Just Wondering: Does Kickboxing ‘Count’ as Strength Training or Cardio?

“There are many different styles of kickboxing,” explains Chris Gagliardi, CPT, CSCS, an ACE-certified personal trainer and NSCA-certified strength and conditioning specialist. “One style, the combat sport, is designed for fighting, while cardio kickboxing removes the fight aspect and mainly focuses on enhancing your health by improving your fitness.”

Whether you climb into a real or hypothetical ring, the practice can be a fantastic addition to your workout routine. “During a kickboxing class—either at martial arts or combat sports school or cardio kickboxing group exercise class—you’ll be using your entire body to generate force, avoid strikes, and establish positioning for offensive and defensive maneuvers,” Gagliardi says. As a result, all this effort means the sport can boost both muscular and cardiorespiratory fitness, he says.

Does that mean kickboxing counts as both strength and cardio? Not so fast. We’re digging into that question below with the help of Gagliardi and Grace Bellman, DPT, CSCS, a doctor of physical therapy and studio manager at Hit House, a Muay Thai-inspired kickboxing studio in New York City.

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Does kickboxing count as strength training?

Kickboxing can help you get stronger, but it’s hard to say definitively that it can count as strength work.

Let’s start with the upsides. “While kickboxing isn’t structured like a typical strength training session, participants can expect to improve both upper-body and lower-body muscular fitness—aka muscular strength and endurance,” Gagliardi says. “During the work portions of the workout, you'll be squatting, lunging, rotating, punching, kicking, jumping, flexing, extending, abducting, adducting, and using your muscles in various combinations that will no doubt build muscular fitness.”

This is especially true if your class involves calisthenics work, like holding planks for active recovery, doing push-ups between combinations, or adding squat jumps between punches.

If your kickboxing training doesn’t include much strength and conditioning work and focuses primarily on technique, you could reach the max muscle-building benefits once you hit a certain proficiency level. “Our bodies learn to adapt to new stimuli through cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neuromuscular adaptations to meet the demands of the physical activity we’re performing,” Bellman explains.

Translation: When you challenge your body through exercise, you prompt it to adapt and become stronger. If you’re a beginner, things like punching and kicking will challenge your strength, but for someone more experienced, those won’t be demanding enough to provoke adaptations. “For those new to the kickboxing world or new to exercise in general, muscular changes in strength and power may be more notable than those of an experienced athlete or Muay Thai fighter,” Bellman explains.

When evaluating kickboxing as a means of building strength, you also need to look at which muscles it works. It’s generally considered a full-body workout, but there are specific muscles you’re most likely to strengthen with the sport, including your shoulders, upper back, and core, Bellman says. You’ll work your legs and hips, too, but to a lesser degree.

One small 2014 study¹, for example, showed that people who participated in kickboxing three times a week for five weeks experienced significant improvements in upper-body muscle power, aerobic power, anaerobic fitness, flexibility, speed, and agility, Gagliardi says. However, the participants didn’t show an increase in lower-body power.

For a comprehensive and well-rounded full-body strength routine, you’d want to ensure you’re also sufficiently challenging the large, powerful muscle groups in your lower body, like your quads, hamstrings, and glutes. A kickboxing session that includes moves like lunges and squats can help check off that box, though without adding external resistance (like weights), you may also hit the ceiling of strength adaptations in this situation.

The TL;DR? “Kickboxing does promote positive changes in your musculoskeletal health, including increases in muscular strength. However, I would not consider kickboxing strength training exclusively,” Bellman says.

“Ultimately, the goal of physical exercise is to improve your health and fitness while doing something you enjoy. If you enjoy kickboxing exercise, you're more likely to do it, and that's most important.” —Grace Bellman, DPT, CSCS

Does kickboxing count as cardio?

In many cases, yes. “Kickboxing does count as cardio by the simple definition that it elevates your heart rate and breathing,” Bellman says.

