Boxing is a sport which trains both your physical and mental health. It boasts an impressive range of fitness benefits: improving strength, agility, speed and cardio – boxing requires full use of your body and mind. Taking up boxing as a recreational activity allows you to acquire a range of athletic skills but without ever risking a black eye.
Here are the 5 top fitness benefits of boxing training:
Full-body workout with boxing training
Even if you are not boxing to compete and win a knockout, improving your boxing skills comes with increasing the power behind your punches and kicks. Mastering the correct technique behind a jab or upper cut requires many repeats of the same movement and engages both your lower and upper body. You need to use your entire body in order to successfully coordinate your movements. This makes boxing a great way to increase your overall strength, from the legs to the core and arms.
Improve your cardio with boxing training
Cardio is key to a healthy lifestyle and should be a staple feature of your fitness routine. Despite its benefits for your heart health and endurance, cardio may also have a reputation for being somewhat boring. With many associating it with tedious minutes spent jogging on a treadmill, some may be looking for a more exciting way to fit in their weekly cardio into their schedules.
Boxing provides just that, moderately working your heart and lungs with all the excitement of punching and kicking. It is key to boxing to always stay on your toes and keep moving around in between throws. Although you might not be running miles and miles, a few minutes in the ring can already be enough to get you working up a sweat.
Better agility and coordination
Boxing also engages your flexibility and coordination to combine punches and avoid them. When dealing with a moving target, you need to be able to move and react with speed and precision. Becoming more coordinated with your body will also help you in other sports and whenever good balance is needed.
Stress release with boxing training
Whether you have had a difficult week at work or have deadlines to meet, stress can quickly build up behind our back. It is well known that physical exercise can help reduce some of that stress and prevent it from building up. Boxing is a great way to release some of that tension by alternating between high-intensity strikes and more gentle periods of recovery. Such combinations require a lot of mental focus and leave little space for worrying about things outside of the ring.
Fitting a few minutes of boxing training into your weekly schedule has many fitness benefits, whether it is strengthening your upper body, improving your agility or working on your cardio.
Training for other sports
As a whole-body exercise, boxing can help improve body composition by helping with both muscle building and calorie burning. This makes boxing a great workout to help you train for other sports. From football to swimming, the skills you learn and develop as you box can better prepare your body once you return to the pitch or swimming pool.
How to find a boxing class near you?
If you are looking for boxing lessons near London, Going Swimmingly London offers private boxing lessons. Whether you are looking for a way to train your swimming outside of the pool or to improve your general fitness, a private teacher can help motivate you to reach your goals. Get in touch today and be ready to lace up your gloves the next time your schedule frees up.