Working with the boxing bag

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Ever boxed with an aqua bag before? When you’ve not done it, it can be a little tricky to get used to. The key to remember is that movement is your best friend, but how do you get to that stage? We chatted to our Boxing Activist Dave Gordon to find out more.

Why should I box with a bag?

Boxing with a bag, like the aqua bags we have in our Boxing studios, is a great way to refine and improve your boxing technique. You’ll work with a moving target but you’re not limited to needing a partner to spar with. You might find that it improves:

• Your footwork
• Your speed and agility
• Hand-eye coordination
• Strength

When you box with a bag in the right way, it’s great at enhancing your performance. But when your bag technique is not quite right, you can feel like you’ve never boxed before.

Why is boxing with a bag sometimes difficult?

How many times have you seen someone working on an aqua bag, only to pause as soon as the bag starts moving, grab it, stop it from moving and start all over again? To some people this makes complete sense; all you want to do is hit the thing after all. But when we do this, we take so much away from the session without even knowing it.

A good way of looking at it is to try and make the bag our best friend – flowing with it to focus on our own movement and technique. We can move towards the bag as it swings away, move backwards as it comes towards us, slip or roll out of the way, check hook to reset – the possibilities are endless; and they are also extremely important to work on.

How to perfect boxing with a bag

To begin with, you want to spend some time getting used to bag work. So, don’t even worry about the boxing. Just push the bag and get moving around with it. You'll be surprised how tiring this can be but you’ll get so much more out of your training, especially when you incorporate proper boxing technique on top of this. 

As well as allowing us to drill certain movements, it also helps to engrain a mentality; never be stationary! It’s true that bags don’t hit back, but should we ever wish to take our training further with sparring, or test ourselves in Contender Boxing, we need to be in the habit of moving constantly whilst we box – because people hit back!

Give Boxing Bag work a try at some of our selected clubs. We’ll see you there!

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