It’s been about nine months since I acquired my Century Martial Arts Versys VS.1 free-standing training bag and I thought a short review might be helpful to someone who might stumble onto this blog.
TL; DR I like this bag a lot but it is definitely a compromise.
Construction
The bag is very well built and very durable. It ships in two pieces, the “cylinder” and the base, which easily attach via a very study zipper. I have never been concerned that the zipper was going to pop when knocking the bag over or dragging it around. The external material is PU vinyl which has proven very durable. While I have scuffed the lettering in a couple of places with my martial arts shoes, the vinyl has never shown any real wear, despite being occasionally, albeit accidentally, driven down onto the corner of low bookshelves.
The Good
I find that this bag is really good for practicing the targeting of punches and kicks. The “Century” lettering down the length of the bag makes for convenient targets for side kicks and heel kicks. I especially like that the base is very short and has a diameter that isn’t much larger than the diameter of the column that it supports. This is to be contrasted with, for example, the big, honkin’ base on a Century Wavemaster. I find that the diameter and height of the Wavemaster bases interfere with my feet and shins when I’m trying to practice close range techniques. The small base also allows for driving in close to effectively train elbow strikes.
The small base makes it good for practicing technical stand-ups as well; that is to say, kicking from a sitting position from which one immediately transitions to a standing position. The red band around the bottom third of the bag is about the height of the average person’s knees and so provides a convenient cue for targeting such kicks.
The combination of the small base and the fact that it can be pulled forward makes it good for practicing knee strikes if you also work to train your reflexes to not think that people have three loops sewn around their skulls that serve as convenient handles. Try that with a suspended bag or a Wavemaster.
Since the bag is free-standing, there’s no requirement to hang it from joists or set up a frame, each option resulting in permanently carving space out of a training area, which in my case is limited. It’s worth noting that suspending it from a frame would also limit your ability to move around the bag while throwing techniques. The bag is light enough that it can be quickly dragged into position when needed, and stored in a corner when it’s not.
The Not-So-Good
The biggest problem with this bag is that powerful techniques knock it over. This isn’t much of a problem when practicing targeting; when it falls over, you can easily use a foot on the base to lever it back to an upright position. But the fact that it’s so easy to topple means that if you’re doing fast techniques, you have to ease up a bit, and at that point it’s like you’re doing a cross between shadowboxing and hitting a heavy bag.
Bag Mods?
For a while now I’ve been thinking about how to mod this bag in order to get more of the best of both worlds. It lives in my finished basement which has a drop-ceiling. I imagine that a system of bungee cords could be attached to ceiling joists, perhaps fed through a short length of pipe to limit motion, and exiting a hole in one of the ceiling tiles. These could then be attached as needed to the handles at the top of the bag. This system wouldn’t be expected to suspend the bag, it would still sit on the floor, but the system would keep the bag from falling over after hard strikes and kicks.
I’ve also wondered if there might be some way to give the bag arms, perhaps made of thick foam rollers. This would open up the possibility for practicing framing and trapping, moving the bag a little closer to the design of Century’s Versys VS. BOB.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m very satisfied with the Versys VS.1. It’s versatile, built to take abuse, relatively inexpensive compared to other options, and is easily stowed when not in use. It is definitely a compromise, but when compared to a heavy bag, it is perhaps better suited to the limited space of a home gym.