Boxing is recognised as one of the best all round exercises a person can participate in. If taught safely and professionally your clients will reap the rewards and you, as a trainer will have a skill for life.The benefits of Boxing Fitness training include:

• Full body conditioning
• Cardio-Vascular improvements
• Flexibility and proprioception awareness and improvements
• Resistance and toning
• Hand to eye co-ordination imrovements
• Footwork and speed of footwork
• Mental capacity i.e. stress relief, aggression control
• Enjoyment of training
• Weight loss
• Endurance improvements

Training Tips added regularly:

1. Hand Wraps 2. Flat Stomach Exercises 3. Bottom Busters 4. BIG Arms 5. Intervals

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Tip 1. Hand Wraps:

Why wrap your hands?

The handwrap's purpose is to protect a boxer's most important weapon, his hands! The hands are made up of many small joints and small bones that could easily fracture from the impact of repeated punches. Handwraps are there to hold your hand together providing support for your wrists, fingers, knuckles, and the entire hand itself.

The handwraps are there to secure all your loose joints and moveable bones. The handwrap fastens all your joints together so the shock is better distributed across your entire hand. You don't want your joints to be moving freely and independently when the hand strikes an object. You can suffer a fracture if joints are moving in their own direction.

That being said, now follows the steps to wrap hands correctly:

• Use the loop put over the thumb and wrap behind the hand
• 3 times around the wrist
• 3 times around the hand bringing it back down to the thumb
• 3 X's through the fingers, this part pulls your knuckles together for support but keeps your knuckles seperated so they don't collapse or break over each other.
• Wrap then over and across your knuckles 3 times
• Wrap over the thumb drawing it into the hand
• Finish off around the wrist and tie off.
• Congratulations a perfect hand wrap!

A perfect handwrap will tighten your fist when you close your hand.

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Tip 2: How To Get A Flat Stomach

8 steps to rid yourself of the fat around your stomach which just wont go away!

1. Exercise and eat right
No kidding, right? Yet so many of us sabotage this no-brainer of a stomach shrinking plan. Study after study proves that eating a well-balanced diet heavy in fruits, veg and whole grains and low in fat and refined sugars, plus exercising regularly, will help you shed not only subcutaneous fat (the surface fat that makes love handles), but also the deeper visceral fat, which builds up around abdominal organs and can raise your chance of suffering high cholesterol, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes. And regular exercise not only helps you slim down your whole body, it actually shrinks the size of fat cells in your stomach.

2. Get down to your healthy weight
Losing that gut isn't easy, but you can improve your contours (and lower your risk of heart disease and cancer) by lowering your overall body mass index A healthy adult BMI is roughly 19 to 25. You can do as many crunches as you want, but if you're overweight, your abs will be hidden under a padding of fat. (By the same token, you can be naturally slim but still carry a paunch if you don't exercise or eat right. Bottom line: think of Tactic #1 as the Golden Rule.)

3. Don't be a stress head
Scientists are studying the link between stress and stomach fat. Heightened cortisol levels in blood, resulting from stress, seem to react with the body's insulin to create visceral abdominal fat -- and, in a double whammy, to also drive us toward fatty, sugary foods. Reducing stress may make it easier to say no to crisps or chocolate cake that go straight to the waistline. Try to find time to relax and chill at times of the day, a tip to if your daily commute is a cause of stress, wear an iPod or read a funny book to help you chill out on public transportation; if you drive, consider ways to reduce your commuting time.

4. Stop boozing, quit smoking
Think cigarettes keep you thin? Think again. Both smoking and alcohol raise the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your body. See Tactic #3 for a refresher on what that means for your stomach.

5. Hire a personal trainer
Embarking on a fitness regime is more likely to be successful if you invest in some one-on-one workouts with a personal trainer. he can devise a regimen that will give you the right amount of cardio plus strength training to help you tone up, and target trouble spots most effectively. And the faster you see results, the more likely you are to stay motivated -- and active.

