Hello and welcome to my very first instructable! Today we are talking about how to re-balance a punching bag. If you have ever owned a punching bag you know that over time the bottom of a bag can become much harder and more packed than the top of the bag. The bags of sand, placed in the heavy bag for weight, slowly shift and make their way down, making the bottom of the bag too hard to punch. So rather than purchase a whole new heavy bag, or try to muscle our way through a work out and bloody our knuckles, let's walk through a simple and cost effective way to re-balance a heavy bag that takes very little time. We are going to make a tube to contain the sand to keep the weight centered and prevent it from sinking. Let's get started!

Supplies

For this project I used a tarp to empty the filling onto, a cylinder to shape the plastic sheeting around (in this case the front tube attachment of a leaf blower), plastic sheeting (I used 1.5 mil), duct tape, and a razor knife. You will want something to pack the filling into the bag, I used a croquet mallet.

P.S. There was a fair amount of dust generated from the filling, I didn't do this, but a dust mask would be a good addition to this supply list.

Step 1: Empty the Heavy Bag

The first step is to unzip the top of the bag and pull out all of the filling onto your tarp. Easy peazy!

Step 2: Create Your Sand Tube

In our second step we roll out our plastic sheeting, roll our cylinder inside of it, and wrap enough duct tape just to keep it in place while we fill it. Once we have our shape taped onto the tube we can stand it up, cut open our sand bags, and pour them into the open end of the tube. Once all of our sand bags are empty we can pull out our cylinder, fold down the top of our plastic sheeting, and start duct taping the heck out of it. Because the heavy bag will be subjected to physical abuse, it's best to be generous with your duct tape so your plastic doesn't eventually bust and leak out all your sand.

Step 3: Refill and Pack the Heavy Bag

Now to refill our bag we start by placing an initial amount of filling in, around 4-5 inches, packed into the bottom, to serve as the foundation for our sand tube. In my case some parts of the filling were more clumped and packed together, and I chose to tear those apart as I was placing them back into the heavy bag to be repacked. Place the sand tube inside the heavy bag as best you can in the center of the bag. Start placing the filling back into the bag around the tube, packing it down as you go. As I reached the top of the bag, I placed a weight on top of the filling and worked my way around the edge of the bag with the stick end of the croquet mallet, packing the filling down the sides of the bag.

Step 4: Rezip, Rehang, and Start Punching

All there is to do now is to close up the heavy bag, and rehang it. There you have it, my solution to a simple problem, that has worked well for me so far. I hope you enjoyed my first of many instructables to come, thank you for reading!