The top benefits of Boxing

Boxing is one of the best sports going for developing yourself across a range of areas. It will help you to improve your cardiovascular fitness, strength, speed, hand-eye coordination, proprioception and agility, endurance and power output.

It’s also incredibly high energy – from working the heavy bag to spending long minutes skipping, you will burn through a lot of calories, making it a perfect weight-loss tool. There are many fitness classes in Dubai that involve boxing! Give it a go today!

Nor do you have to take a single punch, if you don’t want to. We’re talking about boxing as a training method, not as a sport. You can get all of the health and fitness benefits without necessarily having to spar.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these benefits.

Improved cardiovascular fitness

Boxing is an efficient, fun way to work on your cardiovascular fitness – far more so than spending hours peddling away doing steady-state on an upright cycle.

To improve cardio fitness, you need to place a strain on your heart, making it beat faster to pump more oxygen around your body.

As it is so high-energy, boxing demands a great deal of oxygen. It therefore puts a massive strain on your heart (in a good way), which will bring about a great many positive health benefits whilst also benefiting your overall athleticism.

Improved strength, power and endurance

Boxing uses the trinity of muscular output – total strength, fast release power and longer-term endurance. It trains them simultaneously, switching between energy systems at will and making you push yourself for an extended period of time.

You will be a fair amount stronger for taking on boxing training. You will be a lot more powerful, and your endurance will shoot up as you train yourself to deliver punch after punch after punch, all whilst dodging and weaving.

It isn’t only limited to the upper body. Core strength is vital. Working a bag, throwing punches at a set of focus pads and sparring itself 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 are vital, too. Bruce Lee’s ‘one inch punch’ is only possible because, though his fist only moves an inch, his whole body is behind the shot. He takes power from his stance, from the ground, and shifts it up through his body, into the opponent.

You will use your legs as you generate punching force, as well as when you’re dancing around the bag, as well as in any given session in which you have to perform sprints, squats, lunges and all that other good stuff.

Improved proprioception and coordination

You need to develop fast reflexes and an ability to know how your body moves through space with an acute and unconscious level of detail when training to be a boxer.

It helps hand-eye coordination, balance, spatial awareness and full body mindfulness. At any one time, you will have to be able to see a target, react to it, hit it, all while the target is moving, changing position and trying to hit you back.

That’s a lot.

Improved body composition

As mentioned above, boxing is very high energy. You can burn hundreds of calories per hour training. It will also take you into the orange zone for extended periods of time – 85%+ max heart rate, where you will elicit an after burn effect that will have you burning extra calories for up to 24 hours post-training.

If you want to create and maintain a caloric deficit, boxing will be one of your surest allies.

In addition, the demands placed on your muscles will elicit hypertrophy. Working heavy bags, throwing punch after punch at the focus mitts, and running through the countless hours of conditioning that underpin a solid boxing routine will all help you to build muscle.

Taken together, this means improved body composition. You will have less fat and more muscle by virtue of taking part in boxing training.

Improved mental clarity and diminished stress levels

Exercise increases endorphin output, boosts your mood, works as a form of meditation, and improves your sleep. All of which help reduce stress.

Boxing goes a bit further than this, however. The improved proprioception and coordination help with mindfulness and mental clarity. You begin to feel how your body moves through space far more clearly than ever.

It is also a challenge, which brings its own rewards – you will likely find yourself more confidant for taking it on. There is also something to be said for learning how to handle yourself.

You will feel generally more capable and safer for having a good bit of boxing training under your belt.

Then there is the outlet. If you’ve had a stressful day, work a punch bag for a good few rounds. That stress will be a lot easier to handle.

Contrary to popular belief, boxing doesn’t make you aggressive. Quite the opposite. It channels aggression into something constructive and healthy, whilst teaching you how to control it, whilst helping to dissipate it. You will likely be calmer and happier for getting involved with it.

There will be plenty of fitness classes near you that offer some form of boxing training. Either search out a boxing class near you – there are quite a few dedicated boxing classes in Dubai – or find some form of bootcamp style class that uses boxing principles. You won’t look back and you will benefit.