How To Optimize bag swing direction for a beginner

[rick1]

I just switched from a ChainLink to a Ball-Hook swivel. Because of the more sensitive swing path changes due to hit points and hit force direction it seems that it might be nice to have a training method/exercise to optimize and improve ones over all skill. This might also increase learning speed. The actual swing direction is key to many combos, linking and swing direction corrections after miss hits.

There are only a few hints in the "Bible" as small arrows on some of the areas of the speedbag diagrams. (Fig 4A, 9D, 9I etc).

After about 50 pages of practice I realized that I might need to get better at swing control and need to go back to the starting point on page 19.

Thinking of the basic exercise: R fist FSP''' FCP''' L fist FSP''' FCP'''then adding in a the strick force angle due to fist start position towards the back center would spec the swing angle to follow.

Clearly bag direction can be done with all bag swings on 1 straight line (0 degrees on my diagram) and this does teach some control to manage this with the ball hook swivel for a beginner.
But also can be done on different strike/swing lines. The only way I can think to describe this is with an image attached below and small change the "Bible" description adding a direction in degress (rough value).
Examples: R 10deg FSP''' -5deg FCP''' L fist -10deg FSP''' 5deg FCP'''
and then more add larger angles:
R 25 deg FSP''' -5 FCP''' L -25 FSP''' 5 FCP'''.

One could put deg in the punch spec:
F25SP''' F-5CP''' F-25SP''' F5CP''' (see attached image)

Yes, this over the top for natural athletes that just optimize this naturally and done need this detail but maybe it could help novices, like myself, in getting started. Might only be done for 1 exercise to train swing direction control. Or could be done for each of the basic hits and bottom view videos would show the resulting bag path. A basic drill might even progressively increase and then decrease the strike angles during the exercise. One could even increase the angles out to the point that the front punch spec becomes a side punch. Added angle info might help learning basic elbow hits which are often at and angle.

Any advice or comments would be helpful as I make notes in the "Bible"?

[Speedbag Seaweed Man]

An interesting topic. I'd consider what you are suggesting, but at 90degree increments. Front, side, back and other side. Whatever happens in between these directions (in my opinion) are miss hits and I wouldn't bother training for them. Your ability to recover from a miss hit will improve really fast either way. But that's just me and each to their own. Anything that keeps a bagger's elbows and enthusiasm up has to be good.

[rick1]

An interesting topic. I'd consider what you are suggesting, but at 90degree increments. Front, side, back and other side. Whatever happens in between these directions (in my opinion) are miss hits and I wouldn't bother training for them. Your ability to recover from a miss hit will improve really fast either way. But that's just me and each to their own. Anything that keeps a bagger's elbows and enthusiasm up has to be good.

Thanks for the input.

I thought about your comment for awhile. The problem with angle changes to the existing swing direction is that timing becomes much more critical. You have to have the strike direction headed through the center of the bag's mass else you put left or right spin on the ball with a early or late i hit from the same fist position and angle. So hitting with no angle change is more tolerant of slight timing errors especially for beginners.
I plan to use slow motion video (300fps) with white marks on the hands and bag to see my hit errors and timing errors are as I progress. I created 2 examples of hit angle changes, links follow, one that had a late hit not at the center of the bag showing it spins and is a show stopper.

https://youtu.be/X6NTicrCkUk

https://youtu.be/do4zBQ5xNLA

If you look at Fig 4A page 19, 2 of Alan's arrows (far left and far right) each would cause swing direction change but unwanted spin since they dont point to the center of the bag.

[Speedbag Seaweed Man]

Hi rick1. It's great to meet another bagger who is punching their way through the Speed Bag Bible, I did the same thing. Started on page one and hit the book page by page.
I watched your two short video links, to me it looks like your punch may be coming a bit late, not just on the second vid but in all of those punches.
It's harder to tell because there is no sound and they have been slow mo-d but i'd say the fist hits the bag a bit later than ideal and is allowing the bag too much time after the rebound.
When i'm hitting the bag from the same side as the last punch came from, such as FCP'''FCP the fist will meet the bag after it has rebound from the drum, while the bag is swinging toward me, but definitely before the bag gets a chance to swing back to a plumb position. By the time it has swung back down plumb, the bag has more ability to spin, veer off to either side or jump up on the hook.
While the bag is coming toward you, but is still on some angle is the moment to connect when hitting from the same side. Something between say a 45degree angle and before it gets plumb from the swivel.
This traps the bag within this range of motion where it has few possibilities other than to comply. Allow it more space and time to move and it will more likely escape.
When your punch comes from a direction 90degrees from the last punch, such as SSP''FCP that is when you want the bag to come all the way down to plumb. In this case it allows the bag to cleanly turn 90deg in direction without the miss hit occurring.
I suspect if you slide your timing ahead closer toward the sound of the rebound, most of your miss hits will fade away to just being memories.
I'm looking forward to reading what AK has to say to us on this topic. No one is more qualified than The King..

