Complete Idiot's Guide to Fitness Boxing Illustrated: [With DVD]

I have taught boxing aerobics for many years, and I have published reviews of numerous boxing books in the past. This book is one of the best books I have ever read on Fitness Boxing. It is one of the most comprehensive and well illustrated books ever published on using boxing as a total fitness activity. It covers every aspect of fitness, not just the punching exercises of boxing. This book also includes a 650-minute DVD which demonstrates the fitness exercises and movements in the book. However, there is one flaw in the DVD in that it promises to take you through 12-two minute boxing rounds, but all it does is show you how to do the exercises. Nevertheless, the book is still worth purchasing. This text is broken down into four parts. Part one provides an introduction and reasons to choose fitness boxing as your workout choice. Various warm up exercises are also shown in this section. The second part covers training tools of boxing,taking a fitness boxing class, how to use power and balance balls, using weights and how to do partner exercises. Part three finally gets into the actual mechanics of boxing. This part covers stance, balance, footwork, how to throw the basic boxing punches, and using workout bands in your boxing workout. The final section covers various workout routines such as shadown boxing and bag work. In conclusion, if you are interested in boxing for total physical fitness, you will want a copy for your personal library. I also recommend this book to fitness professionals who teach or would like to teach boxing for fitness. Joseph J. Truncale

The Complete Idiot's Guide books are always well put together and contain lots of information. This is an excellent book on Fitness Boxing. I was really excited about getting the DVD to supplement my other workouts, but unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed. It is pretty bad. Each exercise is demonstrated, but the fitness models are not very good. They use poor form in a lot of the exercises; each demonstration is very short; the instructor is annoying - you get the idea. The book is great, but the DVD is not.