Medicine Ball Exercise List
Medicine ball is often an overlooked exercising tool that can add a great variety of challenging exercise to your workouts. In this post we will go over the most well-known medicine ball exercise variations as well as describe a few "less mainstream" variations. If you are interesting in discovering a bit more about other exercising tools like kettlebells and dumbbells, have a look at our previous blog posts here and here.
Superman Extensions
Lie down on the floor with your hand extended in front of you. Raise your upper body and legs at the same time while holding a light medicine ball in your hand. Pause and slowly return back to the starting position. This is an excellent exercise for building lower back strength and stability.A Large List of Dumbbell Exercises
Following the success of or Kettlebell Exercise List blog post we decided to create one for dumbbells. Since dumbbells are a more common and accessible fitness training tool, we hope that this article will benefit many users of our gym as well as others.
Push-ups using dumbbells
Hold two dumbbells in your hands and place them shoulder with apart on the ground. Keep your core muscles engaged and your whole body as straight as possible. Perform a regular military push-up. Dumbbells will allow you to go a bit deeper than usually.High Intensity 3 Day Circuit Training Programme
Here have just created a well-rounded 3 day full-body conditioning routine. The main focus is on simplicity and use of highly effective movements. While the concept stays the same, there are some major differences between the three days. In day one we will be using an olympic barbell and the focus will be on the development of raw strength. In day two we are going to use kettlebells in order to develop that explosive strength and improve core and posterior chain muscle endurance. Day three will be all about bodyweight training and learning how to properly and efficiently use your body to execute demanding movement patterns.
Day 1 - Olympic barbell:
Perform 10 reps for each exercise without taking breaks between the exercises (or putting down your barbell). When you have done 10 reps of all exercise take a 1 minute break and repeat the whole process for five times in total. Shoulder press – grab the bar a bit wider than shoulder with apart. Lift it up and slowly lower it back down. Rest it on your chest or on your shoulders (behind your head) before pressing up again. You can alternate the sides or pick the one that feels most comfortable for you.A comprehensive list of kettlebell exercises
In this post we have provided you with a large variety of kettlebell exercises. We believe that kettlebell is a great tool for developing mobility, explosive strength and upper body endurance. You will see that we have divided the exercises in small groups depending on the main muscle group each of them is targeting. You can pick and choose the exercises to fit your needs and develop a great full-body workout routine. Just remember, even though an exercise might be "posterior chain dominant", most of the exercises listed here are full-body exercises. Be prepared… this post is a long one!
Posterior chain
Kettlebell swing: Feet should be shoulder with apart and lower back completely straight. Use your legs and hips to generate movement in order to swing the kettlebell up. Stop the movement when your arm is parallel to the ground. All the “work” is done by your legs, hips and core muscles, not your arm or shoulder.Joint Mobility routine
Good joint ability is a very important aspect of improving individual’s athletic performance. Quite often people experience inability to perform a specific movement not because of lack of strength, but because of lack of sufficient range of motion in the major joints. Use of joint mobility exercise will not only help to improve athletic performance, but it is also a great prehab tool for avoiding injuries and degenerative joint illnesses when you are older.
In this blog post we will show you a very basic, easy to follow joint mobility routine which you can (and should) use as a part of your warm-up routine before boxing or fitness training. A lot of emphasis will be put on shoulder mobility since it is a common problem area for many athletes, but especially boxers. Shoulder mobility A: Relax your arms and let them hang at your sides. Start to slowly move your shoulder joint in a circular motion. Try to use a full range of motion, but don’t put too much pressure or additional force. Perform 10 circles forward followed by 10 circles backwards. Read MoreBasic core strength training routine
Core muscles consist of the oblique, abdominal muscles, lower back, and the gluteal muscles. These four areas of the body are the ones that frame the posture of a person. Having strong core muscles will make you physically more powerful, it will help you to maintain balance in physical activities. All explosive body movements are generated in the core region. It doesn’t matter how strong your arms, legs or shoulders are individually if the centre of your body isn’t able to produce the same or higher power output.
If someone has a ripped six pack it doesn’t certainly mean that he/she has strong core muscles. Most of the time it only shows that this person has a low level of body fat. People often underestimate the importance of strong core musculature, especially abdominal muscles. It’s important to remember that core muscles have three main tasks: generation of movement, protection if spine and protection of internal organs.
Below you can find a basic core muscle training routine which focuses on both static and flexing type core training exercises.
Regular plank: place your elbows shoulder-with apart on the ground and extend your legs. Keep your abdominal muscles strained and buttocks slightly raised so that your belly doesn’t sink in. Maintain this position for as long as you can (at least 15 seconds and no longer than 3 minutes).
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Nutrition planning principles
In a recent blog post we tried to cover the very basics of nutrition and dietary planning. In this article we will focus more on the major food groups and try to provide a bit more specific guidance on the creation of your individual diet/nutrition plan.
Read MoreAre you ready to optimise your nutrition plan?
