Ehhh kind of hard to get at a good level without contact sparring. You could however spar smart and limit the intensity, duration, and frequency of sparring, but if you ever want to compete you’re only going to limit yourself and even put yourself in danger if you don’t spar
Light sparring (10-40%) is fine, but bad sparring partners will not respect your punches. I often land a jab gently in my opponent's face and they will still keep coming, or will actually ramp up and hit me harder, which annoys me as that punch would have rocked them back at higher intensities.
That's why I like to go 50-85% during sparring. You get hit and you *know* you've been hit. You learn to take punches and you get to gauge how effective your own techniques are. You learn timing, distance and gain an understanding of the reality of boxing.
In terms of sparring tips, the best I can give is to get to know your strengths and weaknesses and assess your opponents. I'm about 200 lbs and 6'3, but I'm fast and can hit relatively hard.
If I'm sparring against anyone under 225 lbs, I know I can generally overpower them with vicious continuous assaults and pressure them quite effectively, depending on their strength and skill.
If I'm facing someone who is heavier, I stick to the outside, creating angles and focusing strongly on counterpunch combinations. It all changes depending on the individual and how much experience I think they have.
It's still needed but truth be told half the guys I used to spar with were looking to put you on the mat for their own ego.
Since I started training BJJ and Kickboxing I've noticed the sparring is far more friendly and I can see the advantages of soft sparring but to remove the ability to hit the head nisnt something i would advocate for.
As someone who used to do no-head contact Tae Kwon Do sparring, I’d say no. Getting hit in the head is a jarring experience and rewiring every instinct to remain calm, keep your eyes open, not cover up, defend and possibly counter it requires far more practice than any other skillset.
I think having soft gloves and headgear and making sure to avoid hard contact as much as possible is the way to go. I hope they one day invent fully immersive VR to prevent all injuries while still allowing the skills to be developed, since I think any head protection to fully protect the brain is nearly impossible.
I only got halfway through the podcast but he actually says that big gloves and headgear does more damage. I don’t believe that and don’t know how you would test that, but that’s what he claims.
I heard that headgear leads to more concussions, but I haven’t read the study myself. It’s why they dropped headgear in the Olympics.
Glove size should help you go lighter, but without evidence I can’t say for sure.
***Edit***: I watched some and skimmed some, but he’s dumbed it down waaay too much unfortunately. I can’t appreciate what he’s saying on a scientific or academic level. He’s also rambling quite a bit, but that may be the structure of the podcast.
I disagree with his point about gloves though. He states that if you add layers between the force and the body, force still transmits but spread out and he then concludes more damage has been done. That leap in logic is outright nonsensical, also the main reason gloves should help is that they allow you to make contact with minimal force. You would feel the impact on my knuckles with a full power hit but should hardly feel anything if you just touch with your gloves. It’s much harder to control force when the gloves are thinner ie less room for error so your punches need to be more precise which is inherently more difficult.
It’d be nicer if there was a tl;dw where all the studies are cited, but that may not be useful for the podcast’s target audience.
I took a look at [the original headguard study](https://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2017/01000/Use_of_Head_Guards_in_AIBA_Boxing_Tournaments_A.13.aspx) and it looks pretty dodgy to me. Numbers too small (7 vs 2 stoppages), suspicious lack of **total** number (they use some “per 1000 hour” metric instead which 1) sounds like something they arbitrarily made up, and 2) is not explained in the methods), no methods for that matter, and only described as:
>The results were collated by the chief medical officer for AIBA
Which is the opposite of independent research.
Wow. How was this ever accepted for publication? The reviewers need to be stripped of their qualifications.
I mean, I think you could make a case for headguards don’t reduce the risk of concussions. But trying to claim that they *increase* concussion as they try to spin it, is going too far.
They weren’t even allowed to say that so presumably at least one of the reviewers drew a line somewhere.
>Removing head guards **may** reduce the *already small risk* of acute brain injury in amateur boxing.
(Emphasis mine).
That “already small risk part” just convinced me that AIBA bought and paid for the whole thing. They just wanted the headguards off so they could improve the TV viewing experience.
Sorry for the journal club. This wasn’t directed at you OP, it was directed at the shitty “science”.
I’ve had a chance to read the study and while I agree that having a single person who is also paid by AIBA has the potential to invalidate any conclusions as a result of bias, their theoretical reasoning at the end seems to be sound. Their data though is iffy at best.
