The heavy bag is one of the most useful and versatile training tools at your disposal, it’s also probably the most widely available; many non-boxing gyms have a punch bag. Having a wide selection of exercises and drills to work on the heavy bag will not only make your workouts more technical, but also more intensive. This will make you more motivated to train for longer and harder, which in turn will help you improve your boxing.

With any heavy bag routine, it’s a good idea to break it down into rounds that relate to your training goals and personal level. Use a round timer to keep your rounds strict, but sets comprising of three minutes of work and one minute rest will obviously suit most boxers, as they are the same as most fight/sparring rounds. Shorter rounds will be necessary when the intensity is high (such as pyramid/punch-out rounds or when you’re not conditioned to standard rounds.

Bear in mind active rest (footwork drills and movement) is a good idea after lower intensity rounds and passive rest (deep, controlled breathing whilst walking around the bag) is normally necessary after high intensity rounds.

Also remember your footwork drills during all the rounds. Move around the bag, put in step-offs, forward and backward steps, pivots and stance switches. The only round below that this is not such a focus is punching with balance, this round is focused more on being stable in one place.

I’ve broken the rounds/drills down into three main types: Defence and Attack; Attack only and Conditioning. It’s a good idea to mix a range of these round types into every workout, rather than just focusing on attack.

Attack Rounds

These heavy bag rounds are focused on increasing your speed, power and movement around the bag, they’ll also naturally work your boxing endurance.

Head Body Head

Simple as it sounds, the goal of this round is to drill the good habit of level changes. So start with a punch at head level then drop to a body level shot and finish with one or two shots back up at head height. Focus on smooth, fast flow amongst shots. You can mix up straight shots and hooks, for example: left jab, left body hook and right hook. You can also try working all your shots on the same side. This exercise will make you hard to defend against and more likely to land a clean shot.

Hooks – Short, Medium, Long Range

This round is all about switching up the range of your hooks. Start by focusing up close at holding range, throw in a few hooks with the same hand and then switch hands, staying tight to the bag and keeping your guard solid. Next step out to medium range, and throw hooks on both sides. Finally step out to maximum range where your hooks can still connect effectively and throw a number of hooks. You can mix things up with a few other shots and also mix up the ranges quickly.

Jab Round

With the jab being so important, especially for outside fighters, this is a fundamental round and one I would say worth including in every heavy bag workout. There’s more to this than simply jabbing the bag, you can work on multiple elements within the jab. So start with singles; then doubles; then triples and quadruple jabs. Remember your movement and footwork throughout, and use the following techniques to keep it varied:

• Mix up your levels (Jab to head and body).
• Add in feints.
• Focus on snapping the jab out and back as quickly as possible.
• On your doubles try half-beat jabs for the 2^nd This is where you only return the fist about halfway back to guard after the first jab, before snapping back out. This will be less powerful, but can often catch your opponent off-guard.
• Use the jab as a set-up for other combos in the jab round.

Southpaw/Switch Stance Jab

Try a full jab round using your non-natural stance, for me this is southpaw. It will highlight to you, weaknesses in your footwork and your technique. If you’ve been boxing for a while and don’t practice switching stances that often, then this is good practice to help avoid tightness in your kinetic chain and can help give more speed to your cross (when you switch back). Try applying all of the above principles, but for your switch stance.

Body Attacks

This round emphasises the body shots. Try throwing pure body shot combos, then add in combos that finish with a body shot and really focus on setting up and delivering the final body shot effectively. Mix in straight body shots and body hooks. Try playing with your footwork, add in some pivots and angle changes. Remember on your body hooks to really try and drive your punches diagonally upwards, as if you were aiming for the opposite shoulder on your opponent. Land a liver shot with this technique and it’ll be game over.

Short Combos

This round works particularly well as an early round. Keeping things simple I aim to work short simple combos, such as: jab-cross, double jab-cross, jab-cross hook etc. This will help warm up your fundamentals without too much thinking, you’ll also be able to focus on remembering things like keeping your hands up and moving in and out of combos. It’s also a good opportunity to polish up your basic combos before progressing onto more complex ones.

Short Combos in Southpaw/Switch Stance

Again this works well as an early round, allowing you to warm up your fundamentals, but in your switch stance. Feel things out and try to identify weaknesses to work on in this stance. I feel my footwork doesn’t have as much natural mobility in southpaw, so I’ll use this round to try and work on quicker movement in southpaw. Remember to be creative and try things even if you think they don’t look great, this is your chance to push yourself out of your normal comfortable stance.

Focus on Punching with Balance

Sometimes you need to work on delivering your shots with balance. Often we’ll use our footwork to compensate when we’re off balance; however this round will force you to deliver punches with more balance. So keep your footwork to a minimum, focus on your balance and keep the weight on the balls of your feet. Stay quite planted in your stance, then work on delivering combos and upper-body/head movement from this position. You don’t need to stay in one place for the entire round, you can move around the heavy bag, but then stop and deliver a few combos and upper body movements, slips, lean-backs etc. from the same spot. This exercise also helps to develop power as you can deliver shots in a more balanced, stable way.

Working on the Inside

Get in tight on the heavy bag, just like being up close with your opponent, get your head and shoulders uncomfortably close to the bag. Feel the movement of the bag and try to maintain contact with it, stay tight and deliver short sharp punches. It’ll give you a feel for inside sparring and although you won’t be able to train some of the more tactical inside sparring moves perfectly, you’ll be able to simulate the general techniques. Don’t be afraid to move the bag with your elbows an shoulders, as you would with an opponent and also you can occasionally hold on to the bag. It’ll get you more comfortable working your opponent up close and it’ll help you keep your hands up and deliver tight, fast shots.

