Why should you add boxing to your routine?
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Why should you add boxing to your routine?
Put simply, boxers are some of the most fit people on the planet. The training involved to withstand 12 rounds in the ring is rigorous and unrelenting.
What makes it so difficult are the various training regiments needed to acquire speed, power, explosion, endurance, hand eye coordination, and actual boxing skill.
So what are the benefits? Here are 10.
1.Cardiovascular Health and Performance
- Boxing uses almost every muscle in the
body at a very intense rate increasing the participant’s ‘beats per minute’ up well above the 80 % max heart rate. When the heart muscle is forced to pump this hard and this fast it will adapt and become stronger pushing more blood out with each pump over time. Like many exercise adaptions, the body wants to make it easier on itself the next time it experiences the same stressor.
2.Stress Relief
– Hit something, you will feel better. Additionally, aerobic exercise of any kind will also increase the serotonin hormone, improving mood.
3. Speed
- Punching and moving your muscles as fast as you can will recruit ‘fast twitch muscle fibers’. These are the ones that give you the ability to move quickly , jump high, run fast, and stick and move. The more you excite fast twitch fibers, the more they will develop, improving your performance.
4.Endurance
- Boxing is a series of anaerobic (without oxygen) movements over a long period of time, which makes it an aerobic (with oxygen) exercise as well. Sports that utilize both capabilities of the body can be the most rigorous because the body is constantly starved for oxygen, hence the heavy breathing and burning muscles. Boxers must perform long duration activity to make aerobic performance adaptations to last 12 rounds-i.e. run, jump rope.
5.Increased muscle mass
- Punching with maximum effort requires a large amount of force through the muscles of the shoulders, pectorals, triceps, low back, and various abdominals. This force repeated will breakdown the muscle fibers or proteins. These muscles/proteins will then need to be repaired which will lead to increased muscle mass over time.
6.Decreased fat mass
- High calorie burning workouts using the high intensity interval training (HIIT) method have been shown to be an extremely effective way to burn fat.
7.Hand eye Coordination
- Being able to pick out targets and confidently strike across your body improves this skill greatly. As a bonus, boxing requires both hands to be used independently, improving any unnoticed weaknesses you may have on the right or left side.
8.Footwork
-Muhammad Ali has a speed ladder drill named after him, need I say more. Not often thought of as being a lower body sport, boxing has a great deal of speed and power igniting from the lower half.
9.Confidence
-Learning a new activity can be very humbling, however accomplishing new goals can be extremely rewarding. Learn the skill, get good at it, and reap the reward.
10.Less monotonous, more results!
-Perhaps the best part of boxing is that you are so focused on the task at hand, you temporarily forget that you are exercising. This allows you to push your body well beyond the intensity of a more monotonous activity such as running, which requires serious mental discipline and fortitude.