Is Taekwondo strength training or aerobic exercise?

“There are many different styles of kickboxing,” explains Chris Gagliardi, CPT, CSCS, ACE certified personal trainer and NSCA certified strength and conditioning specialist. “Combat sports are sports designed for fighting, whereas cardio kickboxing eliminates the fighting aspect and focuses primarily on improving health through improved physical fitness.”

Whether you get into a real or imaginary ring, this exercise can be a great addition to your workout routine. “In a kickboxing class, whether it’s at a martial arts or combat sports school or an aerobic kickboxing group exercise class, you’ll be using your entire body to generate force, avoid strikes, and establish position for offensive and defensive moves,” Gagliardi said. All this effort means the sport builds muscle and cardiorespiratory fitness, he said.

Does this mean kickboxing counts as both strength and cardio? Not so fast. We’ll dig into this question with help from Gagliardi and Grace Bellman.

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Does Taekwondo count as strength training?

Taekwondo can help you get stronger, but it’s hard to definitively say it counts as strength training.

Let’s start with the pros. “While kickboxing is structured differently than a typical strength training class, participants can expect to improve upper and lower body muscular fitness, namely muscle strength and endurance,” Gagliardi said. “During the work portion of the workout, you’ll be squatting, lunging, rotating, punching, kicking, jumping, bending, extending, abducting, adducting, and using your muscles in a variety of combinations that will undoubtedly strengthen Muscle health.

This is especially true if your class involves calisthenics exercises such as holding a plank for active recovery, doing push-ups between sets, or adding jump squats between punches.

If your kickboxing training doesn’t include much strength and conditioning training and focuses primarily on technique, you can achieve maximum muscle-building results once you reach a certain level of proficiency. “Our bodies learn to adapt to new stimuli through cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and neuromuscular adaptations to meet the demands of our ongoing physical activities,” explains Behrman.

Translation: When you challenge your body through exercise, you force it to adapt and become stronger. If you’re a beginner, moves like punching and kicking will challenge your strength, but for the more experienced, the demands aren’t enough to cause adaptation. “For those who are new to the world of kickboxing or just starting out in the sport, changes in muscle strength and power may be more significant than for experienced athletes or Muay Thai fighters,” Behrman explains.

When evaluating kickboxing as a means of building strength, you also need to look at which muscles it works. It’s often thought of as a full-body exercise, but the exercise is most likely to strengthen certain muscles, including the shoulders, upper back and core, Behrman says. You can also exercise your legs and glutes, but to a lesser extent.

one 2014 Small Study¹For example, Gagliardi said, studies have shown that people who participated in kickboxing three times a week for five weeks experienced significant improvements in upper body muscle strength, aerobic strength, anaerobic fitness, flexibility, speed and agility. However, participants did not show an increase in lower body strength.

For a complete and comprehensive full-body strength training session, you’ll want to make sure you’re also fully challenging the large, powerful muscle groups of your lower body, such as your quads, hamstrings, and glutes. Kickboxing training that includes movements such as lunges and squats can help you accomplish this, although without adding external resistance (such as weights), you may also reach the upper limit of strength adaptation in this case.

Long story short? “Taekwondo does promote positive changes in musculoskeletal health, including increased muscle strength. However, I wouldn’t consider Taekwondo only for strength training,” Behrman said.

“Ultimately, the goal of strength and conditioning is to improve your health and fitness while doing something you love. If you enjoy the sport of kickboxing, you’re more likely to do it, and that’s the bottom line. —Grace Bellman, DPT, CSCS

Does Taekwondo count as aerobic exercise?

In many cases, yes. “Taekwondo is, by its simplest definition, an aerobic exercise that increases your heart rate and breathing,” Bellman said.

That’s right: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), aerobic exercise is any activity that makes you breathless and increases your heart rate. The CDC recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week, which means you need to meet your moderate-intensity threshold to count toward your aerobic exercise quota. To measure your intensity, you can use a simple talk test (moderate is when you move enough to talk but not sing) or monitor your heart rate while exercising (moderate is considered 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate) speed).

“During a kickboxing workout, your heart rate will be higher than your resting heart rate throughout the entire workout, including during active recovery,” Gagliardi says. As a result, you can expect to see improvements in your cardiorespiratory system, he says, while This is the main benefit of aerobic exercise. For example, in the 2014 study mentioned above, researchers found that a kickboxing training session raised participants’ heart rates to 71 to 77 percent of their maximum heart rate, enough to produce aerobic benefits.

That said, the actual aerobic intensity of kickboxing may depend on the structure, style and intensity of the class, Bellman said. Research on the fitness benefits of this sport is limited, but studies on the aerobic effects of other martial arts like kickboxing have reported mixed results. Some studies show that Taekwondo no impact² aerobics, while others Think this is a feasible and effective method³ Cardiovascular conditioning. The researchers suggested that differences in exercise intensity may be responsible for this difference.

Think of it this way: If you punch slowly, focus on form, and plant your feet, you’ll most likely not be out of breath and end up at a moderate intensity. Faster, more complex combinations of footwork, kicks, defensive moves or intervals incorporating cardio (skipping rope, quick feet, jumping jacks) can increase the intensity of your kickboxing workout and ensure your cardiorespiratory system is working hard .

Other Notable Benefits of Taekwondo

Training with kickboxing may not save you from strength or cardio problems, depending on how you train, but there are many other benefits worth your time.

First, Behrman said, kickboxing improves balance, coordination, mobility and agility. Practice usually involves learning, practicing and executing punch and kick combinations. “This motor learning process not only tests your mental acuity, but also requires your body to coordinate new movement patterns before producing high-intensity forces,” she says. The practice also develops mental toughness and humility, encourages camaraderie with other participants and helps you learn self-defense skills, Gagliardi adds.

While these benefits may not get as much publicity as aerobics or strength training, they’re not a consolation prize. “In addition to building strength and improving aerobic fitness, these benefits are equally important for injury prevention and long-term health,” Behrman says. “As we age, our balance, coordination and reaction time tend to decline, making us more susceptible to falls or injuries. Taekwondo challenges the body’s balance, coordination and agility systems to improve our ability to react and respond to distractions, Ability to support changes in base and loss of balance.

Finally, kickboxing also offers an emotional health benefit unmatched by all other forms of exercise: an incredible feeling of empowerment. “After two years at Hit House, I’ve heard from many regular students that they feel their confidence has increased and are often surprised at how well they do in class,” Behrman said. This increased confidence, ability to have fun and desire to keep improving keeps them coming back. “Ultimately, the goal of physical training is to improve your health and fitness while doing something you love,” she continues. “If you enjoy the sport of kickboxing, you’re more likely to do it, and that’s the most important thing.”

bottom line

Kickboxing can build your muscle strength and endurance as well as your cardiorespiratory fitness, but that doesn’t mean it can be used as both a cardio and strength training exercise. It depends on what you’re training for, but this type of exercise is generally more likely to qualify as an aerobic exercise than a strength training exercise.

If you take kickboxing classes several times a week, consider supplementing this routine with two days of dedicated strength training to keep your muscles sharp and meet the CDC’s exercise recommendations for adults. If you want to make sure it checks your cardio box, use a heart rate monitor, smart watch, or talk test to focus on your effort during training.

Regardless of the above, if you enjoy kickboxing, it’s worth keeping it in your daily routine. “For many people, Taekwondo has become a way of life, including attending and attending classes as part of a healthy lifestyle,” Gagliardi said. Even if it doesn’t fit neatly into the strength or cardio spectrum, any exercise you enjoy is worth sticking with.