Moving to the Right

This can feel unusual at first as we’re used to moving to the left, being the side our weight is on. But adding this into your heavy bag workouts will give you an edge in sparring as it’ll make life difficult for your opponent. If you’re a southpaw then it’ll be a case of moving to the left. So spend the whole round circling to the right, throw a combo move off to the right. Try jabbing whilst simultaneously moving to the right, try circling off to the right then throw a combo, basically spend the whole round moving in the same direction, it’ll feel strange at first, but will eventually become more natural.

Defence and Attack Rounds

These heavy bag rounds combine some defensive drills with attacks. They will help to develop your overall flow, head movement and natural defensive counters.

Block and Counter

To start with, work on one technique until you have it feeling smooth. So for example, start with catch and jab, catch the imaginary jab from your opponent and return with your jab. Keep moving around the bag and then try catching the jab and returning with a combo. Once you’re feeling slick start a different block and counter combo. This could be side guard block and return with the hook, or a side guard block and then a short combo. Remember you can parry, catch or block and then counter, essentially you can mix up the defence and then the attack. The whole time focus on a fast return, this will train your instinctive response to an attack making you a more dangerous fighter.

Dempsey Roll

This is a great drill for getting your head moving, it’s basically a slip in one direction whilst throwing a wide hook with the opposite hand to the direction you slip in. So for example, your head slips to the left and you throw a wide right hook. Then slip to the right and throw a wide left hook as you’re slipping right. This keeps your head constantly moving off the centre line, making you a harder target. You’re also working the power of your shots, because you’ll adding some extra momentum into the shots. Add in some rolls in between the slip/hook combos to keep that head bobbing and you’ll soon see your natural head movement increase.

In and Out Compound Attacks

Again this is a defence and attack drill. You’re working your defensive movement and combining it with fast compound attacks. Start just out of range, then pop into range deliver a fast short combo and pop back out of range. Then move around, reset and go again with a different combo, pop in attack, pop out. Once you’re feeling fast with the pop-in pop-out, start working on ducking in delivering a fast combo and ducking out. This is all about getting in delivering a combo and getting out of range quickly without getting hit. This is a great drill for smaller faster boxers.

Head Movement between Punches

Just like the Dempsey Roll round, this is a great drill for improving head movement, it’s also more taxing than just punching as you’ll be working your neck, shoulders and abs a lot more. You can get very creative with this round. Try starting with a head movement such as a pull, slip or dip and then deliver a combo. Then try adding head movement into the middle of your combos with or without a head movement set-up. Finally you can add head movement to your exit as well. A great starter combo is jab, slip left, slip right, straight. Or pull, jab, cross, hook, roll out. You’ll start to get a feel for the head movements that flow best with the combos you’re throwing, just keep that head moving!

Heavy Bag Conditioning

These rounds will push your fitness and conditioning for boxing. They’re ideal for fight and sparring preparation, especially if you can commit to full 3 minute rounds.

Breathing and Relaxation Round

This is a perfect round to add in after a high intensity round to help recover if you’re still gassed after your rest period. The goal of this exercise is to help you focus on more efficient breathing during rounds and relaxing your posture. So your shot and combo selection is less important in this round. Throw a combo or flurry of punches and then move, take some good breaths, reset and go again. Remember short exhalations as you throw each shot and deep breaths-in through your nose and out through your mouth between combos. Keep things light and loose, loosen up your shoulder carriage and really concentrate on de-tensing your body. This isn’t just a recovery round, but actually teaches you to relax generally during your boxing, which will make you a more efficient boxer.

Low Drives

This is a good conditioning round for the legs. The focus should be delivering punches from a low stance. Get low, throw a shot and then move. Keep your stance low and balanced, deliver your shots and then move. You’ll feel the legs start to burn, but that’s the point of this round, to really build up the conditioning of your legs.

Punch-out/Pyramid Punch-out

This is normally my favourite round to save until last as it’ll really finish off your workout, leaving you feeling like you’ve really worked hard. It also helps to simulate those final rounds in sparring or a fight, where you have to keep working when you want to stop. Don’t focus too much on technique, but more a fast release of the shots to keep the intensity high. The simple punch-out consists of sets of at least 6 shots in a row, but you can do as many in a row as you like. The pyramid punch-out is a bit more interesting as you work your way up from two shots (a one-two) all the way up to ten shots in a row. Here’s how a set would look:

1. One-two
2. One-two-three-four
3. One-two-three-four-five-six
4. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight
5. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten

You can then either reset back to two or for more of a challenge, work back down progressively through 8, 6, 4 and finishing on 2. Then to really challenge yourself and measure your fitness progress, try to see how many of the same pyramid sets you can squeeze into a set time period, such as a 3 minute round. They don’t have to be straight shots either, you can do this with consecutive hooks, or upper cuts, but stick with numbers of the same shot, rather than combos.

So that’s my ultimate heavy bag guide, there’s plenty of rounds here to put together some serious punch bag workouts. Many of these rounds can be used on double-end bags and uppercut bags as well.

Common Heavy Bag Mistakes

Here is a bonus video the most Common Beginner Heavy Bag mistakes that new boxers make.