tried to get into tournaments for a while, and couldn't get an opponent each time.
I understand that frustration. I don't mind going over there to help out. Sometimes it works out better for a Master to spar another Master.


STOCKYARDS CARD TONIGHT

Stockyards Boxing will be hosting a card tonight, February 24. Two boxers on my team will be on the card, and I will be going. 
I will be there as a normal spectator. Not watching from behind a viewfinder for a change.


METROPOLIS TV AND RAdiO-C\65

That being said, Metropolis TV is no longer using YouTube as an outlet for its productions. We are currently looking at other options, but in the meantime all productions from Metropolis TV are halted.

We are still working on a permanent 24/7/365 schedule for RAdiO-C\65. We are working on installing new servers and software so we can operate automatically without the need to have an operator on all the time. Right now, we still operate manually and are therefore only broadcasting part-time programming.

The link to listen is to the right of this blog, along with a list of whatever is currently playing. If you see a program or music listed, it means we are on live. If you see "TONE" at the top of the list or the list is static, it means that we are currently not broadcasting.

We are also currently not broadcasting to U.S. IP addresses due to music licensing issues.


'THE BRICK'S' NEWEST E-NOVELS ARE ALMOST COMPLETE

I have two e-novels in the works.

"The Coach" (Humor) A young man moves from an undisclosed city to Niagara Falls to work at a resort. When that job falls through, he finds himself mentoring teenagers as a boxing coach. Although, he has a bit of a problem getting along with his co-workers as his manager is always on his case.

"Perfect" (Sci-Fi) A man goes missing for 53 years and when he suddenly re-appears, it is discovered that he now has abilities that he never had before. His amazing super-human abilities stun the science community and he becomes a human science project. 

Once the e-novels are complete, links to them will be on this blog.

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--'The Brick', Golden Gloves Silver Medalist


Saturday, February 17, 2018

Ontario Boxing Association: Mystery Solved

   ENTRY 409



OBA: DOWN FOR THE COUNT AND NOT LIKELY TO GET UP


BREAKING NEWS: The Ontario Boxing Association is still alive, but possibly for not much longer.

I found out through research that the organization still exists, but they are not allowed to sanction any competitive events.
This is due to a law that was passed in 2015 by the Ministry of Tourism-Culture-and Sport.
Game ON is the name of this policy and within it they re-assessed combat sports in the province of Ontario.
In order to keep combat sports safe, it was deemed that only one non-profit organization can represent any combat sport within Ontario. 
11 combat sports are represented by 10 organizations. 
For boxing the organization is Boxing Ontario. Therefore, any other organization who tries to organize a competitive boxing event will be doing so illegally and could face criminal charges.

Amateur MMA is still illegal in Ontario since there is no organization to run it. 


Here is an excerpt from the article that I found on the Ministry's web site:


Changes for Amateur Combative Sports


Ontario supports the safe participation in amateur combative sports.
In 2015 the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport released Game ON – The Ontario Government’s Sport Plan in which it committed to clarify the legal status of amateur combative sport.
Through an Order in Council, the Government of Ontario has designated 11 amateur sports in which contests are now legal if held with the permission of a government-recognized Provincial Sport Organization (PSO).
PSO is a not-for-profit organization recognized by the Ministry as the governing body of a particular amateur sport in Ontario. The primary function of a PSO is the development of athletes, coaches and officials. A PSO must be recognized in accordance with the provincial Sport Recognition Policy. Currently there are 10 government-recognized PSOs in Ontario for combative sports.
Contests in sports that are not sanctioned by a provincially-recognized PSO are deemed illegal.

Designated Amateur Combative SportMinistry Recognized Provincial Sport Organization
BoxingBoxing Ontario
GrapplingOntario Grappling Association
Jiu-JitsuOntario Jiu-Jitsu Association
JudoJudo Ontario
KarateOntario Karate Federation
KickboxingKickboxing Ontario
MuaythaiMuaythai Ontario
PankrationOntario Grappling Association
TaekwondoOntario Taekwondo Association
Wrestling^Ontario Amateur Wrestling Association
WushuWushu Ontario

Read the full article here.

So people, there it is.
The OBA mystery has been solved.

I have to say I am not surprised that the Ministry gave the boot to the OBA.
They are not very professional and also ran unsafe events.
They were also breaking a lot of rules such as performing medical tests on their athletes without permission.
One such test that I hate talking about because it is a stupid and pointless test is the Baseline Concussion Test. This test has been proven over and over to be inaccurate for many reasons.

I have mentioned about this before, but I would like to elaborate on it.


