Get in the Ring!

One round of boxing stimulates all of the major muscle groups – delivering a total blast to the body that helps improve power, coordination, aerobic fitness (lengthier sessions with oxygen) to build endurance and stamina, and anaerobic fitness (shorter quick bursts of training without oxygen) to build power and speed. Indeed, boxing will whip you into the best shape of your life.

The great thing about boxing is that the skills you learn in the ring, or when going one-on-one with your heavy bag, will transfer into practical self-defense skills. After all, if you have the power and stamina to survive a round of sparing in the boxing ring; you have the skill to ward off an attacker in the real world.

A boxing workout is really quite simple, and you don’t need a ton of equipment to get a fantastic full body workout. All the equipment you’ll need is:

• A heavy bag

• A speed-ball

• 14-ounce boxing gloves

• A skipping rope

• A timer

• A medicine-ball (optional)

The greatest thing about boxing is that you can do it in the comfort of your own home – with a little space of course. Just clear a decent space in your apartment or basement – and find a good solid beam to hang your heavy bag from. That’s really all you’ll need. With the heavy bag you won’t need a sparring partner. Just put the gloves to your bag, and then follow your sparring with a 2 minute sweaty jump rope session. You may want to invest in a timer – and play some heavy music with a beat – trust me it will help you keep you’re skipping and punching rhythm.

If you’re new to boxing the best advice I can give you is to sign up for a few classes with a qualified instructor first. This will teach you the basic boxing moves:

• Jabs

• Straight rights

• Hooks

• The footwork

After you learn the basics, you can take your moves home. A 60 minute boxing session can burn up to 1,000 calories – which is more than a simple run will ever do. Better yet, it blends cardio with resistance training, and helps build your whole body by calling on the muscles in your shoulders, forearms, abdominals, hip flexors, obliques, quads, hamstrings, calves, upper back, triceps, biceps and lats. What you don’t believe me? You try holding up a pair of 14 ounce boxing gloves for 3 rounds! Trust me; you’ll feel the burn in your upper body.

Personally, the greatest thing that I find with boxing is that after a particularly stressful day at work it lets me take out all of my aggression on the bag!