Heavy bags are a staple of Boxing, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and MMA. From beginners to pros, every martial artist and combat sports athlete can benefit from training with one. Even a small amount of bag work performed on a consistent basis has the potential to improve almost every aspect of a striker’s game.
With such a wide range of benefits for a wide range of disciplines, the heavy bag is already punching above its weight as a piece of martial arts equipment. But with a little creativity, it can do even more.
Here are 5 ways to use a heavy bag, ranging from the orthodox to out there.
Punching Bag
The classic use for a classic piece of training gear. Heavy bags are an essential for any gym that specializes in Boxing, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, or Mixed Martial Arts. They can also be useful for other martial arts that incorporate striking techniques, like Karate and Tae Kwon Do. Gyms with a fitness focus sometimes have a few on hand for fitness boxing and fitness kickboxing purposes, too. If you have the room in your living space and budget, they can even make a great addition to a home gym.
No matter where you are and what techniques you use to hit it, regular training with a heavy bag comes with a long list of benefits. That includes increases in strength, power, cardiovascular conditioning, and improvements in hand-eye coordination, reflexes, agility, and body awareness.
It might also increase your overall enjoyment during training, because punching, kicking, elbowing, and kneeing a heavy bag is really fun.
Grappling Dummy
An old heavy bag that’s too soft for serious striking training can find a second life in grappling-based martial arts and combat sports like amateur wrestling, submission wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Judo. All you have to do is remove any chain links or other attachments that might be abrasive or uncomfortable up close, and you’ve got an excellent makeshift grappling dummy on your hands.
While it isn’t quite as easy to manipulate as a traditional grappling dummy and you won’t be able to arm bar it, a heavy bag can be adapted to most positional drills, conditioning exercises, and even some takedown defence technique training. Depending on the size of both the martial artist and the bag involved, you might also be able to make it work for takedown practice and guard work.
MMA Ground Drill Training Tool
New and old heavy bags can also be recruited for grappling and striking training on the ground. Heavy bags are a particularly useful grappling dummy substitute for mixed martial artists because you can strike them at full speed and power while you’re practicing wrestling and jiu-jitsu techniques on them.
Martial artists of most sizes will be able to used a downed heavy bag for ground and pound drills from both the mount and knee on belly position. Martial artists with longer legs can probably manage to use the bag for striking drills from the guard position, as well.
And if any MMA fighter wants to fine-tune their pure grappling techniques while they’re at it, they can go ahead and use the heavy bag as a grappling dummy, too.
Functional Training Gear
A gym bag that’s nearing the end of its career in fitness boxing and fitness kickboxing classes can be useful—and fun—in other areas of the facility. Fans of functional training and strong man-style exercises love old heavy bags.
They can be a somewhat more forgiving and much easier to store alternative to a tire. You can flip them. You can hit them with a hammer. You can bounce medicine balls off of them for plyometric, reaction time, and agility drills. And you can use them in a lot of smaller gyms that don’t have the space for a giant rubber tire.
Heavy bags can also double as weight or sandbag alternatives for certain exercises, including the fireman’s carry, front squats, back squats, and good mornings.
Furniture
OK, this one might be a stretch. But a heavy bag that’s too soft for training is probably just soft enough to be used as a bench or couch at the gym. Anyone who’s sat down on an extra bag between sets can tell you that they’re surprisingly comfy resting spots.
If you’re feeling especially creative and have some basic DIY skills, you might even be able to turn your old heavy bag into more proper furniture. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to dress it up enough for a formal setting, but a couch or coffee table crafted out of a heavy bag could look really cool in a setting with a more eclectic or bohemian style.
If you’re feeling even more creative and you have some artistic skills, you could try painting it and hanging it as a statement piece.
