Having recently relocated to London, I was spending so much of my time working I had become really stressed, and needed to start doing some regular exercise. A friend recommended kickboxing as a great way to work out and to alleviate stress, so I started asking around and looking for a local kickboxing club. The Kickboxing London scene was more thriving than I expected, and I managed to find a club that was close to my house and held sessions four nights a week. I found a good teacher who was really committed to helping beginners learn the ropes, and fairly quickly I found myself really looking forward to my evenings at the club.
I was surprised to find out that kickboxing as a Western leisure activity is a relatively recent phenomenon – it started in the United States in the 1970s, when karate experts organised competitions which allowed the full-contact kicks and punches that had been banned in karate. Health and safety concerns led to the introduction of padding and safety rules to the sport, giving us the type of kickboxing that is commonly practised today. It is a wonderfully adaptable activity, with different forms that vary according to the techniques used and the amount of physical contact between competitors.
One of the types of the sport I particularly enjoy is aerobic kickboxing, also called kickboxercise, which combines elements of boxing, martial arts and aerobics to give your entire body a full-on workout. In these classes, we generally do a fifteen minute warm up, which involves regular exercises such as push ups and squat thrusts, and then move onto a more skills based half hour that focuses on kicks and punches. After one of these classes I usually feel absolutely shattered, but I’m sure it does my body a lot of good. Apparently, an hour of the sport burns from 350 to 450 calories, so I would guess that kickboxercise could dispense with twice as many!
I know for sure that my upper leg strength and muscle definition in my arms have greatly improved since I joined the kickboxing club. And that’s just the physical changes. Being part of kickboxing London has changed my life in so many ways, it’s hard to remember what I was like before. Fitter, healthier, less stressed, able to defend myself in an emergency – and I have kickboxing to thank!
Please visit http://www.zendokickboxing.com/ for further information about this topic.
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