Carson City boxing coach certified to train Parkinson's patients

Northern Nevadans fighting against Parkinson's Disease have a new ally in their corner.

Francisco Rodriguez, owner of Tazmanian Boxing Club in North Carson City, recently earned national certification to train individuals suffering from Parkinson's Disease, a distinction that makes him unique among other area boxing coaches and trainers.

A former professional boxer with a 28-4-4 career record, Rodriguez spent four days at a clinic hosted by the Rock Steady Boxing Club in Indianapolis, IN, learning to put his skills to work training Parkinson's patients.

"I went over to Indianapolis and I was able to see their program," he said. "They've been doing this for over 12 years, and I love the way they do things over there."

Rodriguez said he was able to observe Rock Steady's training regimen for Parkinson's clients, and what he saw impressed him. Go here for the original story from January we did on Rodriguez and him working with Carson City area Parkinson's patients.

He noted that workouts were team-focused, and clients were placed in groups of varying ability levels with commensurate activities.

Rodriquez is already introducing what he learned at Rock Steady to his own gym where Parkinson's clients currently train two afternoons a week. Key to reaching others with the disease is to combat assumptions about boxing.

"Hopefully we can get more people interested in boxing, but people think Parkinson's and boxing don't work," he said. "Boxing doesn't cure Parkinson's. It will control it, slow it down."

Boxing workouts for Parkinson's clients are all non-contact, Rodriguez said, and are designed to capture clients' focus on the task at hand.

Concentrating the brain on specific repetitive tasks, he said, appears to redirect its energy away from the neurological symptoms that Parkinson's Disease manifests.

From speech impairments to poor ambulation and tremors, these symptoms have been found to be controlled with high intensity movements and activities that target improved balance and coordination, Rodriguez said.

That makes boxing fit like a glove for Parkinson's clients.

Rodriguez's foray into the mysterious world of Parkinson's Disease began in December 2015 when he opened up his gym to Carson-Tahoe Physical Therapist Nina Vogel and her clientele.

Vogel introduced her Parkinson's clients to boxing workouts as a way of stabilizing symptoms, even slowing the disease progression down, in order to give these patients back their quality of life.

The progress Rodriguez saw in Vogel's clients inspired him so much that he decided he wanted to train them in his area of expertise.

"I knew everyhing about boxing, but with the Parkinson's certification, I was able to learn," he said.

Rodriguez said he spent all four days of the certification process working alongside Parkinson's patients, learning about their symptoms, their functioning, and their individual capabilities.

"I learned which level of Parkinson's each client was at that I worked with," he said.

Rodriguez said progress varies by client, and improvement is an individual measurement. But he has personally seen significant progress in balance and coordination in as little as a month.

Each client is at their own unique level, he said, and workouts need to be built around what the client can do at the moment while also pushing them to achieve a little more.

"They want to be treated like everyone else, and they don't want people to feel sorry for them," Rodriguez said. "We don't feel sorry for them. We treat them the same as everybody else."

He also said Parkinson's clients aren't treated as patients, either. They are put through the training rigors as athletes, as fighters.

"If you treat them as a patient, not as a fighter, you bring their self-esteem down," Rodriguez said. "We push them to the limit, and they always give us 100 percent."

Rodriguez, a former Bantam-weight World Boxing Council Latin American title holder and Arizona state champion, said he sees a fire in the eyes of Parkinson's clients the moment they put on the boxing gloves and start working the bags.

"They love it," he said. "When they put the gloves on they want to fight, they want to compete, they want to be active."

Even more than that, Rodriguez sees a passion, a motivation in Parkinson's clients that he rarely sees in most fit young fighters.

"I see more heart in these people, because they are fighting for their lives," he said.

Much tougher than any workout Rodriguez can throw at his clients, though, is attracting more Parkinson's sufferers to the sport of boxing and to his gym.

"Right here in Carson, nobody knows about this program," he said. "We've been able to get more people in here in the past few months, but I know we have more people than that."

Rodriguez said people who need help managing their Parkinson's symptoms may not know where to go to find it.

"Or they don't know anything about boxing," he added. "I want to invite them over here to come and see what we do, and see the people we already have."

While all of the know-how and expertise are in place for local Parkinson's athletes, Rodriguez admits his program hasn't reached optimal yet. Revenue for the kind of equipment he'd like to have isn't in place at the moment, so the gym makes do with what it has.

"This is a new program here," he said. "We make sure our boxers have everything they need to train safe, but sometimes things just aren't in our budget and we have to be creative to use what we have for them to be safe. It's kind of tough, but nothing's impossible."

The Tazmanian Boxing Club, located at 1701 South Sutro Terrace in Carson City, is an affiliate of Rock Steady Boxing, Inc., an organization that has spearheaded a nationwide effort to promote boxing as a therapeutic modality for treating Parkinson’s symptoms.

To learn more about the link between boxing and Parkinson's Disease, visit the Rock Steady web site here and click on ‘affiliates’ to find information on the Tazmanian Boxing Club in Carson City.

You can also call Francisco Rodriguez at 775-722-1752 or email him at ciscoboxing1@yahoo.com. Carson-Tahoe Physical Therapist Nina Vogel can be contacted by email at rocksteadyboxingcarsoncity@gmail.com.