I’ve done a variety of sports training, and general fitness training over the years, competing in athletics, soccer, American football, tennis, badminton, and weight lifting, and in my opinion, boxing is one of the best ways in which you can either get in shape, or to stay in shape.
When most people hear of boxing as a way of getting into shape, or maintaining their fitness, there first thought is ‘I don’t want to get hit’, and this is a fair point, but you don’t have to get hit with the way I’ll be discussing in this article. When I refer to boxing in this article, it won’t be you trying to hurt someone, or someone trying to hurt you, it’ll be you hitting boxing pads, a bag, or shadow boxing.
As with any form of exercise, it’s of great importance that you warm up and stretch first. I like to get the muscles nice and warm by either doing a few minutes at a light pace on the rowing machine, cross trainer, or skipping. All of these exercises should be done at a light pace, we’re not trying to get fit via these exercise, we simply want to get the muscles warmed up and ready for action.
After we’ve warmed up for a few minutes, it’s then a case of grabbing some boxing gloves, and beginning your routine. If you’re lucky enough to have a punching bag to hand, or someone with boxing gloves, you’ll be working in conjunction with them, so as to exercise. If you only have a pair of boxing gloves, you can shadow box. Likewise if you don’t have any boxing gloves to hand.
To begin with, you should stand in an orthodox boxing stance, and throw a jab with your left hand, then a right cross with your right. This is one rep, and we’re aiming for 15. After this, you should throw 2 left jabs and then a right cross. This is another set, and I’d like you to do 15 once again. This is a basic boxing warm up, and the next few exercises will require you to put a lot of effort into them. For your next exercise, you’ll be throwing a left jab, a right cross, then a left hook, again, performing 15 reps of this. We’ll then perform the same again, but this time, swapping the left hook from the earlier exercise with a left uppercut. After doing 15 of these, we’ll then do a left jab, right cross, and right hook. For the next exercise, it’ll be similar to the previous, but this time replacing the right hook for a right uppercut. This is the end of the boxing workout, and to finish off, we’ll be throwing 20 quick punches towards the body, starting with the left jab, then a right cross, then a left jab, right cross etc. Each arm should throw 10 punches each. Immediately after performing this 20, we’ll do the same again, but this time punching straight ahead, at head height. After these 20, we’ll then throw 20 of the same punches, but this time upwards towards the sky.
In between each boxing set mentioned above, you should be constantly moving by hopping on your toes, in a similar way to which boxers do in real life. You want to be as light on your feet as possible, and constantly moving throughout. Try the boxing workout mentioned above, and see how you get on. At first you’ll find it difficult, but after a couple of weeks, you’ll require less rest mid workout, and you’ll be able to perform more than the one routine, doing many continuously.