Why aren't we shadowboxing more?

It's kind of a perfect exercise, stress reliever, and ego boost.

I am writing today about an overlooked form of exercise. It builds strength, coordination, balance, confidence, and better mental health. It connects our spirits with Muhammad Ali and Rocky Balboa. That’s especially important to me because The Greatest held me as a toddler, and the Italian Stallion ran up and down the streets of South Philadelphia. It’s absolutely free and requires no equipment. Not even shoes.

What am I talking about? Shadowboxing. Don’t underappreciate the power of it. Sparring against one’s own shadow or reflection in the mirror is the gist, although we can also box into free air. Here are the other five “W” questions answered, along with the “how?”

Who?

We don’t have to be boxers to step into the mental ring and start working out. The human body is designed for activities like throwing punches. Surely survival of the fittest guided that. Much has been written about how evolutionary pressures molded us into walking and distance running machines. But I would guess that fighting skills, and the neuromuscular scaffolding to defend oneself, were also baked in over millennia. Physical disabilities aside, most people are able to throw a jab or two, start shuffling the feet around, and work up from there.

When?

One of the most frustrating misconceptions about exercise is that we need to go to a gym to do it, or have equipment to facilitate it. Psychologically we start to feel like we have no time to exercise if we can’t make it to the gym, pool, or court. And so we often don’t. But self-contained exercises like shadowboxing can start immediately. As in you can stop reading this right now, stand up, and start moving.

Where?

Home is good, preferably with some privacy so we don’t feel like awkward pugilists. Work is good, preferably with an office door closed on a break so we don’t look like disgruntled coworkers. Outside is good, and when we get better at the mechanics after some practice, throwing some hooks while walking or running adds a really good upper body and core muscle challenge.

Why?

This is the most important question to answer. Here is what I think shadowboxing can do:

• Improve balance. Throwing a succession of punches requires a full body effort to maintain balance, starting with the feet, moving through the legs and buttocks into the core muscles and shoulders, and ending with the head and neck. Similar to exercises like tai chi and posturing like yoga, we are engaging multiple muscle groups simultaneously as we leverage body parts in different directions. This training will have benefits in terms of fall prevention and injury reduction.

• Increase strength. How many weak looking boxers have you seen? Exactly. Weight lifting is best for increasing muscle mass and strength, but depending on where we are starting, shadowboxing will at least tone our muscles if not pump them up. Considering all the small stabilizer muscles of the shoulders, back, and core that go underutilized with activities of daily life, and that are not targeted specifically with weight lifting, overall muscle mass will improve. For those with bad shoulders or knees, shadowboxing allows for low impact exercise that might otherwise hurt with bench press, squats, or shoulder presses for example.

• Increase agility. As we get better, and start introducing some ducking and moving, some dancing like a butterfly, not only does balance get better but we start to notice improved coordination and agility with other complex movements involving the whole body.

• Better posture. While shadowboxing we notice that long neglected muscles in the back, shoulders, and core start firing again to maintain proper body position and alignment.

  

• More muscle memory. Our central nervous system develops new neural pathways when we physically practice a new body movement over and over again. We know it’s important to keep learning new cognitive skills to help prevent dementia. It follows that learning and honing new movement sequences should keep our cerebellums and motor pathways more durable as well.

• Ready defenses. Let’s face it. If we haven’t thrown a punch in a long time, it’s going to feel awkward relearning. And if we’ve been fortunate enough to grow up without intimidating bullies, perhaps we’ve never had to throw a punch at all. There is nothing wrong with being pacifist and non-confrontational, and I wish this were the way of human social evolution. But the reality is that people challenge our personal space all the time. They test our defenses in everyday conflicts both small and large. Something about shadowboxing can restore a sense of confidence, reaction time, and that intangible projection of “readiness.” Try it. If you show a posture of fear to an aggressive dog, chances are it may attack you.

• Reduce stress. This is accomplished through the cardiovascular work out we get from a full body work out, but can also be mediated through the imaginary defeat of whatever opponent or troubles we conjure in the shadows.

• Strengthen self image. Just like assuming a powerful posture can increase other people’s perceptions of our confidence and abilities, so too can shadowboxing instill a sense of oneself as a fighter. Metaphorically that is. This is not about joining our local fight club, but which stance intuitively sounds more empowering - staring in the mirror with a slumped posture full of fatigue and self doubt, or engaging with the mirror in a series of battle ready jabs, hooks, and crosses?

How?

Without hurting ourselves, we can probably just start by slowly and lightly throwing some punches from a natural boxing stance. Deep down, whether we like to admit it or not, we are hardwired for it. I personally got back into this while watching a series of video classes on Peloton. I wish I could say it was something better, like I joined a South Philly boxing gym. There are plenty of instructional videos out there. Or we can just watch vintage Muhammad Ali on grainy black and white pirated videos:

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This next guy knows what he’s doing, and is coming from a boxing background. Peloton is more sanitized. But worth a view anyway:

And so in conclusion, while boxing is a bloody sport with the potential for all sorts of injuries and harm in the short and long term, shadowboxing instead combines the balance, agility, strength, fitness, confidence, and stress reducing benefits… without all the head traumas. It can be practiced anywhere, and almost anytime. Work outs can be 60 seconds long, or 45 minutes while watching Family Feud. And if we want to battle some demons, all we need is a source of light to throw a shadow on a wall, or a reflective surface to create an immediate sparring partner.

Is it goofy telling people that shadowboxing makes for a worthy exercise of the body and mind? You tell me.

Or we can always ask Mike Tyson if it’s silly.