Kickboxing is not for everyone, but it is a unique and exciting way of achieving a perfect shape. This is a physical exercise that comprises of punches and basic kicks. If you are looking for an easy but effective workout, then Kickboxing should be your choice - it's intense enough to compete with any great fitness workout.

You would be wrong if you thought that it was only a martial art, because it is also a fitness system and many people call it as cardio kickboxing.

Use of Kickboxing to learn the Self-defense skills

With the riots hitting the streets of England in the past month, you could be forgiven to think that the UK Police had been given permission to take up kickboxing in order to 'take care' of the thugs and looters currently running up and down the dark alleys in the London city centre.

Sadly this article isn't about granting the Met special powers to black-belt the nation into submission through kickboxing, but using the sport as a community builder (admittedly a tiny bit less interesting).

By day he tenderly nurses poorly pets back to health. But by night, pioneering vet Pip Boydell lets his own animal instincts take over – fighting his way to glory in the bloodthirsty world of kickboxing.

The 50-year-old, a respected neuro-opthalmologist, used his skills to cause damage rather than repair it and pick up four gold medals at the British championships. Pip has now set his sights set on world glory in Cadiz, Spain, later this year.

He puts his success down to a skill he says serves him well in both fields.

The theft of two championship belts has left a Lake Country kickboxer devastated.

Adolfo Lozano, a Muay Thai kickboxing instructor at Lake Country Fitness Club Blackbelts, has had his International Kickboxing Federation World and National Championship Belts on display for the past five years.

On Wednesday, February 9, both were stolen from the club.

"Adolfo's devastated, it's very personal when someone does that," says club co-owner Susan Hegedus.

Turkey’s world and European champion kickboxer Gözde Bayergi Arican has recently started practicing boxing with the intention of taking part in the 2012 London Olympics and winning an Olympic medal in boxing.

Arican, who became a gold medalist at the European Kickboxing Championship last year in Baku, pointed out that kickboxing is not an Olympic sport and that she has won every possible honor in this branch.

FORMER British amateur kickboxing champion Kirsty Lund has often had a fight on her hands to convince the opposite sex she is good enough to hand out instructions.

But they soon learned when she offered to spar with them.

Lund, 25, has also fought professionally and coaches with husband Paul at Widnes Kickboxing and Muay Thai Studio in Hale Road.

She said her decision to take up martial arts shocked everyone, including her family, as it was a complete contrast to her previous interests.

Members of the Public Council at the RA Defense Ministry, President of the Kickboxing Federation of Armenia Garnik Hayrapetyan and military psychologist Dadid Jamalyan, think that the young men who are trained both psychologically and physically better adapt in the armed forces.

“In 2008, there were 35 kickboxers serving in the army; this year the number will reach 75,” Hayrapetyan told a press conference in Yerevan. “We will organize a championship of armed forces in March.”

He also informed that Armenia may host Kickboxing World Cup in late June