Tag: boxing

Why I Train on the Heavy Bag

Working out on a heavy bag can yield great results.

Although I’m more of a traditional martial artist than a professional fighter, I find hitting the heavy bag to be one of the best ways to train water boxing. It’s a great workout—and a reality check. Just like sparring with an opponent who is trying to hit you back or grapple you into submission, the heavy bag will force you to think about your art in a different way. I think it can help improve your form (as in your mechanics) and your forms (as in your understanding of Zhu Ji).

One thing I like to do is to focus on a certain strike from a form, work that strike on the bag, and then use that experience to figure out how to improve my mechanics. Obviously, there’s a big difference between hitting the air and hitting a 100-pound bag, especially one swinging toward you or braced by a partner. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how well a strike works on the bag—and other times, I’m disappointed. Either way, I find I learn something. When possible, I then incorporate what I’ve learned back into the strike when I practice the form.

I also like to use the heavy bag to figure out how to put different strikes together in a meaningful way. Although some forms have useful combinations of strikes built in, there are many combinations you can put together that you will not find in any form. However, hitting something solid with weight—just like sparring against a noncompliant opponent—will also make you appreciate the potential limitations of a dozen lightning fast punches in a row, if only because hitting the heavy bag in succession like that requires a decent amount of stamina.

As a traditional martial artist, I find that one of the biggest weaknesses in how we sometimes train is that it can make our footwork lousy or impractical. Although doing forms can teach you a lot, working out on the heavy bag teaches you about distance, space, and movement (assuming, of course, you are not just standing in one spot all the time). Like a western boxer, I like to move around the bag. Because water boxing has its own footwork and combat theory, I might look different than Muhammad Ali and Manny Pacquiao—but I still move.

In a previous post, I discussed how I used untraditional training methods like taking video to improve. I find that taking video of my bag workout sessions has really helped me because I can see for myself what I can do better. (Tip: Try taking video from different angles.)

Naturally, working out on the heavy bag has its risks and limitations. You could get hurt (I suggest starting very light, especially if the bag is firm or very heavy, until you’re conditioned). You might get sloppy and complacent because the bag doesn’t hit you back. You could become obsessed with just hitting and ultimately end up one dimensional. You run the risk of overestimating your striking power. (Note: You might also underestimate your striking power. You have to know how to gauge what is and isn’t a powerful strike on a bag and on a real person. Just because the bag doesn’t swing much doesn’t mean you lack power. In fact, the bag might not swing much because you’re actually very powerful!)

So long as you keep everything in perspective, I say go whack the heavy bag. At the very least, you’ll get a good workout. At the most, you’ll see your form, forms, and force improve heavily!

Why I Prefer Being “Heavy” Over Being Fast

When I was younger, I was obsessed with speed. I was a huge fan of the blinding-fast Bruce Lee as well as of those kung fu movies with cool wind-like sound effects for punches and kicks. More than anything, I wanted to be fast. And that was how I thought and trained for probably 20 years.

But around 10 years ago, I started to rethink the importance of speed in unarmed combat. Note that when I say “speed,” I mean the velocity of the movement (not reaction time). And when I say “mass,” I mean the mass behind the movement, not a person’s mass in general (although sometimes a person’s mass in general can also be an overwhelming advantage).

I now prefer being “heavy” as compared with being fast. Don’t get me wrong: I know you must have speed and mass (and other things, too) to be effective. But consider the following two options: (1) having average speed and above-average mass, and (2) having above-average speed and average mass. All other things being equal, which would you take? Unless I knew beforehand that my opponent was especially vulnerable to speed, I’d take the first option—average speed and above-average mass. But why?

First, I think back on my own fights. (For context, most of my fight experience has been in what would be best described as schoolyard fights. Also, I am not including sparring during training as fighting.) In the maybe six or seven fights—I know it’s not much experience, but it is my experience—I’ve had in my lifetime, in only one did I basically give up. And the reason why was because the guy hit me with such heavy blows—on my body—that I felt like I was, well, getting the hell knocked out of me every time he made contact. Basically I felt like I was being hit with a hammer. Interestingly, I don’t think this guy, who was a classmate in high school, had ever had any formal combat training. He just naturally hit with his whole body.

In all my other fights, which in some cases included guys formally trained in a variety of arts, I got hit (including on the head), tripped, and taken down, but I never felt that I was in serious trouble. In fact, in some cases getting hit and even bloodied just pissed me off even more. But when I got hit with that heavy blow from my classmate, I was done—physically and psychologically.

Also, based on my experience on both the giving and the receiving end of martial contact (e.g., a punch, a block, or a grappling maneuver), I find that what gets the recipient’s “respect” the most is when they get hit harder or controlled easier than they expected. Put another way: speed may get the attention of spectators, but a heavy blow will get the attention of your opponent.

