Club offers free boxercise classes for civil servants
Bruce Greenlaw, left, and Kevin Lamb are two of the coaches who will be helping to run the St. Catharines Amateur Boxing Club’s free boxercise classes for civil servants.
The anniversary of 9/11 is a fitting day for the St. Catharines Amateur Boxing Club to launch its Civil Servant Night.
On a day when people remember and say thanks to the heroic first responders in New York City in 2001, the club is offering its own way of recognizing the unsung heroes in our community by offering a free night of boxing-based cardio for all police, firefighters, teachers, ambulance workers, nurses, personal support workers and all other civil servants.
The program will run every Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. starting this coming Wednesday.
“We wanted to try and do something good for the community,” coach Joe Corrigan said. “This is just a way for us to say thank you for everything they do.”
Saying thank you is important to Corrigan and all the others helping out with the program.
‘It shows that some people appreciate what they do,” he said. “A lot of people never say thank you for what they do.”
The program will see participants skip, shadow box, punch bags and do calisthenics.
“It is a basic boxing workout like our boxers would do except they won’t get in the ring and spar.”
Corrigan stresses the night is for everyone regardless of their fitness level when they start the program.
“At the end of the day, there will be no pressure on anyone, they’re not expected to go in the ring, we are not expecting them to be professional boxers, it’s just come in and get a workout,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you wear and it’s for people of every fitness level.
“You will be able to go at your own pace.”
If there are participants who decide they want to take boxing to the next level and actually step into the ring, the boxing club would be delighted to help out in that regard as well.
Corrigan is hoping for a great response to the program and the more the merrier.
“It would be great if we had to go from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 to 9 p.m.,” he said. “But even if we only get 10 or 15 people to come in here, that would be great too.”
All the necessary equipment will be supplied by the club.
Two of the coaches who will be helping out with the program are retired firefighter Bruce Greenlaw and St. Denis Catholic Elementary School principal Kevin Lamb.
Greenlaw, 55, has been working out at the club since 2016. He began training to participate in the Murphy’s Gloves event, a charity fight night that trains non-fighters to compete in exhibition bouts against other non-fighters, and got hooked on being at the club.
“To me, it is very similar to firefighting because it’s active, it’s a really solid team effort,” he said. “It seems like it’s a one-on-one in the ring, but there is a whole team behind you here and I like that kind of atmosphere.
“It has helped fill the void I had when I left the fire department.”
Lamb, 52, another Murphy’s Gloves participant, has been training at the club for more than four years.
“It has helped me a lot,” Lamb said. “I am quite proud of picking up a new skill athletically and the fitness level you can get if you train regularly is pretty phenomenal.”
He is a enthusiastic advocate of the training,
“Anyone coming in who is looking to up their fitness level or to have an endorphin release should come in,” he said. “And it’s a lot of fun.”
For more information about the program, call 905-988-1244
