What are MMA Gloves?
MMA Gloves are there to protect your knuckles and your opponents good looks plain and simple. Of course when delivering body blows they might help amplify the effect, but regardless provide some cushion to the impact.
Protecting your knuckles is essential when you are sparring empty hand or with a weapon.
Protecting Your Knuckles
You don’t want to punch someone in the mouth, scrape your knuckles on their teeth and run the risk of contracting any blood born pathogens.
This is why it is suggested to use a palm strike to the mouth instead of a fist in a real life self defense situation, an easy saying to remember is hard to soft soft to hard.
An example would be your fist to their nose and your palm to their mouth, or even the nose.
I love palm strikes, the base of your palm can deliver just as hard if not harder a strike than your fist, without risking injury to your knuckles.
Why Heavy Bag Gloves?
Gloves can be purchased for multiple uses. I bought the ones pictured above to train Wing Chun and with the escrima sticks originally.
They are heavy bag gloves and came with a piece of hard foam in the palm that I removed with a box cutter knife and have worked like a charm for sparring as well.
There are not really any options for escrima gloves, these were suggested to me by my sifu as they provided a good amount of grip, knuckle protection, and wrist support when used for training with the escrima sticks.
Wrist Support
Punching incorrectly can result in more than a few bloody knuckles, if your form is off you could wind up with a broken wrist as well.
The wrist wrap of MMA gloves is there for this reason, to provide support to the wrist on impact. It is good to punch with the elbow behind the wrist, inline, to provide sturdy structure for the impact of punches.
This is also where wraps come into play, providing support to the hand and wrist.
Leather or Synthetic?
Leather gloves are the preferred option if you are going for longevity. The synthetic gloves will still do the job however after a while the material will begin to break down and start to flake off.
Padding
MMA gloves are given different weight classifications based on the amount of padding in the gloves, not by how much they actually weigh.
This is necessary for determining what they can be used for, sparring & competition. UFC gloves are allowed to be 4-6oz.
The different amount of padding provides for an extra or less amount of cushion protecting your knuckles as well as lessening the impact on your opponent or training partner.
When I purchased my gloves, it was with the intent of protecting my fingers and knuckles when practicing with the escrima sticks and sparring.
Other reasons you could be in the market for mma gloves are for the heavy bag and competition.
As such there are multiple variations of gloves available with different thicknesses of padding as well as the locations of padding, sectioned over the knuckles and fingers or covering the whole hand, similar to a boxing glove.
Do you have a favorite sparring glove? Feel free to comment below.
Take care and keep your guard up!