Hobart Personal Trainer | Hobart Fat Loss | Hobart Personal Training

At times you can stumble upon ideas and information in an unusual manner.

We all know that boxing workouts are great for your fitness and great for burning fat because of the high intensity and full body nature of the workout. Basically anytime you do a full body, interval based workout, you are going to get fit and lean in a hurry!

Now as you might know, Racheal managed to injure her knee last week and has been unable to do much lower body exercise during that time. But Rach loves her boxing and she was keen to make a comeback even if it meant that she would only be able to really use her arms.

Now when I teach people how to box, I really do emphasize the importance of working from the ground up with each and every punch. You have to be strong from the floor and deliver all of the power from the legs, through the hips and core and then finally deliver the punch with your fist. If you don’t do this you will run into a number of problems.

First of all your arms have small muscles when you compare them to your core and leg muscles. If you let your arms do all of the work they are going to fatigue very quickly. This is a problem because once your arms are gone the whole intensity of your workout is going to suffer and you will struggle to get your heart rate up and then miss out on most of the benefits of boxing!

Secondly, if you aren’t using your legs and core to generate the power behind each punch you will severely limit your output from both your heart rate and therefore your ability to burn calories and boost your metabolism.

So Rach certainly found out the hard way on Thursday that if you don’t use your legs, your arms are going to cop it. But please don’t take this as me saying that if you want to tone your arms and get a great upper body workout to use your legs less. In fact the opposite is true.

By using your lower body more you will be able to go harder for longer and get a better full body workout. This doesn’t mean that your arms are working less it is just that you are working smarter and by the end of the session your whole body (including your arms) will be done!

Box this way and you will get all of the benefits that go with intense boxing workouts. Fitness, fat loss, tight stomach and toned arms.

This week I stood back and let Racheal take our group boxing session. Rach had hurt her knee and wasn’t going to be boxing anyway, and I had to do a conditioning session on Tuesday as part of my training.

Now let me tell you this. If boxing doesn’t get you fit, nothing will. Period!

Ready To Go!

The sessions we run involves working with a partner and doing pad work. So in essence you get a ‘rest’ ever other round. The thing with knowing that you have a rest approaching is that you work harder and harder on each work set! So when it comes to your turn to be on the pads it isn’t really that much of a rest!

Long story short, boxing will get you fit and lean in a very short time.

If you want to get fitter and lose some belly fat then you have to consider boxing. People spend too much time on traditional ‘cardio’ equipment thinking that it will get the results they want. In fact I would argue most of the exercise done with traditional cardio equipment is a waste of time.

Machines such as treadmills, elliptical trainer and exercise bikes are generally used with a very casual intensity and people will use them for months on end and not change their body one bit.

$2 Rope = WIN. $10k Elliptical = FAIL

Compare this to a typical boxing workout where the intervals are short, lets say up to three minutes each, and the intensity is a lot higher than other forms of exercise. When you combine this with the anaerobic nature of the movements involved you have a very potent formula that will get you fit and lean in a very short time.

Working at this high intensity for shorter rounds takes a lot more effort than the typical ‘walk in the park’ type cardio that you will often see but it also burns through a whole heap of calories as well. As an added bonus you will find that your body will be burning through the calories for long after the actual workout itself because you will have raised your metabolism to new levels.

You may be surprised how many muscles you actually use when you do a boxing session and you may find that the day after your first workout that you have woken up some previously dormant ones. After my workout on Tuesday I found that it was my abs and core muscles that were ‘alive’, not just my arms and shoulders which were pretty good.

So if you ask me, boxing has to be one of the best all around workouts that you can do.

1. It’s Time Effective
2. You’ll Get Fit Very Quickly
3. You’ll Burn A Heap Of Fat
4. Tone And Strengthen your Arms
5. Tighten And Tone Your Abs

I have in my head a saying, well more so an acronym, although PPPPPP doesn’t really spell anything that you can say without people thinking you have a major stutter.

Apparently PPPPPP stands for

“Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”

I take it as meaning that if you properly plan (in advance) you can or will prevent poor performance.

On the other hand, the way I remember it (and I’m sure it was told to me this way, because I didn’t invent this one!) is that

PPPPPP stands for

“Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance”

I take it as meaning that if you properly plan you can or will prevent poor (or worse…) performance.

Take home point? You have to Plan and Prepare!

1. Have a plan – The worst plan in the world will be better than no plan at all. And chances of having the worst plan ever are pretty darn slim! Your plan will be a roadmap on how to get to your goal. There’s no point having a plan if you don’t have a goal you are focusing on.

