Stuck

[ssdvc]

I have been doing it for several months now and I have not advanced beyond the basics either.

One thing I did was to order the bible and DVD. For $20, you can't beat it for the valuable info. I hope to have it when I return home next week.

Another thing is something that Ms Deville hit on, the swivel. I went from an Everlast Pro Swivel to an Everlast plastic ball swivel (not the best). Man, now I know what bag control is all about (well, I am trying to LEARN what bag control is all about ). The ball swivel makes you hit the bag accurately or it goes all over. I have learned that it is easier to make different moves with a ball swivel and I am sticking with it now.

I have a spot (I hope) on Jumpcannon's list for his new ball swivel, which everyone swears by. That should make a huge difference in the way the bag acts!

I also use three different size bags during my workouts. I start off with the large red Everlast, then move to the med blue Everlast and then hit the Title Platinum Atomic small. I work all of these for about an hour a day.

Hang in there, you are not alone. I figure I will be a beginner for quite a while. Punch on !
________
CALIFORNIA MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY

[jumpcannon]

I have a spot (I hope) on Jumpcannon's list for his new ball swivel, which everyone swears by.

No worrys....you still got one coming

[novaspeedbagger]

U will improve!

Jewellz, try to relax when hitting! I have a habit of trying to hard often times. Also, go back to single strikes just to gain some confidence when you get frustrated or stuck. Try some single strikes from behind the bag. when you strike form behind the bag the hands have to be up. In that way we develop the instinct to keep our hands ready at all times. It is a shoulder burn but just rest when you need it. You'll be great at it all in the proper time. Can't wait to see your vid!

Keep on Baggin and Postin!

[Mrs Mitts]

Bit late in on this thread Jewellz but also wanted to send some encouragement your way.

You don't need to be nervous about posting your first video, it always feels good to get the first one out of the way.
Just do 30 secs or a minute if that's all you want to.

As you can see, you'll get nothing but help and encouragement from members here. I'm sure you'll soon feel a lot better about the progress you're making.

[pezzaio]

dont worry all of a sudden you will get the moves. The speed bag bible dvd and some times watching video's in slo mo is what worked for me along with all the support from this site. wishing you the best. pezzaio

[Inkspill]

part 1 LOL forum restrictions.

slowing down helps me the most. also reducing the power of the shot.

to begin a new hit pattern I might even just tap the bag enough to get it to swing forward and back, without touching the board. gently, try to get the bag as close to the board as possible without hitting it.

try hitting with loud music on. I try to find a beat that fits the music and keep discovering different ways to hit and patterns. I can't wait till I get The Speed Bag Bible and see what other options are there.

sometimes I hit the bag as hard as I can. check out the workout sections on the speedbagcentral.com site.

also, give yourself more rebounds when trying something new. hit it and let it rebound a bunch until you feel comfortable to strike again, time so you hit at the correct time and place.

also, focus on what striking surface you are using for a particular strike. fingers hurt? ok, make sure when doing hammer fist strikes you hit with the side of the heel of the palm, you can even trying flexing your fist slightly towards yourself to expose the correct striking surface (side of the heel of the palm). now place the striking surface against the bag. pull your fist back, and tap the bag. make sure you tap with the correct surface. gentle gentle gentle. tap tap tap, don't even worry about hitting the board, just bounce the bag on your fist, try to keep it moving straight forward and back. have a goal with your training!

my goal is to tap this bag and keep it centered, and keep it from hitting the board. hit it the same every time!


remember, slow is to learn basic movement, in the embryonic stage everything is mechanical. a little faster gets you feeling the motion.

breaking down the motion into numbers and working by the numbers can help too. example, you punch through the bag, then after it rebounds twice, you punch in reverse back towards yourself to get on the same place you started.

now hitting the bag after 2 rebounds like this is going to be difficult to start. so, hit once through the bag, your arm is extended. this is 1.

