Counterpunch: The club of boxers fighting off Parkinson's

Gary, Lesley, Viv and Kleese are taking their weekly Counterpunch class at the Wairarapa Boxing Academy. Coach Abel Ripene calls these guys the OGs. Margueritte is here this week too, she has been coming for four weeks.

Despite the cold, there’s plenty of warmth and laughter in the gym as Ripene puts the five through their paces. High energy beats are pumping in the background and the group, aged between 60 and 80, are all dressed in their sweatpants and T-shirts.

First up is a five-minute warm-up on the rowing machine and bike then the class kicks off with throwing and catching exercises.

The crew work through boxing routines, chosen by them, written up on the white board. They do three rounds each with two different combinations, mixing jabs, upper cuts and hooks and swapping partners when Ripene calls out for a change of combo. The combos change up every week, keeping Counterpunch fresh.

“They're doing so well. I mean those combinations have been hard, but they chose it,” Ripene says.

Counterpunch is a non-contact boxing programme designed for people with Parkinson’s disease, set up in New Zealand in 2016 by neuro and rehab specialised personal trainer Lisa Gombinsky Roach alongside former New Zealand pro boxer Shane Cameron.

Canadian born Gombinsky has an interest in disability and conductive education. She had heard of an American version of the concept, called Rock Steady. That combined with her own Parkinson’s research about the power of exercise on neurological conditions sparked the Counterpunch framework.

“Exercise is a really, really, really key piece of the puzzle for managing Parkinson,” she says.

“Ten years ago I started to see information that was making it clear that it didn't just have to be movement but that there needed to be exercise with higher intensity to get some of these results [slowing down the disease at a brain cell level].”

For Parkinson’s in particular, she says boxing directly addresses some of the problems that we see in people living with the condition such as forward reach with the arms, rotation of the trunk and overall mobility. Also targeted are power, agility, balance and breathing, posture and vocalisation, she says.

Gombinsky contacted Commonwealth boxing champion Cameron who was running a gym near her home in Auckland. Over a coffee and with pen on a napkin they nutted out the plan for the programme. They have since gone on to train 100 coaches and there are now 17 Counterpunch setups across the North and South Island. There are plans to roll it out in Australia and the UK too.

“What we've all found is that people with Parkinson's need to move, they need to have intensity, they need to have cognitive and physical challenge, and we need to be making that as fun and social as possible because it's for the rest of their lives,” Gombinsky says.

Johanna Quirk attends Counterpunch twice a week, in two different locations – once with Gombinsky on Auckland’s North Shore, and another downtown (which iconic musician Dave Dobbyn will also show up to sometimes).

Quirk was diagnosed ten years ago with early onset Parkinson’s, aged 51. She had noticed her ring finger shaking out of the blue. One day she woke up with a dead arm and that combined with back pain led to to a doctor discovering the disease – a “huge surprise”.

Six months later she met with a neurophysio who told her: “The more you move, the better you'll do”. She started Counterpunch soon after and became “fitter than I’ve ever been in my life”.

“A lot of people say to me, I don't look like I've got Parkinson’s,” she said.

Quirk says she’s stiff and sore to start the day, until her medication kicks in. She’s often tired by her Tuesday afternoon class, but punching a bag gives her a sense of “freedom”. Counterpunch works her co-ordination and her memory. They also do a lot of shouting, “to keep our voices strong” (another symptom of Parkinson’s).

The group fitness sparks a sense of community and gives the whole group a dopamine hit.

“The more you move, the better you feel. And then by the end of it, we totally exhausted.”

On top of her two, 45-minute boxing sessions, the newly minted grandmother takes three, hour-long walks a week and keeps limber at weekly pilates and yoga. She also meditates every afternoon.

“It just revives me. I usually do that about 4pm and get myself going again, but and then I once I've served dinner, my husband does everything else, whereas I used to do everything, but I just get really tired. The fatigue was Parkinson's. It's horrible.”

Coach Ripene, who spent 14 years in the Netherlands coaching and playing rugby, takes most of the Masterton classes, one of the newest Counterpunch setups.

“I started off trying to get them walking as a boxer. So, trying to get that long step, short step in their stance.

“Everything we try to do is boxing, keeping your guard up, learning all the combinations.”

The Wairarapa Boxing Academy which hosts these Tuesday afternoon session was founded by Laurence Titter nine years ago with the initial aim of working with at risk youth in the community.

But a chance encounter led to the head coach of the academy and founder of Wairarapa Youth Charitable Trust getting involved in the Counterpunch programme.

Titter and his wife Channyn had just started the academy and had a van parked up on their land just outside of Masterton with the academy signage on it.

“I wasn't home this day, but the next door neighbour popped over, Rosalyn, who is the regional coordinator for Parkinson's Wairarapa.

“She asked my wife, because she saw the van, she's just like, Oh, do you know the people who run the boxing academy?”

It turned out the local Parkinson’s group needed a new home for their activities, he says.

“They had nowhere to go. And then obviously my wife replied, yeah, my husband owns it. That connection started there.”

They offered the group a regular slot for free, he says, and after a year or so the idea of running Counterpunch classes came up.

Titter has been boxing for 30 years and knew Counterpunch founder Cameron from way back, he says.

Titter put Ripene and himself through the two-day Counterpunch accreditation, and the classes have been running in Masterton since mid-2024.

The drills the Counterpunchers go through are the same as any boxer would do in training, but slowed down.

“Parkinson's shortens movements, coordination starts to disappear, a little bit of disorientation sometimes,” Titter explains.

“And it's just about slow, long, stretched out movements. So, we're trying to get them to actually think about where that foot's going, and where this hand's going and the coordination between the foot and the hand.”

The training is about more than just the physical therapy, he says.

“They're more confident within their own abilities, so for me, that's the outcome.”

The five boxers training when RNZ visited were still going strong towards the end of the one-hour class.

“You’ve got some power in those hands,” Ripene tells Margueritte.

66-year-old attendee Lesley doesn’t have Parkinson’s but comes along with her 68-year-old husband Gary, who does.

She says the training is beneficial for anyone as they get older, not just for those living with the neurological disease.

“It keeps you moving, it develops your coordination because you've got to put your brain to an action.

“When it's a random punching exercises, you've got to think.”

The couple have been coming since the start. Lesley is really fit, Ripene says, and he values how she is able to help out the rest of the class.

“It's the one class I wouldn't miss,” adds Viv.

Margueritte says the sessions are a weekly shot in the arm.

“I feel good afterwards. I feel energised. So, although you've done exercise, you feel, I feel anyway, more active afterwards. And an hour later, I might zonk.”