i box,kickbox,thaibox and do savate so i will spar with whoever but not kids. i don't mind sparring with women because some of them are just as good as men and we should encourage women to participate in any sport. i go to the camden class and it is not bad and i wouldn't mind going up to cambridge one day. i also hope that the camden class gets bigger too.
in my club in france, there are less and less women every year. Now they represent about 20%. Men refuse to boxe with women. Not all of them but most of them. I can even see it with some 11 eleven year olds. it's not the same everywhere. There is another club 20 miles away and it's just like in England. Never mind but it's really difficult for women to put themselves across even though you are at the same level as they are. I just want sometimes to stop boxing but i love it too much.
One of the (many) great things about the London class is that we swap around partners so much so you get used to fighting lots of different styles. It's great practice for beginners to be able to train against lots of different levels and learn not to judge by appearances: Dom can still kick you in the head even if you are a foot taller than him, and a chassez frontal from Sophie can push you a good distance across the room. The more you mix people up, the more varied the training, so it seems a shame to arbitrarily cut down the variety. And I imagine that some of the guys in the class would agree with Pugil: some of the women can be a bit intimidating. (Not speaking of myself, of course...)
