Training solo at home, the heavy bag is probably your most important piece of equipment and having a number of “go to” muay thai heavy bag drills to train is very important.
This post will look at 4 different types of muay thai heavy bag drills to develop different aspects of your muay thai and includes videos of 12 different drills you can use of modify for your training needs.
A lot of professional fighters and experienced nak muay like to “flow” on the heavy bag.
And don’t get me wrong being able to flow on the heavy bag is important but you should also use your heavy bag training time to really hone in on certain techniques and areas that you need to improve on.
The 4 areas of focus of these muay thai heavy bag drills are:
- Footwork
- Balance
- Endurance
- Defense
Check out the muay thai heavy bag drills below to help you improve your striking power, speed, technique and endurance.
5 Footwork and Movement Drills
The drills put together in the vdeo below come from Glory Kickboxing Champion Joseph “Bazooka” Valtellini.
Bazooka Jo is known for getting the most out of every workout he did when competing professionally.
Even though he only managed to train once a day a lot of the time Jo was able to take his striking to the highest level and claim the Glory Kickboxing crown.
The drills in Bazooka Jo’s video work on developing and improving your footwork and timing to use in sparring and fighting but working solo with the heavy bag.
The 5 drills presented in the video include :
- Footwork exit and re entry for attack – use any combination you want
- Timing and forward/backward movement – making use of the swinging motion of the bag
- Side to side movement footwork and using sideways movement of the bag
- Striking from different ranges
- Angles, pivots and shuffles in closer range
The type of drills described in the video below is an example of how to get the most out of your training using what you have available.
Whats great about these muay thai heavy bag drills is that you can work solo but with a focus on the type of footwork, range and timing that will come out in real sparring and fighting.
Balance – 3 Heavy Bag Drills
The 3 drills presented by Pro fighter Richi Alvarez in the video below are excellent for training your balance and defense and countering after throwing your kicks.
Balance is a huge part of muay thai and what judges look for in a fight in order to award scores.
Being able to maintain your balance is crucial to muay thai and this is especially so after throwing kicks.
Being able to return to stance reset your hips and be ready to defend and counter after throwing your kicks is the main focus of the 3 muay thai heavy bag drills shown in the video below.
The 3 drills work on 3 different ranges in muay thai fighting:
- Long range – Roundhouse kick to same side teep drill
- Mid Range – Roundhouse to opposite knee
- Close Range – Roundhouse to wall block (with same shin) to opposite or same side elbow
Endurance – 2 Pyramid Drills
You can build up your own ‘Pyramid drills’ using any combinaiton techniques.
These are great for building up your endurance and fight cardio.
Pyramid muay thai heavy bag drills work by building up the number of techniques you perform successively until you reach the total number for your workout.
Example:
Round Kicks:
- 1 each leg
- 2 each leg
- 3 each leg
- 4 each leg
- …. continue up to 10 each leg
You could then also Pyramid down again back to 1 but take your time to build up your conditioning to this level.
Pyramiding up once would a good goal to work toward before trying to Pyramid down again.
You could use any technique or combination you like for the Pyramid drills.
You can even combine heavy bag strikes with pushups, situps, squats or burpees in order to create an even toughter Pyramid.
Check out the boxing and pushup Pyramid drill below to get some more iedeas about how to use the endurance building drills in your own workouts.
There are endless numbers of combinations of striking techniques and body weight exercises you could use to develop your conditioning with the heavy bag.
Defense – 2 Muay Thai Heavy Bag Drills
The first drill is from Paul Banasiak that he calls the “reset button”.
This drill is great for keeping your hands up and in a ready defensive position after throwing combninations.
The drills involves resetting into good stance and ready defense by “posting” on the heavy bag after every technique.
The post involves the muay thai long guard with the extended arm posting on the bag to keep distance from your opponent and reset your posture and stance.
Paul uses it when teaching beginners and helping them to get back in good posture and defense by posting on the bag.
It is also great for all levels of strikers to keep good defense after striking.
The second defense muay thai heavy bag drill is from Namsaknoi.
The drill is important for defending against kicks after attacking.
Namsaknoi emphasizes punching with good technique and returning your pucnhes to defensive position after striking.
This drill is great for practicing and drilling defense when you do not have a partner and work solo on the heavy bag.
Include this drill in your training to work on your defense and blocking kicks after striking.
Training these Muay Thai Heavy Bag Drills
How to implement and use these muay thai heavy bag drills in your own workout?
There are several ways to do this.
You could put them all into a single workout session. This means looking to develop the aspects of footwork, endurance, balance and defense in one session.
Or you could seperate each aspect to train on seperate days of the week or seperate sessions in the same day.
If most of your training is solo at home then seperating your heavy bag training into specific aspects each time would be a good way to keep your workouts fresh and interesting.
As most of my training is solo at home here at Fiji Muay Thai I recommend seperating the workouts something like this:
| MON | TUE | THU | FRI | ||
| Footwork & Defense | Endurance | Balance & Defense | Endurance | ||
