Is a Punch Bag Good for Your Arms

By Kasim Javed Punchbags

Punching bags have a great many benefits whether you’re looking to relieve some stress, get in good shape with cardiovascular fitness or improve your boxing performance. Professional boxers use several different pieces of equipment to train, and punching bags are a vital part of their training regimes as they allow them to practise their combinations and hit as hard as they can without hurting a training partner.

But punching bags don’t give boxers huge muscles, if you want to improve your muscular strength, you need to do more weight and strength training to build up your biceps. However, punching bags can be good for your arms in other ways. Let’s take a look at the main benefits of punch bags so that you can get the most out of your boxing training.

What are Punching Bags for?

When you walk into a boxing gym, you’re likely to see several pieces of equipment:

Punching bags
Skipping ropes
Weights
Focus pads
Boxing gloves
Battling ropes

Each piece holds great value to the training of a boxer, allowing them to improve an aspect of their physical fitness and boxing performance. But punching bags in particular are useful for boxers as they allow them to practise their punches and combinations with power and improve their cardiovascular fitness so they can comfortably fight for 12 rounds.

Boxers don’t usually intend to fight for the full 12 rounds, however, so they practise powerful shots to be able to achieve the all-important knockout punch to conclude the fight as early as possible. Punching bags allow them to utilise their full power and maximise the power behind their punches, unlike focus pads which are predominantly for shot accuracy and agility.

Kickboxers also make use of punching bags; heavy bags and free-standing bags are ideal for kicking as they’re longer and heavier than other punching bags to allow for different kicks and practising punching and kicking combinations.

Are Punch Bags Good for Kids?

Since the main goal of punching bags isn’t to develop huge muscles, you don’t need to worry about your child using a punching bag regularly. Cardiovascular fitness, punching techniques and stress relief are all factors of punching bag use that can also greatly benefit your child, helping them to enjoy sport and see it as an important part of a healthy lifestyle.

While you may wish to show your child the benefits of using punching bags by training with them, children should never use adult equipment as it’s too heavy and therefore dangerous for them.

You can buy good-quality punching bags for kids that are suited for their size and weight, so make sure you invest properly and don’t buy a punching bag that weighs more than half of your child. For example, an average 10-year-old weighs from 24 to 50 kg, so their punching bag should be between 12 and 25 kg. A 30 kg punching bag would be far too heavy for most children.

When hanging a kid’s punching bag, you should also ensure it’s low enough on a sturdy wall for them to train comfortably, without having to stretch to reach the bag.

Are Punch Bags Good for Your Arms?

While punching bags don’t build muscle, so you won’t see any growth in your biceps from punching a punch bag regularly, it is good training for your arms for multiple reasons. Boxers need great endurance for their sport – even though rounds are two to three minutes, they can be very intense and fighters can fight for up to 12 rounds in a match. So increasing your endurance is key to being a good fighter and improving fitness levels.

Punching a bag regularly will increase the endurance of your arm muscles as well as the rest of your body as you need to engage your core, shoulders, back and legs in each of your shots to generate the power in your punches and move around the punching bag as you would an opponent in the ring. This kind of cardiovascular fitness will help you to lose fat as you burn calories, which will tone your muscles, including your arms and your abs, helping you get into great shape.

If you have a lot of loose skin or fat around your arms, regularly hitting a punching bag for an intense 10 – 20 minute-session, 4 – 5 times a week will help reduce the fat, toning your arms and making your biceps and triceps more defined.

Heavy punching bags are also great for your arms as they provide a lot of resistance, allowing you to hit the bags as hard as you can, maximising your power and utilising your full strength. Over time, you’ll notice your punches becoming stronger and your arms becoming more toned as you hit the bags over and over.

Why are Boxers so Muscular?

While endurance is an important aspect of boxing, you don’t need to last the full 12 rounds if you’ve got a mighty punch, so boxers focus mainly on strength and power. To become stronger, you need to build muscles through strength training and weight lifting.

Strength training exercises include:

Squats
Lunges
Crunches
Sit-ups
Press-ups
Pull-ups

When looking to build muscle, you should do a range of strength training activities to focus on different muscle groups in your body, so alternating between those actions on the above list will help you get in great shape by working out your legs, core and arms.

Repeating the actions will both increase your strength and your endurance, but if you want to build muscle further, you can use weights in the exercises or simply weightlift. Using a barbell when squatting will build quadriceps and gluteal muscles, while holding a weight plate or dumbbell when doing sit-ups will build your abdominal muscles and help get you a six-pack.

Boxers will, of course, train with punching bags, focus pads and sparring partners to improve their fighting performance, but most boxers are so muscular because they spend a lot of time strength training and weight training to increase their muscle mass so they can be more powerful in the ring.

How to Train with a Punch Bag

Knowing how to train with a punch bag is also essential if you want to improve your fighting performance and tone your arm muscles.

When you start training with a punch bag, practise each type of punch over minute-long rounds. It’s important to maintain rhythm, so first throw jabs, alternating between each arm, before resting for 15 – 30 seconds and starting another round alternating between jabs and uppercuts, and repeating the pattern for each arm, and jabs and hooks.

As you get more confident you can speed up your strikes and increase the length of your combinations, for example, throwing a right-hand jab, a left-hand uppercut and finishing with a right-hand hook.

Training can be tiring, so to train for longer and build muscle, you can intersperse a few rounds on a punching bag with a few minutes of strength training or weight-lifting exercises. These kinds of intense routines will also help you lose weight by burning calories, and tone your muscles and increase muscle mass through strength training.

It’s best to use a free-standing bag or heavy bag for heavy punching practice so you have sufficient resistance against your punches. You can also move around free-standing bags and heavy bags to improve your footwork and agility to help your overall fighting performance.

MMA fighters will also benefit from alternating between training with a grappling dummy and a decent punching bag so they have sufficient skills in striking as well as wrestling-style manoeuvres.

What Gloves to Use on a Punch Bag

When training with a punching bag, you need sufficiently heavy boxing gloves; the weight of the gloves refers to the amount of padding in the glove which protects the boxers’ hands. As punchbags provide a lot of resistance, you need a large amount of padding to protect your knuckles from harm. MMA gloves don’t have enough padding to protect your hands from punching the bag, and Muay Thai gloves don’t protect the thumb by keeping it in a fist position as boxing gloves do. So make sure you’re using boxing gloves when training with a punching bag.