(Waiting stance, although I could have improved this by bending my knees more. Pic cred: The author)

Doing boxing exercises at home

Recently, I haven’t been able to visit my local gym for my boxing classes due to work piling up at school. Thus, over the October break, I decided to revisit my boxing moves as a form of exercise. This required revisiting jabs and other forms of punches taught previously in my boxing classes.

I think that the toughest part of this session was maintaining the stances for long periods of time. While this might have been the easiest part of boxing a few months ago, it was quite tough because I was out of practice.

(Some basics of boxing. Source: Boxing Wiki)

I had to watch some videos of boxing basics in order to make sure that my stances and punches were positioned correctly – while it might not be harmful to me just at home, having incorrect positioning is very risky in an actual match/ spar.

Overall, I think that it was a very rewarding workout, I was definitely able to work my muscles (with a focus on the bicep and tricep area, and obliques). I mainly worked on jabbing consecutively for long amounts of time. A challenge I faced was the lack of a partner/ coach to practice things such as sparring and blocking properly, however, I think that the exercise I did was beneficial.

After finishing practicing my boxing exercises, I decided to push my limits further by conducting a short strength training session – about 45 minutes of pilates with some dumbell lifting. At this point, my muscles, particularly my triceps and biceps, were burning quite a lot. Despite the uncomfortable feeling, I felt that this was for the best – as it meant my muscles get to grow back stronger!

Learning outcomes:

• LO1 – Strength and growth
  • I think that this learning outcome was present in this boxing session in a literal sense – as strength is something implemented and developed when doing exercises. 
  • Although I might be out of practice with boxing moves, I think that this session could be the start of my progress in boxing.
  • Since I regularly do strength workouts, the last 45 minutes weren’t as tiring – however, I have definitely sensed an improvement in the way I can conduct some exercises (chest presses/ overhead tricep extensions/push-ups, etc) for longer periods of time without taking a break and with heavier dumbells. 

• LO5 – Showing perseverance and commitment
  • I believe that this is a learning outcome that I can work on more as I continue improving in boxing and exercising more, with commitment and proper focus I can make progress with this activity.