Fighter

Kristy Follmar vs. Mary Mcgee in the World Championship bout in April.

Kristy Follmar squares off against a shriveled man almost twice her age.

His arms tremble beneath the weight of the boxing gloves as he raises his fists. He struggles to lean in, knees wavering. The 28-year-old shows no mercy.

“Hard right hand!” yells Kristy.

His right cross barely grazes her mitt.

“Hard right hand!”

He digs deeper, this time sounding a faint thump. Not hard enough.

“Hard. Right. Hand!”

He rears back, focusing all control on his right arm, shoulder-to-elbow-to-forearm-to-fist. He scowls, grits his teeth, and unleashes a crisp POP! into the mitt.

“Good,” says Kristy, as she scampers backward across the gym floor, beckoning him to pursue. She shouts in rapid succession: “Hard-right-hand!” POP! “Hard-right-hand!” POP! “Hard-right-hand!” POP!

A buzzer sounds. Kristy drops her hands, looks around at her students, 14 men and women ages 40 and up working through various boxing drills in other parts of the gym. She calls them to attention: “C’mon, parkies!”

Parkies. Parkinson’s disease. A degenerative neurological disorder evident in various stages in the posture of the students now looking to Kristy for instruction. This is Rock Steady Boxing, a program that uses the repetitive noncontact training of boxing to improve Parkinson’s patients’ strength and coordination. Six of these students walked into this eastside gym on the day it opened in October 2006 literally tripping over their own bodies, unable to get through even the initial stretching. Thirty months later, they—and more than 60 classmates—breeze through 90-minute workout sessions.

“Okay, parkies,” she says. “Bring ’em in.”

The students huddle up, thrusting their arms to the center, hand on hand on hand.

Kristy: “1-2-3 …”

The chorus: “… Rock Steady!”

“Stand up straight,” Kristy orders the dispersing class. “Be proud.”

Kristy knows what boxing can do. She has seen the execution of simple punching drills inspire and enable people to wrest control of their lives from debilitating illness. She’s lived it, used the sport to transform from a gangly redhead from Cedar Lake, Indiana, into a champion. And she knows what working a heavy bag can do to salve the pain of unimaginable loss.

The gym now cleared, students all hugged and sent home, Kristy unwinds the wraps from her hands. She walks past wall-hung mementos of her professional boxing days, a shrine to Kristy “The Fighting Rose” Follmar. Photos of her in the ring, red hair woven into tight cornrows, facing some of the world’s best fighters. Yellowed news clippings recap fights that aired on national television. Posters herald title fights. None of them bears a date past 2005.

Except one. In recent days, a bright fight bill has appeared among the sun-faded memories. A photo of the 28-year-old Kristy, fists up, touts “McGee vs. Follmar/World Championship Bout.” After four years of retirement, Kristy has returned to the ring to fight for the title she always dreamed of. She is trying to tap into the power of boxing one more time.