Opinions on the Fairtex 7ft Pole Bag

Get it. Its a good bag. Perfect for kicks. Your shins will develop

 

Any bag with a bit of weight to it will help you condition your shins and develop power. So you want a bag made for boxing, MT/Kickboxing or MMA.

Your shins, feet, elbows, knees etc. will get conditioned over time just training MT in general i.e. kicking the pads, bag and sparring. The nerve endings in your skin will slowly start to lose feeling and the muscles that surround your shins will get stronger and you’ll be able to take more and dish it out more, but it takes time.

Yes, a heavy bag helps to develop power, but only if the right technique is being used. Beware of really really really heavy bags even after years of experience because if a bag is “too” heavy and causes pain, discomfort or just makes employing your technique awkward don’t use it as you’ll pull your kicks and start to develop bad and un fluid technique.

The bag you’ve selected is fine for developing powerful round kicks especially in combinations using low kicks. However, notice the bag comes

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and is a monster at 7ft and is unmovable i.e. rooted to the floor. It’s great for a busy gym in addition to a load of traditional hanging bags, but I sense you are buying a bag for personal use so I’d veer away from this particular bag, too many headaches and not versatile enough. If I was to go out and buy a new bag right now just for me and to be used in a Muay Thai set up I’d go for this in either 4ft or 5ft depending and I’d hang it lowish:

http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/160797720378?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&adtype=pla

These leather Sandee bags are great quality, get better with age and last forever. They are very weighty and bulkier than they look but crumple just right when you kick or punch them, enough resistance that you have to work your hips to develop power but not too much that you’re gonna bust up your hands and feet!

But the two main and most important reasons I’d steer away from a bag that is fixed to the ground is it doesn’t move! When a bag moves it helps you a little with timing and distance and also makes you think about foot work and balance more. But most importantly in a Muay Thai context you need to be able to grab it and throw knees in repeatedly in a kind of mimic clinch. Hence if it’s fixed to the ground like the Fairtex bag you can’t really work clinch like knees and you can’t mimic throwing a couple of knees and then spinning your opponent (the bag) off balance to put in your big scoring knee!

In Thailand you very very very rarely see anything longer than a 4ft bag and they are hung high. The bags tend to be nailed in exactly the same spot each time when kicked and are very rarely used to formulate combos like in the west, however I realise for personal use you need to be ale to kick low, so I’d suggest getting the 5ft Sandee and hanging it so the bottom of the bag is at least say a foot of the ground so you get the movement, can tip it for grabbing to do clinch work, but is low enough to slam your low kicks in. :thumbsup

It may seem more money,but it's leather and is

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and come with chains!

 

Why don't you just kick banana tress to oblivion like Buakaw does?

Seems those trees gave him the awesome power he has.

 

Hey Sugar.

I take it that's tounge in cheek!

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Or take it with a grain of salt.

But here's an honest one, Boran's got some good advice there. :good

 

Good luck with the training, but don't believe all the hype and mythology that seems be ever present when people talk about MT training. Get in a gym staright away and that's where all the conditioning you are looking for starts. (It's way harder than you think to break a shin bone.)

Contrary to popular Muay Thai Urban myth belief, you can't stengthen your shin bone, only the muscle next to it that protects it and deaden the nerves in the skin of contact areas. The worst thing you can do is focus on trying to "strengthen" you shins, you'll just damage them for life and never be able to kick properly. I've herad ever mad story under the sun from rolling a glass coke bottle up and down them every night to well..........this:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRHxmrce6IM[/ame]


I assure you this is not a normal Thai warm up! Lumpinee's corragated steel roof would collapse otherwise!

You sound young and keen and that's good. :good Just remember Rome wasn't buit in a day, take it slowly & steady and be patient, focus on technique nad get some instruction. After 6 months of kicking that bag the" right way" you'll turn your legs into a pair of brutal baseball bats.

Last thing, honestly don't teach yourself to kick, get some instruction first and then do your own practise otherwise you'll be ingraining incorrect technique into your muscle memory and you'll find it very hard to "unlearn" an ingrained bad habit! :deal

 

"Bull**** baffles brain!" come to mind.

4-6 years? :-(

Check out a current top Thai fighter called Saiyok. He had two two weeks before he had his first fight. :scaredas:

Look you don't have to take my word for it, but I basically laid it out in these few quick posts. My advice would be to stop looking at these guys on youtube, get in a gym, start training and things will become crystal clear.

(If you waych guys on youtube, be a bit more selective and at least pick a Muay Thai guy not a Taekwondo guy to show you MT stuff).

Good luck with the training & always train hard!:thumbsup

 

Where do you live?