Fit Calabasas: Boxing with Mister G

“Left –left–right, right–right–left,” barks Garba Onadja, demonstrating a combination hit on the nearest bag. “Listen to me and your life will be easy.”

“How long?” asks one of the women.

“Two minutes,” he replies.

“That means five!” she answers.

Once the pulsing beat of Timbaland’s “The Way I Are” begins, so does the muffled pow–pow–pow of gloves hitting bags.

Welcome to Mister G’s world.

Onadja turns lazy Saturday mornings into crazy Saturday mornings during his "Boxing with Mister G" (the G is for Garba, his first name) sessions at the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Center.

“He has a lot of energy. He gets the class going and keeps us laughing,” says Kathy Milbrand of Van Nuys.

Onadja, a former martial artist from Burkina Faso by way of France, grins as he encourages his students in thickly accented English, “Let’s get going!” His students are already glowing.

“I like playing that bad guy in their face. They get a good laugh out of it when I play the drill sergeant,” Onadja says with a smile. “Everybody knows it’s a façade, it’s a show. It’s done out of love and care.”

He merges boxing-style moves with traditional exercises like squats, lunges, abdominal work and push-ups, to hit all the major muscle groups.

“It’s a lot of cardio and boxing skills. It’s an all-body workout,” says Calabasas resident Burt Brooks.

And there’s a method to Onadja’s madness.

“There’s a logic to it, to maximize cardio burning and increase the effectiveness of muscle toning,” Onadja says. He runs the class like circuit training to heighten the heart-rate without triggering fatigue.

Narges Rezai, who has taken boxing with Onadja since the beginning of January, is a believer.

“I was talking to my husband today and I said I feel different. I look in the mirror and—maybe it’s just me but—I see a different person mentally and sort of physically,” she says.

Onadja builds from simple combos to more complex combos, “but we do it very gradually so anybody can keep up,” he says. His class is suitable for all ages and all fitness levels. “It’s my job to push them to do more, but everybody is advised to slow down or not go as hard if they get fatigued, to pace themselves.”

He patrols the room, correcting technique and encouraging his students in his expressive way.

“We got the moves, we got the technique, we got the power, we got the style. Now we got the rhythm,” he says, switching the soundtrack to an Usher hit that many of his students likely know of only from their children.

Indeed Onadja pairs the music to the moves, with more aggressive combos set to faster music.

“The music matches the intensity you want them to be at, to put them in the right mood,” he says.

Rezai says it's a good way to start her Saturday.

“I’ve been in different classes, and I wanted a class to energize me,” she says. “[Boxing] pumps you up and gets you to your maximum.”

Milbrand agrees. “I don’t want to stop when we hit that hour," she says.

Get your kicks—and punches—from 8:30 to 9:25 a.m Saturday mornings at Boxing with Mister G for $8 (or $72 for a pass good for any 12 classes on offer) at the .