Imagine training young fighters only with double end bag, cobra bag, speed bag, mit work and then sparring. No heavy bags to hit, like james toney said thats a bag beater not a real fighter. Heavy bags are not realistic at all, your opponent isn't that fat or big. Work the double end bag for accuracy, that is way more important. Speed, accuracy and timing. Lots of mitt work and slipping drills, cobra bag like ryan garcia uses and then you spar 4 - 5 times a week.
If anything, speed bags are more expendable than heavy. They're basically just a parlor trick for show ponies anyway; nothing about them increases the speed of your actual punch mechanics. Double-end is underrated tho.
You develop punching power and learn proper footwork with the heavy bag. It's the reason heavy bags have been a staple in gyms for hundreds of years, long before weight training was incorporated. They are the width of a man. They sway. You can practice your footwork by jabbing and moving around the heavy bag, and making sure you circle and move forward with your feet in the proper position so you can punch with power as you move. People used to make their own heavy bags when they first got the itch to box. I've got drawings of pioneers punching heavy bags they made. When I was a kid, we put a heavy canvas tent in a canvas laundry bag and hung it on a hook in our basement and we punched it until our knuckles bled. The heavy bag and lots of sparring are the most important things in a gym, by far. A double-end bag is good for accuracy, if you want to work on landing to the head. But boxing isn't just about head punches. You need to be able to dig and hook to the body. Speed bags are useless. There were a lot of all-time greats who couldn't even hit a speed bag. (Do a search for Julio Cesar Chavez trying to hit one.) They are pointless and just for show. And mitt work isn't much better. If you're going to punch mitts, you might as well just spar, so you can work on punching and avoiding the punches coming back. The guys who put on shows, like the Mayweathers, with their pad and mitt work aren't doing much. The guy holding the mitts is usually doing all the flashy moves, while the boxer just moves his hands back and forth and doesn't vary it much.
I would sign up in a heartbeat to fight some fool who trained without ever using heavy bags (and especially if he also replaced sparring with just mitt work). He could outweigh me by whatever and rehydrate to whatever he wanted, too, no stipulations.
To learn to fight, everyone needs sparring, but when it comes to equipment and preparation, I'm a big believer in the heavy bag and shadow boxing, not that there is anything wrong with other workout equipment. The heavy bag is probably the closest thing available in the gym to fighting a real person, most fighters don't like to use it, it jars them, it hurts sometimes, and it's hard work. It's the squat rack of the boxing gym. If done right, it will condition a fighter and it will teach them to move correctly while maintaining their balance and punching. It also helps people to punch correctly and to turn over their punches. Shadow boxing, is also avoided by a lot of people. Some people are embarrassed to shadow box, but there is no substitute. It teaches through repetition and it works. IMO, fighters should go slow and strive for perfection when shadow boxing, they'll speed up later. Why would anyone want to practice doing something the wrong way? Holyfield on a video said something like, "you're fighting air, if you can't look good against air, how can you look good against an opponent?" I don't like to rate one activity over another, but if a fighter's gym time is limited, he/she would not go wrong by spending the bulk of their time on shadow boxing and the heavy bag.
I would imagine most polls to pick the top ten fighters of all time would include Ali, Sugar Ray R & L they definitely used heavy pads and speed balls but can’t remember seeing them using mitts ? Would that have added something to them ? That’s open to debate , all I would say in my opinion mitts in the wrong hands are detrimental to the development of sound boxing technique , from what I see there are more bad examples than good.
Agree. I don't know when mitts became popular, but as you already have written the mitts are only as good as the person holding them. Two trainers who were fighting out of Gleason's in the late 50s/early 60s told me that at times they would take 16 ounce gloves and put them on backward and use them as mitts before there were mitts available. But I don't think that was a regular thing. I've seen trainers train fighters using the mitts and the trainer didn't watch the feet of the fighter he was training. He only wanted the fighter to do more "intricate" things with his hands. The fighters got worse, not better. Their foot work got much worse. If a hand moves, a foot needs to move and if the trainer can't watch the feet while catching punches with the mitts he needs to either slow down or stop using the mitts IMO.
PatM my coach used the reverse glove thing but it probably contributed to about 5% of his coaching scheme. He was a heavy bag /sparring fiend. The comment about footwork getting worse I totally agree with . The problem is high profile guys particularly Mayweather ,who are without doubt top notch ,is they don’t actually let film crews film record the main and most important part of their training . Coaches who actually know what they are doing seldom let their opposition into the whys and wherefores of their teachings.
They never used the mitts. Mitts have been around since the beginning....and they were used for warming a fighter up in the dressing room. That's all. Nothing more. The speed bag was occasionally used for a cool down. Mostly amateurs drilled on them, but rarely pro's. Same goes for double-end bags. Shadow boxing, heavy bags and sparring was all they knew.
heavy bags help condition your wrists and forearms for when you hit something solid you won't hurt yourself. Nevermind that heavybags give you feedback on how much leverage you're getting into your punches and developing your endurance for punching. Gym with no heavy bags, I'd pass.
