Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Cross Training With The Perfect Punch

Well, let's face it.  The whether around here lately has made it really hard to get out there and run.  So how do you keep pace on your days off. I always try to do a little cross training to give my legs and my hips a little rest and to work on my upper body.  The upper body often gets neglected in my training routines and I find that during 5K's my neck and shoulders begin to hurt near the end of the race.

I know building a strong core and upper body help your running but until recently I hadn't found anything that I really liked to do.  I saw the Perfect Punch on TV and thought it was pretty cool, but I didn't make the connection to running for quite some time. The perfect punch is simply a Boxing or MMA Punching system designed to increase speed, strength, and technique.  When you think about it, that's the same point of the speed training I like to do to increase my race times.

If you have not seen the commercial on TV I will explain a little more about the product since I've used it for about 3 weeks now.  It comes already assembled and contains a pair of MMA training gloves attached together with a special progressive resistance band and a training video.  The premiss is more or less a shadow boxing workout with a ton of positive side effects.  Mostly, a great low impact workout.  Besides the training benefits for fighters, the rest of us can take advantage of the Perfect Punch to improve our core and really workout our arms and shoulders.  The routines are exhausting but quick. 

Think about boxing rounds, they are only 3 minutes long but the fighters have to be in incredible shape to make it through.  Shadow boxing is a small part of their training but a very important one. The Perfect Punch takes it a step further and creates an opportunity to use shadow boxing to work on speed and strength in a very low impact way.

The low impact is what drew me in initially but I can certainly appreciate the way my arms and shoulders look and feel but it is the quick cardio workout that keeps me using it when I can't run.  It is easy and fun which helps motivate me more than a trip to the gym.

No comments:

Post a Comment