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Boxing for Ultimate Women's Fitness

Lately a lot of emails have been coming my way asking for more fitness articles. It seems many of the women here want to read about getting super fit for their chosen sport or health kick - this really impresses me.

Boxing for Ultimate Women’s Fitness

We have touched on this before but I wanted to spend a bit of time looking at boxing and how awesome it is for all-round women’s fitness. Boxing truly is one of the absolute best ways to to get ultimate women’s fitness.

What do I mean by ‘ultimate’ women’s fitness?

I mean the type of fitness where you can run for miles without getting tired, you are faster than your friends, you are toned and lean because you are a fat burning machine, your muscles recover well after a workout and you are full of energy all day long. This is the kind of fitness I am interested in and in this post I will be talking about why boxing can help you achieve that and how you can do it for yourself - just like the girl in our header image!

Why boxing is so good for women’s fitness

When you think of boxing what comes to mind? Fighting? Anger? Blood? Not me. When I think of boxing I think of old gyms where you train in the heat without any fancy equipment. I think of battered old gloves and taped up punching bags that have been beaten for years. I think of sit ups, pushups, early morning jogs and I think of skill. You see boxing demands total body skill. You need to coordinate your legs and your hips and your arms with whatever movement your eyes see. It is quite amazing.

And this is why boxing is so good for fitness. It is full body.

When you step into a boxing gym you will be made to do all kinds of exercises - pushups, sit ups, bag work, speed ball work, sparring, jogging, weights, skipping, etc. They have fitness down to a very fine art and they know how to get the best out of you.

But it goes deeper than that. Sure they will train your whole body on the whole but when you box your whole body is used. What I mean by this is that every punch you throw (if you do it right) should utilze your whole body. The power comes up from your feet and then transfers into your hips where you twist hard and then punch the bag with your arms. As your hand hits the bag you tense your arm for a nano-second and sink your weight into the target to create maximum power. 10 correct punches is enough to make a beginner need a rest!

Think about the fitness possibilities. Every training session you will get a full body workout. You will mix weights with cardio as well as learning how to defend yourself. It is like the ultimate circuit really. No wonder boxers are so toned and lean.

How you can get fit with boxing

If you want to utilize the power and fitness knowledge of boxing you have two options:

1. Join a boxing club
2. Use their techniques at home

Both of these options are good and each has it’s own advantages.

1. Joining a boxing club
As I have mentioned before, women’s boxing is now taking off and becoming really popular. What this means is that there are women’s boxing gyms popping up all over the city. You can go along and be trained by women and not feel intimidated by all the huge men staring at you and wolf-whistling. Not that this happens at mixed gyms. Every martial arts and boxing gym I have trained at over the years has always had a mixture of men and women and we were always good friends. There was never any intimidated or unwanted sexist remarks.

My point is - don’t be afraid to go to a mixed gym. 90% of the time the men will be helpful and just glad to see more people interested in their sport.

The advantage of training at a gym is that you get taught everything you need to know. You will be guided through how to throw all the different kinds of punches and get experience in training and defending yourself. This minimizes your chances of injury and helps you to get fitter a lot faster.

2. Using their techniques at home
This is also a good option because you get to train in the privacy of your own home. Many women prefer this. The downside is you have to buy all your own equipment and you run the risk of doing the techniques incorrectly.

However it isn’t that hard to train like a boxer at home. For example, start with some early morning roadwork (jogging) and then come home for some weights or body weight exercises. Then move out to the heavy bag and do some punching work and then finish off with a bit of skipping. That’s a full body workout and enough to get you mighty fit.

Or you could just do one per day: bag work on Monday, running on Tuesday, skipping on Wednesday, etc. and see how your fitness levels improve.

You can get a lot of it done without the fancy equipment but at the minimum you will need a good skipping rope like this one and a proper heavy bag with gloves. The rope is cheap, the bag isn’t.

Conclusion
I encourage all reader of Real Women’s Fitness to learn more about boxing and explore it’s fitness techniques and methods. There really is a lot to learn from this sport. It isn’t all about violence and fighting - it is about bettering yourself and your body and learning a pretty cool new technique. It really is the ultimate for women’s fitness.

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