REASONS WHY BASELINE CONCUSSION TESTING IS INACCURATE

This is a test that is supposed to be able to detect if you have ever had a concussion. That in itself is inaccurate since it is very hard to detect a concussion unless it has happened within 24 hours.
Generally, this test is less than 20% accurate most of the time.
There are so many external factors that can cause an inaccuracy on the test.
Being tired and/or being sick can both skew the results. A change in emotion can also an inaccurate result. Such as being nervous or depressed.
Also, look at when the test was being conducted. About two hours before entering the ring. 
That is a stupid time to be doing such a test.
At that time a person's brain is going into Protection Mode. The brain knows that the body is soon going to be involved in combat. Since it is the brain's job to protect the body from damage, it begins to assess what it should do to protect the body. That is also known as "Fight or Flight" and in some cases "Self-Preservation".
This is a high-priority for the brain, so frivolous tasks such as processing the questions asked during a baseline concussion test are ignored by the brain's processing system.

Think of your brain as a computer with a 4 TB hard drive, but only 16 MB of RAM.

The hard drive is your storage, or long-term memory. The RAM is what your brain is currently processing or short-term memory.

The human brain has an amazing capacity for long-term memory, but is very limited to what it can do at any one time.
Therefore, it must prioritize what needs to be processed immediately and what needs to be stored for later.

A "Self-Preservation" is a high priority, obviously.
Short-term memory is not important while preparing for combat, but does become important during combat. At that time, your brain will switch priories to allow you to think "fast" in order to protect yourself as part of the Self-Preservation process.

However, there is something else I recently found out.
Intelligence can also affect how your brain processes and prioritizes.

If you have trouble remembering names and appointments, or questions asked as part of baseline concussion test, it is likely that you have a triple-digit IQ.

The reason is that a high-IQ brain likes to always think about things that it thinks are important. Therefore, unless you manually prioritize something as important, your brain will likely ignore it because it has more important things to do.

An example is remembering people's names. 
Have you ever met someone and then meet them again a few days later and for the life of you can't remember their name? Then after meeting that person four times, the name just automatically pops into your head?
That is your intelligent brain prioritizing tasks.
When you meet someone once, you brain does not think it is important to remember that name right away because there is a chance you may never see that person again. Your brain sticks the name onto the hard drive to access later, but as a low priority process.
That is when you remember the person's name after they have left...Damn!
What happens after you see that face a few times, the brain realizes that this face must be important, so it increases the priority of processing that name. From that point on, you always remember that name since your brain sees the face and knows to pull the name from long-term memory for immediate processing.

The thing to take away from this is that it is not a bad thing to have a poor short-term memory, or to do 'poorly' on a baseline concussion test. It just means that you are too smart for frivolous thinking and your brain has better things to do with its time.


SPARRING GIVES YOU BRAIN DAMAGE

I would like to finish off with a bit of humor.

One of my coaches mentioned the other day that at one time he had a person in his gym that didn't want to spar because "sparring gives you brain damage".
Coach was not happy about that.
He said that if that was true, we would all have brain damage.
You know, he is right.
I have been sparring for six years and my IQ hasn't dropped. If anything it has made me stronger and more fit.

Boxing is good for you despite the bad apples.

Find out for yourself and give it a try.
The next entry will be my "Guide To Boxing In Toronto". It will give you a chance to study and explore options for boxing in the GTHA.

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--Paul 'The Brick' Brec, 2017 Golden Gloves Silver Medalist



Saturday, February 10, 2018

Brampton F-up

   ENTRY 408



BRAMPTON F-UP

What can I say?  A complete and totally wasted weekend and a total waste of my time. 

First of all, the weigh-ins were not held at the venue. Which I found really confusing.
There was no indication on the Boxing Ontario website otherwise. If I had not confirmed it with coach I would have gone to the wrong place.

The location the weigh-ins were located had no bus service. Of course, Boxing Ontario doesn't think that not everybody has a car.

I needed to be at weigh-in for 8:00 in the morning. That meant catching the 6:00 bus from my place. Take the 35A to the new (crappy) Pioneer Village station. Then taking the subway one station south to the new (not-so-crappy) York University station. Then walking to the York University bus terminal (because nobody thought to move the bus terminal closer to the subway station). From the York University bus terminal I had to take the Brampton Transit 501A Züm to West Drive (the closest stop to my destination). Then a ten minute walk in minus 15 degrees to Clark Boulevard, then another five minutes over the Highway 410. 
By-the-way. the Brampton bus stop announcement does not announce West Drive. It announces Laurelcrest Street. 
If I had not noticed the sign for West Drive, I would have missed it.