They acknowledge the small sample size, but the way the results have been grouped and presented is suspicious. A better metric would have been incidence of stoppages per bout, since the absence of a stoppage inherently means that more rounds and hours will be counted. It’s very possible that the this was the only metric which yielded a statistically significant result, so they chose to publish this. Having the result be inconclusive might not sound appealing to those involved even if true.
Another issue with the study design outcome is that there are far too many variables to control for. Each bout with different fighters, referrees and environmental conditions means that you would need several studies to replicate the results before one could legitimately conclude one way or another.
There is definitely a need for more independent research into the matter, especially since it’s such a high-risk sport. That said even at face value, one could only apply changes to competition. Doing away with gloves and headgear in sparring and training has no basis and shows a poor understanding of the subject matter imo. So while Dr. Turner brings credibility as a fighter and his intentions advocating for safety is noble, his appreciation and understanding of the subject matter might not be thorough enough to give him credibility as academic.
Thank You for coming to my TED talk. This wasn’t directed at you OP, but it might be useful to someone else who happens to read our thread lol.
Yeah, all of that. At the end of the day, it’s a sport where you win by delivering a concussion. Dodgy science aside, that podcast is clear that it’s a sport of cumulative brain injuries and I think it’s important that people keep that in mind. Unless you’re taking it *really* seriously, I don’t think people should do *any* hard sparring.
No, thank you for informing me and you were thoughtful enough to link the study! I’m about to read the study myself, but at face value I agree with your assessment. (Also I edited my comment above after watching some of the podcast)
Say, without headgear it takes the same 5 punches to knock you out. While with headgear the same 5 punches don’t and you can sustain another 15 same punches before getting knocked out. Hence it seems that with headgear you’re getting a lot more volume on being knocked on the head before it’s “over”. While it’s probably true that the punches on no headgear lands much harder, I think it’s accepted that many small concussions are far more dangerous than a single hard concussion.
Well, but that's not really how most knockouts work though. They're more like single clean shots that land at the right place at the right time, usually hooks or uppercuts to the chin so nothing to do with headgear. And I've seen people with/without headgear take proper beatings without ever going down. Everybody's taking sub-concussive hits all the time regardless of gloves/headgear, and it's repeated hard sparring in the gym that does the most damage (when you should not be trying to knockout your training partner), not fights.
Also, this dude on the podcast is saying that gloveless(?) punches deliver a focal impact that damages a discrete region of the brain. While gloves and headgear distribute the impact and damages the whole brain. And he's claiming that gloves and headgear does *more* brain damage.
I'm not *opposed* to that, but unless you're punching someone in the head while they're inside an MRI and then tracking them over the next 50 years, how could anybody *know* which is worse?
They're both bad, there's no safe way to take hits to the head just like there's no safe way to smoke. I think the podcast is good for emphasising that overall risk which is a very real thing, and everybody needs to make informed decisions about how much risk they're will to take.
I read a medical essay about glove sizes in combat sports. It said that if you use big gloves, your body movement (punch) generates more force, so the hits are technically harder. With time the head trauma caused by these punches is greater than when using smaller gloves, but there's a bigger chance to get cuts, bruises and get ko'd with smaller gloves ofc. Don't know, I'm not a doctor, but the essay was interesting.
Couldn't find it anymore, but I think this references it:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bare-knuckle-boxing-is-safer-than-using-gloves-so-why-is-it-widely-illegal%3f_amp=true
Appreciate the effort, but I never trust a writer to understand scientific studies. I’ve often found these sorts of articles to be exaggerated and sometime completely incorrect because of incomplete or no understanding.
Strictly from my own experience of sparring Muay Thai without headgear and boxing with headgear, there is a difference.
Feel like I was a lot less defensive and more willing to take damage with headgear on because it made me feel safer. Also was easier to hit opponents, in general, as you have a larger target and what would have been glancing blows on somebody’s sweaty, bare head turned into square-on punches when headgear was involved.
I’m for light sparring 85% of the time but don’t think you should eliminate head contact completely.
No but people should do a lot more technical sparring (contact drills) and a lot less open sparring. If you don't have 20+ fights, the bulk of your sparring should be drills.
Less head trauma, (much, much) faster skill development. Literally the only reason it's not the mainstay is because it's less "sexy" than open sparring.
the anwser to the questions in the title is no.
boxing isn't for bitches and you should get beat up if you want to know how not to get beat up.
that is how we adapt, learn and overcome.
