ADDING BOXING INTO YOUR FITNESS REGIMEN

2 major components to a successful fitness regimen:

• Fun
• Results

In order to have fun, you must “buy-in” to the program, or truly believe it will work, and be doing something you truly enjoy (or will come to enjoy via it’s results).

In order to get results, you must adhere to the program, or exercise, with consistency. To do so, you must be having fun!

Let’s talk about an outlet I (and just about everyone else who tries it) deem incredibly fun, a long term driver of results, and often a rabbit-hole for many.

Boxing is huge in the fitness community right now, and for very good reason.

People don’t want to hear you yell into your mic about how many burpees you should be doing with the time left in the round (keep your burpees, bro), and most people don’t give a shit about learning program design, exercise selection, and periodization; people want to reach their goals, have fun, and be proud of what they’re doing and who they’re becoming.

You don’t have to prepare for a 12 round fight, or spar with pro’s, but you can learn the techniques, build the skills required, have a ton of fun, oh -and burn a ton of calories.

How do I Add Boxing into My Training?

Let’s determine your goals, first and foremost:

Are you focusing on fat loss primarily?

Are you focusing on becoming a boxer?

Are you focused on your physique overall, and just looking to add boxing in as cardio?

Do you want to become competent with boxing, but not exactly devote yourself to it?

Do you just want to find something new and fun, re-invigorate your workouts, and potentially find a new hobby?

These are important questions to ask yourself, because we want to align your actions, with your goals.

For example, if you’re mainly trying to add boxing in as a tool for fun, or just some cardio, all that’s needed is to add in some rounds on a heavy bag to finish off your workout.

But, if you’re wanting to get into the sport, or become competent with boxing, then you want to really focus on building skills!

Integrating Boxing:

Let’s say you’re looking to add boxing in for some engaging cardio, your workout may look like this:

This fella is obviously training hard, focusing on his/her “gains” but may have just replaced a row interval, treadmill interval, or assault bike with some boxing.

Simple integration, and that’s definitely a workout to be looked forward to.

Now, let’s say you’re really trying to focus on building some boxing skills, get in a complete workout, and not just add a “calorie burner” to finish things off.

Your workout may look a bit more like this:

This workout is not only intense, it’s intently programmed.

The focus is placed on the “skills”, by placing the mitt-work first, aiming to improve combo’s, with footwork right after working on building those skills as well.

The main focus strength exercise is paired with more skills work (but less technically demanding compared to mitt-work), by adding some double-end bag or speed bag work as an active rest following deadlifts.

And finally, we finish up with a circuit to hit the rest of the body, with the finisher of the circuit being a minute on the heavy bag.

There’s a clear difference in these workouts (which, I kept basic for the sake of this), so there should be a difference in how you integrate boxing for your goals.

You want to place your most demanding, work first, and rank the rest of the workout based on goals/demand.

In other words:

If you’re focused mostly on building your physique, but want to add boxing in as a tool, you would want to work your boxing after you’ve done your strength/hypertrophy work. That’s what will align you more with your goals; you need to build strength, and muscle, therefore you don’t want to box first because it may hinder your ability to complete the volume necessary for you to grow.

On the other hand, if you’re focused on learning the skills of boxing, or building the myriad of skills involved in general, focus on it first. It’s going to be quite neurologically, and technically demanding, so you don’t want to be taxed from your other exercises and then go into working on your skills because your goals say you want the skills.

Is it Simple/Difficult Enough for Me?

Whether you’re an advanced exerciser, or a complete novice, you can scale any exercise tool to suit you.

Boxing is no different, and since it’s so skill based, it’s simple to determine where you should begin.

For Example:

If you’ve been training for years, and may have dabbled a few times with hitting a bag, but you have the foundation of fitness required to train hard, go for it.

Take some classes, hire a boxing coach, add some simple skills work like footwork drills, coordination drills, or some focused combos on the bag prior to your lifts, and follow your lifts with some output-based bag work.

If you’re a complete novice, it’s as simple as starting.

Take a class, hit a bag following your regular workout, start jumping rope, just start.

But, Am I Going to Hurt Myself?