Shadow boxing and tying a mattress to a tree (or several phone books taped together which will harden up your knuckles without the gloves, but will hurt) are both good. If you want to work on speed, accuracy and control (but not so much power) what I like to do is tie an empty squash or cola bottle to a bit of string and hang it off a branch or something high enough so the bottle hangs about face or diaphragm height. Then from there you punch/kick/strike it as often as you can while moving backwards and forwards.

The trick is to punch as fast as you can and make contact with the bottle - without it making any sound or moving much at all. It's perfectly possible, but ridiculously hard.

You could always make a punching bag out of an old duffel bag you might have. Other than that i don't really know of anything that you can hit that wont damage the gloves or yourself. Could try tying a mattress around a tree, or any other sort of padding.

People.

You could shadowbox

i got a pair of boxing gloves and we are gettin some real nice sunny days, so does anyone know a way you can use your boxing gloves outside? what would you hit though if not a punching bag? any replacements outside?