6 tips for newbies on choosing boxing gloves

Foreword

The first gloves most people will come into contact with will be the public gloves within the boxing club.

After the trial class, many students will buy their own gloves for hygiene reasons. They may buy them from the boxing club or follow the advice of their coach. Students who are diligent might found information on their own online.

However, the information on the Internet may be biased against certain brands.

There are different opinions, who is right? We will explain it below.

1. Weight of gloves

In order to protect students' hands, many coaches will kindly recommend gloves with larger ounces and thicker knuckle area.
Such a recommendation is well intentioned, but it is not quite correct.

If you observe carefully, for many students who wear large-ounce gloves from the beginning, when they punch, their fingers often come into contact with the striking surface first, rather than the knuckle area. The weight of many gloves rests on the knuckle area, and the human body is driven by levers that save time but strain.

For new students with no boxing experience, it is very difficult to swing heavy weights, let alone maintain a fighting posture.
Students who have to both bear weight and raise their hands high, and who tend to use their arms to punch, will naturally shrug their shoulders to allow their hands to be held higher, and then let their hands fall through the position.

This method saves effort for students and makes it easier to hit the instructor's target.
However, as long as you gain a sense of accomplishment in this state, future habits will only become more difficult to break.

Because the angle of the punch is from high to low, like a javelin, the fingers are bound to hit the striking surface first.
Compared with the knuckle area, the fingers have better mobility, but their ability to withstand impact is much lower.
It's like accidentally kicking a cabinet with your toes and heels. The pain is completely different.

The thick padding intended to protect the knuckle area subtly hurts the fingers.

It is recommended that novices start with a pair of gloves that are light in weight and not too thickly padded.
Of course your hands will hurt when you hit the sandbag hard, so you need to control your body accurately.
Wait until there is a need for sparring, then purchase heavy-weight gloves to protect your sparring partners.

If the budget is not sufficient, you can also choose middle-weight gloves for long-term use.

For heavy weight boxers, there is no such obvious difference in the weight of the gloves. You can just choose gloves that are comfortable to wear and have a good feel as your first pair of gloves. When choosing sparring gloves later, the thickness of the gloves will not be the only reference, but the equivalent thickness of the overall gloves.

2. Type of gloves

Choose gloves/brand according to the martial arts you practice. For boxing, use boxing gloves, and for Muay Thai, use Muay Thai gloves.
Everything has its scope of use. Muay Thai gloves can easily hurt the wrists when struck, while boxing gloves do not allow enough wrist movement to hoop.
Each brand has its own positioning. Buying non-specialized equipment is more likely to cause problems.

3. Model of gloves

There are many models of boxing gloves. To facilitate differentiation, the author roughly divides them into the following four categories:

1.AIBA/IBA/amateur boxing gloves
The knuckle area the thickest, but the weight is often unbalanced, making the center of gravity of the punch easily deviate, thus achieving the effect of decreasing the lethality.
It lacks wrist support and requires a more experienced boxer to operate it well.

2.Training boxing gloves
The knuckle area feels obviously covered, and the softness of the padding is between bag gloves and sparring gloves. It reluctantly suitable for both uses.
It is one of the options that newbies with limited budget.
Experienced boxers who want to change their feel sometimes use training gloves.

3.Japanese style
The most well-known Winning belongs to this model. Although the padding is thin, its resilience and softness can offset a lot of impact.
However, the padding is too soft to provide rigid support for the wrist and requires additional reinforcement.

4.Mexico style
The most well-known Reyes belongs to this model. The filling is very thin and has super penetration. The latex padding will harden instantly when it encounters impact, providing good feedback, but it is very unfriendly to sparring.

4. Wrist support of boxing gloves

For beginners, wrist protection is very important.
If a beginner is lack of training, their forearm will easily become sore and swollen after a few rounds of practice. When they cannot make a good fist, they will easily break their wrists.

Pick up the glove from the cuff, if it fold into a U-shape automatically. This kind of protection is usually not enough.
I would recommend a tight sewn, or even one-piece glove construction.

5. Knuckle area of boxing gloves

This may be difficult for novices to understand. The most intuitive way is to put your entire arm parallel to the floor, put your weight on the knuckle while wearing a boxing glove,
Feel if your wrist is bent or if you can't press the correct knuckle feeling. Feel the pain of breaking your fingers when punching sandbags.

6. Thumb design of gloves

Major students are most aware of the dangers of the straight thumb design, and some even expressed their wish to knock off their thumbs so that they would no longer bruised their thumb.
When the glove hits the striking surface, once the thumb cannot grip well, it cannot brake inside the glove and will continue to rush forward.
This not only easily causes the wrist to turn over, but some people may also get their nails broken and their thumbs injured and bleeding.

The ergonomic curved thumb design can help boxers stabilize their wrists when striking, reducing vibration and the chance of folding wrist.
Allowing power to be pushed out more smoothly.

Conclusion

There are actually quite amount details that we haven’t mentioned of a boxing glove. If you still have doubts after reading the article and don’t know how to choose a boxing glove, please feel free to ask us.
We will not give you the answer directly, but will let you understand these concepts so that you can choose more based on your ideals.