Speed bag for shoulders...

[big in vegas]

I have a speed bag at home and after about 20 minutes or so of hitting it, my shoulders are trashed. I love hitting it to release from anger and frustrations, but my shoulders get a great burn from holding them up at head level. Anyone ever hit one for cardio or anything and feel the same? I guess this could possibly be why boxers have pretty big shoulders or not, but it might have something to do with it

 

[Chris-Winfield]

I used to hit them back when I trained , there a good tool but the main reason I feel speedbags are for , is to teach people to constantly change angles , and not plant their feet which teaches beginners that there is more to fighting than power and speed. But technique , movement , and tactics.

Speed bags , will give you a good workout regardless of whether you start off correctly or you hit them just how you've seen they should be hit , but will give a greater workout if you slowly progress focusing on constantly moving and constantly doing 0-90-180 degree sweeps to keep your opponent off balance and train you to remember not to stay in one spot and be able to counter you opponents planting his feet , and or throwing power shots.

If you do not have a speed bag my suggestion is to get a double end bag , their easier on a beginner and give a better muscular , and cardiovascular endurance workout... Along with being less boring overtime , and carries over more to real life situations in real life fighting. Its a more functional training tool , and keeps rust away since its correct punches which a speed bag is not.....

If you already have a speed bag , and do not want to add a double end bag to the mix. Then my suggestion is just start slow. and focus on movement and footwork the entire time you are hitting the bag maybe 2-3 second stand stills at the most when hitting the bag , before you move again. Start with the basic 3 left , 3 right , 3 left , 3 right combinations while moving around at slow speed... Once you feel you have no messed up with your balance , missed the bag , not hit the bag off in a bad direction , your footwork did not cross you up , or throw off your focus , and you did not have to think about your movement , everything was perfect for arond 30 minutes of speedbag work.

THEN , speed up a little bit , and repeat the process before speeding up again.

 

[Chris-Winfield]

Speed bags IMO are not much for cardio but muscular endurance , it may improve you but I never got exhausted cardio wise.

Double end bags are a more improved tool , which also targets cardio because of them being correct punches and not icepick motions.

 

[big in vegas]

I agree, I've never gotten anything out of it as far as cardio, but I know that at our gym you can fully circle around the bag and I've seen people run from one side to the other to I guess work on footwork or just want to look stupid, but either way they're sweating from doing whatever it is they are doing

 

[Chris-Winfield]

their probably doing it incorrectly if they look stupid

I do not have any videos of me , but I might be able to find a video of a friend on youtube hitting the speed bag, But I think he was just showing off speed and not correct technique.

Ill try to find a correct technique video , but you just take small steps while hitting the bag.

 

[Chris-Winfield]

I could not find footwork videos I did not spend much time , neither did I spend much time sorting through my friends videos because they are mostly upper shot videos without footwork , and staying in one place anyhow. to show off speed.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHIMKwDvdsU[/media]

Technique in word form.

You want to circle mostly towards your jab hand in training but also to your own power hand just to keep you in tune for opponent adjustments who have alot of power and your natural jab hand circles to their power hand.

Circling to your own jab keeps your opponent off balance because you can snap your jab while taking leap steps to the right. also steps you up to turn your body to use your own power on your opponent while moving.

So proper speedbag footwork training looks like this roughly.

If am a southpaw , left handed... So I will write it up how I take my steps.

Start with my southpaw stance with my right foot in front , and my right shoulder and hand closer to the bag than my left. You do not want to be in a squared up stance at the speed bag.

1-2-3 right , because you always want to start with your lead hand.

Now you can either take a step to the left or the right when you finish with your combonation with your lead hand , since I am wanting to dominately train for my right hand and to keep the explaination simple I will just move in the dominate direction , rather than moving to the left which you could start off in either direction.

if you are a southpaw moving to the right , do not take a step on the weight transfer preparing your left hand for the speed bag , So just twist your hips to bring your left shoulder close to the speed bag to make sure you have proper timing between the left and right hand while your hitting the speed bag also to train you to turn your body when you throw correct punches which you do not throw on a speedbag.

So from the top of what to do.

1-2-3 right , twist hips bring left shoulder closer while bringing right shoulder back , 1-2-3 left , turn right shoulder STEP WITH RIGHT FOOT SMALL STEP TO THE RIGHT , 1-2-3 right , turn left shoulder closer small step to the right with left foot to make up the wider foot stance , 1-2-3 left , and repeat over and over to move to the right , and just reverse the process to move to the left , always leading with that directions foot as to not cross or get feet too close together.

The small steps are there to prepare your mind to move in a real fight only , proper foot movement basics are incorporated but small steps are not used , leap steps , and turn steps are used in real fights.

But this is the basic training I did and worked great to a proper beginning training since I basically researched and trained myself with just an overseer due to being broke I just got to train with the coach watching not really giving me hands on training till he saw how my ethic and how good I was compared to others in the gym. But at that point I had to quit training to get a job anyhow.