My Other Life: Holly Gregson, Boxing Coach

“I got involved with coaching by being the parent of a boxer,” says Holly Gregson, owner of Monarch Nails in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and head coach for Razor’s Edge Boxing Club, which she runs with her husband. “I sat every day for a year and watched my son learn as a beginner at 8 years of age, so I learned the basics of boxing and teaching boxing. I’ve since studied great fighters and coaches from long ago and today. I have read everything I can get my hands on and watched a lot of YouTube fights and tutorials. But boxing is a sport one is always a student of.”

Day-to-day, Gregson handles club operations and plans the training schedule. “During the summer months we mostly do conditioning training, but during fight season the regimen has to be individualized for each fighter and each fight, as well as holding beginning and intermediate classes. It is also the job of the coaching staff to hold mitts for each boxer in order to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and assess the power and form of their punches as well as the strength of their defense.”

There is also the emotional side of the job. “A close bond is formed between coach and athlete once the boxer has had fights and really stuck with the program for a while,” says Gregson. “A lot of kids who are attracted to boxing are ‘at-risk youth’ and sometimes they are kids everyone else has given up on. Often boxing is just the right thing for them as it is so different from team sports.

“Boxing mimics life. The tests that a person puts themselves through to endure the grueling training regimen and then to actually get in the ring and fight parallels the challenges, accomplishments, trials, victories, and failures we all face in life. It is man or woman putting themself through the ultimate test, getting in front of a crowd and fighting for what they believe in.”