Pad work / Bag work

Atrfin

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We have separate classes in my gym for sparring and pad work. The pad work classes are 1 hour where we pair up and hold the pads for each other for 30mins. It is very cardio intensive (probably more than technique) and classes are usually very crowded.

I find that a random person holding pads for you in a large group may or may not always be a good workout. I also don't feel like holding pads for 30mins is the best use of my time in the gym.

I'm doing some privates at the moment but it's not something I can do in the long run. I'm thinking if it would be a better use of my time to skip the pad work classes and just do my own bag work/shadow boxing etc. instead. I will still do the sparring classes regularly.

Is it possible to make progress with just bag work and sparring or is pad work an essential element that needs to be there?
 
We have separate classes in my gym for sparring and pad work. The pad work classes are 1 hour where we pair up and hold the pads for each other for 30mins. It is very cardio intensive (probably more than technique) and classes are usually very crowded.

I find that a random person holding pads for you in a large group may or may not always be a good workout. I also don't feel like holding pads for 30mins is the best use of my time in the gym.

I'm doing some privates at the moment but it's not something I can do in the long run. I'm thinking if it would be a better use of my time to skip the pad work classes and just do my own bag work/shadow boxing etc. instead. I will still do the sparring classes regularly.

Is it possible to make progress with just bag work and sparring or is pad work an essential element that needs to be there?
How advanced are you? If you've been training for awhile, tailoring things specifically for you is good. On the other hand if you're very green, you need basics drilled in to become muscle memory.

Do your best to get with the advanced members, its very bad to have a shitty pad holder.
 
I'm still fairly basic, that's why I'm doing privates. I don't feel ready to primarily train on my own at the moment but thinking maybe in a few months..
 
If you do 30 minutes straight it can get boring, at my club we do 5 min each in turns about 4-5 times so it stays dynamic

You can learn a lot while holding pads, if you hold for a decent kickboxer, you can help him with is technique, you can lightly kick him in the legs if he's not going back out after a combo. If he's got is hands low you can hit him to show the opening (just tell him first that you're gonna do it). You can also practice footwork and distance.

We do a lot of ''call out the technique'' pad work, where you tell the combo to do just before he strikes, it helps your coordination and understanding of the combos to hold the pads properly. It's also a fun enough game to make sure you don't always call out the same stuff all the time.
 
I'm still fairly basic, that's why I'm doing privates. I don't feel ready to primarily train on my own at the moment but thinking maybe in a few months..
Is your gym fairly large? Say about 200 members+?

The reason I ask is because at those types, its hard to progress as there's just too many students at once. With that I get why you're pondering.
 
A typical class is 30+ people with 1 instructor. When sparring starts we'll be down to 6-7 pairs.
 
What type of gym in this? Some commercial white collar 'title boxing' type thing? The person doing the pads for you should either be:

1- a coach
2-know what the fuck they're doing


...if it is anyone else then at best you get a cardio workout and at worst learn horrible technique and get joint pain.

Sparring, bagwork, pads are all vital if you want to actually fight.
 
This is in a commercial gym although the coaches are active fighters. There's a handul of guys who train here and actually fight.

Having said that I trained in a well known MMA gym in my area before for a few months and the format of the beginner MT classes were exactly the same. 30+ people, 1 coach, 30mins hitting pads, 30 mins holding pads, very heavy on cardio. Maybe it's a local thing.
 
30 mins of hitting pads with an experienced padholder? Fine...but that's still 7-10 rounds of just hitting pads.

Having a shitty padholder for 7-10 rounds straight? Fuck that.

I say make friends with more experienced guys and look to work on the side to improve yourself on hitting and holding pads.

If we're talking Muay Thai, padwork is the meat and potatoes but bag/mittwork, partner drills, sparring and clinching are all very important.

What kind of padwork are we talking about? Skill training or just cardio drills like 5 of the same kicks in a row type stuff?
 
Pad holding is a skill unto itself. You can feel totally gumpy hitting the pads of someone who doesn't know how to hold them but feel like a demon with a skilled pad holder. Saying that, holding pads helps you train your defences. You get to see all those attacks coming at you which builds your cue recognition. You also learn how to brace and absorb impact so you don't immediately crumble when you do take a good hit. Furthermore, holding pads and calling combinations builds your fight intelligence as you get to try out your own combos/ideas and see how they are effected by factors such as balance and distance. Holding pads is a valuable part of your training.
 
Saying that, holding pads helps you train your defenses. You get to see all those attacks coming at you which builds your cue recognition.

I agree a lot with this, and a think it's very underrated...

And as the other said, in general, pad work (either holding or striking at) is a very good way to learn an art.

But it should be done under the guidance of an experienced person. Newbies holding each others pads for 30min without been properly supervised, is not the best training method.
 
Making you guys take turns holding pads is shit and just lazy coaching.
 
A good pad holder will make your workout, a bad holder will break it!

