From what I can tell, it’s uncool to fall for big padded cushiony things. But hell if I can stop from swooning over my heavy bag.
In April, I hung a 100-pound Everlast punching bag on a stand in my garage. I’m not extremely online, but I got a boxing timer app for my phone, a lantern, and a Bluetooth speaker and I was ready to go. For me, it was love at first right hook. Pretty soon, every night before dusk I was out there throwing jabs and haymakers and listening to dirtball rock from a streamer (the "Led Zeppelin Live 1969-1973" station is in heavy rotation), all while grunting, sweating, and smiling.
I am certain my punching form is hideous, and my footwork would recall Joe Biden on airplane steps. But maybe the one good thing about getting old is learning to not give a damn. Feeling good is good. And, man, I’m feeling good about me and my heavy bag.
I look forward to these sessions more than I do meals or sleep, both of which have long excited me to weirdo levels. Nobody who knows me would describe me as disciplined, but I haven’t missed a day in more than a month. My garage is a 100-year-old cinderblock cell with no electricity, and lousy ventilation, but I showed up throughout D.C.’s recent heat-dome-assisted 100-degree skein. I had to be out of town for two nights last weekend, so I made sure to have a bag on the side to keep my streak going.
My attachment to boxing isn't new. As a kid, I watched Muhammad Ali on television with my dad, and later I saw a few all-time great fighters fight in person—Mike Tyson, Leon Spinks, Roy Jones Jr., and Bernard Hopkins among 'em. As with most of the rest of the world, I sorta fell away from the sport a couple decades ago, but whenever I’d work on a boxing story or go to a boxing gym, my affection for the sweet science and its purveyors rekindled itself. I remember feeling even softer than usual in 2016 after watching then-unknown lightweight Tank Davis put himself through hell during a workout at Bald Eagle Recreation Center, a public gym in D.C. He’s now a world champ with a 30-0 record with 28 knockouts, and gets mentioned in all discussions of best living pound-for-pound fighters.
Then, just before the pandemic hit, I got back into the fight game in a hilariously misguided and painful way. The short version is I accepted an invitation to join a small boxing clique that, because of age, athletic ability, fitness level, and well-being reasons, I had zero business being a part of. And it was as amazing as it was stupid. After six enlightening, exhausting, and downright revelatory Saturday sunrise sessions of wrapping fists and trading body blows (no head shots allowed) with a lawyer and a priest in a local church basement, my run in the fight club ended as my wife told me it would from the start: with me in an emergency room. Turns out headshots aren’t the only way to get injured in boxing!
A hook from the lawyer to my ample midsection dislocated my rib cage. The pain was horrendous in the moment—the noises I was making got the priest to joke that he’d administer last rites as soon as I gave the go-ahead—and worse in the coming weeks, when a sneeze would bring tears. But the hurt eventually faded, while the damn great memories of everything else about my boxer cosplaying remained stout. It’s rare at best in middle age to come up with new thrills, but getting punched out by a barrister and man of the cloth sure provided those, along with lots more athletic excitement than anything else I’d tried as an grownup.
But in the hospital waiting room, feeling even more foolish than usual and carrying a vial of my own pee as I awaited internal bleeding tests and X-rays, I decided my run of taking punches from a lawyer and a priest and anybody else was over.
I’ve chased the exhilaration I got during my dumbass boxing foray ever since.
During the global shutdown, I took up cycling, which for a time was liberating and exciting but (as practiced by me) nowhere near as cathartic or beneficial cardiovascular-wise as getting beat up in the church basement. Plus, from everything I read, biking around my hometown was far more likely to maim or kill me than any pugilistic foray. I'm too cheap to join a gym. But for home workouts for a while I did pushups, and a few sets a day, every day, for a couple years was great for the head and several muscle groups. And sit ups. Stronger, tougher folks could do enough pushups or/and situps to need no other exercise. But not me. Obvious as their benefits were, I dreaded my floor sessions with either, and never did enough to outpace my calorie intake. They’re too hard and hurt too much. Like a joke I heard ages ago, my mantra went from “No pain, no gain!” to “No pain, no pain!” as soon as I quit 'em all. Running, too. Thanks to gravity and ligaments, every fat guy who exercises experiences the same vicious cycle: You can’t run until you’re skinny, and you won’t get skinny until you run.
But the end of my search for a workout that stuck began last year with one of my teen sons getting into boxing as a fan, much as I had as a kid. We’ve spent lots of Saturday nights at home watching fight cards on TV, and this spring, we went to New York to catch a title bout live. Within days of returning home, the wondrousness of our boxing field trip had me so inspired that I set up an Everlast frame and an unused bag I’d gotten dirt cheap at a moving sale. (I’ve since noticed a glut of cheap bags on Craigslist and other resale sites that were likely purchased during the pandemic.) I began my one-way sparring sessions right away and haven’t stopped.
I'm not the only bag man or woman out there. One recent sports equipment industry report confirmed a pandemic boom in heavy bag sales while projecting a global market of $76 million for 2026. While crunching numbers, the researchers referred to the bag as a "symbol of discipline and determination," and attempted to explain its appeal to schlubs like me: "Beyond its physical benefits, the punching bag serves as a powerful outlet for stress and tension. Many practitioners find solace in the rhythmic and repetitive nature of striking the bag, channeling their energy and frustrations into each punch. As a stress-relief tool, the punching bag promotes mental well-being, allowing individuals to release pent-up emotions in a controlled and focused manner."
I can confirm!
So if you’ve been in a D.C. alley lately and heard thuds and bells and old man grunts over “Communication Breakdown,” that was me. The workouts, from 30–60 minutes, are hard as hell. And yet as physical as it surely is, other than some occasional knuckle pain, none of my joints hurt. If I'm hitting the bag, I'm giggling. If I’m not hitting the bag, I’m likely thinking or talking (or typing) about hitting it. I’d be lying if I said my bouts with an inanimate object provide the exhilaration I got in the church basement throwing punches at somebody who could hit back, but the bag won’t ever break my ribs, either.
The bag, however, can be broken. My son went to the garage without me last night for his own bout, and in the 12th round, the hanging mechanism snapped. A metal carabiner failed after a flurry of haymakers to the bag's body, he said, clearly pleased to learn that his punches could do such damage. When showing me a photo of the bag lying on the cement floor and describing how it got there, he acted like he’d KO’d the world champ. I was crushed by the news, of course, and worried about what this meant for me and the bag. I stayed in an awful mood until I learned the local hardware store could replace the necessary part for $2.99.
Knowing me as I know me, this obsession too shall pass. And I’ll figuratively go to seed, my default physical state. But for now and the foreseeable future, don’t come between me and my heavy bag. In fact, I gotta go rehang the bag. We’re so back.
