You might come across countless articles and videos that show how to wrap your hands properly. BUT: why does it really matter?
Why Do Boxers Wrap Their Hands?
Boxers wrap their hands to ensure maximum protection against any potential risk of injury. A pair of hand wraps under the boxing gloves protect your knuckles, provide support to your wrist, and minimize the damage to your hands, especially during hard-hitting.
If you’re thinking about getting serious about boxing, continue reading…
Top 3 Benefits of Wearing Boxing Hand Wraps
Let’s get straight into the topic:
1. Wrist Support
Stabilizing the loose muscles in their place is the important purpose served by the hand wraps. If your hands are wrapped properly, shocks get absorbed and redistributed across your whole arm, which is very important to avoid the chances of fracture.
Thanks to the moving muscles, your wrist is usually considered a vulnerable part of hyper-extension. In such cases, these boxing wraps add an extra layer of protection and support to your wrist.
It makes your fist more stable and allows you to perform hard-punching workouts for a longer time.
2. Proper Gloves Fitting
This is another very important reason why almost all boxers wrap their hands. Your boxing gloves should fit properly, as any extra empty room can create an impact on your punching style.
If your gloves are little loose, they are going to slide a little every time you deliver a punch. Regardless of your skill level, this may cause twists and sprains in the bones.
I would think of it as: Along with the protection, boxing wraps also work as “socks in your shoes”. If you’re relatively beginner in your world of boxing, I strongly suggest you go and get yourself a nice of pair of boxing wraps.
3. Protection of your Knuckles
I witness many beginner boxing enthusiasts going through knuckle pain after a few days of training. This mainly happens due to the repetitive impact of your punches on your knuckles and surrounding area.
A tightly wrapped pair of wraps under your boxing gloves creates a layer of barrier between your bones and gloves and reduces the damage, especially during hard-hitting.
Basically, wraps minimize the risk and safeguard you from injury due to poor punching technique or awkward offensive angle.
Do Hand Wraps Make You Punch Harder?
As a whole, hand wraps do not increase the punching power regardless of the amount of tape and gauze is used for wrapping. The essential purpose of the hand wraps is to give an extra layer of protection to the fighters while providing solid support to their wrists.
With a pair of boxing wraps, your fist becomes more stable and you’ll be able to hit hard punches for a longer time, but your opponent is not going to feel any extra impact, in terms of punch power.
What Are the Best Boxing Hand Wraps to Buy?
The best hand wrap for beginners is the one that offers sufficient protection to your hands without compromising your comfort levels.
Digging into this hole:
The only traditional style boxing wrap that I like is these Winning Boxing VL-B (Link to Amazon) 180 inches hand wraps. The material they use is rayon, which is quite similar to cotton but offers you a little more value in terms of its durability.
If you’re more on a tight budget, you can also consider these Mexican-style Title boxing hand wraps that offer great value for the money.
These both are lightweight wraps with a decent amount of stretchable feel and I think offer great comfort to your hands.
Related: Boxing Wraps – 9 Important Questions you need to Read!
Alternative Options for Hand Protection:
There are various alternatives for hand wraps available in the market which are comfortable and liveable. Instead of wrapping hands with straps, boxers can wear these ergonomic designs just like hand gloves.
1. Inner Gloves
Unlike normal gloves, inner gloves do not have a covering around the fingers. Still, its design is good enough to reduce damage during boxing sessions. Also using them are comfortable and not sweaty during practices.
But, these gloves do not have inner padding it is just an outer covering of thick fabric. Thus it fails to provide protection to your knuckles. Even though I still suggest wearing them instead of boxing with naked hands.
2. Fast Wraps
The fast wrap is a far better option than the inner gloves as they protect the muscles, hands, and wrist joints from damage during boxing competition. Fast wraps are stretchy and thus perfectly fit on your hand. During hard punches, it also decreases the backward impact of hitting an opponent.
The only drawback is the durability of wraps which is less compared to other alternative options.
How to Wrap Your Hands Properly for Boxing?
checkout this amazing graphic by healthline:
Things to Avoid While Using Boxing Hand Wraps
One of the big mistakes almost all beginner do is: They use too much tape and gauze, which can cause issues during your fight.
Boxing tapes and gauze are usually porous in nature and that’s why allow moisture to seep in. It not only causes accumulation of sweat but also results in an additional weight on your arms and burns you down quickly.
Another thing that you need to pay attention to is the anatomy of your hands. Many boxers wrap their hands just for the sake of doing and they think having multiple rounds of wrap around their fist will provide them the required protection.
That’s not how it works my buddy!
You need to consider whether you have any medical history with your hands, and whether are there any injuries to your finger or wrist where you want to give more protection.
Be mindful of all these things and best of luck with your boxing training.
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Alternative for hand Protection
My Final Thoughts on Boxing Hands Wraps
I won’t say, boxing wraps are the most important accessories that you must buy, but they definitely help you throughout your training and during the fight.
Hand wraps are quite essential in terms of wrist protection. They make you feel secure and inject the required confidence in you to punch someone with your complete potential.
Let me know, what you think about the hand wraps and what accessories you have in your boxing kit.
