Hundreds are training like fighters to get fighting fit and obtain a knockout body.
"Round for round, pound for pound, this is the toughest workout in town," said Rick Harper, owner of Box-2B-Fit Boxing Clubs.
Harper, who also teaches classes, has been boxing since age seven. He moved from Philadelphia a few years ago and started Box-2B-Fit Boxing Clubs in an industrial park near Brier Creek.
Many of his clients are professionals, including the Raleigh Police Department.
"I got Raleigh, I used to do the Morrisville chief of police," Harper said. "[I train] a lot of IBM, SAS, Cisco employees. I do a lot of upper echelon people that I train in the mornings."
Surprisingly, 90 percent of Harper's clients are women.
"I focus in on what women's problem spots are," he said. "Your thighs, your hips, your stomachs and underneath your arms. That's why I make sure we do pushups like crazy."
Kamilah Webb is one woman who took up boxing about a year ago when a church friend told her about it.
When she began the program, she weighed 260 and a size 22 was tight. Now, Webb is a lightweight as a size eight and is floating like a butterfly as she trains three times a week in boxing gloves.
"It's something that shocks the muscles," Webb said. "It takes you to a whole level."
Boxing is a tough workout. The workouts can burn more than 1,000 calories an hour and you can sample a class at the Triangle Boxing Club for free.
Harper reminds potential clients that workouts offered at Box-2B-Fit are focused on fittness, not violence or fighting. His programs utilize the training aspect of boxing and the technique that not only shapes a person's body, but builds fitness.
