ULU Kickboxing Class Review

Hey guys,

Just a quick update review thing for today. 3 weeks ago I joined the gym at ULU (University of London Union). To be honest, the gym's pretty sweet, got everything you'd need for a good workout. I was curious on whether the kickboxing's any good so decided to try it.

Firstly, the cardio is pretty good, I was sweating buckets halfway through, though the instructor made us do some pretty useless movements though, like from a wall squat into a plank when you barely can quickly wipe your nose; basically to waste your energy, achieving nothing other than possibly a minor stamina boost.

Though the cardio is good, some things I have a problem with was one, the instructor screeches like a banshee for some reason. The only reason I can think of is to wake people up or motivate you? No way it could be the latter... Secondly there must be some kind of screwed up notion that doing lots of pushups = good. Throughout the whole 1 hour session I think the others did 200 pushups; I couldn't be bothered, my muscles were aching from chest and triceps workouts from yesterday.

Then comes the "kickboxing" part. I shoulda heeded the receptionist when he says "It's not really a martial arts session, more like aerobics" but then I'm also glad that I tried out for myself. Well time to rant: There is no freaking form, basically she gets the people to do 10 - 20 kicks holding their legs up in mid air. Many movements were clunky and mine was just "lets get this over with".

There's no proper instructions on how to do it either, just show you once or twice and hope you pick it up. That I can understand, it's due to time constraint of 1 hour but the excessive leg wagging? Just a waste of energy. Well that's more for cardio I guess. Just add in some kicks and punches and you can call anything kickboxing. They should make a game called Kickboxing Mama, you have to punch into the camera to cut potatos and kick 10 times to wash the rice.Though she did explain something when I asked why just punch with the right, but then it still didn't make sense to me though the explanation was sound...ish.

All in all I would recommend you try it out if you want to do some aerobics with punches and kicks. But if you want proper training, find a proper martial arts trainer, not this class.

Final ratings from personal perspective are:
Cardio          =      5/5
Motivation    =      2/5    (down mostly due to the screech "attack drops significantly)
Martial arts   =      1/5    (Just cause there's punching and kicking)
Overall         =      2/5

Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean others won't cause I see people who came back to the class, surprisingly. Do check it out for yourself if you are free on Thursdays from 1-2pm.


~Fox