ARLINGTON – In an Arlington garage-turned boxing ring, Suzanne Taitingfong plants her feet, elbows up, gloves punching through “jab-jab-right” instructions into the pads that former champion boxer Bret Summers holds chest high.
“She’s looking me in the eye? She knew that was coming!” a surprised Summers said to Taitingfong and the other boxers inside the ring as he urged her on.
Amid a room adorned with posters, banners, hung-up gloves, punching bags and colorful memorabilia from 40 years of boxing, Summers shuffles to the next trainee in the ring in the hourlong class. His sparring partners are fighting back against the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease.
“When I step into the ring, I really feel like I’m literally fighting back,” said Taitingfong, 60, of Marysville. “I don’t feel like the victim anymore. I feel empowered.”
Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects the brain, resulting in a loss of coordination, movement, balance and other issues. Every year, 50,000 people are diagnosed with the disease in the U.S. It’s the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s.
There’s no cure for Parkinson’s – yet – but Taitingfong and her boxing mates are making sure it takes a heckuva good pounding in the meantime.
Boxing has emerged in recent years as a proven fitness program that slows the progress of the disease.
Taitingfong has been battling Parkinson’s since she was diagnosed in 2010, after noticing she couldn’t move her shoulder and having trouble maintaining her balance. Doctors put her on drugs to combine with exercise, but her symptoms still worsened.
The wife and mother of three developed dystonia in her legs, a painful condition that caused them to twitch and contort uncontrollably. Last year, through the UW Medical Center, she had deep brain stimulation surgery to counteract her conditions. Doctors implanted electrodes in the part of her brain that controls movement, and installed an impulse transmitter in her chest that sends continuous electrical pulses to the brain, blocking the impulses that cause tremors and spasms.
“The surgery was a huge deal for me,” said Taitingfong, who spent time in a wheelchair until doctors turned on the transmitter. “It enabled me to start thinking about fitness programs.”
When she was on her feet again, she sought out fitness programs close to home for people with Parkinson’s. There were none.
She wound up going to a Bellevue gym that promoted boxing for Parkinson’s, making the long trip like many other sufferers who seek out specialized physical activities.
“I tried out the program, loved it, but not I-405 with its tolls and traffic,” she said.
Taitingfong resolved to see a new program created in Snohomish County that would support the Parkinson’s community. Through numerous calls and emails, businesses turned her down or weren’t interested in moving in that direction to assist.
A friend who had contact with a Seattle gym working with Parkinson’s patients suggested she call Bret Summers, owner of Summers Boxing Club in Arlington and a USA NationalAmateur champion at age 16 in 1976 while attending Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
Taitingfong called. A life-changing connection was made.
Coincidentally, Summers told Taitingfong that his uncle, Rollin Campbell, had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Summers started looking into the original Rock Steady boxing training program for his uncle after the neurologist suggested they give it a try.
As Summers remembers it, “She asked, well what do you think?”
“I’ll give it a shot,” he said. “She was just really shocked that I said I would. We started going on with the program, and it grew from there.”
The sessions have grown to 10 members, and a wheelchair patient will be joining shortly, Taitingfong said.
The trainees combine non-contact ring work, heavy bags, focus mitts, jump rope and other exercise activity.
Ken Adams of Marysville has been boxing for nine months, and he and his wife said the results have been dramatic. He said he has more energy, mobility and endurance, his hand-eye coordination is much-improved, and in the ring he’s quicker on his feet. Adams said he didn’t think he could jump rope. With encouragement from Summers, now he is.
“Bret knows how to get the most out of you,” Adams said during a break from training. “He makes you do it right. He’s good at making you do better than you thought you could. That’s what really helps me.”
Taitingfong clearly feels the improvement.
“Mentally, it involves the seratonin that makes you feel better,” she said. “There’s a tendency for depression with Parkinson’s, and the exercise definitely helps with that.”
Summers’ commands put trainees through the paces to improve hand-eye coordination.
“We have to get our brains to react quickly to execute in our hour, also based on how intense the exercise program is,” she said.
Taitingfong added that she is impressed with Summers’ teaching skills.
“He makes sure that we’re punching down correctly,” she said. “He’ll always say, ‘You’re flailing. You’ve gotta keep your wings in tight.
“He’s not letting us slide because we have Parkinson’s; he’s insisting that we do everything right,” she added, “And that has made a big difference for me.”
In addition to less pain, she has been able to cut her medication in half, as well as reducing by half the intensity of stimulation in her DBS system.
There are the emotional benefits, too.
“When you come in here and get a group together like this, you’re a community,” she said. “You walk into this gym, and you feel like you’re not fighting Parkinson’s alone.”
Summers takes it in stride that he is having such a heartfelt effect on other people’s lives. He’s used to seeing boxers training through his gym go on to bigger things, much like he did after winning nearly 400 matches as a professional before a losing to Joe Frazier Jr. in 1987. He retired early to build a long and productive career in training amateurs and professionals from his own gym. He has since been inducted into the Snohomish County Sports Hall of Fame.
The Parkinson’s Fight Club feels different to him, especially after the boxers shared their stories about how they are feeling about their progress.
“What I’ve learned now that I’m doing this is taking their mind off of what they have,” Summers said. “Their mind goes somewhere else, and they tend to forget they have this impairment, and they just go on to do better.”
“These people, they’re winning a small fight in my opinion, but it’s a huge fight in their opinion,” Summers said. “To me, it’s just what I do – using my skills to teach boxing.”
Taitingfong hasn’t stopped at boxing, either. After learning about a Pedaling for Parkinson’s free program at the Mill Creek YMCA, she worked to get them set up at the Everett and Marysville branches too, with a pedaling program planned soon for the Stanwood YMCA.
Taitingfong called Summers her hero, and the group knows he is in their corner.
“For us to be able to come to a place that’s so close to home,” she said. “He didn’t have to do this. He had plenty of people coming that he teaches. This is a total gift for all of us.”
Contact information
For details about the Summers Boxing Club and Parkinson’s Fight Club, call 425-760-0742 or email summersboxing29@gmail.com.
