The year of covid was a difficult period for everyone in multiple ways. For me personally, having the gyms shut down really impacted my mental health as it was the only real time I had to just focus on myself. I am a youth/community organizer, scholar-activist, Ph.D. student, and professor, working with gang-involved and (formerly) incarcerated boys and men in the community, and so there is a lot of pain, suffering, and trauma that I get to witness. Therefore, being active is/was such an important part of my self-care as it would help me release all the trauma I was around. However, even prior to the pandemic, I had been itching to particularly get back into boxing, as I had discovered how therapeutic the sport was for me especially in helping me cope with what I would see in my work. So I started asking around the community if anyone knew of any solid (no pun intended!) boxing coaches and everyone kept directing me to Gil, which resulted in me reaching out. I had let him know I was a student and that I wanted to get a trainer that could help me step up my self-defense game and toughen me up mentally. To do the kind of work I do requires consistency, discipline, self-motivation, and persistence and I felt at the time I was lacking a bit in that as I was exhausted from the conditions of the pandemic. I did not know that Gil had had a past with being gang-involved himself so when I found out, I felt like I could open up more to him about why I needed to learn self-defense given my line of work exposes me to situations that require self-defense. I found it so impactful how Gil used our 1-1 private boxing situations to do more than just help me improve my boxing and self-defense skills- he took it upon himself to get inside my head-ask relevant and thoughtful questions- and help me come to some insightful epiphanies about what I was truly searching for through boxing. He reminded me of the importance of not burning myself out in my line of work and creating healthy boundaries so I wouldn't give more of myself than I was in the capacity to do so. Moreover, he helped me realize that I still had some work to do in terms of overcoming some of my sexual assault experiences at the hands of men and got me comfortable with having men be in my personal space-knowing that I was picking up skillsets that could help me in adversarial situations such as that. There were so many life lessons that I took from our time together that I carry with me today. Currently, I am working with him and his amazing life and business partner Crystal, learning jiu-jitsu which has been such a therapeutic and fun experience in and of itself. I have even brought some of my youth to work with Gil and have seen the amazing impact he has had with them. Gil is one of the most inspiring people I've met here in SB because of the humility and integrity in which he carries himself and the energy he puts into what he does is unmatched. Hands down would recommend him to work with you! read more