| Heavy Bag | Speed Bag |
| Improves punching power | Improves punching speed |
| Improves footwork | Improves timing |
| You can train combinations | It makes you keep your guard up |
| Builds strength | You’ll learn not to flinch |
| It’s a full-body workout | You can practice blocks |
| You can train kicks | Lets you practice elbow strikes |
Short answer: Ideally, you should train both. But if you had to choose, then you should go for the heavy bag. There’s just no substitute when it comes to developing punching power, while you can kind of substitute a speed bag with shadow boxing and other exercises.
Is the speed bag or heavy bag better for boxing? If you want to get good at boxing, you should train with both types of punching bags.
If you’ve ever been to a boxing gym, you’ve likely seen boxers training on both the heavy punching bag and the lighter speed bag. Both pieces of equipment have pros and cons, and they’re both critical for improving your boxing skills.
Today, I’ll explain the benefits of each type of punching bag for boxing training, how each works out your body, and what they do for your technique
Table of Contents
1. Heavy Bag vs. Speed Bag: What’s the Difference?
2. Heavy Bag Benefits
2.1. Improves Punching Power
2.2. Improves Your Footwork
2.3. Helps You Practice Combinations
2.4. It’s Better for Building Strength
2.5. It Provides a Full-Body Workout
2.6. Lets You Train Kicks
3. Speed Bag Benefits
3.1. Increases Your Punching Speed
3.2. Improves Your Sense of Timing
3.3. You’ll Learn To Keep Your Guard Up
3.4. You’ll Learn Not To Flinch
3.5. You Can Practice Important Blocking Moves
3.6. It’s Great for Muay Thai
4. Other Types of Training You Should Do for Boxing
4.1. Shadow Boxing
4.2. Mitt Training
4.3. Cardio
5. Conclusion – Heavy Bag vs. Speed Bag – Which is Better?
1. Heavy Bag vs. Speed Bag: What’s the Difference?
The heavy bag is a large punching bag that usually hangs from the ceiling. Heavy bags typically weigh between 50-200 pounds, so it’s best to punch them using gloves to protect your knuckles.
On the other hand, speed bags are lightweight bags that martial artists use to improve their reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and punching speed.
Whether you’re a beginner boxer or an advanced boxer, you must use both types of bags to improve your punching technique. First, let’s discuss the benefits of training with the heavy bag, and then we’ll move on to the speed bag.
2. Heavy Bag Benefits
Punching the heavy bag is an essential element of boxing training. The following are the main reasons you should use a heavy bag.
2.1. Improves Punching Power
The heavy bag is heavy for a reason – it helps you develop powerful punches. The heavier the bag is, the more power you will need to add to your punches to make an impact. It allows you to focus on your technique and use your entire range of motion to deliver power punches.
2.2. Improves Your Footwork
Another main benefit of hitting the heavy bag is that it helps you improve your foot movements. You can imagine the bag is an opponent and move away from it as it swings back toward you after a powerful punch.
2.3. Helps You Practice Combinations
Combination punches are easy to practice on a heavy bag. Whether you want to combine a jab and a cross with body hooks or focus exclusively on uppercut practice, the heavy bag helps you improve your technique.
Body-head combinations are also possible on the heavy bag but not viable on speed bags due to how high-speed bags typically hang. For a typical head-body combination, you might first jab high up on the heavy bag, simulating a punch to the head, and then punch lower down, mimicking a jab to the stomach.
You can also simulate hooks to the head and hooks to the liver while combining them with slips and other head and foot movements that make up essential boxing defense.
You can go to the gym and practice whenever you want, for as long as you want, any punching combination or specific punches.
2.4. It’s Better for Building Strength
Hitting the heavy bag won’t help you build a significant amount of muscle. That’s because there is no muscular stress throughout a full range of motion, unlike lifting weights.
However, because of the weight of the bag, it does help you develop functional strength. You’ll practice using your hip and shoulder to punch harder. If you train bare-knuckle, you’ll condition your knuckles to hit hard.
Knuckle conditioning is vital if you plan on using your boxing training to protect yourself in a street fight. In most self-defense situations, you will not have boxing gloves on hand and will most definitely not have time to put them on. If you don’t train bare-knuckle, your knuckles might hurt so much after the first punch that the pain puts you out of commission.
2.5. It Provides a Full-Body Workout
Both the heavy bag and the speed bag are excellent if you want a good cardio workout. However, punching the heavy bag involves footwork, and you must also engage your hips and core to hit harder.
Thus, it provides a full-body workout, while the speed bag primarily works out your arms, shoulders, and upper body.