1. punch through the bag and freeze your arm, you may find the bag swings back and hits your hand. start again and find the correct position and place where the bag will not hit your arm. stop the bag. get back into starting position.

1! punch through. do this a couple of times until you feel comfortable.

2, reverse the motion back to starting position. time this correctly so you hit the bag as it comes back towards center. sometimes you hit too soon, sometimes too late, you will be able to tell by the sound and action of the bag.


now, I have read it numerous places on here and the main site (and found it to be true for myself) that it can be easier to start with your hand on the far side of the bag - position 1, and then to hit towards yourself to the regular starting position.

so really, when the hand is on the close side of the bag - normal starting position, it is in the point of origin to hit through the bag.

when the hand hits THROUGH the bag, it is now in the point of origin to hit in reverse through the bag to starting position.

with a little practice, you will see that you can start from either side of the bag.

as mentioned in the basics, hitting from one side of the bag to the opposite requires an even number of rebounds. so the quickest you can hit through the bag and then hit through in reverse is in 2 rebounds.

you can also hit after 4. or 6 (if you hit it hard enough for your bag, I generally found 4 to be pretty good for me, and if I needed to I hit with less force then I did it with less force in 4)

wait for more rebounds between strikes if you need to. slow and gentle to learn, smooth and with a little quickness to feel the motion and rhythm.

I'm sorry I haven't read all the replies thoroughly, so my apologies if this has been outlined already, but starting with a larger bag will help.

is there a particular strike or striking pattern you wish to develop? remember all combination's begin with basics. a combination is simply 2 or more basics linked together.

every basic or combination I've learned to hit with began with a slow speed, with more rebounds than I eventually worked to. and I also began with the first strike in a combination, and hitting consistently with that strike over and over, before adding another strike. right hand, right hand, right hand, right hand. then stop the bag, left hand, left hand, left hand, left hand. then try right, right, right, left, left, left.

once you get comfortable with a rhythm, R,R,R, L,L,L, try reducing a repetition. R,R, L,L. once comfortable there, go Right, Left, Right, Left.

also, I have the advantage of Kenpo, where I have been studying motion by repetition of movement, as well as studying how to be self correcting, and working towards goals. if you just stand in front of the bag and hit it without a goal in mind you're not going to go very far. the goal needs to be tangible and attainable. my dad has been hitting the speed bag for years and years, and still just hits the basic 3 rebound rhythm. I learned that from him a long time ago and hadn't touched a speed bag until a month or two ago when he set his back up at his new place. checking out Alan Kahn's site and information opened my eyes to more possibility! wow! look at all the things he does, his different sounds and rhythms! it amazed me the first time I saw his 'through the years' video. sure, I'd seen speed bag work in boxing movies and prefight interviews, but I had never seen a speed bag artist!

I'm basically just doing Kenpo with a speed bag and different rhythm. I'm exploring the speed bag through the Kenpo system, you could say.

[Inkspill]

part 2

you said you wanted elbows right?
for the outward elbow strike, we'll start with the right elbow.

stand naturally with your feet slightly apart, legs slightly bent. hips and shoulders on the same plane.

make a fist with your right hand and hold it out in a horizontal alignment, parallel to the ground, palm down, in front of you.

now bend your right elbow bringing your right fist to a position touching the front of your opposite shoulder. like you're punching yourself in the shoulder. your right arm should still be horizontal, your elbow should not flap up or down, correct your elbow if this is not the case, do not move your fist to correct, only dip the tip of your elbow up or down if necessary until the plane of your arm is horizontal or parallel to the ground. if you bend your arm without dipping or raising you won't have to flap your elbow.

now observe the tip of your elbow, it points out in front of you, but slightly to the right of your center line, your center line is the line from your nose down through your belly button, the path of your spine. if you were perfectly symmetrical this would be the line that divides the symmetrical sides, left and right.

here is an opportunity for clock principle. you are standing on a clock in the center. directly in front of you is 12, directly behind you is 6, 3 is directly to your right, and 9 to your left. the center line would then run from 12 to 6 on the clock.

