It’s you against the bag, and the bags have been socially distanced since before the term was invented
From a distance, boxing looks like the least Covid-compliant exercise possible: a contact sport with more sweat than you ever dreamed and a presumably concomitant amount of heavy breathing. But look again: there’s not much actual contact in a boxing class. It’s you against the bag, and the bags have been socially distanced since before the term was invented.
So, for my first live-action aerobic class in more than a year, I found myself in Kobox, a boxing gym in London. Perhaps I was overexcited to even be there, but I was dazzled from the start. The receptionist was on furlough from performing in The Phantom Of The Opera. Everyone in the class was built like a model, and possessed of a seriousness of purpose that made me think they’d been told to attend as part of their induction into the SAS. Aidan, the instructor, had a PhD in the legal definition of art. They were the kind of people who made you wish David Bowie was still alive, so he could write a song about them. If you weren’t wishing that already, which of course you were.
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