The free standing heavy bag has become increasingly common as mixed martial arts have become popular. These bags offer a number of benefits over a hanging heavy bag. Even boxing studios have discovered these benefits and only the boxing purists scoff when they see this type of boxing bag at a boxing school.

One of the big benefits this type of bag has over the older hanging boxing bag is the additional striking surface area. For the mixed martial arts crowd, this is critical as punches are often combined with kicks and knee strikes. A well designed free standing bag will accommodate all of these attacks much better than a hanging bag.

Even a double mounted hanging bag will sway quite a bit if kicked, which is the second advantage of the standing bag. A free standing heavy bag weighs quite a bit more than even the heaviest hanging bag. A water filled standing bag weighs around two hundred and seventy pounds and can easily weight more if filled with sand, as many are. This gives a much more stable bag to punch and kick.

To counteract the lack of movement, the padding on these bags is designed to cushion the blow quite a bit more than a hanging bag. The feel can still be altered though. A bag filled with sand will feel quite a bit more substantial than that same bag filled with water. The individual school may even have a few of each, giving the less experienced strikers a chance to use the water filled and the more advanced students the sand filled to keep it from moving when it is struck.

Another advantage of the standing bag is that it is somewhat portable. A small karate dojo, for instance, can have these lined up on the walls and will only roll them out to the middle of the gym when needed. When there is not enough space for a permanent mount of a hanging bag, the standing bag becomes the obvious choice.

Another advantage of the standing bag is cost. Because the end user simply puts water or sand into the bag, the amount of materials needed to produce each unit is dramatically lower than most of the hanging bags. The amount of labor to build one is dramatically less as well. Most of the labor of a hanging boxing bag is in the sewing of the pieces together by hand. Because of the design of most standing bags, there is much less hand sewing need.

Finally, the purchaser of a standing bag also saves on shipping. Because it is shipped as a bulky but incredibly lightweight item, the shipping is much less than that of a typical heavy bag. Many of the heavy bags have shipping limits as to where they can be shipped. Many more destinations can be reached by a standing bag.

A free standing heavy bag makes sense for more and more people. Between the cost, space saving design and the fact that multiple styles can use them they become increasingly popular at not only sparring centers but even gyms. michael kors satchel bag