Which Boxing Gloves You Should Buy

Investing in a good pair of boxing gloves is one of the essential things you can do to improve the overall quality of your training sessions. An irritating pair of gloves is like discovering a pebble in your shoe: it will make you feel more uncomfortable and may even increase your chances of being injured over time.

You may believe that selecting the perfect pair of boxing gloves is straightforward. However, this is not the case.

 

Indeed, you may stroll into your local sports goods store and purchase a random set of boxing gloves. Nonetheless, there is a rather considerable possibility that you will;

• dislike the gloves, 
• find them uncomfortable to wear while striking something with them, 
• find that they do not provide the results you are looking for.

 

So do yourself a favor and get the best pair of gloves first so that you don’t have any future difficulties and don’t spend time and money on the wrong pair.

How to Choose Boxing Gloves?

While picking out boxing gloves, there are various aspects you must keep in mind. Each pair of gloves has a different highlighted feature; however, they provide the same service. 

Below, you can read multiple aspects that you may have to deal with during a boxing glove haul.

Types of Gloves

The type that you choose to go with matters a lot when it comes to boxing. Therefore, to know how to choose, you must first be aware of the categories of the gym gloves.

Training Gloves

These boxing gloves are used to train yourself generally. You can use them in workouts with speed bags, pads, or heavy standing bags. Some people also use them for sparring purposes, which is not wrong. But at the same time, it is not recommended. 

Sparring Gloves

Sparring is when you have a real-life opponent to fight against. For this reason, the sparring gloves are heavily padded. The idea is to protect your knuckles as well as the opponents. One thing about these gloves that stands out is the design. Despite having to fight another person, this set has quite a unique design that gathers a lot of attention from many customers.

Bag Gloves 

These gloves are mainly used in cases of punching bags. However, they do have two further categories; 

1. Heavily Padded Boxing Gloves
2. Lightly Padded Boxing Gloves

Due to this, you can even use them for sparring because they are good at shock absorption.

Competition Gloves

These boxing gloves are often lighter in weight to allow for faster movement and less tiredness, and you want your opponent to feel the blows. According to the nature of the competition, the competition will determine the particular gloves authorized.

 

Boxing Gloves Size

Choosing boxing gloves would be the easiest given that you know what boxing gloves size you want. Every size has a different service to offer, as you can see in the table below:

 

Glove Size and Purpose of Use

 

8oz to 10oz – Mostly used in competitive boxing competitions

 

12oz – General Training glove size has the perfect ratio of padding.

 

14oz – Mostly used in sparring and general training

 

16oz – Ideal for sparring at gyms

 

18oz to 20oz – Used for training people with larger builds

 

The Category of Boxing Fights

Another point that matters while choosing the gloves is; what sport you are aiming to play. In the boxing world, there are a few major sports that have gloves specified for their sport. 

 

Traditional Western Gym Gloves

Gloves for boxing are not just used for boxing; each type has a minor design variance to accommodate each practitioner’s demands.

 

Using a boxing glove, you may keep your hand in a closed fist form with a contoured shape along the rear glove area and the glove’s wrist. When heavy striking, the wrist area will generally ride higher up the arm than the wrist, providing additional stability and support for the punching motions.

 

Muay Thai Gym Gloves 

Despite looking similar to boxing gloves, Muay Thai boxing gloves are modified to suit the kicks and powerful clinching that are part of Muay Thai, in addition to striking techniques.

 

 

As a rule, the padding on the back of the gloves is thicker, while that found on the front and thumb sections of the gloves is generally thinner and less flexible.

 

Muay Thai gloves are closed up and less contoured than boxing gloves, and they are generally shorter and stop just above the wrist area. You may use a Muay Thai glove brand for Kickboxing due to the similarities between Muay Thai and Kickboxing.

 

MMA Gym Gloves

You may be able to get away with either pure western boxing gloves or Thai-style gloves when it comes to mixed martial arts (MMA), which combines all martial disciplines under one training tent. To train Muay Thai or Kickboxing, a pure boxing glove may be preferable. You may want to have two pairs of shoes, one western and the other Thai.

 

Some gloves include a thumb lock feature. So when you make a fist, your thumb will be curled and outside, rather than sticking out or being tucked within your closed hand as is the case with most gloves, since it will be in the proper safe position when you make a fist.

 

In both design and function, MMA gloves differ substantially from standard boxing gloves because MMA requires more flexibility of movement. Due to mixed martial arts’ gripping and grappling demands, fighting gloves with exposed fingers are utilized. A 4 ounce MMA glove is used instead of the 10-12 ounces of boxing gloves used in Muay Thai, Boxing, and Kickboxing.

 

Material of the Glove

Gym Gloves come in different materials; however, the two most popular ones are Vinyl Gloves and Leather Gloves, followed by others. Each of them has different features to offer, which you can read down below. 

Vinyl Gloves

Most boxing beginners go for vinyl gloves because they are the most affordable. However, in comparison to leather gloves, these are a lot less durable and are very uncomfortable. The user is more prone to sweating inside the glove. Therefore, if you are looking for a typical training session for a while, you may buy these. But in cases of boxing professionally, you must invest in a better pair that is more comfortable and long-lasting.

 

Pure Leather Gloves

Leather Gloves may be the most expensive gym gloves; however, they are also the best quality. The pure leather used promises a long-lasting period of these gloves. 

While Vinyl Gloves are uncomfortable, leather gloves, on the other hand, conform to your hand shape with time and become more comfortable. During the break-in period, the gloves may press uncomfortably on certain parts of your hand, but overall, the customer is always satisfied with the purchase.

Polyurethane Leather Gloves

Unlike vinyl, polyurethane is synthetic leather that appears like genuine leather and is extremely durable. It is not as expensive as pure leather gloves, but it is also not cheap. Polyurethane gloves are a fantastic place to start if you don’t want to spend too much money but still want to invest in a good pair of boxing gloves.