On any given Tuesday, one can find Torie Moore at the gym — gloves on and ready to box.
From the punching bag to a practice round with trainer Jonathan Gainey, the 30-year-old woman seems immersed in the boxing culture for the hour she is at the gym.
“I love everything about boxing,” Moore said as she and her friend, Rachel Rhea, left Knockout Boxing and Fitness, a Newark-area gym where people with Down syndrome participate in Down to Box — a weekly program that builds skills in coordination, self-defense and physical fitness.
Because people with Down syndrome typically have low muscle tone and lack of coordination, Down to Box has a customized curriculum that helps develop fine and gross motor skills to advance their physical and mental health.
“Our program works to target muscle control and increase tone as well as improve coordination through boxing techniques,” said Lauren Camp Gates, Down Syndrome Association of Delaware’s executive director and a co-founder of Down to Box.
Gates and Gainey, who owns Knockout Boxing, began Down to Box in 2018 after seeing a need for more programming for adults with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities that incorporated boxing techniques.
The idea for the program developed as Gainey was training Gates.
“We started talking a little bit while we were training and she asked me if I’d be interested in offering a program for individuals with Down syndrome,” Gainey said. “And I didn’t say no to that.”
Gainey said he’d worked with individuals with disabilities before, but never in a class setting.
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They tried a pilot class and got about 10 participants. When people were told that they would launch the program in the fall, Gainey said some become concerned the program was not going to continue.
“So instead of having a delayed start, we kind of just started right then,” he said.
About a year later they filed for nonprofit status. They then started attending Down Syndrome Affiliates in Action events and talking to other Down syndrome associations around the country to see about spreading the program to facilities where it’s needed.
The program has grown beyond Delaware with about 15 locations across the country and five more starting around late summer into next year.
“There’s a market that’s underserved for individuals over the age of 18 with intellectual disabilities,” Gainey said. “And this kind of fits that bill.”
While Down to Box participants train like fighters, they do not actually box.
To Gainey, the standards are the same for anyone who walks through his doors — whether they have a disability or not.
“I want them to make progress. I want them to like what they’re doing. I want them to leave here like it was a great experience,” he said. “So that’s basically what we’re trying to replicate when we spread the program across the country as well.”
In addition to the physical benefits Down to Box provides, the program also teaches confidence and serves as a social group for participants allowing them — and their families — to engage with their peers and develop friendships.
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“A typical person could, you know, go out and drive and go see their friends and do all this,” said Joe Rhea, who was waiting in the parking lot while his 28-year-old daughter, Racheal, was training inside the gym. “But for us, we have to facilitate that.”
Rhea said his daughter, who was part of the original Down to Box class, has a great core of friends who she talks to on the phone. But she has friends in the class and they are actually happy to see each other.
“It’s really a wild experience because it’s like, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ Like they haven’t seen them in months,” he said. “And they see them every week.”
Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.
