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Boxing has always been seen as a noble art, anyone who has ever been involved with the sport will tell you that the raining is hard but only half the story. To be a boxer you need to be totally dedicated and let boxing consume your life and you need to have nerves of steel when you step in the ring. That’s wonderful if you’ve got the fitness levels to get you to a stage where you can get on the road to being a boxer. But what about those mere mortals such as you and I who are looking for a release after a long day at work or some where to channel the frustrations of life that we encounter in our day to day lives. How can we use boxing as a way of keeping fit?

Boxing at any level is hard. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you are a normal guy who doesn’t want to fight at the Olympics and therefore won’t go to the extremes of the professional guys that it will be easy, it isn’t. Boxing is energy sapping, you are throwing punches and using footwork to move around a bag or opponent put these together for a two minute round and you’ll soon start to feel it.

All amateur and beginners boxing is based around a two minute round with a one minute break between rounds. This minute isn’t always used as a break. A really good way of boosting your fitness levels is to maybe to one set of twenty squat-thrusts, press-ups, burpees, crunches or star jumps. You can take a break between the rounds, or even ever other round but doing a set of these exercises will make a big difference, and you will know you’ve trained hard at the end of the session.

Within a boxing gym [http://www.nike-trainers.com/The_News/Latest_News/Boxing_Fit/] there should be maybe 10-12 different bags to work on; these will all help to develop different skills. All punch bags are not made equal.

A light bag should be used to develop fast hitting skills. The trick is to get the bag to not swing as wildly as you imagine that it would. The idea is to move around the bag as it swings, hitting it as it is on its way back to you, not going away from you. If you catch it hard and correctly as it’s on the way back to you it should be possible to stop it. You can also use the light bag to develop you movement technique, push or swing the bag away from you and from your boxing stance use your foot work to step to the side or bob and weave to avoid the bag, when the bag slows down finish the round with a flurry of fast punches for a real burn of a round.

The heavy bag is used purely for developing your punching power. Again, as the bag swings towards you try connecting with solid left and right straight shots, ensuring that your arm is straight and that you make contact with the knuckle part of the glove or you risk twisting your wrist which can be very painful.

The floor to ceiling ball is where you can be made to look very silly! This is a punch ball suspended floor to ceiling by two pieces of heavy duty elastic, as you punch the ball it whips back at you. The trick here is to anticipate where it is going to go and correctly judge a punch to it or use quick feet to get out of the way. This isn’t the most tiring round you will do but it is one of the most mentally draining. Be ready for the ball to fly back at you as it does come back at some speed and to the amusement of anyone else training it can take you off your feet. Prolonged use will improve your reactions though and it won’t be too long before you’ve got the better of it.

The teardrop bag is suspended from the ceiling and is usually quite a heavy bag, sometimes filled with maize. The teardrop bag is used to hone boxing skills such as the hook or upper-cut although you can land straight shots to it.

The body bag isn’t as brutal as it sounds, it’s basically a bag that is best described as having a figure of 8 curve to it to help you practise body sots and body hooks as well as head hooks and straight shots. This is great bag for practising your close up boxing work.

The final piece of equipment you’ll find in a gym is the speedball. This is the piece of equipment that all new-comers to boxing want to master as they’ve seen it on all the boxing movies.

The speedball develops hand to foot co-ordination and although the punches that are thrown whilst on the speedball aren’t realistically used in boxing the speedball still develops hand speed and stamina. I’ve always found the best way to perfect using a speedball is to land rolling punches slowly and build to a crescendo and get the timing of the ball by listening to the rhythm of the bag.

Don’t feel intimidated by boxing; it is a great discipline to learn. It isn’t easy to master but you can get yourself to a reasonably competent level by sticking with the training. Boxing will give you a great all over body workout, help you lose weight and keep you in good shape.