TITLE Boxing Club NYC – Midtown East

TITLE is one of the largest brand names in the community. Try to think of frozen yogurt without the name Pinkberry coming to mind – you can’t. So, we had pretty high expectations for this namesake boxing club. They’re typically known for their retail, but it’s no surprise they hopped into the studio game with 172 locations across the country. We wondered if they’d go down more of the legitimate, old school fighter training route or if they’d try to keep up with the incredibly high standards of the NYC fitness scene.

All classes, whether regular boxing or kickboxing, are about bag work. Want to touch the ring or do mitt work? You better come in for open gym or with a personal trainer. Speaking of which, this is a membership-only style studio. They offer one trial class but after that, you either need to be a member or be on ClassPass. No drop-ins is mega, mega harsh. On top of that, the classes are a lot more advanced both in boxing skills and conditioning than they are billed as being. In our opinion, this is a boxing gym that wants to seem approachable to all but totally missed the mark. They want a certain type of clientele, and shouldn’t pretend to be something they aren’t.

RUNDOWN

WORKOUT

One serving of Title Boxing includes 15 minutes of warm up, 30 minutes of bag work, 10 minutes of abs and a whisper of a cool down. Now, let’s break it down.

The warm up is really just the cardio section of class. And instead of short bursts of energy, the goal here is sustained movement to build up that stamina. Title notoriously throws moves into this section that just are not approachable – superman push ups, 180 degree burpees (while horizontal to the ground press your body into the air while spinning around) – with no modifications whatsoever. We love to be challenged – hell, sometimes we crave it – but let’s be reasonable. Yoga instructors aren’t walking into the room asking you to do a headstand on your first try.

Bag work at Title is fairly standard, but the instructors don’t make the rounds enough and none of them run through the six punches, so you best be able to police your own form. The combos build from two or three punches to five or six. But, unlike the complexity of the warm up, you don’t really get to do a ton with footwork, blocking or defensive moves.

The sour cherry on top of this disproportional class sundae is that each ab move is held or done for a solid minute – resulting in even the strongest among us taking a quick break. We would have much rather done more reps of 30 seconds a piece and gotten in that solid work then try to sustain with crap form.

INSTRUCTOR

Angel was just so typical as far as boxing instructors go. You want to come off as the standard hard ass who wants to push a class beyond its limits? That’s fine by us. But bring some damn personal flair to it. He had one “motivational” catchphrase and that. Was. It: “Work, come on, work.” And if you’ve ever heard something like that – neither motivational nor helpful – said after every single rep or set, it will grate on your GD nerves. Also, in choosing to go with super advanced moves during warm ups without any sort of modifications, he alienated a good portion of the class. Not all of us can do a superman pushup, good sir. But hey, here’s a thought: maybe give us a move that can help us work towards it??!  We’ve never seen an entire class give an instructor a collective “F#&% you” glare,  but Angel accomplished it after demoing a complicated aerial type move.

Beyond offering us ninja warrior-type moves and having a single catch phrase, the thing that drove us off a cliff was the extremely disproportional way he built combos around the left hand. Even if you aren’t a boxer you know that both sides need to be worked evenly. You’re killing us, smalls … You are killing us.

SPACE

When you enter the Midtown West location, there’s this rush of energy. You can hear gloves smacking leather, and see dedicated members hitting the jump rope or getting a shadow box in as their warm up. Yeah … Midtown East has none of that.

This is a much quieter location where both the ring and free gym space are a bit more hidden, with a much darker and grim feel. Not that we want their fluorescent lights cranked up to max, but it felt a bit like a dungeon in there and not in the cool, sexy, “Mr. Grey will see you now” kind of way.  Resources-wise, if you want to shower or store your stuff, you better bring your own towel and your own lock. Thinking about getting a pre-workout in? Good luck, because the treadmills and free weights look like they’ve been handed down from an NFL team.

The workout space itself has 49 bags hanging from the ceiling with no podium or mic for the instructor. Even if the instructor works the room, you still have to pick you bag location very carefully to know what’s coming. And spots, honey, are first come first served, no assignments here.