Boxing Gloves Buyers Guide

1. Boxing Gloves Buyers Guide

3. Are you stuck on deciding which boxing gloves to buy? I don’t blame you. With thousands of different boxing gloves available, making a purchase can be frustrating and confusing. What boxing glove size should you be? Why are the gloves different shapes? Should you go lace-up or straps? Do I really need anti-perspiration technology? Can’t I just pick a pair with a cool design? And why do the Mexicans have their own style?

4. Types of Boxing Gloves The kind of gloves you need will depend on what you will use them for most. You see, boxing gloves are broken down into categories: • bag gloves • sparring gloves • fight gloves • cardio gloves

5. Which are then broken down into subcategories: • bag gloves – traditional or modern • fight gloves – professional or amateur • And then each subcategory of glove is available in a variety of styles, brands, weights, and they all have different features.

6. Bag / Mitt Gloves Bag gloves come in two different styles; traditional and modern. The slim gloves with dense, compact foam are traditional style, and the bulkier gloves with plenty of padding are modern style bag gloves.

7. Traditional Bag Gloves Traditional style bag gloves are slim and have minimal padding. They don’t protect the hands or provide wrist support, and they only stop the skin from tearing if you were to mishit and skim the bag. What they lack in padding, they make up for in teaching correct technique – with minimal padding, you feel the connection on your knuckles, giving a truer sense of the power and accuracy behind your shots. 

8. Modern Bag Gloves Modern style bag gloves are designed with protection of the hands and wrist in mind. They resemble normal gloves and are much bulkier than traditional gloves due to the layers of thick foam. The padding is designed for repeated hard impacts and won’t go flat and lose its shape.

9. Many modern bag gloves offer cutting edge boxing technology as they contain laboratory tested materials that absorb shocks efficiently and dual strapping systems for superior wrist support.

10. Which is Better? One style isn’t better than the other, and it comes down to personal preference. Old school trainers are fond of the traditional style as they condition your knuckles and teach you correct technique (massive generalisation on my part). Other people would baulk at the idea of knuckle conditioning and wouldn’t risk damaging or losing the functionality of their hands.

11. I sometimes use only my hand wraps when hitting the bag and have done so for years and my hands are fine. As I said, it comes down to choice and your views on training. However, one thing I can attest to is that using light, traditional style gloves for a prolonged period will wreak havoc with your timing and speed when you switch to using heavier gloves for training or sparring.

12. Sparring Gloves Sparring gloves are softer and have more padding around the knuckles to protect your sparring partners. When you’re training for a fight, you need to spar a lot. You can’t spar if you’re injured, so sparring gloves are specifically designed to minimise injury. The added foam in sparring gloves makes them heavier and sparring gloves typically come in 16oz and 18oz.