At the Fit 4 Boxing Club in Hampton, 90-year-old Charlie Pearson, whose arms are muscled like a longshoreman’s, donned a pair of boxing gloves and punched hard into the gloves of former lightweight boxer Bugsy O’Connell.
The workout is designed to help Mr. Pearson, who has Parkinson’s disease and uses a wheelchair.
Parkinson’s is a neurological disorder that affects the nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that passes messages on from one neuron to another. Symptoms include tremors, muscle rigidity and changes in speech and gait.
There is no cure, but symptoms can be reduced by medication and exercise.
Rich Mushinsky, who owns the gym with his wife Laurie, said Scott Newman, an Indianapolis prosecutor with Parkinson’s disease, was working out with a boxer when he noticed his Parkinson’s symptoms were improving. Mr. Newman eventually founded a non-contact boxing program called Rock Steady Boxing, to help other Parkinson’s patients.
Research has shown that forced exercise, such as the exercises boxers use to get ready for fights, forces dopamine from the brains of Parkinson’s patients into the body, allowing better balance and movement.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mushinsky was doing boxing routines with Michael Bell, then a practicing physician with Parkinson’s, three to four days a week.
“I didn’t understand why he was getting better, but he was,” Mr. Mushinsky said.
Later, Mr. Mushinsky said he went to Indianapolis to become a certified Rock Steady Boxing trainer and learned why. Now, he and three other Rock Steady certified trainers have evaluated more than 300 Parkinson’s patients at the gym, he said.
There in December, he shouted numbers to the Parkinson’s boxers: four and five for uppercuts, one and two for straight punches and three and six for left and right hooks.
The boxers work out to a mixture of upbeat dance music, oldies, disco and rock … “anything uplifting,” Mr. Mushinsky said.
They also dance to the music, doing the Cupid Shuffle and Conga Line, he said.
“We try to have fun [and] make it fun for them, too,” he said.
The gym family is a kind of support group for the Parkinson’s patients, where they can make friends with people who understand what they’re going through.
Former Hampton detective Sgt.Jimmy Hughes, whom trainer Joyce Williams describes as the star of the class, had lost his ability to walk because of Parkinson’s disease when he first went to the Butler Veterans Affairs Hospita in 2016.
He lost the ability to stand up and had trouble using his arms, Mr. Hughes said.
Doctors at the hospital put him through an intense course of physical therapy, and one physician got him leg braces, he said. When he graduated from physical therapy, he was sent to Fit 4 Boxing.
During eight months of physical therapy, then boxing workouts, he lost almost 100 pounds, Mr. Hughes said.
“The VA is important,” his wife, Joan, said. “Without their assistance he wouldn’t be here.”
The Mushinskys said about 40 men and 10 women with Parkinson’s work out at the gym in Hampton.
In early December, the Mushinskys opened a second Fit 4 Boxing location in Export, which is run by their nephew, Brett Burkhart.
At the Export gym on Dec. 26, a group of men with Parkinson’s punched heavy bags and small punching bags with determination to Mr. Burkhart’s shouted commands.
Though he had been there for only six classes, Joe Bramer, 76, of Murrysville said he already felt a slight improvement in his symptoms. His daughter, Mindy Bramer, said her father doesn’t use his cane as much, and sometimes even leaves it behind now.
Art Snyder, 78, now of Rural Valley, who also was working out at the gym, said playing soccer with a men’s league in Texas until he was 60 probably delayed his development of Parkinson’s disease by a number of years.
Now that he has the disease, “Boxing is basically my salvation in terms of keeping my reflexes, strength and balance,” he said.
Fit 4 Boxing will stage a benefit boxing event Jan. 26 at the Syria Shrine Center in Cheswick to pay for equipment, social events for the Parkinson’s patients and certification for its trainers in the Rock Steady methods. Ticket deadline is today.
It will be the fourth year for the event. Last year it drew more than 500 people.
Ticket costs are $150 for VIP tickets, which pay for dinner at ringside tables, and $75 tickets, which include a buffet, cookie tables and cash bar.
Standing room only tickets may also be purchased at the door for $40.
The event will feature eight to 12 amateur boxing matches supervised by USA Boxing. WTAE-TV News anchor Mike Clark will be master of ceremonies.
For more information, call 412-213-3584.
Anne Cloonan, freelance writer: suburbanliving@post-gazette.com.
First Published: January 18, 2019, 3:06 p.m.