Blog on the Lillypad

Friday, July 02, 2004

Gym Update
My newly gained liberation to return to the gym has become almost a mania to me, tempered only by the harsh experiences of having overtrained in the past to my own detriment. After a couple days of weightlifting and roadwork on the elliptical trainer, I met up with a man of incredible physique who gave me some help on back and ab exercises. As it turns out, he loves kickboxing, but he cannot keep hitting the bag for more than half a minute or so.

Of course, if you're familiar with bagwork, you know that when you hit a heavy bag, most of the power that you slam into the bag will slam back into your arm. That's why powerful but untrained hitters (like my new gym pal), "punch out" after as few as eight or nine punches.

The strong guys slam that bag like Rocky, but they run out of energy fast. The stronger you are, the more force you've got pounding back into your muscles when you hit the bag. If your arm is isolated from your body (which happens if you lift your elbow high and to the side to punch the bag) then it is taking the full shock.

Think of it this way: a muscle-bound guy might deliver 300 foot pounds of force into the bag. Say 275 foot pounds of force come back. If he punches the bag ten times with the right arm, then within about 15 seconds the muscles of his arm and shoulder will have taken 2750 foot pounds of force. All in the bicep, tricep, and deltoids. Of course his arm will stop punching effectively. If he tries to keep going, the arm will simply quit as tonicity forces it to stop.

To hit a bag for a long, sustained period, you have to keep the elbows in, with the arms traveling on the centerline (or close to it), and punch with the entire body in proper alignment, from the feet up. And you have to relax through the punch until the last instant before impact. I explained this to him. To my surprise, he asked me to come the next day and instruct him. I agreed.

Men almost never ask a woman for help with punching, but this man is serious about wanting to do bag work. So we had a long session with the heavy bag in the aerobics room.

One bad punch from him was still powerful enough to really rattle the bag, so I showed him how I, a comparatively weaker person *must* use good form to get the amount of power he can throw so effortlessly. He got the idea. Good form improves a punch and also enables a person to sustain the shocks of repeated punching. In the illustration to the left, the boxer is using the type of form I use for repetitive bag work. That back foot pushes his hip forward, which pushes the arm forward into the punch. Everythng stays close to the centerline of his body, and he sustains the counter-forces efficiently.

We practiced the proper form, first through several one minute rounds on the bag, and then through several two minute rounds. When I was at my peak of fitness, I could hit the bag for eight-minute rounds, and I would do four to six eight-minute rounds with three minute rests between each set. It will take a lot of traning to get back to that level, but the successful tutoring session was a huge motivator for me. And it's nice to have made a friend at the gym. ¶ 2:18 PM