That’s right: Cardio exercise is any activity that makes you breathe harder and elevates your heart rate, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC recommends adults log at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio activity per week—meaning you need to hit that moderate-intensity threshold for a workout to count toward your cardio quota. To gauge your intensity, you can use a simple talk test (moderate is when you’re exercising hard enough to talk but not sing) or monitor your heart rate while you work out (moderate would be considered 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate).

“During a kickboxing workout, your heart rate will be elevated above your resting rate for the entire workout, including times of active recovery,” Gagliardi says. As a result, you can expect to see improvements in the cardiorespiratory system, he says—and that’s the main benefit of cardio exercise. In the 2014 study mentioned above, for example, researchers found that kickboxing training sessions put participants between about 71 and 77 percent of their max heart rate and were sufficient for eliciting cardio benefits.

That said, a kickboxing workout’s actual cardio level can depend on the class's structure, style, and intensity, Bellman says. The research on the sport’s fitness benefits is limited, but studies on the cardio effect of other martial arts like Taekwondo have reported mixed results; some research says Taekwondo has no impact² on cardio fitness, while others consider it a viable and efficient method³ of cardiovascular conditioning. Researchers propose that variations in workout intensity may be behind the difference.

Think of it this way: If you’re drilling punches slowly, focusing on form and your feet planted, you likely won’t lose your breath and end up in that moderate-intensity state. Quicker, more complex combinations, including footwork, kicks, defensive moves, or incorporating intervals of cardio moves (jump roping, fast feet, jumping jacks), could all turn up the intensity of a kickboxing workout, ensuring your cardiorespiratory system is working hard.

Other significant benefits of kickboxing

Adopting a kickboxing routine may not get you off the hook for strength or cardio, depending on exactly how you train—but there are so many other benefits that make this practice worth your time.

For starters, kickboxing can boost balance, coordination, mobility, and agility, Bellman says. The practice often requires learning, practicing, and executing combinations of punches and kicks. “This motor learning process not only tests your mental acuity but also requires your body to coordinate new movement patterns before performing them with high force production,” she says. The practice can also build mental toughness and humility, encourage camaraderie with fellow participants, and help you learn self-defense skills, Gagliardi adds.

Though these perks may not get as much hype as cardio fitness or strength-building, they’re not consolation prizes. “These benefits outside of building strength and improving cardio are just as important for injury prevention and long-term health,” Bellman says. “As we age, our balance, coordination, and reaction time often decreases, leaving us more at risk for falls or injury. Kickboxing challenges the body’s balance, coordination, and agility systems to improve our ability to react and cope with perturbations, changes to our base of support, and loss of balance.”

Finally, kickboxing comes with an emotional health benefit that not all other forms of exercise can claim: an incredible sense of empowerment. “After working at Hit House for two years, I’ve heard from many regular class attendees that they feel an increase in confidence and often surprise themselves with what they’re able to do during class,” Bellman says. This boost in self-confidence, ability to have fun, and desire to consistently advance keeps them coming back. “Ultimately, the goal of physical exercise is to improve your health and fitness while doing something you enjoy,” she continues. “If you enjoy kickboxing exercise, you're more likely to do it, and that's most important.”

The bottom line

Kickboxing can build up your muscular strength and endurance as well as your cardiorespiratory fitness—but that doesn’t mean it counts as both cardio and strength work. It’ll depend on exactly what your training is like, but the practice is generally more likely to meet the qualifications of a cardio workout rather than a strength one.

If you go to kickboxing classes a few times a week, consider complementing that routine with two days of dedicated strength training to keep your muscles sharp and meet the CDC’s exercise recommendations for adults. If you want to ensure it’s ticking off your cardio checkbox, keep an eye on your effort level during a session with a heart-rate monitor, smartwatch, or the talk test.

Regardless of all the above, if you like kickboxing, it’s worth keeping it in your routine. “For many people, kickboxing becomes a way of life that includes attending and participating in classes as a regular part of your healthy lifestyle,” Gagliardi says. Even if it doesn’t color perfectly within the lines of a strength or cardio workout, any exercise you enjoy is worth sticking to.