Bag work and pad work give different benefits, so you can't really just replace one with the other. If you're working with other beginners just stick to very basic combinations, unless coach is feeding you all the combos to use.

30 in a class to one coach is a little much in my opinion, in an hour if they are fair you get 2 minutes attention each. 120 seconds isn't a lot of time to correct mistakes and teach improvements. At the least I'd have an assistant on the mats with me to help people who are getting it wrong, while I lead the session.

Is your gym fairly large? Say about 200 members+?

The reason I ask is because at those types, its hard to progress as there's just too many students at once. With that I get why you're pondering.

It depends if they have enough coaches, and they are organized. We have 400+ members over 2 full time schools, they can all hold pads.
 
Yeah my issue is when you get paired with another newbie (which is most of the time) no one is correcting my mistakes and I'm hitting poorly held pads for the most basic combinations. Which I think can be done on a heavy bag equally well.

We don't do any partner drills either but like I said this was the case in another MMA gym I trained in as well. So I don't really know how Muay Thai class looks like in other parts of the western world.

I suppose I can just suck it and attend the regular Muay Thai classes with mediocre pad work but I would much rather spend that hour rolling on the mats for more benefits. Just need to figure out how to make progress with my Muay Thai given the training available.
 
We have separate classes in my gym for sparring and pad work. The pad work classes are 1 hour where we pair up and hold the pads for each other for 30mins. It is very cardio intensive (probably more than technique) and classes are usually very crowded.

I find that a random person holding pads for you in a large group may or may not always be a good workout. I also don't feel like holding pads for 30mins is the best use of my time in the gym.

I'm doing some privates at the moment but it's not something I can do in the long run. I'm thinking if it would be a better use of my time to skip the pad work classes and just do my own bag work/shadow boxing etc. instead. I will still do the sparring classes regularly.

Is it possible to make progress with just bag work and sparring or is pad work an essential element that needs to be there?
i have a pet hate against beginners holding pads. tends to make them react to the jab with the wrong hand when sparring. i tend to agree with you about hitting the bag and sparring, pads are great if held by an experienced pad holder, otherwise not so much, thats boxercise as far as i am concerned.
 
Yeah my issue is when you get paired with another newbie (which is most of the time) no one is correcting my mistakes and I'm hitting poorly held pads for the most basic combinations. Which I think can be done on a heavy bag equally well.

We don't do any partner drills either but like I said this was the case in another MMA gym I trained in as well. So I don't really know how Muay Thai class looks like in other parts of the western world.

I suppose I can just suck it and attend the regular Muay Thai classes with mediocre pad work but I would much rather spend that hour rolling on the mats for more benefits. Just need to figure out how to make progress with my Muay Thai given the training available.

For basic combos? Sure...you can do the same on a heavy bag but there are obviously things that padwork replicates (like moving around with an opponent) that bagwork can't. You probably aren't getting that with a noob padholder though.
 
i have a pet hate against beginners holding pads. tends to make them react to the jab with the wrong hand when sparring. i tend to agree with you about hitting the bag and sparring, pads are great if held by an experienced pad holder, otherwise not so much, thats boxercise as far as i am concerned.
Yeah. Bagwork is better than shitty padholding to be honest. Some guys end up with bad habits ingrained from it, one of the more active hobbyists at our gym used to train at another place with crappy padhodlers and his middle kicks ended up going at a 45 deg rather than inwards, and due to that, he was hitting elbows quite a bit, not to mention the kick being weaker
 
Yeah. Bagwork is better than shitty padholding to be honest. Some guys end up with bad habits ingrained from it, one of the more active hobbyists at our gym used to train at another place with crappy padhodlers and his middle kicks ended up going at a 45 deg rather than inwards, and due to that, he was hitting elbows quite a bit, not to mention the kick being weaker

Isn't the point of the 45 degree kick (in MT anyway) to cut upwards inside the arms and avoid the elbows? You don't keep your arms tucked to your ribs like in boxing.

Not saying that was what he was trying to do with his angle...just in general.
 
Isn't the point of the 45 degree kick (in MT anyway) to cut upwards inside the arms and avoid the elbows? You don't keep your arms tucked to your ribs like in boxing.

Not saying that was what he was trying to do with his angle...just in general.
The way they were padholding at their gym (more vertical than horizontal), he ended up building the habit of kicking where his leg ended up sliding upwards on the pads and it became some weird front snap roundhouse hybrid.

The 45 deg up is fine on the trajectory, but the kick still goes inwards, his was ending up with the leg going up 45 to the sky
 
The way they were padholding at their gym (more vertical than horizontal), he ended up building the habit of kicking where his leg ended up sliding upwards on the pads and it became some weird front snap roundhouse hybrid.

The 45 deg up is fine on the trajectory, but the kick still goes inwards, his was ending up with the leg going up 45 to the sky

Lol...some guy was holding like that for me once when I was relatively newer and I ended up glancing my foot/shin off the top of his forehead. Luckily, he was a bigger dude and it just kinda bounced off, so nobody got hurt.
 
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