
"It’s all about what’s happening behind your eyes and between your ears." Want another full-body workout you can do at home? Give this routine a try: “That’s the best perk of it all.” So you do you, girl, going as fast as you can or as slow as you need. “When I’m teaching or any of my instructors are, we always show modifications for an inclusive space for both beginners and the super athletic,” Shirazi says. That also means you can really turn it up-pushing your pace and adding more force behind each punch with your hips and lower half-whenever you’re ready to increase the intensity. While you do get a full-body challenge with every punch and kick, you can also move at your own pace and easily modify when you need to, says Shirazi. So you train from head to toe doing those exercises, too. “The power comes from the legs, through the core, and then translates out to the arms,” she explains.Īlso, most kickboxing workouts involve a total-body warm-up or active recovery intervals, featuring moves like squats, lunges, situps, pushups, or burpees. Your arms might do a lot of work as they turn, twist, and extend through each punch, and your legs certainly drive each kick, but it takes your entire body to create force and add power to each movement, says Eliza Shirazi, trainer at Everybody Fights in New York City and creator and founder of Kick It with Eliza, available to steam at. "There’s mental and physical benefits to boxing, but it’s also easy to do regularly, because it’s such fun.”Ĭonvinced to give it a go yet? If you’ve never signed up for a fight-centric class or followed along in an online workout, let these next seven kickboxing benefits convince you it’s time to start knocking out your workout. “Getting hand wraps, talking about the benefits, and learning the jab, cross, and uppercut technique gives people confidence," she says. “Once people try it, they get excited,” says Taylor Merritt, ACE-certified, on-demand trainer for Title Boxing. While kickboxing can be intimidating-it may conjure up images of dudes knocking each other out-don’t let that turn you off. In other words, you hit every aspect of physical training. While there hasn’t been any super-recent science analyzing the pay-offs of your punching, one study from 2014 did find that kickboxing improved upper-body and aerobic power, anaerobic fitness, flexibility, speed, and agility. Like most workouts, you'll break a major sweat while you jab, cross, and kick-but the benefits of this form of fitness go well beyond strength and cardio (though those top the list). Kickboxing packs more than a one-two punch for your health-it’s more like a 4-6-10 combo.
