Why boxing’s such knockout exercise...
PIPPA MIDDLETON describes it as ‘a pure but pleasing agony’, singer Ellie Goulding says it gives her stamina on stage and the supermodels on the catwalk at last week’s Victoria’s Secret lingerie show in New York swear by it to give them their honed bodies.
Boxing has become the new punishing fitness regime for the world’s most beautiful women, who are eschewing the emaciated ‘waif’ look in favour of washboard stomachs and defined, muscular legs. Now, thanks to celebrity models such as Gigi Hadid and Adriana Lima posting their sparring routines on social media in the run-up to the Victoria’s Secret show, Britain’s boxing gyms are reporting a sudden surge in popularity.
Instructor Dave Andrews, at Chelsea’s exclusive KX private members gym, says women make up 70 per cent of his clients, with a long waiting list for classes. Dave claims his female boxers ‘tend to listen and learn, and then progress more’.
Interest in women’s boxing began to rise after it was included in the 2012 London Olympics. Then, Pippa Middleton revealed she was doing boxing training – which can burn up to 700 calories per hour – claiming it could ‘banish bingo wings, back fat and booze blubber’.
And earlier this year Taylor Swift was seen in the ring with American supermodel and It girl Karlie Kloss in the video for her single Bad Blood.
Dave says the physical benefits of boxing – which tones the muscles as well as improving cardiovascular fitness – appeal to women too busy to spend four hours in a conventional gym.
The MoS dispatched writer Rosalyn Wikeley to the KX gym, where Dave Andrews taught her a series of jabs, hooks and ducks which ‘soon left me panting heavily, my arms aching’.
‘“Keep going!” Dave urged me, and I jabbed until I could jab no more,’ she says. ‘Two days later, I’m still so stiff I can’t manage to get my shoes on.
‘But you can count me in. After a day at the office, nothing quite beats hitting something hard.’