Boxing is one of the most popular sports around the world. Despite emerging in ancient times, it still attracts a large following in present times.
The number of people taking up boxing is growing at breakneck speeds, partly because of its myriad benefits. The sport has proven to be a great way to challenge individuals’ mental and physical health. To further push its popularity and promote awareness on why boxing is a sport worth giving a try, we have seen the rise of various authority boxing blogs, including http://www.probellumnews.com/ – a boxing site where you can get updates on the latest happenings in the boxing world.
Do you know what’s more interesting?
You do not have to engage in competitive boxing and follow in the footsteps of notable names like Mike Tyson, Anthony Joshua, and Tyson Fury to leverage these benefits. With a punching bag, you can learn the art of striking and experience its inherent perks.
In this article, we will share the advantages of engaging in boxing as a career or a hobby.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the specifics.
1. Improves Cardiovascular Health
Boxing incorporates various forms of physical exercises, including HIIT, fully known as High-Intensity Interval Training. HIIT involves giving maximum effort with minimal rest when doing short bursts of exercises. These kinds of exercises are an excellent workout for the whole body, and especially the heart.
With regular boxing exercises, you can sustain more extended HIIT periods, which builds cardiovascular endurance. As a result, you minimize the possibilities of developing heart disease and other related conditions.
2. Helps in Weight Loss
Being a high impact workout, boxing is one of the sports that aids in weight loss. You can quickly burn 800 calories in 1 hour of boxing, which is more than you would burn taking a brisk walk or jogging. To be exact, people burn 415 and 557 calories onwards when walking and jogging, respectively. Of course, these figures can still go up depending on the intensity of the various exercises, but still, boxing is a more effective calorie burner.
Thanks to its impressive calorie-burning capabilities, boxing is a great sport for people looking to shed excess weight, especially visceral fat, otherwise known as belly fat. Also, since boxing involves various overall body movements from the arms to the legs, it gives you a full-body workout, which further accelerates weight loss.
3. Improves Balance
It is essential to improve balance to ensure you are not toppling over things as you walk past them.
As kids, activities such as skipping and hopping boosted our balance. However, as we grow up, we engage in these activities less and less, causing our balance to suffer.
Boxing is one of those sports that improve balance. It involves many coordinated intensive hand and leg movements to help you be better at blocking, parrying, rolling, and sliding. You will also need to change your position more often, challenging your balance. In addition, these movements help you build muscular strength, which is integral for promoting balance.
As a result, many people are taking up boxing to help recover people who suffer a stroke. Also, many parents are considering it a viable option in managing Parkinson’s disease, a neurological condition characterized by movement and coordination problems.
4. Improves Hand-Eye Coordination
The ability to maintain focus and, at the same time, have a proper reaction is a perk you can gain from boxing.
In boxing, learning how to block or punch at the right moment is vital and a skill that improves your hand-eye coordination. In addition, it helps you better assess your opponent and know the best action to take in a particular situation.
Coordinating the hands and eyes is a skill we strive to learn in everyday life. From feeding ourselves to writing, hand-eye coordination plays an instrumental role in our lives. Even as a professional boxer, your success in boxing partly lies in how fast and accurate you react. With drills such as the double-end bag work and shadow punching, taking up boxing allows you to improve hand-eye coordination. As such, we can be more efficient and productive.
5. It Works the Core
A common belief is that boxing targets the shoulder muscles only, which couldn’t be further from the truth. When done correctly, incorporating boxing exercises into your fitness routine will work your core.
Boxing movements such as punching, moving, and evading punches from your opponent use your abdominal muscles. Especially when throwing a punch, you need power: power that requires you to use abdominal strength.
So, if you want to develop abs or burn belly fat, boxing exercises can be a great addition to your fitness regime. Sit-ups and crunches primarily focus on the rectus abdomens muscles, and boxing will, in turn, work on the serrate anterior muscles, which are vital when building your midline stability.
6. Stress-relieving Properties
From listening to your favorite tunes to meditating and taking a walk, various ways to relieve stress exist. However, the number of people letting out their frustrations on a punching bag continues to increase, and for a good reason.
Boxing is an excellent stress-reliever. It presents the perfect avenue to channel your frustrations. With a punching bag, you have a chance to release negative energy without causing harming yourself or the people around you.
Also, being a form of exercise, boxing releases endorphins – otherwise known as feel-good hormones. When endorphins interact with the brain, they reduce the feeling of pain. Also, they promote a positive feeling, making it an excellent remedy for combating stress, depression, and other related illnesses.
Conclusion
Even undertaking boxing as a hobby allows you to enjoy these and more benefits. Apart from physical wellness, you will also experience mental clarity. Knowing that your body, mind, and spirit are as they should be is an excellent confidence booster. This increased self-esteem ensures you walk taller, allowing you to lead a better quality of life.