If you’re looking for the best way to torch calories and shed fat fast, you’ve likely come across advertisements or articles relating to boxing for fitness. It’s not surprising, considering that boxing is one of the top high intensity interval training workouts available for every age and stage of fitness. The calories burned boxing for fitness melt fat and keep your heart in peak cardiovascular condition.
Boxing for fitness isn’t just an amazing calorie incinerator, it’s a total body workout that involves body weight muscle-toning exercises with a heart-pounding cardiovascular aspect that will leave you beyond breathless. The combination of interval training (periods of short, intense work followed by brief periods of recovery) is the best way to burn calories faster and is healthier for your heart and lungs.
So just how many calories does boxing burn? Let’s take a look.
How Calories Are Burned
Calories are burned through the biochemical process of your body converting the things you eat and drink to energy, which is then expended on activities like keeping your heart beating, breathing, and of course, physical activity. Each person burns calories differently according to their body size, composition (percentage body fat versus percentage of lean muscle), age, and sex. Your metabolism (which basically gets the blame when we feel we can’t eat what we want, when we want, and never gain wait) is the amount of energy required for your body to carry out basic functions like breathing, cell repair, circulation, and the like.
When you engage in an aerobic activity, your body begins to convert more of its fuel stores to energy to carry out the extra burden of movement. Because every person is different, the caloric burn per hour of the same activity will be different also. As such, each person’s caloric burn will be different, but we can get a ballpark estimate of caloric burn because researchers have studied it so extensively. The generally accepted amount of calories you can expect to burn in a one hour boxing fitness class ranges from 600-800.
How Many Calories Does Static Cardio Burn?
This number might shock you, so be prepared. Even though running for an hour straight might allow you to cover upwards of six miles if you run at a pace of ten minutes per mile, your total caloric burn will only be around 400-500 calories. That’s a big gut punch considering how physically demanding running is on the body, and considering how monotonous it can be on a treadmill or on the same loop you’ve run for years.
Cycling burns about the same if you cycle at a pace of 9 miles per hour. If you can hold a pace of 13 miles per hour, you can expect to burn around 500-600 calories.
The reason why static cardio doesn’t burn as many calories as boxing for fitness is because static cardio requires more time to burn the same amount of calories. When your heart rate remains at a static rate, it takes more time to burn calories than it does when you move your heart rate in and out of a high intensity burning zone. This means, you can burn more calories doing half an hour of boxing than you can running or cycling for an entire hour. This is great news for anyone who needs a quick, effective, and calorie shredding workout.
What Makes Boxing so Effective at Burning Calories?
Maybe your idea of boxing consists only of hitting a heavy bag with gloves, or throwing in a few kicks here and there. While you’ll definitely be punching and kicking, you’ll also be incorporating body weight movement, high intensity cardiovascular movements like burpees, lunges, and jump squats. A typical boxing fitness class lasts about an hour and incorporates strength training and boxing techniques, and a metabolic condition component to get your heart rate fully in the calorie burning zone.
Because boxing incorporates strength training and cardiovascular work over a sixty minute period, it effectively burns a higher amount of calories than performing strictly weight training or strictly cardiovascular exercise for the same amount of time. Additionally, you’ll have a blast while you’re torching those extra calories because boxing is a great way to release stress, engage with others, and learn new skills. Boxing gym purists claim there is no better way to get your workout in, blow off steam, and burn calories than hitting the gym for a boxing fitness class.
Boxing can effectively burn between 600-800 calories in one sixty minute class. Incorporating high intensity interval training with weight training and boxing technique, boxing is a great way to get in an intense workout and have fun at the same time. Effective at shredding more calories faster than just static cardio work alone, boxing is a great option for anyone looking to get the highest caloric burn in the shortest amount of time.