your right elbow points towards 2 o clock with our clock principle when the right fist is on the front of the left shoulder.

the arm makes a triangle. the line from shoulder to shoulder creates the base line, and the arm and forearm make the 2 remaining lines of the triangle, the tip of the triangle, which is the tip of your elbow, is pointing out.

point your arm out straight again, when the arm is straight out in front of you we'll call that position 1. position 2 is the fist punching the front of your opposite shoulder. go to position 1, now position 2.

do this a couple of times, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. now you begin to feel the motion and learn the position.

now stand in front of the speed bag, align your center with the center of the speed bag. how do you do this? easy, stand where your nose is touching the speed bag, in the center of the bag. now step back from there without moving side to side until you are at proper distance not get hit in the face by the bag when it swings back. you can check this distance by pushing the bag towards you and holding it against the close side of the board.

now, put your right hand in position 1 - right hand in a fist, straight out in front of you, now move the hand to position 2, punching the front of the oppposite shoulder.

you will note that the point of your elbow is not on the center of the speed bag. this is because without turning your shoulders, your elbow does not point directly in front of you.

we need the elbow to hit in the center, but we need enough penetration to move through the bag. how do we do this? well the elbow is generally pointing towards 2 o clock.

while in position 2, pull your left shoulder back slightly, which rotates your right shoulder forward. turn until the elbow point is pointing towards 10 o clock. your elbow is now on the left side of the bag. keep your hips facing forward and square. this is only the shoulder rotating. your head still faces forward, your hips face forward, you are simply rotating the shoulders on your center line. this is position 3.

now return your shoulders to a square position, rotate back to center. the tendency is to over rotate. only bring your shoulders back in alignment with your hips, everything is forward again. this is position 4. you will note that position 4 is the exact same as position 2. but for ease, we will call it 4 because it's the next movement after 3, it just shares the position of 2.

as you did this, your elbow pushed into the bag, but probably just moved it out of the way, or brushed it or made the bag spin. we know this 'push' isn't a strike. a strike HITS! you can push a shopping cart or strike it, these are 2 different things, now back to our outward elbow. we will come to striking in a moment.

so we practice rotating our left shoulder back, then rotating back to center.

position 1, position 2, position 3, position 4.

now when you get to 4, it becomes position 2. stay in that position.

2, 3, 4
2, 3, 4
2, 3, 4

here we are just isolating the movement of the shoulder rotation with the elbow cocked for an outward elbow strike.

now to turn this into a strike, you are in position 2, slide your fist across your chest until your fist is on your center line. return to position 2, slide the fist back across your chest to your opposite shoulder. now do this back and forth, now watch your elbow, see how it extends and retracts?

now, position 2, position 3, and as you rotate to position 4, slide your fist across your chest and stop your fist at your center line.

you have now down an outward elbow strike. do this slowly, time your elbow so that it hits with the rotation from position 3 to position 4. the movement of your shoulders rotating and your fist contouring across your chest are done TOGETHER. they occur together.

this motion of our shoulders rotating and the elbow extending outward are complimentary.

be careful to pay attention to your position. like I said, the tendency is to over rotate back, out of alignment. only go as far as returning to center.

1, fist out, 2, fist to opposite shoulder, 3, rotate to the left, 4 slide the fist to center as you rotate the right shoulder back to center. now, simply unfold your arm until your fist is back to position 1.

repeat a bunch. 1,2,3,4. do it slowly. by the numbers, this is supposed to feel mechanical. ALL learning begins in the primitive, the embryonic.

