Sunday, December 10, 2006

Anatomy of a Heavy Bag

I got a new toy a couple weeks ago, a water-filled heavy bag. Supposedly, it's 80lbs when full. I didn't check it on the scale, but when I had to hang it, 80lbs seemed about right. I was kind of fascinated by it's construction, so I took some pictures as I was putting it together.

Here's how it came. Mostly a lot of foam and plastic.



The shell with the foam inserted.



Bladder inserted and filling. There ended up being more air space between the filled bladder and the foam than I expected. This helps to make the bag very soft to hit. The bladder felt pretty tough. I don't expect to have any issues with it rupturing.


All closed up.



Hung up and ready for some punishment.


So far, I like the bag pretty well. Like I mentioned, it's fairly soft to hit, so I haven't had any issues with my hands (I am wrapping my hands and wearing bag gloves when I work with the heavy bag). I'm not getting a whole lot of bag movement, although it does move some; I think this has to do with the foam, the air gap, and it being water-filled.

I've only done two real workouts with it so far. One was part of a longer workout, and I just hit the bag for 5 minutes straight. The other was a bag-only workout suggested by Ross. Essentially, he had you throw 10 sets of 10 punches as fast as possible, take a little break, and then go another 10x10. I managed 7 rounds (10x10x7 = 700 punches), but my last few punches in the last two rounds were pretty pitiful.


What's this have to do with bike racing? Not much, but it's December. My plan for this part of the year is just to stay in generally good shape and give my legs a little break from cycling. I did do a speed skill ride on the trainer yesterday, and I felt surprisingly strong. I can say that spending so much time off the bike for the past few weeks has really gotten me fired up to start riding again.

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