Shed the weight and shred your muscles by adding in some kickboxing workouts to your routine.
Calling all cardio-junkies and fitness fiends! If you love the challenge of high-intensity, sweat-worthy workouts, you will love kickboxing. You can wake yourself up with a quick-start to your morning mood and metabolism or you can release the stress and frustration of the workday on a bag instead of on a person. Below are five benefits of incorporating kickboxing into your workout routine.
You can punch your way through stress with a kickboxing workout. The fitness outlet gives you an easy target — you have a literal punching bag in front of you that you can take out all of the day’s stressors on.
For those who do not hold as much pent up emotion as others, you do not have to punch hard in order to feel the benefits. The high-intensity workout elevates your heart rate quickly, pushing your physical limits to the max and melting the stress away on the bag. The hardcore workout will then release endorphins for a satisfying after-workout high.
Kickboxing allows you to set, achieve, and reset goals all the time. When you first start out, you will notice how tired your arms feel after only a few minutes of holding them up to punch and block — talk about a shoulder burn! You also may tire out in minutes because of the fast-paced, full-body, cardio routine. If you continue through the pain of the first week or two, you will notice drastic improvements in your form, power, and endurance.
A kickboxing workout does not need to be long in order to burn calories. A 30-minute workout can burn between 400-600 calories. Not only will you see an instant calorie deficit, but you also get to enjoy the boost in metabolism for the rest of the day. You will work your whole body, toning and shaping your arms, legs, glutes, and core. Your body will reward you by working hard the rest of the day to shed fat and tone muscle.
So why not give it a go? You can find gyms with punching bags that you can form your own self-paced workout, look for guided classes, sign up at kickboxing-specific gyms, or search for YouTube videos to get you started or improve your form. Just a couple workouts will burn off stress, burst past plateaus, and torch calories!