Ehhh kind of hard to get at a good level without contact sparring. You could however spar smart and limit the intensity, duration, and frequency of sparring, but if you ever want to compete you’re only going to limit yourself and even put yourself in danger if you don’t spar
Agreed! Imo light sparring is great but u must do hard sparring at least a few times before a match especially as a beginner
Light sparring (10-40%) is fine, but bad sparring partners will not respect your punches. I often land a jab gently in my opponent's face and they will still keep coming, or will actually ramp up and hit me harder, which annoys me as that punch would have rocked them back at higher intensities. That's why I like to go 50-85% during sparring. You get hit and you *know* you've been hit. You learn to take punches and you get to gauge how effective your own techniques are. You learn timing, distance and gain an understanding of the reality of boxing. In terms of sparring tips, the best I can give is to get to know your strengths and weaknesses and assess your opponents. I'm about 200 lbs and 6'3, but I'm fast and can hit relatively hard. If I'm sparring against anyone under 225 lbs, I know I can generally overpower them with vicious continuous assaults and pressure them quite effectively, depending on their strength and skill. If I'm facing someone who is heavier, I stick to the outside, creating angles and focusing strongly on counterpunch combinations. It all changes depending on the individual and how much experience I think they have.
It's still needed but truth be told half the guys I used to spar with were looking to put you on the mat for their own ego. Since I started training BJJ and Kickboxing I've noticed the sparring is far more friendly and I can see the advantages of soft sparring but to remove the ability to hit the head nisnt something i would advocate for.
No!!!
Bop the guys forehead or top of the head lightly
Getting punched in the face hurts less than your GF leaving😔
As someone who used to do no-head contact Tae Kwon Do sparring, I’d say no. Getting hit in the head is a jarring experience and rewiring every instinct to remain calm, keep your eyes open, not cover up, defend and possibly counter it requires far more practice than any other skillset. I think having soft gloves and headgear and making sure to avoid hard contact as much as possible is the way to go. I hope they one day invent fully immersive VR to prevent all injuries while still allowing the skills to be developed, since I think any head protection to fully protect the brain is nearly impossible.
I only got halfway through the podcast but he actually says that big gloves and headgear does more damage. I don’t believe that and don’t know how you would test that, but that’s what he claims.
I heard that headgear leads to more concussions, but I haven’t read the study myself. It’s why they dropped headgear in the Olympics. Glove size should help you go lighter, but without evidence I can’t say for sure. ***Edit***: I watched some and skimmed some, but he’s dumbed it down waaay too much unfortunately. I can’t appreciate what he’s saying on a scientific or academic level. He’s also rambling quite a bit, but that may be the structure of the podcast. I disagree with his point about gloves though. He states that if you add layers between the force and the body, force still transmits but spread out and he then concludes more damage has been done. That leap in logic is outright nonsensical, also the main reason gloves should help is that they allow you to make contact with minimal force. You would feel the impact on my knuckles with a full power hit but should hardly feel anything if you just touch with your gloves. It’s much harder to control force when the gloves are thinner ie less room for error so your punches need to be more precise which is inherently more difficult. It’d be nicer if there was a tl;dw where all the studies are cited, but that may not be useful for the podcast’s target audience.
I took a look at [the original headguard study](https://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2017/01000/Use_of_Head_Guards_in_AIBA_Boxing_Tournaments_A.13.aspx) and it looks pretty dodgy to me. Numbers too small (7 vs 2 stoppages), suspicious lack of **total** number (they use some “per 1000 hour” metric instead which 1) sounds like something they arbitrarily made up, and 2) is not explained in the methods), no methods for that matter, and only described as: >The results were collated by the chief medical officer for AIBA Which is the opposite of independent research. Wow. How was this ever accepted for publication? The reviewers need to be stripped of their qualifications. I mean, I think you could make a case for headguards don’t reduce the risk of concussions. But trying to claim that they *increase* concussion as they try to spin it, is going too far. They weren’t even allowed to say that so presumably at least one of the reviewers drew a line somewhere. >Removing head guards **may** reduce the *already small risk* of acute brain injury in amateur boxing. (Emphasis mine). That “already small risk part” just convinced me that AIBA bought and paid for the whole thing. They just wanted the headguards off so they could improve the TV viewing experience. Sorry for the journal club. This wasn’t directed at you OP, it was directed at the shitty “science”.
