Book excerpt: Challenge your body with an exciting, increasingly popular martial art. Kickboxing training is hard work and an excellent way to build your body. It is demanding--you must strive for maximum alertness, conditioning, strength, and quickness--but it is also intensely rewarding. Every training session and every fight leads to greater insights into the sport and into yourself as a person and as an athlete. This generously illustrated guide introduces you to all the basics you need to learn in order to step into the ring for your first amateur fight--and win it! Begin by preparing your body through exercises designed to increase your strength and stamina. Develop your triceps, biceps, shoulder muscles, and latissimus muscles for punching; your forearms and wrists for stability; your quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves for kicking; and your abdominal and lower back muscles for necessary support. Learn to control your breathing while running. Next, get to work on boxing skills--jabs, uppercuts, bobbing, and weaving--and kicking skills, including the front kick, football kick, roundhouse kick, and ax kick. Guidance is also offered in ring skills, fighting strategies, choosing equipment, and finding coaches, trainers, promoters, training facilities, and training partners. Before you know it, you'll be in peak physical condition, ready to kickbox your way to victory! 128 pages, 141 b/w illus., 8 x 10.