I use the word embryonic because the motion will mature! how does that happen? I'm glad you asked, it happens the only way that anyone gets better at anything, with repetition!

now go back and practice with the left side, go through all the steps again with your left side, the directions are generally reversed of course, your right shoulder rotates back, and when you strike you pull your left shoulder back to center as your left fist moves from your right shoulder to your center line.

you may notice that this sets you up to link an outward elbow any time your hand is in position one.



how else could we link the movement? well, we could have both hands up, fists on our center line, elbows up, parallel to the ground.

we drop our left elbow straight down, it flaps like a bird wing, you'll notice that the left fist is now on our left side, it moved away from center. your left forearm and arm are both now aligned vertically.

now slide your right fist across your chest to the front of the left shoulder. well I'll be damned, it's position 2.

now do these things at the same time, left elbow flaps down with the right hand sliding or contouring across your chest.

rotate to the left, position 3, rotate back to center and slide the right fist back across to the center line and complete the return to position 4.

now, when you go to position 4, your left elbow flaps back up to a horizontal position. ready to rock and roll again.

if you were to unfold your right arm with the correct timing you could hit the bag with your right fist after 1 rebound from the outward elbow. you could then hit the bag again after 1 rebound with the left fist.

as I understand it, this combination is called the Outward Triple Elbow Strike (O-TES) I don't know if Speed Bag coaches this differently or if this is different than what he does, it just seemed apparent to me after playing around with outward elbows from Kenpo. the body moves the same way whether it's on a speed bag or on the mats, physics remain.

now in Kenpo, we have our hands hanging naturally at our sides. the right hand moves to the opposite hip, up to the opposite shoulder, hand palm down now, and moves in a straight line contouring the palm down fist across the chest until the right fist is over the left pectoral, this action is circular and then linear without loss of motion. a circle becomes a line. this outward elbow strike hits to 3 o clock with the right elbow, and the left hits to 9 o clock. you'll notice there was no shoulder rotation.

because the speed bag, or target, is in front of us at 12, we have to rotate the shoulder, to align the weapon - the outward elbow, with the target.

anyway, if you made it through all of that, congrats and I hope it helps. I in no way intend any copyright infringement with this post, I have made observations and with the website and forums here have been given ideas of the possibilities. an analogy, I'm encircled by a wall, a wall that exists only in my mind. I cannot see through this imaginary wall, that's how powerful my mind is, that it can believe so strongly I cannot see through this wall. going through my Kenpo training put a hole in the wall that I could see through. I am doing things I never thought I could do. this is spilling out into all aspects of my life. I saw my messy disorganized house, and remembered the clean houses of friends, and I knew that a clean organized home could be mine too! I broke it down like we do in Kenpo, and have reclaimed my space and made my home clean. seeing what Speed Bag does on the speed bag was like putting another window in the wall, I could see all kinds of things beyond my wall regarding the speed bag! the more holes I put in the wall, the more I realize that there is no wall outside of my own mind. I am the only one in my way. let's go punch some bricks out!

[Roc Stone]

Hi Jewellz, 'lil ol Roc here.

What elbow strike are you shooting for, IE outwards or downwards?

Luv, how are your front doubles?

If you can double punch from the front you may get a better feel for the timing of the bag when throwing double or triple strikes.

Another tip would be to deflate the bag a lil.

Also, are you cocking your wrist in the direction of the elbow strike you are aiming for, because this will shorten the distance between elbow and fist, which should gie you an edge.

Good luck

[Speedbag]

Very detailed and insightful posts, Inkspill. You have a very good sense of body position and movement. I'm sure it will be helpful.

One of my favorite movies is "The Perfect Weapon". featuring Jeff Speakman and Kenpo. It has one of my favorite opening scenes of All time.

This was a very motivational scene for me and made me instantly love the song "I've got the power". I was deep into writing speed bag information that would later become The Speed Bag Bible, hitting and writing for hours every evening, and sometimes hitting all night Friday and Saturday nights. (In my Texas garage studio it was cooler at night with video lights. Also less traffic noise). About this time (1990 - 1992) I had just figured out much of "my system of technique names and the abbreviations" for writing speed bag combinations. I was furiously hitting, video taping in high speed shutter and watching it back in slow motion, writing down the combinations from the tape. I did this for hours and started to really believe the system would work. I was also working on hitting to music, including this song. I really felt like "I've got the power" to do it, and understood that now I could really write down every combination I could punch, including fists and elbows, and then present it to others in a format they could use to learn themselves. I was very driven at the time for I knew that there was nothing available like it. The word Epiphany (#3,4) probably best describes the feeling. I can only hope that everyone has such a feeling of attaining something in their life that they truly want.

