If your fitness routine involves bag work, choosing an empty bag should pave the way for several benefits. For one, it allows you to customize the entire experience, from the feel and weight of the bag to its density. It also keeps injury risks at a minimum, which is crucial when training for any physically demanding combat sport.
Materials you can fill up a punching bag with can be anything from sand and sawdust to fabric and water. In case you’re in the market for a water punching bag, find out how choosing the right water bag can help your cause.
Today, we will go over a couple of questions that revolve around punching bag filling so that you can modify a bag to suit your training needs.
What Can You Fill an Empty Bag With?
An empty bag allows you to personalize your striking experience. It lets you choose and alter the weight of a bag, as well as its density and feel.
For example, if you went for a heavier boxing bag, you’d have to put in more effort behind your strikes to move it. This is why weightier punching bags favor hard strikers or bigger athletes who pack more power behind their punches.
Conversely, filling up an empty bag with lighter filling grants the opposite effect. You don’t need to deliver hard blows to move the bag, which should allow you to swing more freely. A lighter bag also gives off less shock and helps one incorporate boxing combos better.
What Fillings Should You Choose?
Knowing what and how to fill an empty bag can be a struggle at first. However, as soon as you get the hang of it, you can start modifying them to suit your boxing style. The fillings you choose depend on whether you want to create a lightweight bag or a heavy one.
Lightweight Bag Materials
Fabric-type fillings, like rags, old clothes, foams, and towels, can give a bag a low-density and soft feel. These materials make a bag less compact, which, in turn, lets it deliver lighter feedback that doesn’t deal as much force on the joints as a heavier bag.
When filling up the bag, make sure to do some layering. If you simply stuff the bag to your heart’s content without aiming for compactness, you’ll get a badly shaped bag that is incredibly awkward to punch. Also, make sure you use a wide-end tool that allows you to push the materials inside the bag closer together.
Heavy Bag Materials
On the other hand, a firmer and heavier bag requires smaller materials, such as sawdust and sand. These leave the bare minimum room for air. You should also place thinner and softer clothes in the middle section of the bag so that the filling doesn’t overwhelm the casing.
Another option to get fantastic results is to stack fabric on the outside and tiny layers of sand in the middle. This might take more time to prepare, but many fighters would find the trouble worth it because it lets them feel the crispness of the contact with each strike.
If you want to go overboard with the firmness, you can try overfilling the bag with sand, though this wouldn’t be a good idea most of the time. In some cases, it could cause the bag to crack or break from the sheer weight of the filling.
Conclusion
Ultimately, your choice in punching bag filling depends on the part of the boxing game you’re trying to develop. If you’re looking to hone striking accuracy, fabric-type fillings that allow for freer striking would be ideal. On the other hand, if you’re trying to build power behind your blows, smaller and more compact fillings would aid in that more considerably.