Importance of Conditioning Fundamentals for Boxing and Martial Arts

Boxers are trained to attack their opponents with fast and explosive punches and evade their opponent’s attack. During a boxing match, the fighters are judged based on their strength and hitting power. The thing hard to quantify is the extent of conditioning in a fighter and the ability to endure the fight to last long. That’s why it is necessary for boxing and martial arts, i.e., MMA, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, to practice a combination of both resistance and endurance training for the strength and conditioning required to win the fight.

What Is Conditioning In Boxing?

Conditioning is used to describe the ability of tolerance and gaining endurance to last long in a match. In other words, practicing methods to improve the ability of the body to bear the sustained effort. It is like a runner performing to train his muscles to run faster, and conditioning would enable him to keep up his fast speed for a longer time. Similarly, work-outs would enhance muscle strength for quick and explosive blows, but conditioning would determine how long you will last in a match launching explosive attacks.

Importance Of Conditioning

The objective of conditioning is to enhance the time for any activity being performed and delay exhaustion. For a successful match, the boxer needs to exert himself for many hours, repeating the same training and steps. The earlier you get tired, the more you will suffer. You may lose your guard and make random punches. To make your training fruitful and helpful while in the ring, you need to condition your body to utilize the strength obtained from training. During a fight, in some instances, you need to push yourself harder to the maximum capacity in every round. The duration of the round may be five-minutes to three-minutes, from three to twelve rounds but keeping yourself intact till the end of the match is the main goal. When you get exhausted, you drop your guard with an exposed chin, and your opponent would not ever miss such a chance to knock you out. Conditioning your strength is the way to overcome such a situation. For this purpose, cardio-exercises are the best to perform; to attain better results, you need aerobic and anaerobic training.

Forming A Base Conditioning By Modest Aerobic Training

Aerobic workouts particularly do not include a single type of exercise. The degree of potency one can bear is described by a particular aerobic training. In aerobic activity, the average intensity of exercises is about 55%-65%. Building endurance through aerobic training helps you in surviving long in a fight. Moreover, aerobic activities would enhance your recovery ability in rest time between two rounds. For a moderate level of aerobic training, running is the best option for boxers. As running can be done continuously without any pause. Moreover, it is an easy activity that requires no equipment, and space for the public is easily available for running. Apart from running, cycling, swimming, rowing, and trekking are also cardio activities with various intensity levels. Targeting the right exercise with the required intensity is the right thing to do for strength conditioning. You need to opt for low-intensity training at the beginning to build up your stamina. Starting from brisk walking with periodic running during the walk would build up your aerobic tolerance. Once you gain the required stamina, you can go for high-intensity activities like running, swimming, and trekking.

Advanced Level: High-Potency Anaerobic Conditioning

The more resilient activity is the anaerobic training, which leaves you breathless and tires you out. This activity exhibits high exertion training, which is essential to incorporate greater endurance, tolerance, and speed. In a boxing match, every round constitutes a bombardment of flurries which is an anaerobic activity. This series of flurries may last even longer in MMA and wrestlers in the form of engaging and grappling. To gain training for launching high potency flurries, an excessive amount of anaerobic tolerance is required. High-intensity training is based on brief shots with repeated momentary gaps or periods of light activity. The most common high-power activities for enhancing endurance are sprints, skipping rope, and stair runs. Like aerobic activity, building tolerance in anaerobic exercises is performed at a high intensity no matter what the activity is. You need to pull yourself to full capacity; even it is for 30-60 seconds, then take a rest for about a minute. Try not to exceed a particular limit in reps and sets to avoid any injury. High-intensity training helps improve your speed during foot drills and your endurance to last long while sparring with an opponent.

Combination Of Aerobic And Anaerobic Training

A boxer needs to launch an attack at various intensities in a ring, with different movements from moderate to 100% capacity many times in each round. There is a slight pause between hard attacks, and you need to get back on it again. A boxer attempts both slow aerobic activity and strenuous anaerobic activity for defense and offense in the match. The attacks need to be switched from anaerobic to aerobic and vice versa as per requirement. To trigger such perpetual switching, you need to go for interval training. Interval training involves switching from moderate-potency activity to high-potency and vice versa. One such example of a mixed activity is running; during a medium-intensity run, you can combine various high-intensity work-outs performed at several intervals. These high-intensity activities may include burpees, sprinting, trekking, and shadowboxing. Jumping rope can also be used as a combined training by varying the speed of the spin of the rope. By effectively combining aerobic and anaerobic activities, you can work out and stand a better chance against your opponent and survive long in the ring.

Keynote: Boxing is a game of strategic utilization of strength and power; conditioning the strength helps fighters get through round after round against their enemies. Every game's fundamentals are the same, which requires improving strength utilization and conditioning, which can be enhanced by focusing on cardio activities.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our NEWSLETTER below and start receiving more Tips & Info by E-Mail.