How to Choose the Right Boxing Glove?
Between French boxing gloves, English boxing gloves, and Muay Thai gloves, it’s not always easy to choose the right boxing gloves for your discipline. Should you pick specific boxing gloves for training and competition? High-end gloves for intensive use? Budo-Fight is here to guide you in choosing your boxing gloves.
Which boxing gloves for which type of boxer?
As with any sports accessory, it’s essential to select a pair of boxing gloves that suits your specific practice. Depending on your punching power, technical skills, and experience level, you’ll want to choose models that are tailored to your needs.
Boxing for leisure and occasional use
For occasional or recreational use (1 hour/week or less), you can easily opt for an entry-level model that offers sufficient technical features and a very good quality/price ratio.
Discover the Padawan boxing glove
Finding your boxing gloves: the protection/lightness balance
For more regular use, intermediate or even high-end boxing gloves will allow for more effective and comfortable training. Here, it’s all about balancing protection and lightness. In fact, the more padding a glove has, the more it protects. But as the level of protection increases, the glove also becomes heavier. For comfort, it’s best to train with lighter boxing gloves so you can strike quickly and react faster. The goal is to find the best protection-to-lightness ratio. This isn’t always an easy choice. However, Budo-Fight shares its time-tested advice!
Well-padded gloves for powerful boxers
Powerful boxers (especially heavyweights) will prefer heavily padded gloves. Boxers who focus on power rather than speed don’t necessarily need lightweight gloves, but rather boxing gloves that will deliver strong impact on their partner. Thick gloves help reinforce the punch while protecting the bones in the hand. The Leone Ambassador boxing gloves feature injected shock-absorbing foam. The Adidas boxing gloves are equipped with preformed foam blocks and a multi-layer structure for optimal shock absorption. Finally, the Venum Giant 3.0 boxing gloves have quadruple-density foam padding to distribute impact.
Lightweight boxing gloves for agile fighters
On the other hand, boxers who rely more on agility than on raw power will gravitate toward lightweight boxing gloves. These gloves will follow every movement, allowing for subtle and precise strikes. Boxing gloves weighing around 12 oz are ideal for agile and often lighter practitioners. The Leone Il Tecnico 2 boxing gloves are part of this selection, as well as the King Pro Boxing Air gloves, specially designed to keep your hands cool during training.
Boxing gloves based on your training preferences
There are many ways to practice boxing. Your choice of gloves will depend on your main activity as a boxer. Want to know more? Check out our guides! Are you into French boxing? English boxing? Muay Thai? Or maybe kickboxing? Are you a competitor, sparring enthusiast, used to the punching bag, or do you prefer mixed training? Just starting out and looking for the ideal pair of gloves? Practicing chessboxing? You’ll definitely find a model suited to your profile.
Boxing gloves for every type of training
You’ll also find gloves designed for the punching bag, sparring gloves, training gloves, amateur competition gloves, professional competition gloves, and coach’s gloves.
Punching bag gloves
Punching bag gloves feature dense foam to protect your hands and joints from impact. However, this high density makes them too stiff for sparring, as they don’t allow for precise striking. Budo-Fight offers several models of boxing gloves dedicated to punching bags.
Sparring gloves
Sparring gloves have less dense padding than bag gloves, in order to reduce the impact on your sparring partner. Here’s a selection of Budo-Fight sparring gloves:
Training gloves
The training glove is a hybrid glove, suitable for both the punching bag and sparring. It’s ideal for boxers who don’t want to carry multiple pairs of gloves. In this case, you should choose a sparring glove to avoid injuring your partner with foam that’s too dense and hard, which could hurt them on impact.
Amateur competition gloves
Amateur competition gloves are more flexible than bag or sparring gloves: they are lightweight and feature soft padding. They are often provided by boxing clubs. Here are a few models:
Professional competition gloves
Professional competition gloves have much less padding than any other gloves to increase punching power. That’s why they’re used only in professional bouts. These gloves are stuffed with horsehair: this simulates effective padding for commission approval, but it quickly compresses to weaken the opponent. These are single-use gloves, as they last only for the duration of the match. Cleto Reyes offers an horsehair-padded boxing glove model.
Coach’s boxing gloves
Coach’s boxing gloves combine the power and protection of standard boxing gloves with a built-in focus mitt. This mix allows coaches to demonstrate and train with students without constantly changing equipment.
Boxing gloves for every style
Did you know? In the past, boxing was practiced bare-knuckle, which often resulted in broken hands. In 1865, English boxing matches were regulated to prevent these kinds of injuries. Each boxing style also has its own glove specifications—let’s discover them here.
English boxing gloves
English boxing gloves have a rounded shape that prevents the boxer from opening their hand during a match. Thumbs are attached to avoid cheating (such as poking an opponent’s eye). The palm is traditionally more padded on English boxing gloves since grabbing is not allowed in this sport.
French boxing (savate) gloves
French boxing gloves are very similar to English boxing gloves. However, some models designed for professional competitions offer extra reinforcement to reduce the impact from kicks.
Muay Thai gloves
Unlike English boxing and savate, Muay Thai allows you to grab your opponent for throws. As a result, Muay Thai glove models have minimal padding on the palm to make it easier to grip your opponent. The thumb is also detached from the rest of the glove to facilitate grabbing.
Finally, since knee strikes are allowed, the sides of Muay Thai gloves and the wrist area have an extra layer of padding. This helps minimize the impact from strikes delivered by your opponent.
Now you have all the information you need to carefully choose your boxing gloves: based on your profile, your practice, and the style of boxing you do. To find out which size to choose, check out our dedicated guide!
