How to protect your hands and wrists during boxing?
If you have asked yourself this question, you are not alone. And certainly, this is one of the most asked and crucial questions in boxing. Your hands are your bread and butter when it comes to boxing. Experts at Infinitude Fight take great pains to design premium quality protective boxing equipment, especially the boxing gloves for every type of boxing and training.
Boxing Gloves
Protecting your hands is critically important while boxing or training; using hand wraps and boxing gloves is a good start; however, there is so much more to it to better protect your hands.
Let’s look into some tips, discussions, and tutorials about boxing equipment:
First, one must understand that every tiny bit of energy created in your system during boxing – eventually translates through your fists: on the two very tiny areas where the entire force of impact takes place. To save oneself from injuries and still practice combat sports much later in your career and life, you must take dedicated steps to care for your hands.
So, what boxing equipment do you need to protect your hands?
Boxing Equipment
Once again, we want to stress that your hands are your biggest and most important asset in boxing. Therefore, making them strong, sturdy, and durable and protecting them from sustaining injuries needs an extra bit of work and dedicated equipment.
It would help if you had quality boxing hand wraps to protect your skin better. You also need premium quality boxing gloves to ensure the safety of your joints from the shock of impact forces through a punching bag. Also, employing proper punching techniques will ensure your hands stay healthy in the longer run.
Read More: WHAT EQUIPMENT YOU NEED FOR BOXING?
How to protect the knuckles?
The knuckles are the most vulnerable part of the hands and are the first place where injuries occur if the boxer’s hands are not carefully protected. Knuckles, in medical terms, are known as metatarsophalangeal joints. And there are various injuries these joints are exposed to while not protected from forces of impact.
The knuckles can become calcified, calloused and in the worst-case scenario, the knuckles could also become immobile. The ligaments and tendons inside your hand can get injured if you are not careful, and even a simple bruising of the skin on the knuckles can lead towards substantial pain – keeping you away from boxing, potentially putting an end to your career.
How to avoid injuries? – The first step to better protect your knuckles from powerful forces of impact, surprise movements, and friction is to cover them up properly. But how?
Hand Wraps
Hand wraps are one of the most important parts of boxing equipment. Wearing hand wraps is the first and the most important step in protecting your hands while boxing, MMA, kickboxing, or any other form of martial arts, which involves punching.
Hand wraps for boxing are made from a thin layer and help prevent injuries to your knuckles and wrists in contact with a punching bag. Conventional hand wraps come with a long elastic band that goes around all the fingers, making them secure and tight to form one unit of protection for both knuckles and the joints around the wrists.
Learn how to wrap hands properly with hand wraps in this article: Hand Wraps with Boxing Gloves – How to Properly Wrap the Hand
Types of Hand Wraps
Hand wraps come with two basic types, the traditional hand wraps, which we have discussed above, and then come the other type, the quick hand wraps.
The traditional hand wraps come much cheaper; however, they are a bit hard to put on correctly when compared to quick hand wraps. If you are a beginner, you seek hand and wrist protection in hand wraps while ditching the hassle of traditional hand wraps; quick hand wraps are a great option.
Buy Boxing Gloves
Proper and quality gloves are also important for hand and wrists protection. Boxing gloves offer protection for your hands through dense padding. The padding in the gloves absorbs the shock factor/force of the punches.
The gloves are available in various and multiple types, which vary in weight, padding, and use – such as sparring, training, Muay Thai, etc. Boxing glove price factors vary based on their type, use, and quality. It is recommended that beginners buy heavily padded boxing gloves, so these can be used on heavy bags and sparring.
Intrigued? Check out these boxing gloves images, and make your purchase today!
Punching Bag
Using a premium quality punching bag can serve you the right way to protect your hands in the long run from injuries and damage.
Two points you should always consider while thinking about hand protection:
- How hard is the punching bag?
- Which material is used to cover it?
If you are starting in boxing, it is always better to opt for a punching bag covered with leather or vinyl, while the harder and heavier weight punching bags are a good option for advanced boxers/trainers.
Textured bags are merely a cheaper version of the punching bags, and they do not offer much value to the build and design of the bags or offer any benefit to the boxer using them.
Technique
Boxing Punching Techniques – learning proper punching techniques offers many benefits. You must understand that executing punches without employing proper techniques exposes you to many potential injuries.
From making a proper fist to the rotation of the hand correctly upon delivering the punch to focus of power in the first two knuckles – index and middle fingers – employing a proper boxing technique are essential. Not only for the success of your attacks but also for staying away from possible injuries.
There are also other ways:
Above, we have thoroughly discussed the important tactics and tips to take care of your hands while boxing; below are some other ways to protect better and care for your hands:
- Knuckle pads, which are mostly used in actual boxing fights and sparring sessions
- Boxing hand grenades, small rubber pieces you squeeze to make the fists tither and better formed
- Putting ice to your hands after workouts reduces and prevents inflammation and speed up recovery.
If employing all of these above precautions and techniques doesn’t help you much, and you feel pain after working out, or your hands feel sore in the days following a workout, etc., it is advised that you reduce the intensity of your striking/workout and let your hands harden a bit slowly and gradually.
A beginner in boxing using a proper technique would normally have 80% of the power they can muster, but not more than 30% of the hand strength needed to resist or handle the shock of landing those punches. As said, “With power comes great responsibility” it is mostly used in a different context; however, it applies here too.
Read More: BOXING GLOVES TOP 12 FAQS