Why Boxing Is The Best Workout
The simple truth is that most gym-goers are looking to become something other than professional athletes, let alone professional boxers.
Most of us are trying to lose a few pounds to improve our health,
gain more energy to perform our daily responsibilities, look better in our
clothes, and feel better about ourselves.
While we are biased here at Gloveworx, boxing is the best workout regimen you can choose. That’s because
we genuinely believe an exercise routine centered on boxing can help you
accomplish all your fitness and personal health goals.
To prove our belief, here are five of the top reasons we
believe boxing is the best workout.
Boxing Will Help You Burn A Ton Of Fat
Regardless of what the latest fitness trend or dietary fad
might tell you, the scientific community almost unanimously agrees that weight
loss -- and fat loss, as a byproduct -- occurs when we create a caloric deficit
through diet and exercise.
While the oft-repeated adage among the fitness community is that
“abs are made in the kitchen,” the best way to think of the combination of
exercise and diet is that exercise burns your body’s energy stores (in the form
of calories) in a way that facilitates weight loss. Your diet is how you refuel
yourself to repeat your chosen training method.
Accordingly, it would make sense that you want an exercise
regimen that will engage your whole body and burn a ton of calories as a
result-- and there are few better ways to burn a considerable number of calories in a
short period than boxing.
Case in point? A one-hour boxing workout involving punching
a heavyweight bag can burn as many as 700 calories. That's more than one-third
of most people's daily caloric intake requirements.
Boxing Is A Great Way To Improve Cardiovascular Health
Anyone familiar with the sport knows that boxers are among
the athletes in the most remarkable physical condition. Those three-minute
rounds of boxing, often spread out over 12 to 15 games in a given match, are exhausting
and thus require an incredible amount of conditioning in preparation.
Even if you do not desire to enter the ring, there’s no
reason you can’t derive the same cardiovascular benefits through boxing
training. Perhaps just as importantly, you don’t have to be anything close to a
professional athlete to enjoy those benefits.
As a baseline comparison for its ability to burn fat and
improve cardiovascular health compared to other forms of exercise, an
evaluation compared two groups of overweight adults: one who performed boxing
training versus another who achieved the equivalent amount of brisk walking.
The results showed that the boxing training group
significantly improved their body fat percentage, blood pressure, and overall
cardiovascular ability compared to the walking group.
On top of that, boxing is a more efficient
way to get in an incredible cardiovascular workout as well.
Understanding that boxing is a high-intensity training
method, a growing body of research shows that even very brief stretches of
high-intensity exercise, lasting as little as 60 seconds sometimes, can offer
the same improvements in lung and heart health as 45 minutes of
lower-to-moderate intensity exercise.
Translated: The training sessions that will wrap up in 60
minutes or less at Gloveworx can improve your fitness levels exponentially more
than your basic cardiovascular training methods.
Boxing Can Help You Build Muscle
There’s no question that boxing can help you build and
strengthen muscles in your body. That doesn’t mean that boxing will help you pack
on big, hulking muscles that will leave you looking more like a professional
bodybuilder.
Suppose you’ve ever seen the bodies of most professional
boxers. In that case, you’ll notice their physiques with almost no visible body
fat -- meaning nothing is covering up the muscles they’ve sculpted due to all
of the conditioning and boxing work they’ve put in.
We’ve already discussed how you can enjoy those same fat-loss
benefits. Still, the training you’ll undergo at any Gloveworx session will help
you strengthen and enhance the significant muscle groups all over your body.
That’s because many of the muscles you engage when boxing are the same ones you
use to perform various day-to-day tasks.
Naturally, your muscles will get stronger with
all the conditioning exercises you’ll perform during a training session,
including many activities using your body weight (like push-ups and
crunches, among many others).
So, as you might expect, improving your abilities overall as
a boxer correlates to improving the strength and endurance of
those daily use muscles.
Boxing Can Improve Your Abilities In Other Sports
There are countless stories of collegiate and professional
athletes taking up boxing during the offseason of their respective sports to
improve their technique and overall abilities when their mark is in season.
That’s because boxing is an incredible way to help you improve everything from
your overall reaction timing, hand-eye coordination, lateral movement ability,
and cardiovascular endurance.