6. Skip the Pies, meet for sushi instead
A recent Japanese study found that fucoxanthin, a compound in brown seaweed, shrank abdominal fat in lab animals, and encouraged a five to 10 per cent weight loss. Human studies are next, but the scientists are excited. And you should be too, if you love Japanese food. Order that miso soup or seaweed salad. Not only do these low-fat appetizers contain seaweed, they'll fill you up so you won't pig out on that caloriepaloooza known as tempura.

7. Avoid trans fats like the plague
Yes, we already mentioned a low-fat diet in Tactic #1, but trans-fatty acids, found in many convenience foods, deserve their own mention. Trans fats are linked to cardiovascular disease, and, as if that weren't enough, they literally go straight to your belly. A recent study found that not only do trans fats create excess visceral fat in the abdomen, they actually cause fat from other parts of the body to redistribute there.

8. Don't believe the adverts promising miracle abs!
A study by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) found that expensive ab-targeting home-exercise equipment is no better than (and in some cases, is worse than) good, old-fashioned exercises. Skip the gimmicks and work these three ab moves into your workout: the abdominal curl, reverse crunches and the Plank.

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Tip 3. Amazing Glute exercises, toned hard butt.

Exercise 1; The bottom clench:

This is an exercise that you can perform almost anywhere, with no equipment, no time worries, just a simple solution to help tone-up those gluteus muscles.

For best results, perform this exercise whilst seated, it can be made harder by holding a suitable plate weight across your chest. In a smooth controlled manner, gradually tense your butt cheeks, aiming to raise yourself an inch or two whilst staying seated in the chair. Hold this position for a few seconds 3 - 10, then relax your muscles and repeat. The movement is only small, basically shrinking the size of your buttocks at the side.Concentrate on the movement coming from your glutes, avoid leaning forward or pushing down on your feet in order to raise yourself.

Aim to perform 10 - 15 repetitions with a few seconds rest between each exercise. Try and increase the length of time you hold the position for, rather than increasing the reps you perform, aiming to hold for 15 seconds plus.

Exercise 2; Deep squats with or without weights or barbell:

Deep squats will aid both gluteal and quadriceps strength, however always perform these once the muscles have been warmed, by performing partial or reduced weights squats. Avoid performing deep squats when your legs or glutes are tired, as this can result in poor technique, causing injury. In a slow controlled motion, lower yourself down, keeping your back straight, however leaning slightly forward throughout the movement, with your knees going in the direction of your toes. Aim to take yourself down to a position that brings your quadriceps (thigh muscles) horizontal to the floor. Once in this position, clench your glutes, as you rise back up to the starting position to repeat again. By performing deep squats, you will find that your knees will travel over your toes, which is not always recommended, hence as to why you should warm all the leg muscles up prior to performing deep squats, in order to avoid injury, especially to the patella tendon.

Exercise 3; One leg deadlift, my particuar favourite!

See the video provided by ehow showing you perfect technique Deadlifts are challenging enough on both legs...doing them on one leg will really challenge your balance as well as add intensity to the working leg.

Stand holding weights in front of thighs and place left leg out behind you with the toe lightly touching the floor (or lift it completely off the floor for more of a challenge).

Keeping the shoulders back, abs in and the back straight, tip from the hips and lower the weights towards the floor. Lower as far as your flexibility allows. You can bend the knee slightly if you need to. Push into the heel to go back to starting position.

