Do you want to excel in sports? Incorporating boxing into your training sessions can help – a lot.

Boxing has an overall approach to training, which encompasses more than just weight management. It develops and strengthens your entire body including internal organs like we’ve mentioned in our previous post entitled “What Can Boxing Fitness Do For Me?” and it’s mainly the reason why athletes – aside from pro boxers themselves – include boxing in their fitness regime.

Tennis
One prime example of a sport where players benefit from boxing is tennis. You need to have strong and quick limbs to keep up in a tennis game and boxing develops both these aspects through combining punches and footwork.

There are many pro tennis players who admittedly enjoy boxing as a part of their training. WTA, it was shown how several top ranking players engage in various pursuits to maintain their tennis physique including the former world no. 1 Caroline Wozniacki who regularly puts on a pair of gloves. The Danish tennis star stated that “In both tennis and boxing, you need to have fast arms and fast feet.”

Horse Racing
Another highly demanding sport is the Sport of Kings. Horse racing means you have to handle a 1-ton horse and that alone takes a considerable amount of effort. Due to boxing’s capability to effectively fortify the upper body to the core down to the lower body, you see a lot of jockeys doing using boxing as a legitimate training method to improve their core and upper body strength.

For this reason alone, there are now boot camps for jockeys that acknowledge this process and include boxing in daily training. A report by CNN featured a boot camp in the British Racing School currently run by ex-jockey Richard Perham and present riders that attend the camp like Martin Lane who undergoes strength training and boxing classes regularly, in addition to other routines, to stay in the best condition for the races. Perham stated in the report, “If you looked at a jockey without clothes on, there aren’t many who have an ounce of fat underneath the skin. Jockeys are incredibly well-toned athletes in the same way that Olympic champions are.”

Soccer
In addition, soccer players also benefit greatly from boxing and you don’t need to look any further than the biggest names in the sport such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

Mike Clegg who manages the gym where the Real Madrid star trained for some time looked back at how Ronaldo devoted himself to his training in which boxing was – and still is – a big part. “He took on a new level of total dedication to his training because he wanted to be the best footballer in the world,” Clegg told the Manchester Evening News.

As a result of all his training, Ronaldo is indeed one of the best soccer players in the world today and he’s already often regarded as one of the all-time greats as well. In fact, this season he has led Real Madrid to the finals of the UEFA Champions League on June 3. Many are expecting Ronaldo’s Real Madrid to triumph, an article written by James Horncastle, a well established journalist who covers the Premier League for Betfair, predicting the Spanish giants will win their second European Cup in a row. What’s even more impressive is that despite Ronaldo’s age, his stamina and strength on the pitch is still head and shoulders above everyone else, with many suggesting his boxing training has helped elevate his fitness levels to new heights.

Tennis, horse racing and soccer are just three big sports where players reap the benefits of boxing training. The best thing about boxing is that it can be enjoyed by anyone as we’ve explained in Why Boxing is Great Exercise for Everyone.

For more details on how to get started in boxing, you may visit our Personal Training page.