Introduction
This third and final part of this article series finishes the list and description of the fitness components that can be enhanced and improved through a professionally designed kickboxing fitness program. We will finish with:
- Reaction Time Training,
- Brain Health/Cognitive Function, and
- Emotional and Mental Health Benefits
Reaction Time Training
Why Reaction Time Training? Reaction time is very important for everyday life. It enhances safety and ensures that a person’s body is primed to move whenever necessary. Think about all the activities people do every day that rely on quick reaction times to perform successfully.
Reflexes slow with disuse and aging. Physical changes in nerve fibers slow the speed of conduction. And the parts of the brain involved in motor control lose cells over time. This decline in function can be slowed by including training activities that require the brain to observe and interpret certain stimuli and then quickly respond.
Boxing and kickboxing movements, activities, drills, and routines can be manipulated to focus on specific improvements in reaction time by assigning specific movements to specific verbal or visual cues. The challenge of reaction time training drills often turns into an extremely FUN part of a workout!
Brain Health/Cognitive Function
Brain health is enhanced through the same physiological responses that result from safe and effective exercise and physical activity. Increased blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain, resulting from exercise activities will improve brain health and function.
Cognitive functions can be challenged in a variety of ways during a boxing/kickboxing fitness workout. The key is to keep the mind engaged during the workout – make the participants think while moving! One of the many, many ways to do this is by including reactive training in the workout. Have participants respond in a specific way to a specific stimulus or cue. One example would be to have participants execute a specific movement when the trainer provides a specific verbal or movement cue.
Emotional & Mental Benefits
Emotional & Mental benefits may be experienced because of the physical training and the goals that are achieved. Some of these benefits include:
- Confidence & Self-Esteem – is developed by:
- Starting, maintaining, and experiencing the physical results of an exercise program. Confidence and self-esteem is enhanced when an individual recognizes improvements in physical appearance, capabilities, and abilities.
- Learning and mastering the new skills required to perform a boxing/kickboxing workout. A sense of accomplishment and internal power is developed as coordination and physical skills improve.
- Discipline relates to having the mental and emotional control to perform and complete required tasks. Maintaining a workout program promotes both physical and emotional benefits. This is an indirect reinforcement for discipline development, which is required to maintain the program under any circumstances. The discipline achieved can positively impact other areas of personal and/or professional life.
- Respect is developed in two areas: 1) respect for oneself, 2) respect for others.
- Stress relief – think about! What is a normal reaction to something that causes negative stress? Do you clench your fist? Do you slam your clenched fist down on a table or hit a wall? Well, that is a normal response! The best thing to do is participate in a physical activity, like boxing or kickboxing, that includes “striking” something! Immediate (legal and non-destructive) stress relief! The emotional stress relief experienced is a key benefit in today’s world of “fast” paced and high-tension lifestyles.
Conclusion – Very Important:
Instructors/trainers are evaluated on their abilities and capabilities to provide safe and effective training routines and programs to participants who may have a broad range of experience, skills, physical conditioning, levels of function, abilities and capabilities. ‘Safe’ is defined as avoidance of acute and prevention of chronic injury. ‘Effective’ is defined as experiencing the most benefit, based on specific, defined participant goals and objectives.
Kickboxing or Boxing fitness training is not intended to develop Fighters or Black Belts! The goal is to provide safe workouts in which each movement is fully utilized, to positively stress the body and achieve the desired exercise program objectives and/or individual’s goal(s). Safety is important!
Boxing/Kickboxing fitness classes DO NOT TEACH SELF DEFENSE. Fitness class or training clients learn, in a non-threatening environment, how to execute certain defensive movements and strikes. A real conflict situation involves additional factors which influence learning practical, realistic, and effective street self-defense.
- Believing that one can learn real-life self-defense in a fitness class, is to create a false sense of confidence that could possibly have very negative results.
- The physiological AND emotional responses to a real attack are not duplicated in a fitness class.
- In fitness training, you don’t learn how to get out of various types of grabs & holds or how to fight while on the ground or in any other potential environment.
- And an important part of self-defense training includes the development of mental, emotional, environmental, AND physical awareness which is not part of a fitness program.
Fitness training can enhance physical conditioning that would be needed for performance of physical self-defense (anaerobic conditioning with muscle endurance/strength/power conditioning). Boxing/Kickboxing Fitness training does provide practice time for certain physical self-defense skills (striking, blocking, evasion, balance, agility, reaction, etc.), but not under the physiological duress of a realistically simulated attack that would happen in a real self-defense training.
So, I repeat – Boxing/Kickboxing fitness classes DO NOT TEACH SELF DEFENSE. But these workouts are potentially THE most versatile fitness activity you can participate in!
Remember, “One Body, One Life, One Choice!”