There are many great fitness routines you can do to get the heart pumping. I think I have done a great many of them but always seem to go back to my martial arts training. I am going to do share an upper body cardio routine derived from this era of my life.

It is going to involve a lot of punching. So, I want to cover the motion first. To throw a proper punch you need to make a fist by rolling your fingers into the palm of your hand and placing your thumb over the pointer and middle fingers to lock your fingers down. Then put the left fist, palm facing up, beside your left breast and the same for the right. Then as you extend the punch twist your palm downwards until the arm is fully extended.

Now, you need to find something to punch. I like to use a heavy bag, and many gyms have them these days. Most of them are free-standing on a water base. They work very well and do not swing around like the traditional ones used by boxers.

Make sure you have some glove with knuckle padding, because this will wear your knuckles down quickly if you do not.

For the first round, walk around the bag to your right and throw punches with your hand slowly and deliberately for 30 seconds. Then circle to the left and throw punches with your right for the next 30 seconds.

Round two involves double punches. Throw two punches with your left hand and then step to the right. However, instead of a simple step you are going to do a sumo step. To do this, step out to your right side with your right leg so your foot lands the distance of twice your shoulder length. Then lower your body until your thighs are parallel with the ground, and straighten back up bringing your left foot toward your right. Once you are standing straight again, throw two more punches and repeat the process for one minute and then reverse directions and punch with the right hand for another minute.

Round three is the speed round. Here you are going to throw as many punches as you can by alternating the left and right hands for three minutes.

Then, you are going to repeat rounds two and three two more times for a total of seven rounds (including the warm-up round), and then finish the workout with a cool down round doing the same thing you did in round one.