Now let’s look at combat sports including boxing, modern MMA, wrestling, judo, etc. Except for the old-school MMA fights back in the 90s and “underground” competitions, notice that all combat sports have weight divisions—but that that there’s no such thing as speed divisions. Why divide competitors into weight classes instead of speed classes? Because whether it’s a striking art or a grappling art or something in between, a big difference in weight between participants is generally considered unfair (and more dangerous) to the lighter competitor. Who would you take the majority of the time in these some-of-the-greatest-of-all-time bouts in boxing, MMA, and freestyle wrestling, respectively: Heavyweight Muhammad Ali versus welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson? Heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko versus middleweight Georges St. Pierre? Super heavyweight Aleksandr Medved versus bantamweight Yojiro Uetake?

I know some people will say that in real-life self-defense situations, speed plays a much bigger role because all it takes is a relatively light hit to the eyes or groin or windpipe to maim or kill. I won’t completely disagree with this—just press on your own windpipe with your finger to see how fragile the area is. But there is a reason why women and children, who are generally smaller and weaker (but can often flail their arms with a good amount of speed), have self-defense classes geared specifically for them, while men, who are generally heavier (and stronger), do not.

I would also add that although it is true that for vulnerable areas and pressure points you only need a modest amount of force, I find it also true that hitting those targets on a moving, reacting opponent can be challenging. Being in a stressful situation can reduce your fine motor skills, making you less accurate. And when we’re talking about vulnerable areas and pressure points, you must be not only fast but also accurate. Don’t believe me? Try angling your finger while pressing on your windpipe and note how just a few degrees of deviation from pressing directly against the windpipe make a substantial difference in the pressure, pain, and ultimately the efficacy.

Thus, I train and teach with an emphasis on being heavy because I think it’s a heavy blow that hurts an opponent more physically and psychologically. And it turns out I can even go back to the blinding-fast Bruce Lee to support my argument. About a year ago, I came across a YouTube video in which James DeMile, one of Lee’s more well-known students, said that when he first met Lee, he was thoroughly impressed at how fast Lee was. Lee, he said, seemed to punch like 50 times a second—but they felt like bee stings and didn’t necessarily keep him from coming forward and continuing to fight. He noted that Lee himself quickly realized that blinding speed might not be enough to stop an opponent in a fight, so Lee began working with his students to figure out ways to add mass to the equation. I only wish I had been as fast as Lee in realizing that.

The Best Way to Increase Your Power

Want to increase your striking power? Physics tells us that momentum (in other words, striking power) is equal to mass multiplied by velocity. Thus, to increase your power, either you increase your mass or you increase your velocity.

Of course, ideally you’d increase both. By applying proper mechanics, which is how we train Liuhebafa, you will indeed increase both. But, in theory and in practice, I’ve found that the best way to increase power is by focusing on applying those mechanics with the goal of increasing mass rather than with the goal of  increasing velocity.

So why do we focus on mass rather than velocity? Again, physics (and biomechanics) gives us the answer: the amount you can increase the mass in your punch is many times the amount you can increase the velocity of your punch.

I found an interesting online article from Scientific American entitled “Pro Boxer’s Punch Carries Heavy Weight,” which shows the difference in speed (in essence, velocity) and force (in essence, momentum) between world-champion welterweight boxer Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton and a non-boxer. It turns out Hatton is twice as fast: his punches averaged around 25 mph and his fastest punch was 32 mph compared with the non-boxer’s best attempt, which measured 15 mph.

What’s really interesting in this study, however, is that Hatton’s force was measured at 10 times the average person’s. Let’s assume that Hatton weighs the same as the average person (Hatton fought at about 147 pounds and the average adult in Europe weighs about 156 pounds). Because his speed is twice the average person, his force should be twice that of the average person.

So how did Hatton manage to instead hit with 10 times the force? Simple: he used much more of his body’s mass than the average person uses. Most people (including many martial artists from what I’ve seen and felt) tend to punch only with their arm. A 150-pound person’s arm weighs on average about 8 pounds while their trunk (torso) weighs on average about 72 pounds (see here and here). It’s not hard to figure out (or to feel, if you were fearless enough to let Hatton punch you) that an average person punches with only around 8 pounds of mass whereas Hatton—who engages his arm and body—punches with something closer to 80 pounds of mass. (Note how nicely the math works here: Assuming Hatton and the average person have the same punch speed, Hatton would have 10 times the striking power just based on his ability to get 80 pounds of mass into his punch compared with the average person’s 8 pounds.)

When I teach Liuhebafa, I always focus on the impact that proper mechanics will have on engaging more mass. Although proper mechanics will also increase velocity, I don’t focus on it because, as we can see, it does not contribute to striking power as much as mass does.

Naturally, there is a way to increase your mass without applying proper mechanics—you simply eat more. But I suggest the only time you focus on that is after a good training session!