Using The Double End Bag Like A Pro With Kirian Fitzgibbons
Over the years, sports have kept growing and repetitively breaking old records, and why is that?
Through the years, we notice a specific change that is the reason for our never-ending growth, and this is the usage of new tools that take our athletes to the next level. Physically, athletes today are not different from athletes of the past, and they even lack many attributes due to the way of living nowadays. Athletes back then would come from a background of physical labor and life that isn’t forgiving, which is essential for an athlete’s mentality.
Well, the only thing that has changed through the years is the way we train. Today, training professional athletes happen under scientists who take their knowledge and use it to get the athlete into peak performance, using new tools the new age brought to us.
In fighting, it is the same as other sports; tools over the years increased athletic performance to greater heights than ever before. Let’s look at some of them right now:
- Jump rope - used to develop leg endurance and stamina that resembles a boxing fight where we stay on toes
- Heavy bag - used to develop specific power and endurance in our punches
- Double-end bag - used to develop timing and hand-eye coordination
- Slip bag - used to build awareness of head position and to move our head off the centerline as we are punching
- Punch shield - like a heavy bag, it is used to develop speed and power but on a moving target
Like we see here, there are many tools we can use, and it is easy to get lost trying to find the right tool to use, so to make that easier, we must first choose a specific goal of what we want to improve in our athletes, so they have a higher chance of winning.
By analyzing athletes consistently, we can monitor their progress and use the optimal tool to develop a lacking specific attribute. Other than just developing attributes, the tools can be a game for athletes to expand on their imagination and develop specific creativity that will help them later on in their fights.
In the following video, Kirian Fitzgibbons will show us the correct way to work the double end bag.
Who Is Kirian Fitzgibbons?
Kirian is an American professional MMA coach specializing in the striking arts and has his own MMA gym in California - CSA gym. Over the years, Kirian developed many athletes to become elite Kickboxers and MMA fighters. As a result, we can find great fighters like Bellator fighter Gaston Bolanos, known for his vicious spinning elbows under Kirian, who has succeeded both in kickboxing and MMA.
Want More Top-Tier Tips From Kirian Fitzgibbons? Click Learn More!
Working The Double End Bag
In this video, Kirian will talk with us about what he calls “the specialty bags,” which are all the bags he would like to see in a professional gym so a fighter can evolve and develop all their different fight skills.
The double end bag is an old boxing tool with tremendous value for fighters; still, it is not just boxers that use it. We can even kick the bag or throw elbows at it. Today we will not work the kicks as we will focus on hand strikes to drill and get better.
When we work on the double end bag, we want to develop timing offensively and defensively, which means it is not just about timing our punches on the bag; we should also time our defense, head movement, pullbacks, and blocks.
Notice that we don’t want to blast it with heavy shots; we want to keep it technical and time our shots only touching the bag. We will start with straight punches always, and when we feel we get the hang of it, we can add hooks, uppercuts, and more.
When Kirian works with the double end bag, he reminds us that the key here is to move our head constantly because if we don’t move our head, the bag will hit us. So as the bag comes bag, we get out of the way, slipping it, pulling away, and not letting it touch us.
Remember, you can add a lot of variety into this bag work; you can add hooks and uppercuts or even body shots when we hit the band, and it will give us the same back and forth action.
Learn More From Kirian Fitzgibbons
Suppose you liked this video breakdown and want to learn more from Kirian, check out - “Bag Work 101 - By Kirian Fitzgibbons” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking.