The Benefits of Boxing Training

Boxing is one of the best forms for improving yourself across a broad range of skill sets: it will work your strength, speed, hand-eye coordination, proprioception and agility, endurance, and power output.

Because of all of this, it is also incredibly high energy – it demands a great deal from you! From shadow boxing to skipping, from heavy bag work to sparring, everything you will do in boxing training will use up a lot of calories and keep your heart rate sky high. This makes it perfect for weight loss, as both the caloric burn and the afterburn will be tremendous.

Of course, boxing has a reputation for violence. It is, after all, a combat sport, and training for it requires you in large part to learn how to fight hard and how to cause a great deal of physical harm to another person. However, this violent side is largely separate – and completely separable – from the physical benefits of boxing as a fitness discipline. You need never take a single punch, nor throw one at a real person if you don’t want to. Simply training to be able to – against bags and pads and going through conditioning practice – will give you all of the above benefits.

The benefits of boxing training

It aids in improving body composition

Due to its high-energy nature, boxing burns through a lot of calories. Much of your training will also be completed in the orange zone, the 85%+ heart rate range. In this range, your body will experience an afterburn effect whereby your metabolic rate (the rate at which you use up calories) will be heightened for several hours post-training.

Because of this, boxing is a potent weight-loss tool. You will be able to create and maintain a caloric deficit very easily if you include regular boxing training in your life.

There is also a hypertrophic element to a lot of boxing training in gyms – it will enable you to build muscle. As your weight from body fat drops, your weight from muscle mass will rise, giving you a leaner, more athletic physique and an enhanced metabolism.

It improves your cardiovascular fitness

Running through boxing training is an engaging and incredibly efficient method for improving your cardiovascular fitness.

Improving cardiovascular fitness means placing increasingly large amounts of stress on your heart, making it beat harder and faster in order to pump more oxygenated blood around your body. Due to its high-energy nature, boxing is very aerobically demanding – it requires a great deal of oxygen to complete, thus placing a great strain on your heart (in a good way!) As a result, your heart will grow stronger, commensurate with an improved ability to get oxygen into your muscles.

It will improve your power and endurance

Boxing uses and training total strength, to a small degree, fast release power, to a large degree, and longer-term endurance, also to a large degree. They will all be tested and improved by frequent, hard boxing training.

Simultaneously training them, as boxing does, will switch your body between energy systems to allow you to train for a longer period of time, whilst improving athleticism by training your body to move more fluidly and adaptively.

This is all particularly true of the upper body and core. Striking practice, especially against heavy bags, will engage your core, building and using your deep core muscles. Boxing training itself will also inevitably involve a lot of core work. Your legs will also be vital: all power for every punch begins at the ground, moving through the grounded feet, into the hips and then through the arms.

Improved proprioception and coordination

Boxing hones your reflexes and spatial awareness. It takes both of these elements to correctly move your body through space, athletically, whilst landing punches and dodging your opponent’s strikes. Hand-eye coordination, balance, and full body mindfulness will all improve, in tandem with full-body control.

There are plenty of dedicated boxing classes in Dubai. You can either find a local boxing gym that specialises, or simply check out what’s on at your gym. Most will host some style of boxing training, be it boot-camp style, hardcore sparring, or simply just boxercise. There will be something for you.