My Basement Gym

Today I tried the beginner workout from Danny Sullivan’s Real Kickboxing Bag Workout set. I’ve done the tutorial before (which is very good!) and felt ready to try this one. The complete 4 dvd set includes instructional, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and 20 minute workouts.

The warm up starts off immediately – with jump rope. It was particularly cold in the basement today, so I started with marching in place until I felt warm enough to start jumping (without the rope). Next Danny and his two backgrounders do some dynamic stretching, as well as some shallow lunges done slowly to stretch out the legs, into some runners stretches. He also does some mountain climbers, horse stance stretching, and some planks with knee-ins.

The bag workout begins with some footwork practice, showing Danny and the class circling the bag. No punching or kicking is done yet. The workout consists of 8 one minute rounds, with a 10 second “blitz” after each round. Danny is great at explaining and demonstrating each combo, and there is a very good voice-over prompt for each punch or kick combo, to keep you on track without having to look at the tv. The cool down is a bit unusual, as it starts with push ups. There aren’t many though, because I was in the midst of wresting my gloves off, and ended up missing the push ups, lol. Next they a few different kinds of crunches, then finish with some stretching.

I really enjoyed this one, but the kicking part was kind of hard to do, given the location of my heavy bag. I already knew that kicking might be an issue, so I may consider moving the bag out to the garage when it warms up. A few times I ended up just practicing my kicks and watching my form in the mirror instead of trying to carefully aim for the bag with my kicks – without kicking my treadmill or the pole on the other side, heh. The blitzes were my favorite part, and were so fun! I hope the blitzes last longer in his other, more advanced workouts!

Here is the breakdown of the combos done in each round:

Round 1 – Jab, cross, jab-cross

Blitz

Round 2 – Hooks – left, right, left, pause, right, left, right

Blitz

Round 3 – Uppercut – left, right, left, pause, right, left, right

Blitz

Round 4 – Jab, cross, left round kick, pause, jab, cross, right round kick

Blitz

Round 5 – Jab, cross, left front kick, pause, jab, cross, right front kick

Blitz

Round 6 – jab, cross, front knee strike, pause, jab, cross, rear knee strike

Blitz

Round 7 – right round kick, left round kick, right cross, left hook

Blitz

Round 8 – left round kick, right round kick, left hook, right cross

Blitz (this last blitz is 20 seconds long)

So, this one was really fun and I look forward to trying the other workouts in this set. Especially if I move my bag outside, and can try them in the garage – giving me more room for kicks, as well as more space to move around.

ETA: Looks like this set is discontinued, as far as I can tell. Check out THIS POST on some  other ideas for heavy bag workout dvds!