Luc

Many people who start boxing prefer the training to actually fighting. When Luc Zirkzeefigured that out, he started LuckyGym, a place where boxers of all skill levels can learn the sport and train with a private instructor or a group. A boxer who simply want to train never needs to spar if he or she doesn’t want this, and the LuckyGym motto is “boxing without losing brain cells.” Luc, 48, lives in Leiden with his wife and five sons.

“I’m the owner of LuckyGym. There’s one co-partner in LuckyGym, but he’s an investor and he’s not involved in the daily operations.”

“It’s been 15 years since we started. In the beginning it was a difficult idea to promote. I had the idea for a boxing gym, but Holland wasn’t really ready for it.”

“Boxing is now becoming more popular in Holland. It’s much more than just two guys fighting … people are beginning to understand that boxing is a physical game of chess, and that you need to have a good set of brains if you want to be a successful boxer for a long period … boxers always knew that, but many people have been worried that boxing leads to brain injuries.”

“People should be worried about brain injuries. Everyone understands that if you get too many punches to the brain you’ll get confused. And there are many examples of boxers who have brain damage. … but you don’t have to hit each other every day in the head to be a good boxer.”

Luc began boxing when he was a teenager. “I used to do a lot of sports. Basketball, football, things like that. When I was 15 years old there was a period of my life when things weren’t going the right way. I wasn’t training anymore, not doing sports, hanging out on the street … one of my older friends woke me up and said ‘what’s going on?’ … there was something going on in my life that was the problem, and it’s why I couldn’t concentrate on a sport. He said ‘so what will you do?’ My answer at the time was ‘I would like to punch a boxing bag. Just get rid of the stress, get rid of the hassle and just get that sporting energy back again.’ So he said ‘why don’t you do that?’” 

“So I went to a boxing school here in Leiden. And from the moment I walked in, I felt the friendship. Boxing is like a community. Boxers respect each other, and it was completely different from what I expected to be getting involved in. So from the first moment on, I just fell in love with boxing.”

“Boxing is really putting yourself in front of a mirror. You can’t hide. You just have to face yourself and say ‘this is me.’ Some people fight, some people flight. Boxing is brilliant for that. Your true character comes out. Are you going to be able to fight? Are you going to be able to continue? Are you going to be able to think about your mistakes? Do you plan things? Do you prepare well?”

“I think intelligence is the most interesting part about boxing. It’s not the strongest one that wins. It’s the intelligent one that wins in the end. At the top of professional boxing, you have 100,000 boxers who are good at the sport. But the real champions, the long-time champions, are very intelligent. They have to be. Because there’s always another opponent coming up to you, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. You have to be awake all the time and be prepared.”

Luc was educated as a building designer. “I used to work for building firms and architects, making drawings for buildings and things like that. I did boxing just for a hobby. I was a contest fighter.” But in the traditional boxing gyms where Luc trained, it was almost always the case that boxers spent the final 20 minutes sparring. “I saw that a lot of people walked in, and they enjoyed the training very much and had a big smile on their face. Until the sparring started. Because then you’re throwing punches at them. And I never saw most of these people come back again. So I started wondering where all these people are going.”

“The idea was running in my head all the time. And one day I decided I’m going to do something with those people. I want to see why they aren’t returning to the boxing gym. I thought I can catch them and let them just do the training, not necessarily the fighting.”

“I started a training program and developed the marketing tagline ‘boxing without losing brain cells.’ Then I started approaching local companies to see if their managers were interested in encouraging their employees to do boxing. My pitch was that this type of training helps to make a good team, that there’s a good jump from sports to business life.”

“The idea was successful from day one. In the beginning I brought the boxing trainings to my customers. But it wasn’t long before people started asking if I had a gym.” Luc opened the current LuckyGym location on Rooseveltstraat eight years ago.

These days, Luc doesn’t need to do much marketing. “I don’t even have to go outside. People are calling me.” As demand for Luc’s brand of boxing training has grown, LuckyGym started offering classes at rented spaces in Noordwijk and Warmond.“There’s a big change from 15 years ago. People are really accepting the idea of training without getting punched.”

Despite this success, Luc doesn’t plan to expand LuckyGym. “I don’t want to be very big. If you come in, I want to know you by name and know what you’re doing. And that’s impossible in a bigger place … there’s no way you can make people happy or lucky when you don’t know what’s going on with them. I want to look in the eyes of everyone who walks in to see if they had a good day or a bad day.”

“In the beginning, LuckyGym was designed to be franchised and expanded. To put a LuckyGym in every city once we found it was a successful model. But then I learned that it’s very difficult to find good trainers who can also run a company, who can run financial things and who have a good feeling with people. Many sporting instructors are in it more for themselves than taking care of you. But LuckyGym is about taking care of people, and that’s not possible if you have 2,000 or 4,000 members.”

“Like the name says, I want people to feel lucky ... I want my members to walk out lucky, to make them happy … make them realize that happiness is within ourselves. For me, that’s what life’s about. Taking care of each other and making people better … we’re all behind our computers and in cars and not moving too much. Moving and using your muscles gets the good hormones going through your life, and it gives you a happy feeling.”

Luc and his LuckyGym trainers work to stay on top of the latest developments in boxing training. “There’s growing competition in the boxing training market, and it’s important to stay current. We borrow techniques from Cuban boxing, American boxing, Ukrainian boxing. We also go very often to Cuba to get more education and stay in touch with what’s changing in boxing training.”

“In every sport becoming a champion is one thing, but staying a champion is another thing. That’s what you find out in the ring. If you stand still, you lose. You have to stay focused, you have to change the moves. If it’s not your day in the ring, you have to go back to the basics because you have to win. There’s no time for losers.”

LuckyGym is located at Rooseveltstraat 43 in Leiden. Information about the gym, including a schedule of group classes, is available at www.luckygym.nl