Speed bag training is one of the most fun, high intensity, quick workouts that you can do. The results you can get from short but regular training sessions are very impressive, making this a great way to get your exercise in.
It is easy to use, and it kind of makes you feel macho when you hit it! The benefits of exercise are numerous, in particular when a speed bag is used.
So, here’s a list of some of the benefits of speed bag training:
1. Great Cardio
Training with the speed bag is a great way to get your cardio in. You can break it up into multiple sets, or just hit as long as you can. Most people will do 1 or 2 minutes sets, with two to three minutes rest in between. For an extra knockout punch, you can do jumping jacks, push-ups, or squats in between sets.
However long your workout is, your heart rate will be elevated the entire time and for a little while afterward. Also, the fact that this is predominately an upper-body exercise means that it’s less draining, and longer sessions are possible. Although they may not be necessary!
2. Body Composition
Hitting the speed bag definitely qualifies as a form of exercise that will be beneficial to your body composition. Meaning it will help burn off body fat.
Good quality cardio, like hitting the speed bag, will do wonders for your body by helping you burn fat. Speed bag training has an added advantage over other forms of cardio in that it will help build upper body muscle. More muscle, less fat. This will result in a more favorable body fat percentage. And you’ll be looking good!
3. Speed
Working with a speed bag will drastically increase your speed, as the name suggests! If you have never hit a speed bag before, you’ll be starting out slow. But the speed will come. As you improve, your reflexes will get faster as a result of having to keep up with the bag, and the commands your brain is sending to your muscles.
4. Upper Body Agility
Your agility will be greatly improved by working with a speed bag. Similar to hitting a baseball, this type of training requires pinpoint precision. Your new and improved speed, timing, rhythm, and accuracy come together to result in excellent upper body agility.
5. Accuracy
Have you ever thrown a punch at something, or someone (I know you would never do that), and hit it wrong and messed up your hand? Or maybe you already train with a heavy bag but find you can’t punch confidently with your bad hand.
The speed bag will greatly improve your accuracy and will allow you to punch with confidence with both of your hands.
6. Rhythm
Developing a good rhythm is another benefit of the speed bag. It’s almost musical (and super loud)! You must have some basic sense of rhythm to use a speed bag. It is absolutely inescapable.
In a way, it is almost like playing a drum. There is an element of counting involved, similar to playing music, and this will improve as you get better on the bag.
7. Timing
Ok, so this coincides with rhythm. The ability to continuously hit a speed bag for a few minutes at a time is a skill which will require impeccable timing. Practice will help develop this. You will need to count in your head and strike at exactly the right moment – with clockwork precision.
8. Imbalances
If you are like most people, you are probably much more coordinated with one hand than the other. Even if you have lifted weights for years and feel like both sides are equal in strength, there can still be major disproportions with speed, accuracy, and coordination.
If you can throw 100 punches a minute with your right, and 50 with your left, then you have a serious imbalance. The speed bag will help you correct this. By training with the speed bag regularly, you will quickly find that your levels of coordination between your left and right will even out soon.
Be sure to throw the same number of punches with both hands. If you don’t keep your training even, any imbalances will remain.
9. Joints
This form of exercise is very easy on your joints. With very little resistance and quick, fluid movements. Although there is some impact on the hands, of course, there is far less than other types of exercise, especially the heavy bag.
10. Hands
Speed bag training will be gentle on your hands, but most people should probably still wear gloves and wraps. However, again, compared to working out with a heavy bag, this is a much gentler option.
With a heavy bag, the contents will often settle and make the bottom of the bag very hard. One wrong punch means a jarred wrist or even a broken hand. The speed bag is more like a volleyball. It is simply pumped full of air, not hard or heavy filler materials.
Being easier on the hands means fewer cuts, less strain on your wrists and the small bones in your hands. There is a lower risk of stress-related injuries with a speed bag. It also means that you will be able to train more frequently, and not need long periods of time off to heal and recover.
11. Build Muscle
We’d all like to put on a little muscle, right? When you hit a speed bag, there is just enough resistance to help with that. The movement is explosive enough to be very anabolic. You can definitely gain a few pounds of muscle from hitting a speed bag regularly.
12. Shoulders
Your shoulders will be thoroughly worked and fatigued from speed bag training. Not only do the deltoids contribute directly to the punching motion, but the whole shoulder girdle needs to remain flexed. This is required to keep holding your hands up in a boxing stance. This involves the trapezius as well as the deltoids and is very tiring after a few minutes.
Your deltoids and trapezius can definitely see some growth from regular practice with the speed bag.
13. Arms
Hitting the speed bag is a tremendous tricep workout, but also involves the biceps and forearms. Just hit it as fast as you can, for one or two 1-minute sets, and you’ll be sure to have a killer pump in your arms!
Well that the amount of resistance is very little, you will find that speed bag training is definitely anabolic. That is to say, you will definitely put some muscle on your guns by hitting a speed bag. Especially if you don’t already lift weights as well, the muscle gain could be quite dramatic.
14. Hand-eye Coordination
While it really only takes a short, focused, session to learn the basic technique for hitting a speed bag, getting started is not easy. You need very good hand-eye coordination. If you don’t have it yet, you will if you keep at the speed bag work!
It takes, timing, precision, accuracy, and rhythm, to do it correctly. You have to hit exactly the right spot on the bag, with exactly the right part of your hand, at exactly the right moment in the arc of the bag’s swing. It is not just mindless punching!
As you improve on the speed bag you will notice that your coordination in many other sports and activities will be enhanced.
