Last weekend I was down in Kent at the Howard School at a course hosted by Dennis Jones.  I'll be down there again regularly as part of the new organisation I'm working on.   As soon as we've worked out the dates, I'll post them.  Meanwhile, I'll be in Birmingham this Sunday.  All are welcome.

Bishop Challenor
Institute Road
Kings Heath
Birmingham
B14 7EG
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I recently saw two comments regarding clips of guys working a bag.  The comments came from two of the top guys in their respective MA specialities.  Essentially what they both said is that somebody working a bag isn’t proof that they can fight, which is pretty obvious.  But that doesn’t mean that you can’t see the fight, or the conditioning for the fight, in the bag performance of the individual.  Just look at clips of Tyson on the heavy bag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dOMYoo5Zw&feature=related

or Buakaw training

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZMVetEi-bI 

Closer to home, look at Dennis Jones’ latest clip. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TYI3ClpP9c

It’s pretty obvious from these guys’ performance that their bagwork/padwork reflects at least one aspect of their fighting ability within their respective arenas.  There’s a quality within the performance that doesn’t come from just hitting the bag around to put on a show. 

These guys are hitting with bad intent, whether they are conditioning or working on the tactical elements.  You can see how they’re using the bag to reinforce that violent intent to destroy their target, which will be human in the fight but for the moment is only a bag that they imagine as a man. 

Sometimes the people who look at this footage don’t know what they’re looking at when they say, ‘It’s only a guy hitting a bag, it doesn’t necessarily apply to the fight.’ 

When Dennis Jones put up his clip on my old forum on Self-Protection.com,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnfldrDjopU&feature=related

I privately heard from a number of people who criticized the clip on the basis that it wasn’t anything much.  I put them straight as to what actually was going on there.  What they’d failed to see was how close the bag was to the wall, and how Dennis had to angle out (just as he might on the door) to get his shot in.  And what they also undoubtedly didn’t realise was just how hard the bag was that he was hitting. 

When I phoned Dennis up to thank him for the clip and told him about some of the criticisms and my reply to them, he said, ‘Steve, you’re the only one who’s seen that.’  The reason I’ve seen it and others haven’t is because I’m always looking analytically at movement, based on my experience.  The way I work a bag might not on the surface of it look the same as the way Dennis works a bag, but we’re both working it either for conditioning or for a specific tactical application.  And we both work heavy, hard bags. 

On a light bag, you can hit it more or less any way you like, even with a badly-formed fist, and you’ll get an effect.  You can’t do that on a heavy, hard bag, and you can’t do that on a man.

We’re hitting the bag with the idea of breaking bone (a rib, a nose, an eye socket, a jaw) or getting a knockout.  When I’m working a bag I’m also doing it with an awareness that I’m going to get hit back at about the same time.  I’m set to take a shot as well as deliver it.

I remember at Earlham Street, some visitor who was watching me hit the heavy bag sarcastically made the comment, ‘Bags don’t hit back.’  I said, ‘Yeah, you’re absolutely right.  But I do.’  And then...no, I won’t go into it.

When I was in Benghazi, I didn’t have any sparring partners, nobody to hold pads, all I had was a heavy bag made of sand (which was plentiful in Benghazi!) and a makiwara that looked more like a tree.  I used the makiwara to basically condition my hands and other body parts, whilst I used the bag to hit as I would be hitting on the street.  I’d also use the heavy bag rather like a blacksmith would be beating out metal, to hone my tools, because I could hit it at angles I couldn’t hit the makiwara.  And I’d apply tactics I would be using on the street.  Now, in that bagwork, in order to generate this explosive power, and to sustain the pain off those impacts, I had to psych myself up to hit it.  I had to jump-start the CNS and get myself into an aroused state of mind where I was going to be able to generate more power and deal with the punishment from the impacts. 

And for that energy to be any good to me, I had to give it a very specific direction, technically speaking.  I had to make it into ‘the bullet’ so that I’d be having an effect on the bag and not the other way round.  On a light bag, you can get away with it.  The hard bag, in a sense, does hit back.  It will hurt you.

If you’re developing this explosive force, you have to be able to condition the structure to be able to sustain the greater effort as well as the greater impact.  I started off not wearing gloves personally, and I conditioned my hands to be able to take the impact.  But in teaching, I realised some of the bags, especially the black bag at Earlham Street, were so hard that people were breaking their hands on them.  I was teaching by example and by technical input how to hit harder, but the problem was that guys’ bodies couldn’t sustain the higher level of impact. 

So I now recommend people to wear a bag glove, and then gradually start to reduce the amount you wear the glove as your hands get conditioned.  Don’t compromise the power in order to save your hands, and don’t switch to a light bag so as to encourage yourself to develop a follow-through, because it will be the wrong follow-through.  Use the glove, go for maximum, and then gradually try to wean yourself off the glove without compromising the release.

