Hobart Personal Trainer | Hobart Fat Loss | Hobart Personal Training

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

If you have ever used heavy ropes to do an interval workout you will feel my pain!

If you haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of doing so yet, then look forward to it and make sure you add ‘Heavy Rope Intervals’ to the list of things to do before you die!

Apparently these ropes were named ‘Best New Cardio Tool of 2009′ by Men’s Health magazine and all I can say is that after a few minutes my lungs, arms, legs, shoulders……lets just say EVERYTHING was burning!

This workout was designed to be hard, fast and effective. I’m pretty sure it ticked off all of these boxes and then some! Following a 40 seconds work into 20 seconds rest interval, I did five work sets followed by a full minute rest (very generous I know!!). Do this for four rounds and you have a nice 20 minute workout. (30 minutes if you include a warm up before and lying in the foetal position for 5 minutes afterwards!)

Round One:

1. Double Waves
2. Alternate Waves
3. Double Waves
4. Alternate Waves
5. Double Waves

Round Two:

1. Outside Circles/Spirals
2. Inside Circles/Spirals
3. Double Waves
4. Outside Circles/Spirals
5. Inside Circles/Spirals

Round Three:

1. Rainbows/Throws
2. Alternate Waves
3. Rainbows/Throws
4. Alternate Waves
5. Rainbows/Throws

Round Four:

1. Double Waves
2. Alternate Waves
3. Inside Circles/Spirals
4. Rainbows/Throws
5. Outside Circles/Spirals

I got Rach to film some of the action, so you can see exactly what the exercises are if you aren’t familiar with them.

Ropes supplied by Australian Kettlebells

Interval Workout Music supplied by Workout Muse

You might be in between routines or just looking for a change of pace.

It might be that you are on holiday or training at a mate’s house.

That’s where the ‘When In Doubt Workout’ comes into play.

Follow this simple formula for a great, balanced workout that never has to ge boring.

Take one each of the following and do either 5 x 5, 3 x 8 or 2 x 20.

1. Deadlift or squat variation (do the other movement lightly in the warmup)’
2. Bench or shoulder press variation
3. Seated row or chin up variation
4. Kettlebell or dumbbell swings
5. Floor based abdominal exercise (Go for higher reps if needed)

Don’t worry too much about the details. Sometimes the back to basic approach will work best.

If you were to do this two to three times a week and make gradual improvements in the weights that you were lifting, you would be doing better than most people.

If you want to throw some metabolic, fat burning intervals on the end, make sure you check out this post.

In one of my recent posts I mentioned that if you are short of time and can only do three, half hour, sessions per week that one of these sessions should be an interval sprint session.

Now running doesn’t agree with a lot of people (neither do I for that matter!!) so the sprint session doesn’t just have to be running. What we want to do is get the heart rate and intensity elevated quite high and then have a rest. So you can do this on the track, in the pool, on a bike or if you’re mad : burpees! It doesn’t really matter what the input is as long as the output is high.

These sprint/interval type sessions have been shown in a lot of research that it can be up to NINE TIMES more effective for fat loss over steady state or endurance training.

Put in the extra effort and you will have your body’s metabolism revved up for 24-36 hours after you have left the gym.

Just a quick word of caution though. Don’t go overboard with this type of training. Too much of a good thing can easily make it bad (think red wine). If you overdo these intervals (more than say three times per week) then you run the risk of injury and burning out. Incorporate it with the rest of your training and you’ll be fine.

Here are a few quick samples of how to set up your session. Remember that you need to do a proper warm up prior to going crazy at it.

Session One

2 minute warm up (specific to your task after your general warm up)

30 seconds hard (8-9/10 Perceived Rate of Excursion)  : 90 seconds easy (3-4/10) x 8

3 minute cool down

Session Two

2 minute warm up (specific to your task after your general warm up)

120 seconds hard (7/10)  : 120 seconds easy (4-5/10) x 4

3 minute cool down

Session Three (specific to your task after your general warm up)

2 minute warm up

60 seconds hard (8/10)  : 120 seconds easy (5/10) x 6

3 minute cool down

Try to increase your intensity with each session either by increasing the level or the speed on the hard section of the interval. You will be rewarded with a new level of fitness and a leaner, toned body.

Do you have a favourite sprint or interval session that you do? Let us know about it in the comment section below.