Wearing hand wraps looks like a small detail, right? Well, it has actually vital importance. If you do combat sports like MMA, boxing, kickboxing the chances are your hands get damaged, irritations all the time. There are actually many other things which can happen like fractures, irritations, broken bones…
And I saw that many people in my current MMA gym do not even bother wearing one so I decided that I should write about this topic and came up with 6 really important reasons why we should wear hand wraps for boxing, MMA, and many other martial arts.
1. Second Layer
If you wear hand wraps underneath your MMA or boxing gloves, hand wraps will be a second layer of protection and distribute the shock one more time.
You should also note that it does not only cover our knuckles. It also covers upper side of your hand and fingers. So let’s say that you block a kick or elbow. MMA gloves have less padding on the upper side so wearing hand wraps provides extra protection.
Also when you punch a heavy bag or focus mitts constantly, it also prevents skin infections due to the friction between your knuckles and gloves.
With that, the fabric is soft and does not irritate your skin so your skin just reacts to hand wrap better than any glove type out there. Also, this prevents you from cuts.
According to a study (find the link at the end of the content), there was way less small bone fractures in fighters’ hands, who wear hand wraps, after a month of heavy bag training. The percentage is close to %20. So it can be easily said that wearing hand wraps helps with it.
Also, both MMA and boxing gloves are designed for considering that you wear hand wraps. So if you don’t, the fitting of gloves may feel awkward.
If you are looking for hand wraps for any combat sports, you can have a look these good hand wraps. I also have worn two of them and just loved the stretching qualities of them.
2. Wrist Protection
Many wrapping techniques put emphasize on wrapping wrists. The reason is that it makes your wrists more stable. In that way, your wrist moves less, and these are less likely to get injured. For example, I have really weak wrists and whenever I do martial arts training, I always use longer wraps and wrap my wrists one more time. After I had decided that, I had fewer problems and had less wrist pain.
3. Finger Stability
While you are punching, clinching or doing anything with your fingers, your finger can end up in a weird situation and you can even break it! However, if you wrap your fingers right, this situation will be way less likely to happen. Another thing is to consider that preferring thinner wraps. If you are wearing it for MMA, not only you can move your fingers freely but also this can protect the joints of your fingers. Definitely, keep in mind this for grappling.
In addition to these, if you don’t wrap your hands, your hands can feel irritated.
4. Reduce Vibration
When we punch or have any kind of impact we experience a vibration. Even though “small” vibrations do not affect our health badly, constant and “bigger” vibrations can even affect our mood.
So how do hand wraps inhibit that?
Basically, the fabric of it is just really good at reducing vibration and thanks to that, you will be affected less by it. Especially I find Mexican style hand wraps better about it.
5. The durability of Your Gloves
There are also other reasons why you want to wrap your hands.
Hand wraps or inner gloves prevent your sweat to get into the gloves. In that way, it helps to improve the durability of your gloves and hand wraps are really cheap, right? So you can actually buy new ones without breaking the bank. However let’s say that you wear Cleto Reyes Boxing Gloves, which have awesome genuine leather and will last for years, or MMA gloves which have good quality. These cost way more than hand wraps and if you don’t wear them, trust me you will wear these pairs less. So, wearing hand wraps can actually help you save some money.
6. Harder Punches!
When boxers have “extra” protection, they feel safer. So you can actually make mistake and in many cases, it will not have any bad consequences whatsoever. This is why you can throw harder punches without worrying!
It also creates friction with your glove and while you are punching your hand doesn’t slide in glove and I have experienced that if you don’t wear hand wraps, many gloves especially many Title models (Intense,) you will probably have problems about it.
I researched this subject on YouTube and found a really short video which explains why you need to wrap your hands for boxing as a summary. If you are interested, just check it out. It is only 1 minute.
Final Thoughts
In any boxing and MMA training, your hands, wrists take damage constantly and your hands have a lot of small bonds (around 30) and they are quite delicate so you simply need to avoid injuries, fractures, skin infections… Thanks to hand wraps, you can avoid all of these. So if you do any combat sports (boxing, Muay Thai…) whenever you punch, you need to wear them, period. Also, many boxing gyms don’t even let you do training without them. However, keep in mind that wearing hand wrap only reduces injury risk, it does not eliminate it. So always try punching or blocking kicks, elbows with the right technique!
I hope that this post is informative for you and if I have missed anything related to why we should wear hand wraps please let me know in the comment section.
I was researching boxing gloves and came across your site. Such great info, thank you for the links to the best products! It really helped me make a decision that will help me with my boxing.
I have a lot of boxing related articles and my site is getting popular so I am not surprised : ) Well, if you want to know a specific thing about gloves or need any advice, you can just leave a comment on those writings as well.