There’s always a temptation to use bare knuckles on the heavybag. After all, it seems more natural than punching the bag while wearing wraps, knuckle guards, and gloves.
Plus, lots of guys start training so they can win a bare knuckle street fight.
These guys reason that hitting the punching bag bare-handed is more realistic. After all, they’re training for a real fight, not a sporting event. The reasoning is: if I ever get attacked on the street, I won’t be wearing gloves, so why should I wear them when I punch the heavybag?
This reasoning is fallacious. Let me explain why.
You need to protect your hands and wrists
Hands are delicate. You can’t bash them against something over and over again without causing problems:
- Punching without padded gloves causes sore knuckles and bone bruises.
- Avoiding the use of hand wraps leads to sore wrists, inflammation, and repetitive-stress injuries to the delicate bones and connective tissue of the hands and wrists.
- The heavybag will scrape up your knuckles. If you work out in a gym with others, this can cause a serious skin infection.
If you practice bare-handed punches, your technique will suffer
Once your knuckles start hurting, you’ll try to reduce the pain by altering your punching technique. This just leads to stress and eventual pain in some other part of your hand.
The ultimate in stupidity: This poor fellow will be lucky to avoid long-term damage to his hands, and ironically he can't train anywhere near as hard as someone who wears proper hand protection. All that pain and damage for what? To prove he's a tough guy?
Without proper protective equipment:
- You won’t punch as hard as you are capable of.
- Your progress will stall.
- Without realizing it, you will alter your technique to accomodate the pain instead of using the good form which maximizes power, speed, and precision.
The bottom line is: hitting the heavybag barehanded means you’ll never be able to work out as effectively as you can when you’re wearing wraps and gloves.
Martial artists punch bare handed, so why can’t I?
Yes, you’ll find karate guys who have practiced bareknuckle fighting for many years, and they’re still OK.
But consider what they’re actually doing. Most of their workouts consist of punching nothing but air. And when they work with a partner, they are very careful to let the partner know exactly what target area they’re attacking. There are few surprises in traditional martial arts training.
Most importantly, they are very careful to always punch safely in a controlled manner, with the knuckles landing first. You’ll never find a martial artist swinging away with an overhand right, for instance, because although it’s a very powerful punch, it’s difficult to control how the punch lands. And when it lands wrong the result is injury or broken bones.
You have a choice, you can work out like a traditional martial artist — by limiting yourself to a select number of relatively “safe”, straight punches, or you can wear wraps and gloves and work out at full intensity, with a full range of punches and maximum power. Even karate experts wear gloves and wraps when they practice non-traditional punches like hooks and uppercuts on the bag.
So sure, you can play around with the punching bag and whack it barehanded a few times. But if you want a serious workout that is sustainable, do what all the professionals — boxers, bouncers, security guys, mma athletes, etc. — do: wrap your hands and wear padded gloves.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hitting things barehanded is for movie stars in action movies. To get good at fighting, you have to go slow at first so your hands adapt to the pounding. Good advice.
Only applies to beginners and people who need external tools like gloves and wraps to make up for their bad arm and hand alignments.
Your statement is untrue.
Perhaps you’ll explain to every pro boxer, pro MMA fighter, etc. that their “hand and arm alignment” is wrong and if they just listened to you, they wouldn’t need “external tools” like gloves and wraps? (I didn’t think so).
The truth is, no matter who you are, you can train with more intensity if you properly protect your hands. Additionally, hand protection prevents the injuries that will otherwise occur no matter how careful you try to be.
Anyone who tries to tell a beginner that there is some “secret” way of punching that makes you invulnerable is simply trying to separate the beginner from his money, or they’re trying to create a disciple who can’t think for himself.
For me it’s simple. A puncher – even a novice boxer will injure their hands, suffer immense pain and bleed profusely with moderate training.
Someone who trains bare handed and does NOT injure themselves, has not developed sufficient power, and is therefore training to endure pain, but not develop power. Those who train bare handed and manage to avoid injury, will also manage to avoid injuring their opponents. And that defeats the whole purpose of training.
Once you punch hard enough – you know it, cuz your hands will hurt like crazy – even while using 16 oz gloves. I wouldn’t dream of applying that power gloveless.
Traditional martial artists do not just punch air, they emphasize the use of the heavy bag as well. My sensei has told me to use the heavy bag many times, and it is great for developing power, but I train both without and with gloves. Yes of course my knuckles get sore after a while of hitting the bag, but then I can build up my “pain resistance”. I believe that one should know how to be able to rely on knowing how to punch correctly and not letting the hand wraps cushion you until you get sloppy. I dont like how the author of this article based traditional martial artists, as Enshin and karate guys practice bare fist and use dit dai jow to help their knuckles recover. They are intense fighters. Even MMA fighters use gloves in their matches, but wrist support is something that is learned and gained, not left untrained. I otherwise agree with this article, i just didn’t like all of the bashing on traditional martial artists.
mas oyama who was world renowned for his punching prowess,as he aged could barely let anything touch his hand with out pain.even resting a towel across them hurt.protecting every part of your body when able is a good idea in any endeavor.wear a helmet on a bike,wrap your hands when hitting an object.i open hand strikes now after busing both hands.except for a little wrist discomfort occasionaly,they work well.you can really develop some power as well.God gives us one body,take care of it.
It’s good to see that my hands hurting is normal. Even wrapped and with a padded glove my knuckle stake a beating. Part of it is I seem to have prominent knuckles on my middle fingers. But no amount of wrapping keeps them perfectly protected. I know in time, it will get better.
Speechless made a good point. With as hard as I punch, I cannot imagine doing that with any regularity without protection on my hands.
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