Next is bag work. This is the true main event. The room is dotted with a dozen heavy bags that hang from hooks in the ceiling like overripe fruit. Overturf takes a time-out to teach me a left-right combination, called Hospital-Death.
The left is a quick jab. Following Overturf's lead, I punch straight from my shoulder. My fist, clenched inside my red sparring glove, aims straight ahead, as if I'm pointing with my knuckles. The all-in-one movement should be swift, like I'm snapping a towel. I'm too tentative. I'm not punching the bag, I'm pushing it. Overturf stands at my shoulder, barking, "Smack it, smack it, smack it!"
Next comes the right hook. My arm curves out and around, my fist turned so my thumb faces up. Overturf explains that my bicep is a kind of piston that powers the punch. The left jab, "Hospital," is meant to snap an opponent's head up, exposing his jaw. The right hook, "Death," is the coup de grace, the whack to the side of the head. The left sends him to the hospital. The right puts him in the ground.
We pound the heavy bag for eight rounds. A Sparmate Timer ticks off the seconds. Each round lasts 3 minutes, followed by 1 minute of rest. The timer's yellow light flashes, signaling there are just 30 seconds left. Instead of going all out, which is what you're supposed to do when a round is down to 30 seconds, a few of us ease up. Overturf bellows, "Yellow light means kick some ass! Now!"
I'm slacking. Overturf catches me. "Karbo! Stay with us! Stop cheating yourself. The world is full of underachievers. We don't need one more."
People have called me names before, but never that. I pull my elbow back and let it go. My fist cuts through the air like a rock from a sling shot. Pop! I land a good smack on the bag. Underachiever? Think again.
I'm put under the tutelage of David Smith, the 30-year-old vice president at Bear Stearns who's been working out at White Collar Boxing for the past two years. We practice a kickboxing combination: left jab, right hook, side-step, hop, kick. I have trouble making the switch from boxing to kicking. I get too close to the bag. Then I move too far away. I don't keep my leg straight. I lack power. Smith is patient. "It just takes time," he says. Then I stand aside and watch while he leaps and in one swing spins around and knocks the bejesus out of the bag.
Smith is ultra-gracious, in the Southern tradition. So I ask him: Which is better for beating stress, boxing or jogging five miles? "No comparison," says Smith. "Boxing gets at the violent part of you very quickly. It blows out all that bottled-up tension. And unlike running, where you cram your mind with a hundred different worries, you've got to be fully focused when you're doing a boxing workout."
Agreed. Other forms of exercise relieve stress by leaving you exhausted. Boxing gets right to the heart of the matter. This is your boss. This is your boss's face. Hospital. Death.
Just 25% of white collar's students ever climb into the ring and put Hospital-Death to practice on a real opponent. Getting ring-ready takes time, youth, and "the heart of a warrior," says Overturf. But he agrees to let me spar with him, so I can get a chance to experience the therapeutic effect of landing a solid punch.
I lace up the 14-ounce padded gloves, the real boxing gloves. They're easily twice as large as the sparring gloves we use for bag work. We meet in the middle of the gym floor and slowly begin dancing around each other. I overdo the dancing -- one too many viewings of Rocky -- and glance a weak swat off his jaw.
"C'mon," he says, "pop me one. Think about every coworker and boyfriend you've ever had it in for. Hit me as hard as you can."
To get me going, he lands one right in my gut. No time to block the punch. Hell, I never even saw it coming.
I flail away at him like one of those cartoon characters with windmill arms. Hospital (never mind death), so easy to execute on the heavy bag, seems impossible on a dodging welterweight. Finally, Overturf lowers his fists just a little. I hurl a left jab at his jaw, throwing my arm into it. I feel the push in my shoulder, hear the flat "thock" of contact.
Overturf's head bounces sideways.
Later, I'll tell him that while I've written half a dozen stories from the human guinea pig perspective -- I've gone to gun camp to learn how to shoot a pistol and surf camp to learn how to shoot a curl -- nothing has ever matched that small, primitive satisfaction of landing a solid punch.
Karen Karbo (kkarbo@aol.com) is the author of two novels as well as coauthor, with Gabrielle Reece, of "Big Girl in the Middle" (Crown, 1997).
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