Makiwara or punching bag?

[Wastelander]

Makiwara or punching bag? That's the question.

For speed? Strength? Practicing technique?

What is better to train with.

Makiwara and punching bags are both very valuable training tools, but they serve different purposes. The key benefit of makiwara training is that it provides progressive resistance--the harder you hit it, the harder it pushes back. People often talk about the knuckle conditioning aspect of this, the real benefit is that it teaches you how to better align you body, how to better generate power, and it strengthens the power chain of your strikes. Punching bags, on the other hand, swing away from you as you hit them, so they don't provide progressive resistance. They do, however, provide good feedback for the feel of a strike that hits a moving target, and it provides a good surface for striking from a wide variety of angles. This means that you can work combinations and movement that you simply can't work against the makiwara. Additionally, you can hit a bag full power, which is something that is harder to do with a makiwara.