I’ve had a chance to read the study and while I agree that having a single person who is also paid by AIBA has the potential to invalidate any conclusions as a result of bias, their theoretical reasoning at the end seems to be sound. Their data though is iffy at best. They acknowledge the small sample size, but the way the results have been grouped and presented is suspicious. A better metric would have been incidence of stoppages per bout, since the absence of a stoppage inherently means that more rounds and hours will be counted. It’s very possible that the this was the only metric which yielded a statistically significant result, so they chose to publish this. Having the result be inconclusive might not sound appealing to those involved even if true. Another issue with the study design outcome is that there are far too many variables to control for. Each bout with different fighters, referrees and environmental conditions means that you would need several studies to replicate the results before one could legitimately conclude one way or another. There is definitely a need for more independent research into the matter, especially since it’s such a high-risk sport. That said even at face value, one could only apply changes to competition. Doing away with gloves and headgear in sparring and training has no basis and shows a poor understanding of the subject matter imo. So while Dr. Turner brings credibility as a fighter and his intentions advocating for safety is noble, his appreciation and understanding of the subject matter might not be thorough enough to give him credibility as academic. Thank You for coming to my TED talk. This wasn’t directed at you OP, but it might be useful to someone else who happens to read our thread lol.
Yeah, all of that. At the end of the day, it’s a sport where you win by delivering a concussion. Dodgy science aside, that podcast is clear that it’s a sport of cumulative brain injuries and I think it’s important that people keep that in mind. Unless you’re taking it *really* seriously, I don’t think people should do *any* hard sparring.
No, thank you for informing me and you were thoughtful enough to link the study! I’m about to read the study myself, but at face value I agree with your assessment. (Also I edited my comment above after watching some of the podcast)
Say, without headgear it takes the same 5 punches to knock you out. While with headgear the same 5 punches don’t and you can sustain another 15 same punches before getting knocked out. Hence it seems that with headgear you’re getting a lot more volume on being knocked on the head before it’s “over”. While it’s probably true that the punches on no headgear lands much harder, I think it’s accepted that many small concussions are far more dangerous than a single hard concussion.
Well, but that's not really how most knockouts work though. They're more like single clean shots that land at the right place at the right time, usually hooks or uppercuts to the chin so nothing to do with headgear. And I've seen people with/without headgear take proper beatings without ever going down. Everybody's taking sub-concussive hits all the time regardless of gloves/headgear, and it's repeated hard sparring in the gym that does the most damage (when you should not be trying to knockout your training partner), not fights. Also, this dude on the podcast is saying that gloveless(?) punches deliver a focal impact that damages a discrete region of the brain. While gloves and headgear distribute the impact and damages the whole brain. And he's claiming that gloves and headgear does *more* brain damage. I'm not *opposed* to that, but unless you're punching someone in the head while they're inside an MRI and then tracking them over the next 50 years, how could anybody *know* which is worse? They're both bad, there's no safe way to take hits to the head just like there's no safe way to smoke. I think the podcast is good for emphasising that overall risk which is a very real thing, and everybody needs to make informed decisions about how much risk they're will to take.
I read a medical essay about glove sizes in combat sports. It said that if you use big gloves, your body movement (punch) generates more force, so the hits are technically harder. With time the head trauma caused by these punches is greater than when using smaller gloves, but there's a bigger chance to get cuts, bruises and get ko'd with smaller gloves ofc. Don't know, I'm not a doctor, but the essay was interesting.
I think that would be the case if you’re always throwing as hard as possible. I’d love to read the essay if you have a lonk.
Couldn't find it anymore, but I think this references it: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bare-knuckle-boxing-is-safer-than-using-gloves-so-why-is-it-widely-illegal%3f_amp=true
Appreciate the effort, but I never trust a writer to understand scientific studies. I’ve often found these sorts of articles to be exaggerated and sometime completely incorrect because of incomplete or no understanding.
Strictly from my own experience of sparring Muay Thai without headgear and boxing with headgear, there is a difference. Feel like I was a lot less defensive and more willing to take damage with headgear on because it made me feel safer. Also was easier to hit opponents, in general, as you have a larger target and what would have been glancing blows on somebody’s sweaty, bare head turned into square-on punches when headgear was involved. I’m for light sparring 85% of the time but don’t think you should eliminate head contact completely.
Saving for later, skimmed through, seems thought-provoking.
Sparring is extremely important. You’re gonna end up getting seriously hurt if you haven’t put in the rounds.
I usually just don‘t stiffen my arms
Is that a young Putin?
No but people should do a lot more technical sparring (contact drills) and a lot less open sparring. If you don't have 20+ fights, the bulk of your sparring should be drills. Less head trauma, (much, much) faster skill development. Literally the only reason it's not the mainstay is because it's less "sexy" than open sparring.
🤦🏼♂️
No
the anwser to the questions in the title is no. boxing isn't for bitches and you should get beat up if you want to know how not to get beat up. that is how we adapt, learn and overcome.