[metaldad]

Very detailed and insightful posts, Inkspill. You have a very good sense of body position and movement. I'm sure it will be helpful.

One of my favorite movies is "The Perfect Weapon". featuring Jeff Speakman and Kenpo. It has one of my favorite opening scenes of All time.

This was a very motivational scene for me and made me instantly love the song "I've got the power". I was deep into writing speed bag information that would later become The Speed Bag Bible, hitting and writing for hours every evening, and sometimes hitting all night Friday and Saturday nights. (In my Texas garage studio it was cooler at night with video lights. Also less traffic noise). About this time (1990 - 1992) I had just figured out much of "my system of technique names and the abbreviations" for writing speed bag combinations. I was furiously hitting, video taping in high speed shutter and watching it back in slow motion, writing down the combinations from the tape. I did this for hours and started to really believe the system would work. I was also working on hitting to music, including this song. I really felt like "I've got the power" to do it, and understood that now I could really write down every combination I could punch, including fists and elbows, and then present it to others in a format they could use to learn themselves. I was very driven at the time for I knew that there was nothing available like it. The word Epiphany (#3,4) probably best describes the feeling. I can only hope that everyone has such a feeling of attaining something in their life that they truly want.

Perfect Weapon and Street Knight really showcased Jeff Speakmans skills. I loved the scene in Perfect Weapon where he's doing kata with the sticks and starts going off on the heavy bag using the sticks.

[Inkspill]

Very detailed and insightful posts, Inkspill. You have a very good sense of body position and movement. I'm sure it will be helpful.

One of my favorite movies is "The Perfect Weapon". featuring Jeff Speakman and Kenpo. It has one of my favorite opening scenes of All time.

This was a very motivational scene for me and made me instantly love the song "I've got the power". I was deep into writing speed bag information that would later become The Speed Bag Bible, hitting and writing for hours every evening, and sometimes hitting all night Friday and Saturday nights. (In my Texas garage studio it was cooler at night with video lights. Also less traffic noise). About this time (1990 - 1992) I had just figured out much of "my system of technique names and the abbreviations" for writing speed bag combinations. I was furiously hitting, video taping in high speed shutter and watching it back in slow motion, writing down the combinations from the tape. I did this for hours and started to really believe the system would work. I was also working on hitting to music, including this song. I really felt like "I've got the power" to do it, and understood that now I could really write down every combination I could punch, including fists and elbows, and then present it to others in a format they could use to learn themselves. I was very driven at the time for I knew that there was nothing available like it. The word Epiphany (#3,4) probably best describes the feeling. I can only hope that everyone has such a feeling of attaining something in their life that they truly want.

I'm still amazed every time I'm able to see more, understand more, observe new pieces, to learn more about motion and the systems of motion. I dig that you and Ed Parker both took an existing thing, and charted a system for it, organized it, blazed the trail so to speak.

I've read that Ed Parker had that epiphany moment one night while watching his films, he was tired and rather than switch out a new reel, he just rewound the reel and observed his motion in reverse, which I gather we do by hitting the bag from the opposite side of the bag. this was his big moment to outline the "universal pattern of motion"

http://www.personalselfdefence.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/universal.jpg

I have been drawing up some designs for a pattern of motion for the speed bag and had an epiphany when I was drawing and didn't have the space next to my notes to draw the next location where I had intended to, and drew on the other side than intended and it changed my whole way of thinking about the speed bag. funny that it all began with the triplet rhythm in the basement 20 years ago and now I'm doing all this! where will I be in another 20 years? as long as I practice for these 20 years (as opposed to the last 20 of no practice) I know I will have great insight and skill.