To start off, the KD Elite Knee and Elbow Strike Bag is really a combination of a target shield and a mini heavy-bag. You hit it with your knees and elbows You can punch and kick it too, and I promise the police wont show up, but it was intended for the knees and elbows. It is small enough to be good for some accuracy training, but bit enough to really throw yourself at. As always, though, you have to ask if it is actually any good.

This bag is made of impact-absorbing foam, canvas, leather, nylon, and something that I think is wool. Beyond a few threads here and there coming out from the handle stitching, this bag is rock solid. My students and I abused this bag every way we could think of, and it just kept coming back for more. For the pricetag, you dont generally expect this sort of durability, but the KD Elite Knee and Elbow Strike Bag certainly delivers.

The bag features four different handles on the back (two horizontal and two vertical), as well as some rings to hang it. These work extremely well, but are also probably the source of my biggest complaint. The nylon straps you hold on to have what appear to be pieces of rubber garden hose on them, to help keep the straps from killing your hands. This is great, but they look cheap, and your hands still tend to rub on a lot of nylon anyway. I think a little more work here could go a long way. Also, when you are not hanging the bag, the nylon straps and rings meant for hanging flail about a lot when the bag is struck. We found turning the bag upside down reduced the risk of being hit in the face by a metal ring, but I think it would be better off if these were removable somehow. That said, we did find one (probably unintended) use for the rings. If you hold the rings and face the bag towards yourself, you can do solo knee practice and it works ASTONISHINGLY well when used this way.

This bag seems primarily designed for practicing your knee strikes. I know they say you can use it for elbows, and you can, but until you get the bag broken in properly, the wool/foam padding combination is very stiff and can be quite jarring when you strike it. You dont have this issue with knee strikes, but once you get it broken in it is fine for your elbows as well. It sounds like more of an issue than it is it gets broken in reasonably quickly if youre making pretty regular use of it. Just be careful when throwing those elbows if you miss the bag you can wind up elbowing the
person holding it in the face, which isnt a lot of fun.

This is a reasonably cheap training tool, but is also surprisingly high quality. If you are prepared to spend some time initially just getting it broken in (and figure out how to not get hit by the rings), you will be very happy with it. This isnt a must-have for every martial arts school, but I would definitely recommend it. If you are just practicing/training yourself, then it may make less sense as you do need two people for most uses, but with a friend or training partner you wont have
any issues.  Permalink