The zipper on my heavy bag finally broke irreperably (sp?), so I put the stuffing in a US Army canvas duffel bag and added four taped up 20 lb bags of sand. Now I have an extremely durable 92 lb bag that I use for throwing. I do chest passes, Clean press and throws, suplexes, etc.
Its one of the most exciting workouts I've ever had and it feels like its dramatically improving my "functional strength". I got a good slam on one of my submission wrestling buddies the other day and he was like WTF?????
Anyway, I was pretty friggin' excited about it and wanted to pass it on.
I want to make one of these for myself so I have a few questions.
So you bought a generic Army Duffel bag from a Surplus store or something I assume. Then you bought 20 lb increments of sand. I assume the sand was in plastic bags? Did you tape up the sand bags to try to minimize the shifting within the plastic? I'd guess the sandbags themselves aren't thick and meant to take much abuse.
You put the sandbags in the duffel and then did you tape up the duffel (duct tape?) to kind of make it as compact as possible? You'd still get the unpredictability of the shifting sand inside the bag.
It would be neat to do some squats, cleans with such a bag.
do the taped bags hold? I often just put it all in a couple garbage bags to decrease the shifting. Once the garbage bags break I just replace them and put them back into the duffle bag.
I had an old US ARMY duffel bag from my dad's years in the service, but they are cheap at surplus stores.
I bought a couple of bags of sand at Loew's for $2.00 a piece (each 50 lbs). I then dumped 20-lb portions of sand into garbage bags, rolled them up and taped with duct tape. I put each in a second bag and re-taped (they still break sometimes, but they're easy and cheap to replace.
The nice thing about filling the bag up is that I was retiring an old heavy punching bag, so I had tones of that shreaded up clothes crap that they're full of. I think, though, that you could just as easily use old t-shirt, towels, or something like that.
I didn't tape the duffel bag itself. It doesn't leak much at all and is very durable, so its worked fine on its own.
I do the same thing with a Ringside taped up 100 lb heavy bag. Works great for clinch and positional control on the ground. We do drills with it where we will have one guy attack the back and put pressure on it on the ground while one or two guys moves it around and tries to shuck you off it. A workout for both people. We also do lifting and slamming drills with it and it helps a lot.
What kind of ball did you use (I'm not familiar with the name). How do you seal it to keep the water in? What kind of abuse can it take (from throwing, etc)