2.6. Lets You Train Kicks
A heavy bag allows you to practice kicks if you practice kickboxing instead of traditional boxing. Whether you train in Dutch-style kickboxing or Muay Thai, the heavy bag is excellent for switch, push, and even roundhouse kicks.
3. Speed Bag Benefits
The speed bag, however, does little to help you increase power. Its main benefit is in its name: speed bag workouts enable you to improve your speed and coordination.
3.1. Increases Your Punching Speed
Having quick hands is essential if you want to win fights. While power is also necessary, being fast will allow you to land more punches.
If you punch too slowly, your opponent can block and defend against your punches. It doesn’t matter how hard you can hit if none of your punches land.
The speed bag teaches you to move your hands quickly. You can use a jab to the head to get your opponent to cover their head with their arms and then use a quick sucker punch to the stomach, or vice versa.
3.2. Improves Your Sense of Timing
The speed bag helps you develop a sense of rhythm. As the hanging bag comes back to you, you’ll learn how to time your punches correctly. After training on the speed bag for a while, you’ll be able to do it with your eyes closed.
This sense of rhythm will help you in a fight. You’ll learn to space your punches to overwhelm your opponent and deliver quick knockouts.
3.3. You’ll Learn To Keep Your Guard Up
One of the most essential things the speed bag will teach you is to keep your hands up. During a fight, it’s all too easy to forget and lower your hands, especially if they are tired from punching too much.
Unfortunately, lowering your hands in a fight is a recipe for disaster. It exposes your body to punches and prevents you from taking the initiative and landing effective punches as soon as you see an opening.
The speed bag helps build your arm and shoulder endurance. You must keep moving your hand throughout your three-minute rounds (or whichever length your rounds are). The speed bag typically hangs level with your eyes, forcing you to keep your hands up.
If you use the speed bag regularly, dropping your hands will actually feel unnatural.
3.4. You’ll Learn Not To Flinch
A beginner boxer who hasn’t sparred often may freak out when a punch comes close to their face. When something comes that close, our natural instinct is to panic and let our natural reflexes set in, even if they go opposite what we trained for.
For example, you might have trained to roll to the right and then deliver a right hook. However, in a real fight, when a punch comes close to your face, you may develop a flight or fight response and simply move back naturally, preventing you from counterattacking.
Using a speed bag accustoms you to having something fly close to your face all the time. You’ll learn not to flinch and instead continue punching.
3.5. You Can Practice Important Blocking Moves
While heavy bag training can help you practice footwork defense and slips, it’s simply too heavy to properly train blocking techniques. On the other hand, a swinging speed bag is perfect for training blocking moves with your hands and arms.
3.6. It’s Great for Muay Thai
Traditional boxing training doesn’t involve training elbow movements like Muay Thai. However, if you also train Muay Thai, you can use a speed bag to practice quick elbow hits, simulating hitting an equally tall or even taller opponent in the face.
4. Other Types of Training You Should Do for Boxing
Both the heavy bag and speed bag have certain disadvantages. For example, the speed bag won’t help you develop punching power.
The following are other training methods you should incorporate into your routine if you want a more well-rounded physique and better boxing skills.
4.1. Shadow Boxing
Shadow Boxing involves training while punching the air. It might sound silly, but it serves an essential purpose. It lets you focus on your technique exclusively, without any distractions. It can help you improve your form and get your footwork on point.
It can also help with your speed and cardio. In that regard, you can use shadow boxing as a substitute for a speed bag.
Shadow boxing is best in front of a mirror, as that allows you to see your form. If you don’t have a mirror, you can record a video with your phone.
4.2. Mitt Training
You should also train with a coach. Having someone hold the mitts while you punch them will simulate fighting more than hitting a bag.
A good coach will move around, forcing you to learn how to punch while stepping forward or backward. They might counterattack, forcing you to roll under an incoming hook – something that’s impossible with both a speed bag and a heavy bag.
Besides, a coach can give you real-time feedback on how to improve your form and footwork. They can also motivate you to keep going, even if you are tired and want to take a break.
4.3. Cardio
Boxing itself, whether you’re hitting the heavy bag or the mitts, is a good cardio workout. Good boxers will, however, also skip rope and do other forms of cardio. That helps you build up endurance, which is crucial if you want to maintain your stamina during a fight.
5. Conclusion – Heavy Bag vs. Speed Bag – Which is Better?
Many boxers spend more time hitting the heavy bag than the speed bag, but both are important. The speed bag plays a vital role in helping you develop your rhythm, improve your punching speed and hand-fighting skills, and increase your endurance while the punching bag helps you train power, endurance and combinations.
But if you have to choose, then you should go for the heavy bag, because practising punching power and proper form is vital, and the heavy bag gives you exactly that. As for speed, you can do shadow boxing instead of working on a speed bag.
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