Here’s a clue.  When you hit a bag, give yourself the command: ‘Ribs: break.’ Say it aloud.  And follow your instruction.  Become committed to sensing and feeling the effect of what you’re going to do, and then carry it out.  Keep repeating that, and then give that release a sound (as I talked about in the post on vocalization) which is reflective of the intensity of the effort and the depth of penetration you’re looking for. 

Once you’ve got one shot working, whether it’s a kick, punch, elbow, or whatever, repeat the shot rather like you were repeating the firing of a bullet.  Set the tempo by the sound.  So if you want to make your repetitions faster, then shout out your sound at a faster rate and the body will do all it can to follow. 

In this way, you can condition not only the tool (i.e., fist, elbow) but you can repeat a shot if you need to.  And because you’ve built this dynamic, explosive pattern in, it becomes easy then to switch to another move without breaking tempo.  You develop that Uzi mentality, and your body really does become a kind of automatic weapon. 

Pads are also a really effective tool in training.  Repetitive pad work gives you both the conditioning of the tool and the anaerobic fitness that you need for fighting.  But their best usage lies in fight training, because the man holding the pad can initiate attacks and counters as well as defend against them.  Padwork, unless it is done purely for conditioning, must always resemble the fight as closely as possible, incorporating its emotional intensity, its chaos, timing, and functional skills.

The problem with pads is that they often don’t provide for the kind of impact you would be hitting on a real target.  A guy wearing an abdominal protector does provide a more realistic target, but the pads themselves are much more yielding than a real head would be.  And so, when you use pads, the pad-man has to know how to present them in a manner which will offer the most physical resistance.  And he should add a slight resisting movement at the moment of impact so as to make the impact harder for the striker.  Also remember, although the pad is a ‘softer target’ you must still set yourself to hit it as thought it’s bone.  Otherwise the practice becomes unrealistic.

The padman can give you feedback about whether your hits are penetrating or not, as well as encourage you, point out technical problems, etc.  At Earlham Street, we didn’t have Muay Thai pads available on the market in those days, so we used boxing mitts.  The guys I would hit would have to quit the session because their hands were hurting.  I turned that into my objective.  In the same way, the padman should let you know whether he felt your shot.

Sometimes I look at guys doing the pad and it looks like they’re standing on the runway at Heathrow guiding a jumbo jet onto the runway.  Obviously, the pad man has to stand as he would stand to fight, and not just stand there holding a pad as a target.  You might as well just hang up a bag.  The pad man has to be representative of the fighter you’re going to fight, whether he’s standup, submission, or ground and pound.  In my opinion, the key to producing a great fighter in a professional gym is the pad man.  It’s his job to get the best out of that fighter, physically, psychologically, technically, offensively, defensively, and counter-offensively.  A major part of padwork is clinchwork, and this is often neglected.  The padman should be able to slip one hand out of the pad so he can engage in clinchwork and then slip it back on again at need.  Most people have the pad strapped on so tightly they have to stop everything to take them on and off.  The padman has to be extremely fluid in the fight; you’ll see it in the gyms in Thailand.  They know what they’re doing.

Sometimes I look at the type of pad being used, as well as the type of bag, and I can’t see how it’s supposed to sustain any real abuse.  The pad, like the bag, is a piece of equipment that you want to buy with the idea of using it by abusing it!  Tom O’Shaughnessy was telling Trish recently how he used to bring in different pieces of equipment to the gym for me to test out.  He said when he got them back, it was like he’d given it to the dog.  When I was done with it, you couldn’t recognise it.

When I work anything, it’s like the man.  I’m out to destroy it.  So the equipment has to be functional, and not something you buy because you like the way it looks. 

Pat O’Keefe, the kickboxer, said that when he first came up to Earlham Street he thought someone was doing demolition work in the building. It was me doing my normal workout on the black bag.  That’s what you want to be going for when you work the bag.

Going back to what we see when we look at heavy bag footage.  Here’s the thing.  When I finally got the benefit of being able to look at a wider spectrum of training, particularly boxing and Muay Thai, I used that information coupled with my own experience to influence the way I work bags and pads.  I don’t try to reinvent the wheel.  I just tweak a little bit if I think I can improve it.

I look around at some of the experts, and it doesn’t look as if they’ve absorbed even the fundamental principles of using a bag or pads that you’d see in any decent boxing or Muay Thai gym.  Go to the best source for that kind of information and then modify it for your particular needs; don’t make it up as you go along!  It’s not necessary. It’s already there.

So when some of the experts look at a guy working the heavy bag, I don’t think they know what they’re looking at.  They’re imposing their own limited view of what a bag is for on what they’re seeing.  And so they’re looking at the wrong things.