The Benefits of Boxing
Samuel Reid explains how boxing helps you develop many skills.
To start boxing, you only need a punching bag and a pair of boxing gloves from Everlast or other companies, and you are good to go. Boxing helps you develop many skills and features, such as speed, strength, agility, endurance, hand-eye coordination, and more. Here are some specific benefits of one of the world's oldest sports.
Improves Cardiovascular Health
You know very well by now, given how often you heard it, that you have to do cardio to keep heart disease at a distance if you want to burn some calories or if you want to keep your weight. But cardio does not mean just running or jogging. It can also mean boxing.
Cardio means putting a moderate amount of stress on your lungs and your heart, challenging them to develop beneficial physiological adaptations that will support an increased level of physical activity. You can do that in a simple boxing workout while you punch, bob, and weave, making sure you keep your heart rate up.
Improves Overall Strength
As you can imagine, punching and moving will require the right level of strength since a classic pro heavy bag weighs around 100 pounds but might go way over that. In this type of workout, you will punch a bag hundreds of times. All this activity will stimulate your core, upper body, and lower body.
Not to mention, if you go to a gym for boxing, you will surely start using other types of workouts to improve your strength, such as pushups, squats, and planks, which all have a very beneficial effect on your body.
Hand-Eye Coordination
Hand-eye coordination may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of essential things, and you may not know that it affects your overall health, but it does. This coordination is crucial for one's gross and fine motor skills.
If your hand-eye coordination is good, you will have better and faster reflexes and reaction time. As a result, your physical coordination will improve as well. It is essential, especially as we age since balance and coordination lose development and the risk of falling increases.
This sport helps a lot with hand-eye coordination. When you punch a speed bag (a type of lightweight boxing bag suspended from a disc), spar with someone, or train by punching the partner's padded mitts, you need to be able to see the target, react to it, and hit—all while it is moving.
It isn't easy, but practice can improve hand-eye coordination.
Decrease your stress level
We are stressed out for various reasons, and physical activity can decrease stress levels. Working out increases your serotonin and endorphin levels, boosts your mood, can be seen as a form of meditation, and helps you sleep better—all of these things reduce stress levels.
Naturally, you may need more than just a simple walk in the park to forget all about your problems and decrease your stress level. Sweating it out is the answer in this case.
When working out in boxing, your body goes from high-intensity bouts of exercise to moderate recovery periods. During the high-intensity moments, you will not even have the time to think about your problems, and during the moderate periods, your body is busy recovering.
Boxing is also a stress-relieving sport because it allows you to vent your anger and frustrations on a literal punching bag without hurting anyone. Start the practice, and you will notice the changes in your life, which are all for the better, and you will not feel sorry you decided to take up this magnificent activity.
Page Reference
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- REID, S. (2020) The Benefits of Boxing [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article564.htm [Accessed
About the Author
Samuel Reid is a freelance writer and fitness fanatic who loves to write fitness articles.