GOAL –> PLAN –> ACTION

2. Identify your time wasters – Too many people tell me that they don’t have time to follow an eating plan.

HELLO?!?!     It saves you time.

In the time it takes you to decide what you want for dinner, walking aimlessly around the supermarket, you could have made a double batch of the pre-planned meal and had tomorrow’s lunch or dinner sorted as well. The same goes for snacks. Grab your ziplock bags and portion out the nuts, protein powder or other non perishables you are going to use for the week.

Making 7, 14 or 21 bags of something in one hit takes a lot less time that doing the same thing everyday, or two to three times per day.

If you can’t get around the food analogy, think of it like this. It takes you 3 minutes a day to check the mail. You check it 5-6 times per week meaning it takes you 15-18 minutes per week to check the mail. If you only check it once a week, you probably aren’t going to miss anything and it will take you only 3 minutes.

Apply this principle to your food preparation and you can see that all that PPPPPP stuff makes sense!

I am exactly the same as you. If I prepare my food in advance and follow a plan, my results are 10 times better and I don’t waste time fluffing about. If I don’t plan and prepare, I have to think and this isn’t good!

Less thinking, more doing = Better Results For Everyone!

Know Your Goal

There are a number of acronyms and tools available when it comes to goal setting. The tried and true method of S.MA.R.T goals will work as will the modern I.N.S.P.I.R.E.D method. There are also some pretty powerful goal achievement programs such as the Magic Hundred which can accelerate your progress in many areas not just your fat loss. The main point here though is to have a structure, have a goal, know what it is and then have some way to you manage and achieve it.

Have a Plan

Once you have a goal worked out, you need to work on a plan to help you to get there. Hopefully you have set your goal just outside your comfort zone so that you can achieve something special and worthwhile. This is why you now need a plan. Anyone can work their way to mediocrity without a plan! But to rise up to the next level you need to know where you are going and how to get there.

Remember that you don’t need to go it alone at any stage. There are specialists that can help you at any stage and their help will also accelerate your progress.

Remove Negative Thoughts

The quickest and one of the easiest methods to getting you on the road to success is to instantly remove any negative thoughts and barriers from your mind. These will be thoughts such as why you can’t do what you are trying to do, why you couldn’t do it in the past, reasons that will make you efforts harder etc. These mental barriers will slow down or even completely halt your progress. Once you manifest these thoughts, they are much more likely to play out and become a reality. If you do have a negative thought follow it with a positive question…..

Ask Positive Questions

Instead of replacing your negative thoughts with positive thoughts and trying to tell yourself how good things are and how easy it is, ask yourself questions that lead to positive answers. What’s the difference you might ask, well consider the following. If I were to tell you that the sky is green and get you to repeat it time and time again so that you believe it, what do you reckon the chances are that you will actually believe that the sky is green? Pretty much zero. If I was to ask you what colour is the sky, you are already thinking blue. Why? Well you brain is programmed to answer questions, but remember it will try to answer all questions bot negative and positive.

So instead of asking yourself “Why am I so fat?” (in which case you mind will automatically thinking of all the reasons, over eating, not exercising etc) ask “Why do I find it so easy to lose weight?”

Your brain will automatically be thinking of the reasons why weight just seems to fall off (it’s because I exercise regularly, eat well, I’m focused on my goal etc). These positive answers are embedded deep in you mind and if you can bring them to the front you will actively believe the answers and won’t have to force positive thoughts onto yourself.

Exercise With Purpose

Exercise is great for a whole heap of reasons. One of those reasons is fat loss! If anyone questions the role of exercise in any weight loss program, question them!

The whole thing with exercise though is that there needs to be a reason why you are doing it. Some people just like a challenge and will push themselves to the limit with every workout because that’s what they do. If that’s not you then you need to be thinking of your goal, your plan, removing negative thoughts (yes exercise should be hard at times where you question why you are doing it!) and ask positive questions (Is training this hard going to make me fitter, leaner and stronger? YES, YES and YES! – Positive) (Does I want to stop because its hurts – Yes – NEGATIVE!).

Exercise with purpose and intensity. You will be amazed what you are capable when you have a crack and remove your pre set self limitations.

Putting it all together is easy. Work from the top down and reuse each step as often as you need to. There may be a number of goals you want to achieve. You may need more than one plan, but these plans need to be supportive of each other not conflicting. Change your thought habits, one thought at a time, and start lifting that training intensity TODAY!

If you have any questions leave a comment below.