The Daily Telegraph - Features
How to burn 800 calories an hour and exercise your whole body
With Emmanuel Macron revealing he pounds punchbags for fitness, Phil Hilton tries his hand at boxing
I’m hitting the pads, my arms and lungs are arguing persuasively for a rest, my mind is battling to stay on top of my combinations, I think I’ve forgotten to rotate my hips properly, and my instructor is still asking for more punches. There is no workout like a boxing workout.
THE FRENCH PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron, usually suave in his white shirts and blue suits, recently showed another side of himself: the fitness boxing side. The “optics”, as they say in politics, were all about grit, vitality and aggression. He was trading on the rich cultural baggage that comes with this Western martial art – there is something about hitting things, testing your limits against an opponent (even an imaginary one), that’s just more heroic than a conventional HIIT programme. As you move around, throwing shots, trying to coordinate feet and hands, twisting your weight into each punch, you burn through calories at a rate hard to match on the football pitch or tennis court. “Weighing in” (I’m already using the lingo) at around 68kg (10st 10lb), I was churning through up to 800 calories in an hour. A boxing workout hits at least 11 muscle groups, engaging pretty much the entire body: feet, calves, thighs, glutes, core, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps and forearms. Shedding fat is just one of the many advantages of this extraordinary route to fitness and, just to be clear, you never need to be punched in the face to feel all the benefits.
STRESS MANAGEMENT A review of the research into the mental health benefits of boxing training conducted by the University of Toronto found that: “The act of punching a bag appears to provide a cathartic release that other physical activities may not provide. This seems to allow for the dissipation of energy, leading to improvements in anger, stress, mood, anxiety and quality of life.” My experience found this to be overwhelmingly true. I’ve been trying boxing and kickboxing for more than 20 years. I took up hitting things when my job at the time plunged me into a world of stress and obsession. Sparring and pads insisted I was fully present – it’s impossible to think about anything else when you’re trying to pull-off a double jab, hook, one-two combination.
My trainer is Gymbox’s William White and he has seen both men and women benefit from this stress-relieving workout. “Being able to get aggression out on the pads is fantastic. A lot of my clients find their self-confidence builds from the fact they know some self-defence, they know how to throw a punch.”
FITNESS AND CO-ORDINATION Boxing can be both anaerobic (working at a pace so high your lungs are unable to produce sufficient oxygen to fuel the muscles) as well as aerobic (a lighter pace allowing the lungs to work). Both are beneficial to your fitness. Boxing is also a perfect way to improve co-ordination and balance, hugely important for those of us no longer young. Counterintuitively, it’s a workout for the whole body. We tend to think of boxing as about arms, but with technical tips from White, I was using every inch of myself. “Punches all start from the feet and end in the hands.” To throw a punch is to coil and uncoil your body, twisting everything to generate force. A fitness boxing session will make you stronger – improving muscular endurance and, in combination with strength and conditioning moves, give you a lean and athletic physique.
PROTECTING THE HANDS There are 27 bones in our hands – such a piece of engineering is not intended as a club and has to be cushioned. Our session began with White applying protective wraps to my hands. These are long cotton strips wound around the knuckles to form a protective cushion inside the glove. It’s a fiddly process and there are soft inner gloves available if, like me, you’re usually too impatient to go through it.
‘Self-confidence builds because you know some self-defence – you know how to throw a punch’