15. Cost
The cost of owning a speed bag is very reasonable. The price will generally be between $60-70 with a wall mount included. Or you can make your own for far less!
With the obvious exceptions of boxing or MMA gyms, most gyms don’t have speed bags because they are so noisy and people don’t use them properly. My local YMCA used to have one, in a nice out-of-the-way hallway. Then someone broke it, and they took it down. Permanently.
You are most likely going to need to get your own. But like I said, they are very affordable. Which means you put one in your basement, garage, shed, wherever. Then you can hit it first thing every morning for 10-15 mins!
16. Ease of use
Not only is it affordable, but once you’ve invested 15-20 mins of FOCUSED efforts to actually learning how to hit a speed bag, you can literally just walk up to the bag and start hitting.
Nothing to prepare, no weights to adjust, you don’t need to go anywhere, no need for a spotter or training partner. No need for a separate warm-up exercise either. Just start a little slower and go from there.
There is a little maintenance involved in speed bag ownership. Just keep an eye on the PSI of the bag and check that everything is screwed/bolted down tight every month or so. That’s it.
17. Quick Workouts
With a speed bag, you can get a really good pump in 2 or 3 minutes. Give it 15-20 mins of 1-minute sets and minimal rest in between, and you have a very intense and effective cardio/muscle building workout.
5 minutes a day will definitely get you some results. You can’t say that about a treadmill! Or most other forms of exercise.
Quick workout ideas:
- Try hitting the bag for 5 mins nonstop, twice a day, 5 days a week.
- 5+ x 1 min all-out sets, 1-2 min rest. 5 days a week.
- 100-200 punches per arm, 5+ sets. 5 days a week.
- 10 x 2 min sets, 3 days a week.
- Be creative….
18. Stress Relief
Who doesn’t just want to hit something sometimes?! When the stresses of work, family, ex-girlfriends, etc are building up, it can feel good to wail away on a speed bag. The rhythmic pounding of the bag against the board is almost therapeutic.
As with any strenuous exercise, after you hit a speed bag, once you’ve really got your blood circulating, your body will release endorphins. These endorphins will, in turn, give a feeling of wellbeing, and aid in stress relief.
19. A Skill In Itself
While not the easiest thing in the world to master, it is possible for almost anybody to learn how to hit a speed bag. As you progress, so will your speed. You may even start to experiment with different striking techniques, working different muscles along the way.
Once you are able to hit the bag fast, with minimal mistakes, you will have gained a respectable skill. It will make you want to encourage your friends to learn and to show off to anyone who is around! They will be impressed!
20. Fighting Ability
Hitting a speed bag for exercise won’t suddenly turn you into Bruce Lee or Evander Holyfield, but it will help your fighting skills in some ways…
Speed bag training will increase your punching and enhance your accuracy. It will improve your speed and give you more stamina. You will be able to throw more punches, for a longer time.
Another positive aspect of speed bag training is that it also trains you to keep your guard up. When the bag is flying back and forth there is no time to lower your hands
A big part of coming out on top in an altercation is in having the confidence to know you can handle it. Hopefully, you will be reluctant to fight and will look for other ways to deal with problem people.
Either way, if you decide to pursue training in boxing or martial arts, you will be more prepared to do so with the ability to train proficiently with a speed bag.
21. Confidence
Soon you will be throwing 100s of punches a minute and reveling in the loud pounding of the speed bag. The mind-blowing pump in your triceps and the burning in your shoulders will make you feel like an invincible warrior.
Knowing that you can throw a bunch of punches, and hit your target, is a confidence booster. While not transforming you into a ninja, it will allow you to feel comfortable in the knowledge that you can handle anyone who tests you along the way.
Working out with a speed bag will affect your body in a positive way. With regular use, fat loss and muscle gain are both going to happen to some degree. And if you look better, you feel better. If you feel better, you’ll be more confident. This confidence will translate into all your interactions with other men, women, even your parents! (jk Mum and Dad)!
22. You Can Be An Alpha
A man who is confident, sure of himself, will carry himself in a way that others will pick up on. If you are of some small degree of strong mental stock too, you will convey a natural leadership quality, worthy of respect. People respect strength, they listen to those who seem strong, not just in body, but certainly not without it.
Whether or not you believe in the concept of an “Alpha”, many people do. The combination of physical and fighting-related training and the self-affirmation that comes from it will take you as close as you can be to Alpha territory.
It seems that in male-male social and work interactions, there is always an unspoken assumption about who would ultimately win if violence were to break out between the two. Although in our “civilized” society this is highly unlikely, if you are perceived as weak you will get walked all over at work, with the fellas, and by the opposite sex.
So, why not learn to hit a speed bag and become more of a formidable force? If you have a calm, confident forcefulness, people will sense it.
23. Fun
When compared to other forms of exercise, especially cardio, training with a speed bag is a lot of fun. It makes you feel cool, feel like you look cool, builds your confidence, and is a sight more masculine than huffing away on a stair climber!
There is literally no other indoor cardio training, that I can think of, that is more fun than speed bag work. Imagining yourself as Rocky Balboa, or some other real boxer(!), turns your workout into a form of escapism. You may also find that you get lost in a sort of self-hypnosis, brought about by the loud droning beat… but anyway, give it a try, and enjoy the results!
In Conclusion…
The speed bag is a great way to workout. Regular training will have you looking and feeling your best, and feeling like a man while having fun! There are many ways to get in better shape, but why not try one with as many secondary benefits and as cool to use as the speed bag? If all roads lead to Rome, why not take the one that will get you lean and muscular?! Go out and get one, get ready for the noise, and have fun!
