Following a simplified boxers workout is a great way to lose weight and get fit. The worlds top boxers are ranked amongst the fittest and most well conditioned athletes. The demands in the boxing ring mean that a boxer has to be in top physical condition to compete. If watching Klitschko has inspired you to join a boxing club you might want to run through a basic boxing workout a few times to start getting in shape.
To follow a full boxers fitness regime would be too extreme for a majority of people. But if you are looking to lose some weight and improve cardiovascular health, then following a simplified boxers workout will allow you to reach your goals.
The time of fad diets and fad exercise equipment is over, so forget about the Atkins diet, leave your Crunch Frame behind, and get back to some basic, functional exercises, that will work your whole body, boost your metabolism and get your heart pounding.
A boxers workout routine consists of a combination of 4 main fitness elements:
- Endurance Training
- Speed Training
- Weight Training
Endurance is essential to ensure that a boxer stays fit and alert throughout a match.
Speed is not just hand speed, but reaction time and fast foot work. The power from a boxer’s punch comes from the feet, and to get your feet grounded correctly before strike requires fast and accurate footwork.
Weight training is required to increase core, functional strength. Boxers do not follow a lifting routine like those of bodybuilders. Boxers require functional strength, not hypertrophy large muscles.
A boxers approach to weight lifting is more like that of a track and field athlete than a bodybuilder. For this boxers concentrate on compound weight training, which means that exercises require multiple muscles and joints to work together to lift a weight. This is in contrast to a bodybuilder who will concentrate on isolation exercises, to focus on building individual muscles.
Many weight training programs that are available on the internet provide more bodybuilding exercises than compound exercises. As compound exercises work the whole body more effectively, they are an excellent way to work the body hard and boost metabolism, which helps with fat loss.
Diet and nutrition is essential when following even a simplified boxers workout. Many diet plans ignore exercise, and many exercise regimes fail to explain the importance of good diet. For a boxer, then two must go hand in hand.
When exercising more intensively, your body may actually require more calories than you would usually eat. This is because with intensive weight training, and cardio work, your body requires more food to fuel the muscles.
When exercising, muscles consume glycogen reserves. Once these reserves are used, the body then uses reserves found in muscle tissue, which means that you start to wear down you muscles (this is known as over-training). To avoid this, you need to consume more healthy carbs (salads, vegetables, wholemeal breads and pasta) as this is then converted to glycogen, which is then stored in muscle tissue.
Many people new to weight training make the mistake of only eat protein. Protein is essential, but protein needs to be consumed after the workout, as this is when the muscles are being repaired and are growing. Failure to load up on carbs means that you cannot work the muscles sufficiently to then allow them to build up.
Now that we have dealt with the theory behind the boxers workout, we now need to look at the exercises. For these exercise you require some free weights and a medicine ball.
The exercises must be done in this order, as each exercise follows on from the last. Work intensively for each set, then rest for a full 60 seconds. This was you workout in a way similar to that of a boxing match, i.e. an intensive round followed by a short rest.
- Squats: 2 sets of 8
- Vertical Jumps: 2 sets of 6
- Bench Press: 2 sets of 8
- Medicine Ball Chest Pass 2 sets of 6
- Barbell lunge: 2 sets of 8
- Step jumps: 2 sets of 6
- Lat pull down: 2 sets of 8
- Medicine Ball overhead pass: 2 sets of 6
- Weighted crunches: 2 sets of 8
- Medicine Ball sit ups: 2 sets of 6
In addition to this workout, you should also concentrate on pure cardio work. The best way to do this is to again mimic a three minute round, and to do this interval training works best. Jogging / running splits is the easier way to do this. Rather than jogging at the same pace, you should warm up by jogging gently, then do sprint intervals. You should aim to run at maximum pace for 2 minutes, although to start with this may be shorter.
You can either run after doing the weight training workout, or run on separate days. This workout should be carried out 4 times a week if you are running on separate days, or 3 times a week if you are combining the weight training with the running. Remember to ensure that you eat well, and consume plenty of post exercise liquids and proteins, ideally combined in a protein shake that is designed to be quickly absorbed into your system.