I arrived at weigh-in at 8:15 to find a huge lineup. I guessed I was in the right place.
I messaged my coach while I was in line to bring my passbook.
10 minutes later someone came down with my passbook and I was still in the exact same place in line.

The whole weigh-in process was incredibly disorganized. 
For a while I had an OBA flashback.
Take my book downstairs for part one of the medical check-in. That was a 25 minute wait after 20 minutes in line upstairs.
Then take the book back upstairs to the head official for event check-in.
Then back in line to wait for the actual weigh-in and part two of the medical check-in.
Another wait. About 20 minutes.
Finally in for weigh-in.

Weigh-in was fine, but when I went for part two of the medical, he sent me back downstairs.
Then back upstairs to wait again.  By this time it was after 10:00.
Right at about that time and probably by no coincidence, my opponent walked in.
A really nice guy from the Steeltown Boxing in Hamilton.

It was right about that time that we were told that our bout was cancelled due to some stupid technical crap that I am not going into.

Okay, so you are telling that after all this trouble getting here and the long wait and the fact that I took the day off to be here, it was all for nothing?
Thanks a hell of a lot.

I came very close to going ballistic. 

I didn't. I said nothing and turned around to go home.

Going home took longer than getting there.

I discovered a different way to go home but at the time I did not realize it would take three hours.

I walked about a block and found a bus stop where the bus number 1 stops. I took the Brampton bus number 1 to the Bramalea terminal where my intention was to catch the 501A  Züm again, but the 501 Züm (not the 'A') came first, so I took that. After spending almost an hour on this so-called "express" bus, I realized that this bus stops at the new Vaughan Corporate Center station. The 501A does not stop at that station.
From there I was able to take the subway down to the (still crappy) Pioneer Village station. That station is huge. Three levels with three entrances, and I was the only one in there. Well, except for a few TTC employees walking around with their thumbs up their asses.
Unnecessarily huge and complicated station that nobody uses. Total waste of resources. Like the Highway 407 station. Located between Pioneer Village and Vaughan in the middle of a field with nothing around. 
Really?

I exited the Pioneer Village station as per the signage to catch the bus. 
When I exited the station I was met with an empty field with a bus terminal that was "under construction".

I crossed Steeles Avenue to another station entrance.
This entrance like all others had automated fare gates, but not one accepted a Metropass card, only the Presto fare card. Of course as typical with the TTC there was no clear signage indicating such.
I had my Presto card with me to use on Brampton Transit, but I had a Metropass card for Toronto, so how do I enter this station without the need to use a fare off my Presto card for no reason?

Easy.

I had my gym bag with me, of course. I didn't use it today, but it was about to come in handy.


These gates have sensors for anyone who is exiting the station, but will only open for entry upon presentation of a fare card.

Not a problem. You stand slightly to the side and hang something large in front of the exit side of the gate...like a huge gym bag. 
The gate will open outward, but there will be enough time to enter...without paying a fare.

Your welcome.

Anyway, after all that I was able to finally find where the 195 "Express" bus stops. It was not running earlier in the morning, but it was by that time. Although completely useless since it actually took longer.

I arrived home at 1:00. I left shortly after 10:00.

Just over two hours to get there and just under three hours to get back. 
From Brampton to West Toronto. A 45-minute drive at the worst.

Not to mention I was out almost $400 for taking the weekend off.
My weekends are my goldmine. They are longer shifts and I get a premium for working on the weekend. 
I don't mind if I am actually doing something. Like, for example, actually climbing into the ring and competing. Which is what boxers are supposed to do. I think. Unless that has changed?
Maybe boxers are just supposed to waste time training for the soul purpose of travelling to another city to stand in line and look good.
What a waste.

The point of this post:

Reasons 23,24,25,26,27 why public transit in Ontario is totally useless.
  • The TTC wasted resources building a subway system way up there and the stations are too large and complicated and poorly marked.
  • Brampton needs a non-stop service from Vaughan Corporate Center to Bramalea Terminal.
  • The TTC 195 Express service has too many stops to be considered an 'Express'. This bus only needs to stop at major intersections north of Wilson Avenue.
  • Public transit in the GTHA in general is too complicated for people who are not used to a particular service. It needs to be simplified so to not be confusing for visitors.
  • Brampton stop announcement system is useless as it is. If a street has two names, both should be announced by the system.
Reason number 1 why Boxing Ontario pisses me off.
  • Don't schedule a bout and then cancel it after the athletes arrive. If there are any questions about the bout, give a decent amount of notice. The bout was scheduled for a week in advance. Lots of time.

  I deserve a gold medal for all the trouble. 

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Paul 'The Brick' Brec, Brampton Cup Non-Medalist