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Barry
Barry Oglesby is a professional MMA fighter and BJJ player, in addition to being the owner and head coach of Kyuzo Gym in Dublin, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. He also works as a Strength and Conditioning coach at a North Dublin secondary school, and can be found on the commentary team on Cage Contender, Ireland’s largest MMA show.
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He can be contacted through the GrapplerMan.com website.
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Hitting the Heavy Bag isn't just for Fighters

by: Barry Oglesby

The punching bag is a great and versatile tool for general conditioning, and it’s not just for fighters. I use the punch bag with footballers, hurlers, and fat loss clientele as a variation on interval training. I’ve also used some of the following protocols for clients who are rehabilitating after knee or ankle surgery. These are great drills for those of you who like to punch stuff, but don’t have a lot of technical acumen in the art of boxing.

Hitting a heavy bag is like a lot of strength exercises. Done correctly it’s a great, fun, tough, method of conditioning, increasing upper body power, or improving endurance. There’s also nothing quite like banging the bag to relieve some of the stresses and strains of a frustrating day. Done badly, it can lead to injury, particularly of the hands. There’s many a guy out there who has broken a finger or more commonly a scaphoid bone on a punch bag, though he probably says he did it on some guy’s head. There are 2 main injuries that occur when hitting the bag- the first is a common or garden impact injury. Someone hits the bag incorrectly and something gives. It’s usually the small bones in the wrist that are injured when this happens. The second is hyperextension. This is a timing problem often caused by the swinging bag but sometimes caused by just misjudging distance or just plain old bad aim. This is when you fire out your punch but either miss or glance off the bag and injure your elbow or shoulder through hyperextension. Both of these injuries are pretty painful at best and debilitating at worst.

For this reason, when working with people who have little or no knowledge of boxing, I want to be able to give them 3 or 4 cues before and during the session, and for these to be all they need to perform a tough punch bag workout. Here’s what I tell them, and it usually only takes a minute or two.

1) Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, with your favoured leg (right or left) slightly behind. It sometimes helps to imagine someone has stuck a piece of 2x4 between your ankle bones, meaning you can no longer move your feet further apart or push them closer together.

2) Address the bag (ie. touch it with your knuckles) with your rear hand by twisting your hips slightly. If you can touch it comfortably with a slight bend in your arms then you’re in the right spot. If you have to lean forward, you’re too far away. Obviously too close isn’t ideal either, but with beginners it’s better to err on the side of caution and be too close rather than too far away.

3) Shrug your shoulders forward and tighten your fists so that your forearm and four knuckles are in one line. The fist should neither be cocked back or rolled forward.

4) Pick a spot on the bag at the same height as your nose. Hit it lightly a couple of times by pushing your arms away with your hips and gut. Don’t deviate from that spot during the session. It’s common to allow your hands to drop away from the target but you should be punching high the whole time.

5) During the session, hit as hard as you can in a straight line to that point . Bring your hands back to your face each time, don’t swing... push your punches away as you would a dumbbell.

Now much of that would make a boxing purist tut, but remember that this is for non-fighters who are not going to ever learn how to box, but want to use the bag quickly and in a safe manner.

Now comes the work. We’re going to hit “as hard and as fast” as we can for a given time period, then rest, then go again. The most common one I use is 30 seconds of striking followed by 30 seconds of active recovery, performed for a total of 10 minutes. You can do this one alone or with a partner, alternating on the bag every interval. By “as hard and as fast”, I mean that you are going to try to set a pace for yourself in the first interval and maintain that for the subsequent 9 intervals while keeping the same power. By "active recovery," I mean that you shouldn’t stand still in your rest periods. Keep moving by shadow boxing or just staying on your toes and shaking your arms.

You can play with the timing of each interval by adding in shorter rests, longer work intervals, or even shorter work intervals with more intense punching. Here are a few of my favourites.

1) 30s work/30s rest as above for 10 mins

2) 20s work/10s rest for 5 mins (similar to Tabata... but not the same)

3) 1min work/ 45s rest for 8 mins

You can of course do these as a 10 minute short session in themselves, or you can do them as a metabolic finisher for your strength sessions. You can also use them in a conditioning day like this:

1) Warm Up

2) Bag intervals 30/30 for 10 mins

3) 20 mins conditioning work (eg. carries, sled drags, pushes etc)

4) Bag intervals 20/10 for 5 mins

Whatever way you decide to use it, the punch bag can be a great part of your conditioning toolbox.





CATEGORY: Training