Guide to Heavy Bag Workout

What I am about to share with you is a comprehensive and step-by-step guide to a good heavy bag workout, it is especially useful for beginners! For starters, some might have the misconception that working out with these punching bags meant that they just need to throw technique-less and speed-less punches until they get tired. There are many drills out there and many ways you can use them to organize your rounds. To make your workout more fruitful, you can use various rounds to focus on different parts instead of repeating the same drills again and again.

To help guide your workout and develop your boxing skills, I have a sample workout which is really effective and is less strenuous for beginners:

1. LOOSEN UP
   Like all sports, the first thing you would want to do is to warm up to prevent any strains and injuries from occurring. Move around the bag and imagine it to be like a live opponent, test a few long shots without having to focus on a particular spot on the bag. Keep your eyes on the bag and imagine yourself to vision attacks that might come from any angle of the bag. Do not use your full strength as this is only a workout, continue to move around the bag and establish your comfortable punching range – it should not be too near or too far from the bag.
2. POWER AND MOBILITY
   Now you can start increasing your power output, you can start on hard punches then slowly putting in a mixed combination of both hard and soft punches. When you are going in and out of range, remember to move in and out with sharp hooks and uppercuts. Good power comes with the right breathing technique and skills, and good footwork comes from slick movements and pivots, avoid jumping as it does not help your speed and sharpness of your attack.
3. SPEED
   One can use Tabata Drills to help with this step. Tabata drills are high intensity training or high intensity interval training, which provides similar health benefits to that of cardio workouts. Start hitting the bags as fast as you can with a 15 seconds interval each time and then take a break for another 15 seconds before continuing until the end of the round, this step requires pure speed, no technique or speed required. Not taking a break each time will cause you to be slower and hence hinders the development of pure speed. Concentrate solely on your speed and maximize the usage of your body to develop a fast coordination of both your arm and leg muscles. The non-stop fast punches can be done with lifting your legs at the same time, somewhat like running on the spot, as it develops foot- coordination with speed.
4. PERSEVERANCE
   During this last step, its best to avoid going for power as it might easily exhaust you. This round is all about getting your body to adapt or get conditioned. Focus on small shorter punches instead of wild swinging shots as it might get you injured. Continue to throw endless shots at the bag, although you might feel that the punches you are throwing are useless however that is not the case as those small punches is what exactly that helps develop muscle memory and increases the rate of your muscle contraction. Throwing wild punches enable you to relax after the initial release and the tiny punches allows for contraction. Fight back the urge to give up and lose your balance. Remember to maintain both your balance and regular breathing.

Stand and don't hunch when hitting the punching bag

I hope this workout is of help to everyone that is interested the heavy bag workout. This workout is not rigid to only a standard structure, like I said earlier in the article, one can customize the workout to cater to each individuals' needs.