Is using gloves in bagwork good for self protection?

I would say don't bother with gloves, but go easy and build gradually.

Obviously the make up of your bag is also significant, cloth, sawdust or sand are all very different animals.

A good leather bag seems just right.

If your using makiwara you will build some great wrist and hand strength anyhow, just go easy with that as well.

Little and often is the way forward IMO. 

One common philosophy I have in training is diversity. I rarely settle for either/or decisions if I think I can gain from doing both things.

So...I wear bag gloves...and boxing gloves...and no gloves. It doesn't have to be one thing to the exclusion of all else IMHO. I usually start with bag gloves (doing Iain's excellent bag work podcast) and then finish with some one shot pre-emptives where gloves are useless (slaps, palms, hammer fist, forearms etc).

Practically I'm unlikely to need to punch someone in a fight (and certainly not in the skull if I can help it) BUT will need to do all sorts of other things with my hands daily. Pick my nose, press the remote control, prod my wife for a cuppa and other such important actions. So for longevity I think bag gloves are useful to keep my hands healthy. Coupled with the fact that I'm an artist by profession and functional hands are very important to me. Your life may be different so would need to balance that accordingly.

For me bag gloves are a good half way house between full wraps and bareknuckle.

Thanks for the advice!

jmike wrote:

I was wondering if you all think that using gloves in bag work is counter productive for self protection. If we are to condition our hands to be used bare knuckle against hard targets such as the skull, then wouldn't using gloves make us dependent on them?

My views on this are generally in line with PASmith’s. If you are training regularly, and can hit hard, then your hands are going to suffer if you don’t protect them.

All of the big hitters I have trained with make use of gloves. Their high punching power and intense training regimens mean that gloves are needed. If a person is not hitting that hard, or is not doing impact work that frequently, then they can get away without gloves. Hard and frequent impact will lead to injury though as it will outstrip the body’s ability to repair and condition.

However, from the realism side of things we want to be sure we are hitting with a correctly formed fist (i.e. not relying on the glove to do it for us) and we also want to be able to practise with all the other hand positions too (which a glove sometimes prevents or restricts).

The first thing then is to use of gloves that do not “make the fist for us” and that also permit striking positions other than the forefist. Also, avoid gloves with excessive padding on the palm side and they mean you can hit OK with a half open first (not a good habit to get into).

Gloves with “good” wrist support should also be avoided (unless you have a wrist injury). Correct alignment of the wrist is a skill matter; it’s not something the glove should do for us. Basically, you want some padding on the impacting surface to protect the bones of the hand from impact and little else.

The other thing is to ensure we do some practise without gloves. That way we don’t become reliant on the gloves, we can hit hard with bare-fists, and the hands get familiar with it. My standard practise is to do the last couple of rounds bare-fisted, with the majority done with suitable gloves on. That way realism is maintained and I can keep training hard and regular.

Like PASmith, I will sometimes (not very regularly) do impact work with 16oz boxing gloves on. The reason being that they get “heavy” when you’ve done plenty of rounds so it can be good for shoulder conditioning. The extra padding also means that only solid shots will have any effect on the bag / pads. It therefore builds confidence / gratifies the ego to see that bag fold and leap about a bit despite all the padding :-)

One issue that has not yet been touched on it protecting the equipment through the wearing of gloves. On our Thursday group trains – were everyone there is a powerful striker – barefisted striking is strongly discouraged as the pads can’t withstand much “sharp fist punching” before the padding is warped and recipient feels the impact in their bones and tendons.

In answer to the original question, I’d build up gradually with a view to using a sensible mix of gloves and barefisted in order to get the benefits of both and avoided the pitfalls of an “either / or” decision. I hope that is of some help.

All the best,

Iain

Iain make some very significant points - in fairness I would say we are 'light' heavy bag users so we don't bother with gloves.

Combination of time to train and other things to cover im afraid!

I personally don't use gloves apart from when i'm hitting people in armour and helmets, and then I try to choose the thinnest gloves possible.

A caveat in that training method is that I don't teach punching.  We throw haymakers and jabs  when role playing haov, but I do not teach punches as part of my system and use open hand only.  

If I were punching on a regular basis I'd go for a mix as PASmith and Iain suggest.

Hello

I actually use a bit of both, I use bag gloves, MMA style on the bag and none gloves when Im doing hand strikes.  like palm heels, knife strikes etc.

