Really, how IMPORTANT is it to workout?
Is that a question that has ever crossed your mind, only to be shoved into the back of your mind – kind of in the same place as your years spent in junior high trying to overcome being awkward?
The truth is, working out is VITAL to not only our physical health,
but our mental health as well.
I have been teaching cardio kick-boxing for about 20 years. In the beginning, as a martial artist, my kick boxing was all bag work – for an hour. Non- stop kicks, punches and drills with some dips, push ups and mountain climbers thrown in for good measure. Over these 20 years the way I teach this workout has evolved tremendously. This evolution came about due to several factors – clients’ requests, my own changing physical needs and/or injuries and my continued fitness education. Clients loved the killer cardio workouts but asked for more. Concerns included toning the arms, ab work and, for many, butts and thighs. We added weights for biceps, triceps, chest and back. We added more inner thigh work. All the kicking is amazing for our outer thighs (saddlebags) but lacking for inner thighs. We also added lunges, squats, leg lifts and ab work. Our cardio kick boxing class became a full body fitness class. We decided to work smarter, not harder and often use the principles of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). With HIIT, we focus on one exercise, intensely for about 30 seconds and then recover for about 20 seconds, then on to the next exercise for three sets of ten exercises. This work and recover gets the heart rate up and then allows it to come back down which in turn is said to rev up the metabolism allowing one to burn calories over the next 24 hours! Twenty years of martial arts and cardio kick boxing can place a good deal of stress on the body with so much pivoting, etc. This is precisely why after a few years, I turned to yoga to compliment what I was doing in Taekwondo and kick boxing and to aid in healing and post exercise recovery. We took these principles of yoga stretching and added that to our class cool down. We still work on the bags with kicks and punches, but every class contains additional exercises for a complete full body workout, ending with yoga style stretching, all in 45 glorious minutes!