How to Increase Your Endurance Levels For Kickboxing Workouts

Kickboxing is one of the most physically demanding sports, calling for power, speed, and strength. Of course, it's not all about strength in the end; just as important to this equation of performance and progression is endurance. While stamina and strength are responsible for explosive energy, endurance is what helps maintain the pace.

Understanding Endurance in Kickboxing

Strength, speed, and endurance are all part of the same family, affecting each other in terms of both training and performance. But elite athletes know that there's a little bit more to endurance than meets the eye. Namely, there's a misunderstanding that this ability is interchangeable with stamina.

Stamina vs. Endurance

When people talk about stamina, they usually mean how long they can perform an activity before it tires them out. Unlike endurance, it's not really a workable aspect of physical fitness; you improve it by getting fitter.

Endurance can be further divided into cardiovascular and muscular endurance, both of which can be measured objectively; there are many tests that can measure it.

How Endurance Impacts Speed and Power

Endurance plays a major role in all athletic endeavors, directly contributing towards improving explosive power, a combination of speed and strength. Mastering this combination will turn any fighter into a formidable opponent.

Key Strategies to Increase Endurance

Developing a fighter's endurance requires incorporating a variety of training to the program. Running, cycling, and swimming are all powerful tools to improve your aerobic base, while sport-specific drills are necessary to translate general fitness into ring-ready condition.

Bodyweight exercises are another option to boost your kickboxing endurance. They're particularly convenient since, as the name suggests, you only need the weight of your body to perform exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and squats; these three hit all the essential muscles needed to fight.

If you're ready to advance beyond the most difficult bodyweight exercises, you can also incorporate weight and resistance movements. Free weights make exercises more demanding, adding intensity that will contribute to both muscle strength and endurance. Bench presses will target your upper body for more explosive power, while the deadlift is designed to strengthen your lower back, legs, and abs.

Of course, arguably the best way to build endurance for kickboxing is to actually engage in kickboxing! You can practice different punch and kick combinations with shadowboxing, hit a heavy or speed bag to refine technique, or get a sparring partner to raise your endurance for the real deal.

What to Avoid

If you're serious about improving endurance, it's important to avoid these common mistakes:

•  Insufficient recovery time: Although endurance is about bettering how long you'll last in a workout, that doesn't mean pushing through fatigue. All bodies need time to rest in between workouts.

•  Skipping nutrition and hydration: Both food and water are key components of lasting energy. Otherwise, you run the risk of early fatigue and subpar performance.

•  Too much consistency: It's fine to have only a few workouts you enjoy cycling between, but you'll need to change the intensity so you don't stay stuck in a plateau.

•  Neglecting mental endurance: Mental resilience will help you push through the hardest parts of your workout. Set small, achievable goals and engage in visualization techniques to keep your motivation disciplined.

Advanced Tips for Competitive Fighters

True kickboxing demands an ability to fluidly weave punches and kicks in an unpredictable enough way to through an opponent on the defensive. Advanced training might be as simple as perfecting standard sequences, but they can also include much more complex patterns with angular movements, changes of pace, and even feints.

Likewise, Muay Thai techniques like knee strikes and the clinch give competitive fighters even more options. Expert fighters who have spent time building up their speed, strength, endurance, and precision can readily dominate the match by adapting to their opponents on the fly.

Mental Endurance

Cultivating mental endurance isn't about arrogance; it's about resilience, or your ability to bounce back from setbacks of any size. Many fighters develop their mental strength by vigorously hitting the heavy bag; the repetitive impact reinforces the work they pour into training.

Likewise, engaging in kickboxing with a real opponent will also do wonders for improving mental endurance as well as physical endurance. It creates familiarity with the sensations, eliminating the uncertainty that traditionally causes distress.

The Bottom Line

Kickboxing fitness is an excellent way to build both strength and endurance in the same workout. No need to go to the gym multiple times to target different parts of the body! Getting your entire body involved with powerful movements will directly translate to better kickboxing as well as real-life benefits.

Written by Taylor McKnight, Author for Fitness19