***Update: Kelly has removed all of the Raw workouts lI reviewed from YouTube. I am sure they are still available on her Raw streaming site but that is not free.***
CoffeyFit Raw: Boxing is another free YouTube workout from Kelly Coffey-Meyer. I really like this workout for a lot of reasons. First let me describe the workout and then I’ll give my thoughts. For this workout Kelly isn’t alone. Her brother is with her. She does shadow boxing and he does heavy bag boxing. She says several times throughout the workout that his workout is “different” and harder than hers because of the bag. I used 2 pound weighted gloves and I held special 1 pound grips that are made for shadow boxing–so I was shadowing boxing with 3 pounds total in each hand. It is set up in the usual fashion for Kelly’s CoffeyFit Raw workouts–30 seconds of work and 10 seconds of recovery. She does 3 cycles. Each cycle consists of eight 30 second punch drills, then if you are following Kelly, you do two more 30 second punch drills (for a total of 10 drills per cycle and thirty 30 second drills total for workout) except in those two drills she holds 1 pound hand weights while her brother uses one of those 30 seconds for a recovery and the other 30 seconds he does fast paced weight work with light dumbbells (speed curls, overhead presses and tricep kickbacks). So if you are following Kelly like I was, you do two thirty 30 second punch drills (her drills were punches, hooks and upper cuts). The workout ends with some core work and a push up variation. I break those down below. For those you need dumbbells. They are also done for 30 seconds of work w/ 10 seconds of recovery. I think Kelly and her brother used 5 and 7 pound dumbbells for the core work. I used 8 pound dumbbells.
Here are my thoughts. First, this was not an intense workout for me, even with 3 pound weights. It was zero impact, steady state cardio. And I like that a lot. I have feet problems that generally don’t give me much grief but when they do it’s because of the weather or because I have been on them a long time. That usually happens on vacations or weekends (usually a Saturday). So if my feet start to bother me it’s usually a Saturday night into Sunday morning. That makes this workout absolutely perfect for my Sunday morning yoga warm up. It is the perfect level. Not terribly intense but it warms your upper body up a lot and your lower body some. Most importantly it gets the heart pumping and blood flowing. And there is zero impact. So I can do this workout even if my feet are killing me! With feet like mine, I treasure workouts like this when I find them. So that is how I will use this workout in the future–the same way I used it today! As a warm up before yoga. And if my feet are ever causing me some serious pain, I will use this workout so that I can still get exercise even when my feet are being uncooperative. So thank you very much Kelly! And please keep these wonderful CoffeyFit workouts coming!
Boxing is 28 minutes long; 1 minute warm up, 20 minutes boxing intervals, 4 minutes core and 1:30 minute stretch. Kelly’s brother used a heavy bag and light dumbbells, and Kelly used one pound hand weights and then heavier dumbbells for core work. If following Kelly, you do a total of thirty 30 second punch drills.
- Full crunches w/ DBs (lay on back, arms overhead and legs straight; bring DBs in along sides of thighs, raising head/shoulders while you bend knees into chest then return to start) (two 30 second sets) (8# DBs)
- Bicycles (two 30 second sets)
- Start on stomach on floor, push up and back so you are in a sort of child’s pose but w/ knees off ground (two 30 second sets)
For more info on CoffeyFit Raw and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
