What is the minimum gear that should be worn for light-contact striking sparring?

[Oily Dragon]

Instead of what is the minimum, the question may need to be worded as. What's the minimum needed to ensure a good amount of safety with a random sparring partner.

Answer: all your vaccinations.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Answer: all your vaccinations.

Starting with rabies?

 

[MetalBoar]

The same issue goes for sparring whenever skin contact and damage is possible. IT makes total sense to protect the surface of the hands somehow, to avoid transmission of anything from Hepatitis to HIV. In many competition formats its totally normal to bleed all over your opponent, but there are tests and protocols to prevent infection. Those are not in place for most places that do hand to hand sparring (in any art), making it a fine and dandy way of spreading disease. So for that reason alone, I never recommend sparring without some sort of hand protection. Boxing wraps in particular have a long, long history of protecting the wrist and fist from not just structural damage, but also skin damage, and skin is the body's #1 defense from foreign infection. So for me, hand wraps are always on, minimally (along with jock protection and a mouthguard, even in BJJ you take the occasional elbow or foot).

This is a good point. I've never witnessed any broken skin from light sparring, but I can see how it might happen. You've convinced me that light hand protection is probably a reasonable thing to add to the set that is "minimum".

 

[Tigerwarrior]

Why do you require 16 oz. gloves for light sparring? (Genuinely curious - not contesting it, as you may have some good reasoning behind it.)

3 reasons really but I get what you're saying, alot of people spar light with mma gloves or lighter weight boxing gloves. So the 1st reason is to protect the hands more than say a 4oz mma glove more cushion and usually better wrist support. 2. If you practice all the time with heavier gloves than the ones you compete in it will improve your shoulder stamina, also when you put the lighter gloves on you will feel faster than if you only wore 4oz the whole time idk if you'd really be faster but I always felt it gave me an edge. 3. Less cuts in sparring and it's easier for your opponent to defend themselves because of the bigger target area, everytime at my old gym thar we switched over to mma gloves someone would get a cut or a bad scrape from the outside of the mma gloves we used. But these are just my opinion, there's also some benefit to sparring in mma gloves or lighter gloves too, you can grapple a lot better with them and if you are going to wear them when you compete you need to spar with them because the defense wearing 4oz is different than 16oz boxing gloves it's easier to get a shot in on someone who's using 4oz gloves who only sparred with bigger gloves usually a false sense of security because they could block better and could cover better with the boxing gloves.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I was going to say, empty handed protective gear and weapons gear are totally different universes. Between the lacerations and flying teeth (especially from even light staff sparring), you have to be proportional when it comes to safety. Sturdy helmet makes total sense in any situation where blunt contact with an object is possible. Dog Brothers 101. I'd rather have limited helmet vision than take a pole (or a finger) to the eyeball.

On wrapping hands/gloving hands when sparring...I have to point out the elephant in the room so I'll do it with a personal anecdote.

I set up a heavy bag for a student once. It was a canvas bag, with a rough surface, not polyvinyl that most people are used to in a gym. I come to use the bag myself one day and notice it is absolutely covered in blood. A hundred splotches of dark red all over the thing.

I asked the kid "what happened", and he said he trained for an hour on the bag to "toughen his hands". I said " yeah but now my best bag is a biohazard and I have to throw it out". HE looked at me confused, and I told him next time at least wrap your knuckles or wear some light gloves. His knuckles looked terrible, and honestly, probably infected (I hadn't cleaned that bag in months).

The same issue goes for sparring whenever skin contact and damage is possible. IT makes total sense to protect the surface of the hands somehow, to avoid transmission of anything from Hepatitis to HIV. In many competition formats its totally normal to bleed all over your opponent, but there are tests and protocols to prevent infection. Those are not in place for most places that do hand to hand sparring (in any art), making it a fine and dandy way of spreading disease. So for that reason alone, I never recommend sparring without some sort of hand protection. Boxing wraps in particular have a long, long history of protecting the wrist and fist from not just structural damage, but also skin damage, and skin is the body's #1 defense from foreign infection. So for me, hand wraps are always on, minimally (along with jock protection and a mouthguard, even in BJJ you take the occasional elbow or foot).

And there are far better ways of toughening the skin of the knuckles than bleeding all over my @!#%& favorite heavy bag, or your training partner.

I'm glad I never had issues with students bleeding on my bag. I always start people out with tapping the bag and good punching technique. Straight in then Staight out with no swiping. Stop once the knuckles start to feel tender.

If they still want to hit the bag then they have to wear gloves. But must stop once the knuckles bruise or start to hurt. Good punching technique allows them to hit the bad harder but they still have to stop Once those knuckles start to feel tender. Gloveless means fewer punches thrown but if done correctly the student should develop quality pinching in shorter time because of the extra focus on punching technique.

Once the knuckles are conditioned the student will be able to safely increase the punch count and increase punching power. I train all students to first punch without gloves. How effective is it? Many people in the gym adopt this training after watching me hit the bags.

Now with all of that said. I have to wear gloves if I'm going to hit with all that I can which for most is too hard to hit for long without gloves. I probably hit around 80% to 90% power without gloves. When I go for 100% with gloves on the bruising happens much faster. And I run the risk of trying to overpower my pinch which is not good either.

 

[Oily Dragon]

I'm glad I never had issues with students bleeding on my bag. I always start people out with tapping the bag and good punching technique. Straight in then Staight out with no swiping. Stop once the knuckles start to feel tender.

If they still want to hit the bag then they have to wear gloves. But must stop once the knuckles bruise or start to hurt. Good punching technique allows them to hit the bad harder but they still have to stop Once those knuckles start to feel tender. Gloveless means fewer punches thrown but if done correctly the student should develop quality pinching in shorter time because of the extra focus on punching technique.

Once the knuckles are conditioned the student will be able to safely increase the punch count and increase punching power. I train all students to first punch without gloves. How effective is it? Many people in the gym adopt this training after watching me hit the bags.

Now with all of that said. I have to wear gloves if I'm going to hit with all that I can which for most is too hard to hit for long without gloves. I probably hit around 80% to 90% power without gloves. When I go for 100% with gloves on the bruising happens much faster. And I run the risk of trying to overpower my pinch which is not good either.

This is also why many external Kung Fu dit da jow are formulated from antiseptic compounds like ethanol, eucalyptus, and even cinnamon.

Flesh wounds and bruises are pretty common in the full contact Kung Fu world, which is why some systems come with their own trauma care. I've seen people bleed on each other doing things like 3 star conditioning, cutting themselves on weapons, etc. I'd even argue some of those now recipes are more cared for than the fist sets. I know how to make really low end versions, some others have entire laboratories.

 

[HighKick]

Absolute minimum? Depends on how injury accepting you are. When I started in 1968 or so, there were no sparring pads. I'll still spar that way, but only with someone whose control I trust.

Most of our classes end up with light, no pad sparring. Many of the matches end up something well beyond 'light'. There are too many learning lessons from it to list. It is always moderated and stopped it things go too far or get one sided, but if both parties are complicit, we let it go pretty far.
Conversely, we have full gear sparring classes as well. Ironically, they are probably more moderated based on the ruleset.

 

[GojuTommy]

Whatever you wear for hard sparring.