I think we all would agree that proper nutrition is a vital part of a healthy and active lifestyle. Unfortunately not many people fully understand at what scale nutrition can actually affect ones physical performance and visual appearance. As Mark Sisson, the author of one of the most popular fitness & nutrition blogs has said: “80% of your fitness related gains (including visual appearance) will come from your nutrition and just 20% from the way you train”. Probably many have heard the saying “ABS are made in the kitchen, not in the gym” and honestly I couldn’t agree more.
Read MoreHigh intensity full-body conditioning routine
If your objectives is to improved general fitness, endurance and lose weight one of your best options is high intensity interval training. Due to the variable intensity and training patterns this approach allows you to reach your goals in a faster and more efficient way.
Quite often interval training routines are performed using treadmills, elliptical trainers or other forms of traditional cardio equipment. While you are still able to gain the cardiovascular benefits, it’s not the best approach to obtain general fitness. The main issue is that majority of active people have got a good level of lower body muscle endurance, but unfortunately their upper body muscle endurance is usually quite weak. By placing more emphasis on exercises that develop upper body it’s possible to fix this disbalance. The following routine is designed with exactly this objective in mind.
Box Fitness Experience
Take a look at our latest video. We tried to cover a wide range of training activities our gym offers. Don't hesitate to share this video with your friends or anyone who might be interested.
Read MoreHow to do Pull-ups – Beginner to Advanced
For most people pull-up is a rather challenging exercise. We often hear that our clients’ long-term fitness goals include things like achieving 1, 10 or even 100 repetitions of pull-ups. For many the pinnacle of mastering this exercise is the ability to execute a perfect muscle-up – an extremely challenging exercise which is a mixture of a pull up and a straight-bar bodyweight dip. While there is nothing wrong with trying to achieve 100 consecutive reps of traditional pull-ups, at one point the value of every rep added starts to decrease. Our approach is to focus on variety instead of adding more and more reps of exactly the same exercise. Unfortunately most of the time when people think about pull-up training only two exercises come into their mind – regular (military/shoulder with) pull-ups and chin-ups (the same as a pull-up, only palms are facing towards your body). In this article will try to introduce you to the endless variations and progressions pull up training can offer.
Read MoreMult-Disciplinary Approach to Footwork & Movement in Boxing
Introduction & Importance
This article outlines the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches to the principles of boxing footwork. It also suggests how the coach can use the information when developing their coaching process (Nash et al 2008; Miles 2004). Research into boxing generically, suggests there aren’t a lot of researchers that are willing to study boxing, other than in the realms of boxing injuries. This is due to the very nature of the sport, and the fact they would not want to play a role in getting people injured (Smit and Louw 2011). With this in mind, other research states that the footwork and related movements involved can relate to other dynamic sports, such as tennis (Mack et al 2010) and striking and kicking sports (K-1, MMA, Thai boxing) (Kajmovic et al 2007; Kapo 2006).The Effect of recovery duration upon repeated sprint performance
Introduction
Sports Scientists and coaches have suggested that the ability to perform short bursts of sprints with minimal recovery periods in between them (Repeat sprint ability, RSA), may be influential in determining the result of many different sporting events, including team and individual sports (Jougla et al 2010; Oliver et al 2007; Spencer et al 2005). The ability to recover and maintain maximal effort during subsequent sprints is an important determinant to a successful performance, which shows us the importance of the understanding of the physiological effects that such sprints will have on an athlete. This present study specifically focuses on the rest period duration (15 Seconds(s) and 120 Seconds(s)) and how this will effect sprint performance, as it has been identified as an influential factor on sprint performance (Billaut and Basset 2007; Spencer et al 2005). Read MoreBox Fitness is looking for boxing coaches
Box Fitness has got good news for all already well experienced boxers who would like to further develop their career as a boxing coach. Due to the success of our gym we are currently planning to recruit boxing coaches.
Read MoreBox Fitness kettlebell classes
Box Fitness is excited to announce the introduction of kettlebell classes in our gym. Kettlebell training is an excellent way of working out. It will help you to build a strong core, tone-up muscles, improve endurance and strengthen cardiovascular system. The nature of kettlebell exercises provides the best form of functional strength building without “heavy” weight equipment, which is ideal to maintain muscle strength, flexibility, bone density and prevent injuries. Everyone in regards of their age, gender and fitness level will benefit from this kind of exercising.
Read MoreNew equipment
The Box Fitness team works hard to deliver the best fitness experience to our customers. We are constantly upgrading the range of our fitness equipment to make your workout sessions more efficient and exciting.
We believe that one of the main reasons for training is to improve your daily life – make you stronger, healthier and able to enjoy every aspect of life. Lately we have been working hard on developing functional fitness training classes and upgrading our range of equipment with some useful and unusual pieces:
Read MoreNew and improved BoxFitness.co.uk!
The staff of Box Fitness is very happy to announce the the new website for our fitness club is finally finished. We have tons of new stuff to show you...
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