I have to use bag gloves due to the arthritis in my hands. Somedays its that bad that I struggle to clench a fist properly and just doing light bag work hurs like mad!! the bag gloves are thin with a bit of padding and i can actually have a tight fist without it hurting too much. If we do mitts work in the class then I dont use the gloves but it all depends on the soreness of my hands.

if i were to hit somebody in a fight then I would hope that my hands were able to be clenched but i do hope that never happens, so I am quite happy using gloves! and besides my wife likes my hands all soft!! and not hard on the knuckles!!

this also goes to say that when the class does pushups - sometimes they do them on knuckles, I cant even do that, so hitting a bag full wack is out of the question.

sorry for going on a bit!

craig

And for the record I don't hit anything like as hard or as often as someone like Iain but I have fairly wimpy hands and wrists (that have been injured in the past).

So for me even if the general advice for realistic punching was to train it bare-knuckle I'd still wear gloves as it would make sense for me personally.

As I said...look at it from all angles and do something that makes sense to you I'd say.

And actually...these days when I'm on the bag I'm tending to reduce the amount I actually "punch" it. I'm just as likely to grab it, palm strike, knee, elbow. I'm really liking hammer fists in a figure 8 pattern (siniwali from filipino arts). Swinging forearm shots are coming in too. All stuff where gloves don't help protect you from any damage.

I'm with JWT on this one.  If you punch a lot, then finding a good pair of bag gloves is essential.  However, for curricula that involve a lot of open-hand striking and the likes, they aren't necessary.  If such training methods are adopted and punches are included, I think a pair of those cotton wrap-on ones would work well (even though they're marketed as "sparring gloves"); they serve me quite nicely for both scenario training and allow us to practice our non-punch strikes on pads and the likes.  They are effectively a compromise; knuckle and wrist protection with the ability to form the hand into other strikes where gloves aren't needed.

Hi Guys,

Not much to add as a lot has already been covered, but just to expand on what Iain said. When using focus mitts a gloved hand can help protect the pad holder by taking out some of the impact. I am often out weighed by my training partners so the glove reduces the impact on my wrists.

If you use a punch as your pre-empt though you will need to learn how to go from relaxed open hand to fist while not losing any speed or power.

HawaiianBrain wrote:

However, for curricula that involve a lot of open-hand striking and the likes, they aren't necessary.

JWT wrote:

We throw haymakers and jabs when role playing haov, but I do not teach punches as part of my system and use open hand only.

For my part, I teach both closed and open-hand strikes and almost all of the fundamental impact drills we do have both closed and open-handed variations (plenty with a mix too). The method of generating power remains exactly the same, only the impacting surface changes. The students are then free to utilise whatever methods they personally prefer as they progress.

I think it is true to say that it’s generally the fore-fist that needs the greatest protection, but I still find gloves can have a place for open hand strikes too. Maybe not needed as such, but still useful in certain circumstances. For example, it’s not uncommon for people to have stinging bright red hands after practising power slaps. Although the inside of the glove is not padded, the cloth itself can take some of the sting out and allow lower grades to practise for longer. You do of course need gloves that allow the hands to open as I mentioned in the above post.

All the best,

Iain

PS With my moderator hat on, thanks to all for the great contributions. Lots of good information and views in this thread.

Hi Iain

Do you use the palm as the striking surface for most of your open hand strikes?

For 'power slaps' I tend to cup the hand and splay the fingers (as if holding a cauliflower) so that the soft part of the hand makes only secondary contact.

With thrusting open hand strikes I also use this hand position with the thick skin on the inside of the fore knuckles taking the impact. I'm careful to keep the hand aligned with the forearm.

JWT wrote:

Do you use the palm as the striking surface for most of your open hand strikes?

That would depend on the strike in question, but for the power slaps, yes, we make contact with the whole of the hand (palm and fingers). The theory being the large area results in “information overload” as it makes contact and has a greater shocking effect. It frequently results in a KO and leaves little in the way of facial injury. It also has low their party perceptions (i.e. a slap is perceived to be comparatively non-violent) which we feel makes it ideal as a pre-emptive strike.

I know of one police officer who learnt this method and then knocked out an aggressive individual with it when called to deal with an incident. The individual was knocked out cold and fell over a wall into a garden. The owner of the garden saw the whole thing and wrote to the police to commend the police officer on his restraint having “only slapped him” :-)

So high effect, low injury, and low third part perceptions are why we go with that for pre-emptive method. However, we also include hitting with smaller surfaces too which I agree can be a little easier on the hand.

All the best,

Iain