Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Exercises To Do With Boxing Bags


The boxing heavy bag, weighing from 70 to 100 pounds or more, is a critical piece of training equipment to boxers. While no one knows for certain where the use of heavy bags originated, their use by fighters was well-known by at least the late 1700s, as evidenced in several boxing and fighting manuals of the era, including one by Daniel Mendoza called "The Modern Art of Mendoza," written in 1789. In addition to the basic striking training fighters perform on the heavy bag while learning to punch, there are numerous conditioning techniques that take advantage of the bag.
Abdominal Curl-Up
The abdominal curl up is one of the toughest boxing bag exercises there is. Executed by hanging upside down, with your legs wrapped around the bag, and performing a sit-up from there, the exercise is a great method for strengthening the abdominals and lower back muscles. These are critical muscles for the boxer, since the muscles of this region are the foundation of boxing, both for offensive and defense. You should perform as many non-stop abdominal curl-ups on the boxing bag as possible before reaching temporary muscle failure.
Bag Cleans
Power cleans performed with the heavy bag are a great way to develop functional pulling strength needed by mixed martial arts fighters and wrestlers alike. Picking the bag up off the floor and heaving it over your head behind you is a superb way of developing the strength and power to help you control an opponent in a fight. Bag Cleans should be performed in short duration sets, with ample rest time between.
Ground-N-Pound Drills
For the MMA fighter, learning to strike an opponent from the somewhat awkward positions of groundfighting is critical. Raining down "hate and discontent" from the mount or side mount is difficult if you've never done it before. Without knowing how to put some force behind the strikes, they become weak arm punches that are easily ignored by the opponent as he seeks an escape or reversal. Assuming dominant body positions with the boxing bag as a psuedo-opponent allows you to practice these strikes before you need to execute them against an opponent.

 
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