Thread: Calisthenics vs. Speed Bag? Advice needed

Hello All,

For the past 5 months I have adopted a boxing type workout for the purpose of increasing stamina, speed and losing weight and toning muscle. I'm 36 years of age, 5 foot 6 and a solid 200lbs my goal is to drop down to 175 to 180. Currently, about 5 to 6 days per week I run 3 miles for time and have succeeded in dropping from 36 mins to 27 mins and change. I go right to the heavy bag for 3 rds, speed bag for 3rds then I jump rope for 3 rds. with the goal of getting at least 400 skips per round. After this I usually just go home because I only have an hour or so to complete my workout. Lately I feel like i should really be incorporating some upper body and abdominal calisthenics and wondered if I should trade the speed bag for 2 to 3 rounds of pushups, pullups and situps. My goal is to only be physically fit and I never intend to get in a ring, even though as a detective I still need to be able to defend myself effectively. I would love to have the build of Micky Ward! Is there any benefit of the speed bag vs. calisthenics for my goals? Should I maybe alternate the two? Any advice is appreciated. Thank you all.

Old time guys like Benny Leonard and Jack Dempsey and, I think, just about everybody at that time did a lot of calisthenics. They valued flexibility pretty highly. Nat Fleischer- I'm almost positive- wrote a book on boxing conditioning, based on the workout routines of Leonard (Benny) and Dempsey. It featured the daily calisthenics that these guys did, something like 20 minutes in the morning and another 20 in the afternoon.

If you are going to make calisthetics my advice to you is to make more streches and the exercise of choise to be bridges for the neck, squats and pullups. The situps are bad for your back and you will never need to push something in your live... For me the best calistthetic exersize is the bridging. It gives you flexebility of the back and neck strenght!