Do 1-3 sets of 10-16 reps. If you liked this advice/tips and would like to chat or more info on the training PT ot classes. Please contact us:

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Tip 4: BIG Arms

To sculpt bigger, stronger biceps and triceps, it helps to arm yourself with a bit of knowledge about your arm muscles and how they work.Your upper arms are divided into three main muscle groups. Firstly, we have the biceps, which runs along the front of the arm, from your elbow to your shoulder joint. The main function of the biceps is to bend the elbow. Secondly, we have the triceps that also run from the elbow to the shoulder, but their main role is to straighten the elbow. The triceps are a larger muscle group than the biceps, which means they have more potential to grow. The third group is the brachialis, an upper arm muscle that runs under the biceps. It's really only visible when looking at the arms from the side, but will make your arms appear much larger when viewed this way.Although most people focus on biceps training, if you want really big arms then you need to work your triceps and brachialis just as hard.To get the sleeve-busting look you're after, you need to work the triceps, biceps AND the brachialis.

Train the arms twice a week, no more and no less. When you do train them, train them hard and to exhaustin with at least 2 sets per exercise but owrking up to 3 or 4 sets.

Keep the exercises varied and try changes the number of reps or order of exercise around. The more you can vary the training the BETTER the results.

Here follows 2 exercises for each of the areas needing to be trained:

Bicep:

1. Seated bicep alternate curl aim for 8-15 reps, the last rep should be difficult to achieve/train to failure.

2. Preacher curl again 8-15 reps. 2-4 sets

Triceps:

1. Tricep pull using the Latt pull down machine.

2.Triceps kickback low weights to begin with on here, keeping the body aligned and dont let momentum or shoulders come into play.

Brachialis:

You work the brachialis by varying the way you lift traditional bicep exercise. The two exercises below are good examples.

1. Hammer curls

2. Reverse curls

As always make sure you fully warm up and cool down with this exercise routine and dont lift more then you can handle. Training with a buddy or a personal trainer can help the sessions be fun and effective. Contact us for more info.

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Tip 5: Intervals

INTERVAL TRAINING THE BENEFITS

Interval training is basically exercise which consists of activity at high intensity for a period of time, followed by low intensity exercise for a period of time. Just like BOXING. These 'sets' are repeated. In my opinion backed up by research Interval training is the most effective way to exercie for fitness gain AND weight loss. So if you think that following the guidelines on the exercise machines and staying in the comfortable 'fat burning' phase is the most effective way to burn fat...sorry but not true. below follows a description of interval training and some examples of how to train using it. Click here for wikipedias thoughts on interval training.

Sprint Intervals

The high intensity portion are called Sprint Intervals. Sprint intervals are measured either by time or distance. They can be as short as 15 seconds in activities like 100 metre sprinting, 3 mins or so for boxing training or as long as 20 minutes for aerobic interval training.

An example of a Sprint Intervals would be running at full pace along a stretch of field for 30 seconds, a boxer punching the bag for 1 minute non stop with a 30 second rest then repating 5 times or another would be an indoor cyclist spending 15 minutes simulating a climb on the bike.

Rest intervals

The periods of recovery are called Rest Intervals. During an rest interval athletes do not stop the activity but generally exercise at a low intensity which allows the body to recover from the sprint interval. The length of these rest intervals are determined primarily by your fitness levels and the type of the sprint interval.

The intervals are important; the basis of the interval training is to ensure that your sprints are done at an optimal intensity, without sufficient rest your interval training will resort back to an aerobic type of activity.

Intensity

The intensity of the sprint intervals is how hard you push yourself during the sprint. For simplicity sake the intensity is usually measured on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being no effort whatsoever while 10 represents the maximum effort possible.

Now this is a completely personal scale depending on your own fitness levels and the type of interval training.

For example a seasoned athletes may be training on improving his speed work, the sprint lasts for 15 seconds and his ‘10’ may be a flat out sprint with the athlete going as fast as he or she can.

Another example would be someone who has not exercised in a while decides to do intervals while walking; a 1 minute walk at a brisk pace may leave the person completely out of breath. This would be their 10.

Now take the original athlete who sprinted for 15 seconds and change the interval to 5 minutes. They couldn’t maintain the same original 15 seconds pace for 5 minutes, but the maximum effort still represents a 10.

A '10' is merely the maximum amount of effort a person can safely expend for that particular interval.

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