Here’s a great boxing heavy bag workout from Jason Van Veldhuysen over at Precision Striking. He’s also got a popular Youtube channel.
This 10-round heavy bag workout will improve your power, speed, endurance, and overall boxing skills!
*** Watch the video to see Jason demo his heavy bag workout. ***
NOTE FROM JASON : This heavy bag routine is meant for non-sparring days, where Jason recommends to do 10 rounds on the heavy bag. On sparring days, you use bagwork to supplement your sparring so that you still get 10 rounds of hard work. (For example: if you sparred 6 rounds, do 4 on the bag.)
The standard round time in boxing is for 3-minute rounds with 1-minute rest in between!
ROUND 1 – Warm Up
Start with the jab, bend your legs, and get your hands and feet warmed up. Start gauging timing and distance, move your head before you jab, move your head after you jab, work on your angles, and setting up other shots in later rounds.
ROUND 2 – Southpaw
Hit the bag from a southpaw stance (or orthodox if you’re already southpaw) to balance out your body. You’ll be working different shots and angles. And you never know when you’ll need this strategy in a fight.
ROUND 3 – Head movement
Emphasis on head movement for this round. Work on slipping, ducking, snapbacks, moving head before & after you punch. Move your head, snap your punches, slip, and move again. Keep moving your head.
ROUNDS 4, 5, 6 – Fight pace
Work at 100% full-on fight pace. Throw fast combos, flurries of combos, keep moving your head, keep creating angles, keep your footwork active, move exactly how you move during a fight. Keep the pace high and the pressure on.
ROUND 7 – Tricky
Start getting cagey and slick. Stay on the outside, lots of feints. Start picking your shots, don’t be in a rush to throw. Lots of in and out movement. Move in with a few shots and get back out again. Be cagey and cautious.
ROUND 8 – Speed & Volume
Lots of hand speed and high punch volume. Focus on short and quick punches. Work on getting the speed and fluidity in your hands. Don’t worry about any technique in particular. Let the mind go free and let the hands go.
ROUND 9 – Power shots
Pure power shots. Bend your knees and turn the hips and shoulders on every punch. Put everything into these shots, bad intentions on these shots. Go for the knockout.
ROUND 10 – Inside fighting
You should be tired and with spent legs. Get inside and make it ugly. Get close to the bag, slipping and dipping, move your head, work the body, work the head. Keep turning your opponent, creating angles, and staying busy.
Great video … hope its the first of many collaborations between you guys… best of luck and keep up the energy …
Great work. My fellow club members really need to see this, and they will. Thank you.
Exellent video & Great article. Thanks !
This dude is legit!
Nice..I’ve emailed Jason before and he knows his stuff for sure.
Johnny, you and Jason are THE BEST boxing and fight instructors on the internet. You two collaborating is a major dream come true for me. Please try for as many collaborations as possible. Together you guys are unstoppable.
While Johnny focuses on the basics Jason focuses on the advanced. Both are great internet instructors though. My impression of Johnny is the go to guy for selecting proper workouts and exercises cause he pwns most of the youtubers in that respect by explaining them in his articles.
Thanks, for sharing, will try this today!!
wow, it was exellent and I feel like a wolf today!
really useful johny
Great ideas to keep thing s fresh! Awesome thx.
Just to add. It’s a nice start to evolving your heavybag work, there’s nothing wrong with adding ideas. Some of mine are –
Rounds with only 1 – 2’s/only straight punches from the outside/a partner yelling out commands/punch ur way inside, punch while inside, punch to cover your exit. You could also shorten resting time.
Of course, there are so many variables to control whilst these ’round rules’ are in progress. Things like rhythm on your 1 – 2’s (baBOP | pop pop | pop.. POP), finding new angles on straight punches etc.
The most important things i’ve discovered so far are.
1. Relax the whole time, it might feel good to dump tension on the bag but it’s hard to improve this way.
2. Keep punching, i see too many doing the opposite of no.1 then they look away from the bag with their hands down for a few secs then repeat. It’s a huge no-no, please don’t let this become a habit especially going into sparring. Always be ready to punch and be aware of what’s in front of you.
3. Have fun. If you want extra rest time, take it. Shout at your partner ‘this is too easy!’. Wanna try a round with ur hands down? totally up to u. I remember doing the robot after a round, and it became tradition with the other guys for the day.
“doing the robot after a round” — hahaha 🙂
This is one of my all time most favorite articles on timed drills. I’ve incorporated this type of drill with my martial arts training including kicking techniques.
Thanks , I didn’t mind sharing your great advice with some friends . Great technique!
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hello julio how are you doing i do professional boxing myself and i am happy to say that you have an amazing record but i would like to be the one to give you your first loss and it would be an honor so if you please would please contact me at 845 123 9876 thank you please be sure to call also whenever we meet up we can go for some food or something
Should this be done on its own or with a full workout before it??
This workout can be done anytime that you want although I would imagine it would be too long and hard for most people and that it should either be done alone or during the heavy bag portion of your boxing training routine. To do all 10 rounds of this AFTER a full boxing workout would be a total overkill as your body is too tired to get any real benefits from it.
Thank for you guys making this
I’ve been doing 10-3 minute rounds BUT during my 1 minute rest I do sets of weighted exercises as well as, pushups, sit ups, and jump rope.
I’ve increased muscle, strength, conditioning with this intense all in one bag session.
I keep these workouts to every other day 3 days per week.
My off days I recover and stretch.
Does your “resting workout” affect your performance during your regular 3-min rounds? If so, I would recommend for everyone to put this effort into working harder during the rounds, not during the rest periods.
Love it man, thanks