head hurts when i punch the bag

[thegiftboxer]

Has anyone had this before. I went to the hospital and had a cat scan, and everything came back okay. i also went to 3 different doctors and still the same thing. no concussion no brain injury. I dont have a concussion or anything like that. My head does not get hurt when i get hit in the head. It only hurts when i shadow box or hit the heavy bag? it stings when i punch the heavy bag or shadow box. other than that my head is okay through out the day until i punch something.

[HtotheZ]

what kind of pain do you feel in your head? is it a sharp pain, or almost like a headache type pain?

If it's a sore/headache type pain, it could be one of two things:

a) There is a lot of pressure in your sinuses which in turn is giving you a headache. I deal with this often, especially in this time of year. My head will hurt when i do anything from running down the stairs to pivoting fast to doing double unders on the rope. The most you can do is keep your nose clean and take allergy medication/nose spray.

b) A muscle or ligament in your neck may be stretched or pulled. If this is the case, take muscle relaxants, and give your neck time to rest/recover.

If it's a sharp pain, then I'm not sure what it could be as I have no experience there.

Hope that helps somehow

[juggernaut666]

Has anyone had this before. I went to the hospital and had a cat scan, and everything came back okay. i also went to 3 different doctors and still the same thing. no concussion no brain injury. I dont have a concussion or anything like that. My head does not get hurt when i get hit in the head. It only hurts when i shadow box or hit the heavy bag? it stings when i punch the heavy bag or shadow box. other than that my head is okay through out the day until i punch something.

Dont worry its the vibrations from hitting the bag,you will adjust to it.It can take awhile if you are not used to heavy bag training.you will eventually hit it harder,maybe slow the punching power down and build it slowly,or slower...your body isn't use to the initial shock from hitting a solid object.Sometimes the shock absorbtion goes right thru the body up the arm and shakes the head tremendously,possibly b/c of sensitive ear drums,which I too have...it takes me about a month of consistant bag work to get in the mix again,and my head stops throbbing.

[jony317]

great insight

what kind of pain do you feel in your head? is it a sharp pain, or almost like a headache type pain?

If it's a sore/headache type pain, it could be one of two things:

a) There is a lot of pressure in your sinuses which in turn is giving you a headache. I deal with this often, especially in this time of year. My head will hurt when i do anything from running down the stairs to pivoting fast to doing double unders on the rope. The most you can do is keep your nose clean and take allergy medication/nose spray.

b) A muscle or ligament in your neck may be stretched or pulled. If this is the case, take muscle relaxants, and give your neck time to rest/recover.

Hope that helps somehow

This did help, thanks a lot. For the sake of others dealing with this annoyance/concern, I'm going to provide as much detail as possible with what's going on with my heavy bag related headaches. I've been dealing with this, off and on for over 2 years. ever since I rented this house that had room in the garage to hang a Thai bag; I'm doing more of a Thai bag workout, "the art of 8 limbs."
I've been lucky, I've never had an issue with headaches which is surprising to me when I consider how many times I've bonked my head in football or on the fireplace as a kid. When the headaches started coming on with my bag workout, I initially thought they were related to dehydration; I would wear this neoprene, almost scuba like wet suit, and on top of that 2 more layers. Lost 20lbs pretty fast. After maybe a year, I stopped all that layering, but the headaches were still present, even more so. So it wasn't dehydration. Then, eventually the cheap bag I bought off eBay ripped in half, and a 6ft Thai bag turned into a 3ft ground&pound bag, here's where I really felt the concussive force from elbow strikes on a bag on the ground with no give, through my arms and shoulders, through my chest to the top of the right side of my head. In researching this problem over the years, I've learned a lot of concussions are caused by impacts to the upper torso: chest, shoulders, back, NOT necessarily directly to the head. In car accidents you could conceivably be concussed from violently striking just your chest on the steering wheel. In football, someone could spear you in the chest and KO you. The more I learned about this, the more this seems like a matter of physics. People like to say, the heavy bag doesn't hit back, but from a physics perspective, it absolutely does. I'm not saying I've experienced a concussion from bag work but that the energy I'm putting out into a bag, some of it is coming back through me, all the way to the top of my head. As I sit here typing this, I can nod like I'm nodding "yes" and feel a pain at the top right side of my head and I haven't done a bag work out in probably 3 weeks, just shadow boxing can trigger this ache.

After reading this thread I thought, maybe allergies are causing this, I'm in CA and we've had a drought for years now which keeps the terrain dry and allergens in the air, plus I have a 10 story pine tree outside my window. Then I went to Portland over the weekend where it rained every day, fresh air and no allergies BUT I still have this headache. I actually thought on the flight back, hopefully I don't have a brain aneurysm at 10,000 feet from whatever is going on in my head.

The second suggestion: neck injury. This seems to make the most sense. My neck strain is even on my right side, same side as this annoying headache. In other forums, someone suggested a chiropractor who I'm going to be seeing soon, hopefully that does the trick. Oh, here's how I injured my neckcan't post the link) on youtube, search, "train fight sf muni" my fight video is with the anti-bully logo.

I trained in Gracie jiu jitsu for 5 years but that was years ago, maybe 10 years ago. In this fight, I was trying to "arm triangle" this dummy but instead strained my neck. If you watch the video, it happens at the end right before 3 guys pull me off of my wrestling buddy.

[PitbullParsons]

My guess, you have a nerve getting pinched most likely in your neck or jaw. My understanding is that Marvis Frazier had something similar.


I had a nerve that was being pinched in my jaw that what seemed to be out of nowhere had me feeling like I had a horrible sinus headache. It came on every few months and lasted at most a day and I didn't think much of it until it happened more frequently and lasted for days. They gave me nerve blocking pills and I took those for a few months. I'm just assuming that the muscles around that nerve eventually relaxed because it's been 2 years and I haven't had any problems since.

Might not be your issue but hopefully it helps.

[tomwalker]

Balance is the key

Balance is the key in every aspect of life. Whenever, you lose the balance you fall apart. The same is with the boxing.

You are hitting the punch bag. Your head must have been feeling stress either because your posture will not be right, whenever you had an impact to punching bag.

First of all you should improve your balance while hitting. Secondly you should use the right hand gloves which will retain your comfort while punching.

I recommend boxing gloves for you. They are made with leather-x technology. RDX is the largest online boxing store.