[rick1]

I agree with the problem of lack of sound with 300fps from the Casio. Thanks very much for the "hit earlier suggestions to avoid errors" and the hint to allow it to get to vertical before a SSP. Notice I do this better in the video "Angle of hit change", the 1st 2 strikes happen when the front of the ball is vertical (bag swivel to center of mass is is tilted back) but then for the angle change hit I wait until the bag is vertical. Maybe your suggesting is that I could hit even earlier on the 1st 2 strikes. I will try that. The upward video allowa a clear view of when at 300fps vs 30 or 60fps which is not fine enough
time step wise.

In the "Timing Error" the bag is WAY too far forward, like 4-5" passed your suggest plumb or vertical for a angle hit but that was the intent to create the spin error.

I just tried to captured some videos at speed instead of 300fps some of DCPs. The key error that I found was that I am hitting the bag with wrong 1st fist wrist rotation; it looks like like 1/2 way between a FCP and FSP instead of turning my wrists more toward my face and hitting with the flatter outside edge need for a pure DCP. I see all my DCPs were incorrect, or F-CS-P'FSP. WHAT the HELL!!!! is what I said, clearly could not feel the error. Like I said I am a beginner and glad I found this before I myelinate the wrong hit. My multi DCPs can only repeat for 4 or 5 until the error can not be corrected with another DCP.

Back to the garage and really trying to twist the wrist back to make the hit edge flatter with less knuckle hit. This helped alot and was10x better results and got 40 DCP in a row. But I still see a slight attempt to hit with the wrist and that results in a little too much of the knuckle hitting. Also I am hitting too high above the center of the belly. Clearly see in the video.

https://youtu.be/0cMfARdrBy8

Alan just sent me my order for the 4 DVD set so I will have video models to compare against soon. I hope the video is good enough resolution so see some of these fine points.

[Speedbag]

I just switched from a ChainLink to a Ball-Hook swivel. Because of the more sensitive swing path changes due to hit points and hit force direction it seems that it might be nice to have a training method/exercise to optimize and improve ones over all skill. This might also increase learning speed. The actual swing direction is key to many combos, linking and swing direction corrections after miss hits.

There are only a few hints in the "Bible" as small arrows on some of the areas of the speedbag diagrams. (Fig 4A, 9D, 9I etc).

After about 50 pages of practice I realized that I might need to get better at swing control and need to go back to the starting point on page 19.

Thinking of the basic exercise: R fist FSP''' FCP''' L fist FSP''' FCP'''then adding in a the strick force angle due to fist start position towards the back center would spec the swing angle to follow.

Clearly bag direction can be done with all bag swings on 1 straight line (0 degrees on my diagram) and this does teach some control to manage this with the ball hook swivel for a beginner.
But also can be done on different strike/swing lines. The only way I can think to describe this is with an image attached below and small change the "Bible" description adding a direction in degress (rough value).
Examples: R 10deg FSP''' -5deg FCP''' L fist -10deg FSP''' 5deg FCP'''
and then more add larger angles:
R 25 deg FSP''' -5 FCP''' L -25 FSP''' 5 FCP'''.

One could put deg in the punch spec:
F25SP''' F-5CP''' F-25SP''' F5CP''' (see attached image)

Yes, this over the top for natural athletes that just optimize this naturally and done need this detail but maybe it could help novices, like myself, in getting started. Might only be done for 1 exercise to train swing direction control. Or could be done for each of the basic hits and bottom view videos would show the resulting bag path. A basic drill might even progressively increase and then decrease the strike angles during the exercise. One could even increase the angles out to the point that the front punch spec becomes a side punch. Added angle info might help learning basic elbow hits which are often at and angle.

Any advice or comments would be helpful as I make notes in the "Bible"?

One could even increase the angles out to the point that the front punch spec becomes a side punch.

