How to Hang a Punchbag
Boxing is a great sport for your physical and mental health, and one of the huge benefits of boxing training is that you can train from home, with just a few pieces of equipment. But designing your home gym or setting up your boxing equipment isn’t just about how it will look when it’s all put together. You need to make sure everything is mounted in the right place so you can train safely, without breaking any of the objects in your house or damaging the structure in any way.
Before we look at how to hang a punchbag, let’s clarify why heavy bags are a great addition to your home, and what your alternative is if you don’t think it’s safe enough to hang one in your house.
What Is a Heavy Punching Bag?
Heavy punching bags are the most common type of punchbag that you’ll have seen in boxing gyms and in fighting films like Rocky or Warrior. They’re long bags, around 4 feet long in most cases, but can be as short as 3 feet and as long as 6 feet and can weigh anything from 20 kg to over 100 kg. What size you choose depends on your own size, as heavy bags should generally weigh around half of your body weight, and you can increase the weight as you train and get stronger.
Even though heavy punch bags are significantly heavier than most other punching bags, they’re not necessarily more expensive, with most punching bags costing around the same amount.
Also as with most other punching bags, heavy bags need to be attached to a wall via a wall mount and bracket so they can swing after each punch, but you need to be careful where you mount the punching bag as its weight and the force of your strikes will put immense pressure on the wall or ceiling where it’s attached.
What Are the Benefits of a Heavy Punching Bag?
One of the main benefits of using a heavy punching bag is that it’s an excellent cardio workout. Hitting a heavy bag can be very tiring, and, with the right boxing technique, you should be engaging your whole body, moving your feet to get into the right position to strike the bag repeatedly in a combination. This exercise gets your heart beating faster and makes your breathing heavier, pumping more oxygen around your body to organs and muscles.
What’s more, intense cardio like hitting a punching bag burns a lot of calories, so if you’re eating well as well, you can lose a lot of weight through boxing, and get into great shape.
Hitting a heavy bag isn’t just good for your physique though, it’s also great for your mind. Striking a bag can release a lot of pent-up frustration and anger, relieving stress and releasing endorphins to help you improve your mood. There are many ways to release endorphins, but exercising and releasing your negative energy through striking a punching bag is one of the most beneficial ways for your mind and body.
When hitting any kind of boxing equipment, including heavy bags, you should always wear the right boxing gloves. Muay Thai gloves are similar to boxing gloves, but the padding is spread across the glove rather than being concentrated on the knuckles, so you need a good pair of boxing gloves to protect your hands from the impact of striking the bag when training.
Are Free-Standing Bags Better than Heavy Bags?
Free-standing bags are as good as heavy bags in many ways; they’re great for cardio, you can practise many aspects of your boxing technique and they’re affordable so you can train easily at home. But each has its benefits.
Free-standing bags are exactly that – free-standing – so you don’t need to attach them to your walls or hang them from your ceiling. This is great for people in rented properties and old houses that may not be able to take the weight of a heavy bag on the walls or have permission to screw a wall mount into the walls. However, the risk with free-standing bags is that if you’ve got a hefty punch, the bag may wobble and fall over.
Heavy bags hang so they naturally swing slightly and return to the same place – if they swing too much, however, you may want to get a heavier bag. So if you’re training hard from home regularly, a free-standing bag may not be able to take the hits as well as a heavy bag, so you would have to change your training technique to practise shot speed or combinations, or simply invest in a heavy bag.
How to Hang a Punching Bag at Home
There are three main places where it’s safe to hang a punchbag at home:
- From a support beam in your ceiling
- From a solid wall (made from brick, stone or concrete)
- From a sturdy tree branch outside
If your punchbag is hung from any other part of the house, it can be extremely dangerous, risking bringing your ceiling or wall down after mounting it or striking the bag.
The best place to hang your bag is from the ceiling as this gives you room to move fully around the bag to work on your punches, movement and footwork which you would need when fighting a real opponent. It also gives the bag more room to swing without hitting the wall or knocking over any objects in your room. If you don’t have the space to hang a punching bag from your ceiling, a wall works as well if the bracket is long enough to keep the bag away from the wall and allow you at least 180° movement around the bag.
When you’ve found the location to hang your heavy bag, you should drill into the wall or support beam and attach an eyebolt. This is a kind of large screw with a hoop on the end to attach your bag to, which is better to cope with the movement of the bag, as they may fall off hooks causing injury. If you’re hanging the punching bag from a wall, make sure the bag is far enough off the ground and not too high for you to strike comfortably. Pay particular attention to this when hanging your kid’s punching bag, as their bags will be a lot smaller than an adult’s.
If you can’t hang your punchbag indoors, you can consider hanging it outside.
Can You Hang a Punching Bag Outside?
One of the main advantages of having a punching bag at home is that you can train whenever you want to, so hanging a punching bag outside is not ideal, as sometimes it will be too cold, wet, windy or snowy for you to train.
However, if you can’t hang one indoors, it is possible to hang your punchbag outside. To do this, you should:
- Find a sturdy branch that won’t swing much
- Clear any leaves or branches that will get in the way
- Wrap a secure band around the branch with a carabiner to attach the bag
You’ll also want to keep your punching bag stored safely when you’re not training so the material doesn’t become brittle or break when left outside.
Are Punching Bags Good for Kids?
Kids can benefit from using punching bags just as much as adults, and maybe even more. As well as relieving stress and staying physically active, introducing children to sports that they enjoy from a young age will give them a good starting point to help them maintain a healthy lifestyle throughout their lives.
Boxing in particular also helps to teach children resilience, humility and the right skills to protect themselves if they need to, so punchbags are great for children to start training with. You can buy durable kids’ punching bags from sports shops like Maxx Pro Boxing, where you can also get them the right boxing gloves to help them train safely. Just make sure you’re getting the right size and weight punching bag for them to use now and as they grow.
Buy Durable Punchbags from Maxx Pro Boxing
Maxx Pro Boxing proudly supplies the UK with affordable durable punching bags, boxing gloves and grappling dummies, so you can train safely from home.
