Stopped by the gym back when it was at Hawaii Self Storage in January 2011 and have been a loyal member since. Coach Phil is approachable, professional, and knowledgeable. Doesn't matter if you are fit, unfit, coordinated, sloppy, whatever, he will work with you based on your skill level. So long as you have patience, you will see huge gains in your fitness and boxing technique. I've seen many people come and go, but the ones who have stuck through with the program have all made incredible improvements (myself included). Whether you are looking for a fun casual fitness class or a competitive gym for amateur competition, this is a great place to check out.
Phil keeps the classes fun, challenging, and instructive. A typical class will consist of a 12 minute warmup (jumpropes, shadowboxing, jogging, footwork drills, etc) followed by a ~40 minute circuit where students cycle through mittwork, heavy bags, speed bags, double end bags, or strength/conditioning drills. There is a plethora of equipment in the gym so there is plenty of variety in the workouts. The competitive "class" which is for those looking to fight in amateur competitions consist of ~30 minutes of sparring (with headgear and mouth piece), ~20 minutes of technique drills (bags, mittwork), followed by ~20 minutes of strength and conditioning drills. Most of the competitive athletes will do the late regular class, and follow it up with the competitive "class". Coach also has a few Open gym days/hours where people can go in and train as they like on whatever equipment they want.
If you are new to boxing or working out, I think this is one of the friendliest environments you can walk into. Going into a boxing gym can be intimidating based on the people who are in there, but you'll find that the crowd in here is more friendly than others. Coach will make sure you feel comfortable with whatever you do instead of focusing on the minute details of technique and form. As you get more comfortable and improve, he will throw out pointers on your form and help you with adjustments. For those who want to get into sparring but have no experience, Coach Phil will allow you to get into the ring with some of the more experienced guys once he feels confident in your abilities. Usually you'll start out with sessions where the newcomer can throw anything while the experienced guy doesn't hit back and works on defense. As you get better, he'll allow the experienced guys to throw just jabs, or just body shots, or throw punches at 30-40%, until eventually you are sparring people full on. All sparring sessions are fully supervised. I've been to countless ones, and have never seen anyone get hurt worse than a mild bloody nose (and that was only once or twice).
One note of caution, the gym can get very crowded during some class times during the week and on Saturday. There can be a lot of younger children running around in the area, but they tend to stay out of the way of people working out. The gym can comfortably run a class with up to 12 people or so, but sometimes it can get a bit clogged up once it exceeds that cap. Only seen that happen a few times; on average, there are anywhere between 4-8 people in a class at a time. read more