5 Health & Fitness Benefits of Boxing Workouts

The rise of the home boxing workout has made boxing more accessible than ever before. You no longer have to worry about having access to the right equipment or finding a specialist gym. Everything you need for an effective boxing workout is available in your own home.

It might not seem like it on the surface, but boxing offers an incredible cardio workout akin to a long run, swim or cycle. The best part is that boxing is actually considered to be a low-impact workout. For many at-home workouts, you’ll focus on shadow boxing, which doesn’t involve any physical hitting. You can get an incredible boxing workout without ever hitting anything.

Boxing is not only a workout for your body. It’s also a workout for your mind. You’ll learn to push through pain barriers and realise new levels of fitness you might never have thought possible before. If you’re not convinced by the hype, then consider these incredible health and fitness benefits of boxing...

1. Improve cardiovascular health

The key to getting a good cardio workout from your boxing routine starts in the warmup. All you need is a jump rope. If you haven’t touched a jump rope since school, prepare to be shocked at how quickly you get out of breath. You’ll require good hand-eye coordination to be able to swing the rope. And you’ll need quick feet to be able to jump in time. Just 10 minutes of jump rope can burn 100 calories.

Moving on to boxing moves like jabs, hooks and uppercuts, you can quickly burn calories by doing multiple repetitions of these core moves. It might not seem like much when you start but trying to keep perfect form after 15 minutes of shadow boxing is no mean feat. When it comes to cardio workouts, there’s no denying that boxing offers variety and incremental increases that will keep you engaged and always coming back for more.

2. Increase muscle tone

The repetitive movements found in boxing are great for building muscle tone. It might not feel like a strength workout when compared to something like a kettlebell workout, but trust us when we say your muscles will feel it the next day.

Boxing is not just great for the arms and shoulders, it also improves muscle tone in the legs and core. You need a strong posture and powerful core to be able to duck and weave through a boxing workout, so you’ll soon see improvements in these areas.

3.Calmer mind

As much as boxing is great for training your body, it’s also a great stress buster. When we get stressed out, our cortisol levels rise and this stress hormone wreaks havoc on our health. It’s responsible for your poor late-night food choices when you walk in the door after a stressful day at work. To keep stress at bay, punching away your stress is a highly effective way to calm your mind.

We often assume that boxing is about brute force and violence. In reality, boxing is a very mindful sport. The principles of boxing will teach you all about learning to tell the difference between your mind telling you to stop and your body telling you to stop. These skills can be easily applied to other aspects of your life to help you enjoy a calmer life.

4. Increase hand-eye coordination

As we get older, our hand-eye coordination will start to decrease if we don’t take steps to utilise it. It’s something that we’re all guilty of assuming will always be there, but if you don’t use it, you’ll soon lose it. We often incorrectly assume that hand-eye coordination is a muscular skill, but it’s actually all controlled in the brain. So by taking steps to improve your hand-eye coordination, you can actually help to boost your brain.

To balance this, boxing is a physical activity where you become aware of the movements and position of your entire body. Over time, you’ll soon find your reflexes become better and your hand-eye coordination is improved.

5. Optimise body composition

A lot of people are looking for the magic miracle fix that will help them to lose weight. This can be dangerous territory due to the many unhealthy ways that we can go about weight loss. In reality, those who are looking to improve their health and lose weight should instead look for exercises that will improve their body composition.

Your body composition is the percentage of fat and the percentage of lean muscle. Boxing can help you to increase lean muscle while getting rid of excess fat. In reality, the number on the scale might not go down, but measurements like your waist size will go down. Approaching weight loss in this way is far healthier. Boxing is the ideal full body workout that is varied and exciting, so you are less likely to give up as you might with running or swimming.