So, MMA sparring is pretty much a necessity for anyone that wants to consider themselves a complete martial artist. I see a lot of people that just throw on some 4 ouncers and go at it like that. The problem is this seems to make people almost completely unwilling to hit eachother with any real force. The standup aspect turns into a little slippity slap exchange until finally one person bull rushes through the complete lack of a threat and clinches up and then it goes to the ground and turns into grappling with people generally still unwilling to really hit eachother.
So, the other day I bit the bullet and decided to throw some bucks at a decent pair of MMA sparring gloves. My old gym used Primetime Level 4 gloves for all the fighter training and everyone loved them,
The primetime gloves are designed to combat the slap boxing MMA tendency by putting the shock absorbency of a 16 ounce glove into an 8 ounce MMA glove that looks and feels like an MMA glove. I wanted to get something decent to train with and these looked like the way to go.
So I placed an order with nextmovegear.com and 120 bucks and 6 days later (I ordered on the holiday weekend) they’re at my door.
So we take them to the gym tonight and give them a roll I have to say that I really enjoyed them. it was great to be able to really pop my partner, be it on our feet or on the ground, and not really have to worry about hurting them. The gloves are comfortable to wear Easy to make a fist in and easy to grapple in.
I was no more afraid to hit or be hit with these gloves them I am with a boxing glove. I could throw a nice stiff jab at my partners face and not ruin her day and she could do the same to me. It was wonderful and I highly recommend these gloves to people who want to train MMA. Let’s be honest, most of the people with 4oz fight gloves are never going to fight anyways so they might as well just get the training version.
Couple things of note though is that these gloves are a fair bit bulkier then regular MMA gloves and as such your hands can and will be harder to slip out of stuff if you get them stuck underneath someone, or your partner gets ahold of your wrist. This should encourage you to not get your hands stuck in tight positions. I did not feel the gloves were really in my way at all when working for submissions or the like. I could get good grips and holds and had great hand dexterity.
When striking I think you might want to watch that you hit with the padded part of the glove as it’s easy when throwing longer range hooks to catch your partner with the middle knuckle. Since this part is exposed it hurts a fair bit f you get caught with it but it’s not going to kill anyone. It’s a contact sport, Contact happens.
Ashly and I did many many rounds of MMA tonight and had a blast. I highly recommend these gloves for anyone looking for a good training glove that lets you really tag your partner without fear of hurting them. Put the 4ouncers down, posers.
