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Happy to be kicking
From
across the borders from the South East comes another fitness
regime, kickboxing. But the fitness programme’s growing
popularity, especially among women, reflects a concern for
personal security, finds Ritusmita Biswas
Want to stay fighting fit? Need a sport that is energising,
tough yet trendy at the same time? Then kickboxing could be
the prefect solution for you. And don’t think it is confined
to its roots in Thailand. It’s fast gaining ground as
a work-out for the fitness fiends.
Fitness trainers across the globe agree that kickboxing is
an explosive, challenging programme utilising martial arts
and boxing techniques, combined with roping and plyometric
movements. From warm up to cool - down, a fitness regime consisting
of kickboxing helps one to work on his/her core muscles and
provides natural stress relief.
Kickboxing has been influenced by a combination of Muay Thai
and other martial arts including karate and boxing. Full-contact
karate first surfaced as American kickboxing in January, 1970
when Joe Lewis (known as the Father of American Kickboxing),
influenced by his training sessions in boxing and with Bruce
Lee, staged the first contact bout, knocking out Greg Baines
to become the first heavyweight champion.
“It’s essentially a happening work-out. Vigorous
in nature it helps you to burn those extra calories and makes
you look and feel young,” says 47-year-old Sonal Kalra,
mother of three grown up children, who has been practising
kickboxing for the last three years.
Agrees Aditi D Basu, a journalist working with a leading
national daily in Mumbai, “It’s an excellent workout
that has music, excitement and energy. It combines aerobics,
cardio-vascular and body toning with self-defense tactics
that could be used to protect you.” She validates that
she has tried many fitness regimes but none of it proved to
be as invigorating as this regimen.
Fitness is not the only reason for kickboxing becoming more
and more popular among women. It is a type of martial exercise
that helps one to be prepared for unpleasant situations. With
eve-teasing and other forms of harassment against women on
the increase even in so-called urbane metros, women are getting
more concerned for personal safety and are exploring ways
to protect themselves should the need arise. Here, kickboxing
expertise should come in as quite handy. Tollywood actress
Arunima Ghosh, who has recently enrolled in a kickboxing class,
believes that apart from “burning those extra calories”
kickboxing arms you with techniques that can be effectively
utilised in crisis situations.
“This is one of the major reasons why I enrolled my
13-year old daughter Sneha in this class. Being a working
mother I am not always able to escort my daughter always and
she often returns from her tuitions quite late in the evening.
With Salt Lake (of Kolkata) becoming increasingly unsafe for
women it will be of great use to her if she at least knows
the basics of self- defence and is fighting fit,” says
Paromita Ghosh, mother of Sneha. The recent case of four school
students arrested for harassing two women from Tollywood outside
an upmarket shopping mall in Salt Lake reflects Ghosh’s
concern.
Delhi based fitness trainer Kiran Sawhney, reiterates that
kickboxing definitely is the sport of the millennium. “It’s
a great workout. It's a lot of fun and it's empowering to
feel like you can defend yourself. Kickboxing is a lot more
interesting than traditional workouts like lifting weights
or running on a treadmill. You actually learn and develop
a skill while your fitness level improves. It's rewarding
and it's motivating,” she adds.
What is interesting about the kickboxing classes is that
most of them focus on a real life scenario where a woman is
supposed to use her self-defence skills to fight it out in
unpleasant situations. “In today’s world it’s
a must that every women from 13-60 years have certain skills
that help them in a moment of crisis. Kickboxing is a sport
that helps you not only to keep fit but to fight it out in
an adverse situation,” says Dilip Rungta, who is a personal
fitness trainer for many women in Kolkata and is attached
with some of the prominent gyms in the city. “Learning
self-defence can help you tap into new strengths. With the
right skills, a woman can overcome someone who is bigger,
stronger and faster than her. It is an intense, exhilarating
training programme for women. Most classes focus on real-life
scenarios, such as fending off an overly aggressive date or
flogging a purse-snatching mugger,” points out Kiran
Sawhney.
Until a few years ago, boxing was pretty much a guy thing.
But not nay more. And most of the fitness trainers agree that
in certain respects women are better fighters than men. “When
it comes to learning fighting techniques, women have the advantage.
Men may have more upper-body strength but women tend to pick
things up faster because they're generally more coordinated,
they're more flexible and they don't rely on brute force the
way that some of the men do,” says Sawhney.
“Attending classes on kickboxing has helped me to refurbish
my confidence level. Apart from adding to my fitness level
it has made me feel confident that in case of any adverse
situation, before help reaches me, I can defend myself,”
says Smriti Bansal, a student of plus two in La Martiniere
School of Kolkata who has recently started training under
the supervision of a personal trainer.
However, there are detractors too. A trainer in a Kolkata
based gym, on condition of anonymity points out that kickboxing
was not at all an ideal sport especially for adolescent girls.
“It’s a very rough and tough form of fitness regime.
For beginners it’s a strict no no. And anyway it needs
to be practiced under tight supervision or one may hurt oneself,”
he says.
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