That is absolutely correct, and that is actually how it works. Theoretically you can hit the bag from any point around it, 360 degrees. One could say that is 360 possible "angles" and at certain points on that 360, (the front-side border) the punch is either Front or Side, but it follows that way around the bag. At some point the Side Single Punch (SSP) also becomes a Reverse Single Punch (RSP), and if you keep moving the fist contact by degree to the other side that RSP will become a Side Single Punch (SSP). that is part of the "tao" of the speed bag. You cannot change it, or absolutely control it, ...BECAUSE... the fist contact point on the bag is only about 75% of the angle of rebound. You have to account for the direction of the punch force. As a beginning bagger it may be hard to do this, but more advanced control allows you to hit the front of the bag or reverse area of bag and by fist movement (direction) we can move the bag more sideways than front or back. Your picture is correct in that each around contact point will impact a slightly different angle of rebound, and that angle is also determinant on the direction of the fist movement. A Front Straight Punch (FSP) direction can actually vary straight forward, or more sideways across the face and that can also impact the rebound angle. But doing this "purposefully" for a reason (perhaps an advanced combination..) is a bit more difficult.

As for the fist contact on the bag imparting a bag spin, I find that is negligible effect unless the bag is warped. A bag often spins on a ballhook or chainlink as the fist contacts vary, and the next punch or the board stops it. The more skilled baggers will actually use bag spins as cool tricks, ending a certain combo with a bag spin. Skunk, Matt, Dee Pooler and G-town are masters at this.

IMO, the problem with trying to hit the speed bag by "specific angles" is because when the bag is being hit with even moderate force there are too many of them to actually aim your angle. The after images of the moving bag make it impossible to "aim" a specific punch to a specific point on the bag, and that is also considering the fact the rebounding angles will also vary just enough to change things and the bagger will rarely notice it, or have time to react to it by your eyes. Rick1, you will find your ears are more valuable to you under the board, for they tell you faster what has happened. Your eyes will rarely register a miss hit at speed, but your ears will tell you immediately. By the time your brain can calculate what happened and how to fix it, the bag is way past the point to fix it for it's probably into the next rebound. I find many minor mis-hits correct themselves on the next punch. With time you will find that also.

I would also suggest you try to hit by feel a bit more than specific angular "analysis". Easy for me to say having flunked math at many levels. but the truth is, the bag contact points of punches and the resultant rebounds are rarely repetitively exact and minor differences make NO difference 95% of the time. There are points around the circular rebound arc that variance will make a difference, like close to the Front-side border, side-reverse border etc. Because as you noticed, at some point a front punch will become a side punch and sometimes it is only the rebounding image of the bag that will determine what happened.

Concerning the video analysis

Hi rick1. It's great to meet another bagger who is punching their way through the Speed Bag Bible, I did the same thing. Started on page one and hit the book page by page.
I watched your two short video links, to me it looks like your punch may be coming a bit late, not just on the second vid but in all of those punches. ...... I suspect if you slide your timing ahead closer toward the sound of the rebound, most of your miss hits will fade away to just being memories.

Good eye, Seaweed. IMO you are correct. In all the Front Double Punches the lead fist is a bit late in the rebound, with bag straight under swivel, however the second fist is hitting bag at about 45 degrees.

I would offer a suggestion to help you make bag contact at the correct point within the rebound (close to board about 45 degrees). Try Front Fist Rolling, (F-Roll) and lean in a bit when you perform it. Leaning in will push your fists under the swivel a bit more and reduce the distance of the rebound, allowing your fists to make contact closer to the board. This will also make your fist roll faster automatically, and is an advanced skill for making a F-Roll faster with no increase in force or effort. Each fist of a F-Roll is actually a Front Circle Punch (FCP) contact, and I have found this suggestion helps beginner (...if they can do a F-Roll for 8-10 punches..) to feel the correct spot within a rebound to hit Front Circle Punches (FCP).

[rick1]

Thanks for the comments Alan. I can do plenty of F-Roll rolls but my fists are not on a line (not a real roll) and the bag angle change on each hit. More practice needed. Multi DCP with eblows farther forward after doing the F-Roll attempts seem jammed. Bag almost its my face. Using 7x10 Title bag see video links if interested.

DCP after trying F-roll

https://youtu.be/8R4jlN8aJhc

crappy roll attempt

https://youtu.be/x0l2U7MGhp8

After I studied these videos I went to the garage and tried both of the hits
with my elbows closer together which also moves them forward. Roll was straighter/smoother
and the hands rolled more on a line and the DCPs seems smoother.

Thanks guys for helping me get started on the right track...