Relieve stress and beat the blues with a body-toning workout that gets endorphins flowing to enhance your physical and mental wellbeing.
Combat work/life pressures with these simple mood-boosting exercises from TankoManagement.co.uk’s Dakota Ditcheva, one of UK Muay Thai’s most exciting female athletes.
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Blues-Busting Boxing
Break a sweat and beat a punch bag to banish negativity. The upper-body workout will increase your heart rate and send a surge of serotonin around your body.
Instructions: Begin with five two-minute punching rounds, with one minute rests in between, building up to five three-minute rounds (mirroring the number and duration of rounds in a Muay Thai fight). Incorporate a series of different strikes including punches, hooks and uppercuts for a full body workout.
This workout incorporates high-intensity interval training (HIIT) techniques to give the added bonus of fat burn.
Kettlebell Lifts
Quick-fire kettlebell reps will help tone your arms whilst lifting a downtrodden mood.
Instructions: Pick a weight you know you can comfortably lift 10 times, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and hold the weight behind your neck. Make sure the dumbbell is level with the space between your shoulder blades. Extend your arm and lift the weight above your head. Repeat 12 times.
Stress-Sapping Cycle
Advance cardio workouts by doing quick intense blasts instead of labouring away for hours at an easy pace. Exerting maximum energy in short sharp bursts will increase your heartrate to within the parameters of fat-burning BPM.
Instructions: Warm up by cycling at a steady pace for a minute to raise your heart rate. Increase the intensity to a higher level you can sustain for 20 seconds. After 20 seconds of fast-paced cycling, return to a recovery pace (around half the intensity of your maximum effort) for 10 seconds. Repeat this Tabata style workout for 5 minutes for an alternative HIIT workout.
Speed Skipping
Working out doesn’t always require lots of equipment, you can burn calories just as easily with the humble skipping rope.
Instructions: Start at a gentle pace to raise your heart rate. Build the intensity and speed to a level you can sustain for 60 seconds. After 60 seconds of fast-paced skipping, return to a recovery pace (around half the intensity of your maximum effort). Repeat this cycle for 10 minutes.
Mountain Climber Challenge
Not for the faint-hearted, this maximum energy exertion exercise will leave you feeling like a mountaineering champion. The full body workout involves most muscle sets and will improve both strength and stamina.
Instructions: Get into the press-up position on the exercise mat, with your hands directly under your shoulders. Lift your foot off the ground and bring it towards your chest. Move your foot back to the resting push up position and repeat with your other leg. Repeat for 30 seconds at an intensity you can sustain for that length of time. Over the weeks you will be able to increase in speed as you become fitter.