The Best Boxing Gloves to Spar With
Sparring is an essential part of boxing training if you’re looking to start fighting in amateur bouts or turn professional. It’s also useful to see the boxing skills you’ve learned come together in a friendly fight if you’re just training for fun or to learn some crucial self-defence skills.
But sparring requires different gloves than your normal training sessions; without them, you could risk injuring yourself or your sparring partner.
So what is sparring and what are the best gloves to spar with?
What Is Sparring?
Sparring is a part of boxing training that is most like replicating a real fight. You’ll enter the ring with your sparring partner, and try out the skills you’ve been practising on the punching bags – footwork, jabs, crosses, uppercuts, hooks, and crucially, how they all come together in smooth combinations. Unlike using focus pads, your partner is there to challenge you and force you into defence as well, blocking their strikes and ensuring you return to your defensive stance after each strike.
Sparring is about learning; it’s a live, interactive lesson where participants can test their techniques and learn from each other in a safe and supportive environment. It’s not about winning or knocking your opponent down, but rather a collaborative effort to elevate each other’s abilities. You’re there to push each other to improve and learn from each other about your own performances while ensuring your partner is safe.
You, therefore, need a partner in order to spar, as you’ll be testing each other and practising your techniques in a match-style environment. Heavy bags are useful for training, to practise your combinations and utilise your power, but the bag doesn’t move like a real person, so you can’t use heavy bags for sparring.
Join a boxing gym or get yourself some protective gear including mouthguards, padded head guards and, of course, boxing gloves, to ensure you stay safe while gently sparring at home with your partner or friend.
Why Are Sparring Gloves Different?
Boxers require three types of gloves for their sport:
- Match gloves, which are the lightest
- Training gloves, the average pair
- Sparring gloves, which are the heaviest
Each type of boxing glove is sized according to the weight in ounces (oz), which changes according to how much padding is in the glove. Sparring gloves are therefore the heaviest as they have the most padding over the knuckles to protect the boxer and their sparring partner from their punches by absorbing the shock from the impact. When fighting in a real match for a prestigious title belt, you want your opponent to feel your full force, so you’ll wear the thinnest layer of padding, the lightest gloves, for matches.
When sparring at home or in a gym with a friend, you should both weigh roughly the same amount in order to spar using the full extent of your ability and power. So if you’re training with a partner who is a lot heavier or lighter than you, adjust the strength of your strikes to prevent injury and make sure you keep in good communication to ensure they’re feeling safe and well, and can stop at any moment.
How to Choose Sparring Gloves
Choosing the right boxing gloves depends largely on your weight.
For training you need:
- 6 – 8 oz gloves if you’re under 45 kg
- 10 – 12 oz gloves if you’re between 46 – 68 kg
- 14 oz gloves if you’re between 69 – 80 kg
- 16 – 18 oz gloves if you’re over 80 kg
Sparring gloves should be at least 2 oz heavier than your training gloves for added protection. So a person weighing 60 kg can spar with 14 oz gloves, but a person weighing 75 kg should choose either 16 or 18 oz gloves to spar in.
What Are the Best Brands for Boxing Gloves?
You don’t need to spend lots of money on big brands for your boxing equipment. Even though big brands like Everlast and Cleto Reyes have great reputations and are often promoted by professional boxers, you’ll have to pay a lot for their products, and they won’t necessarily be more comfortable or durable than non-branded professionally made sports equipment from companies like Maxx Pro Boxing.
Cleto Reyes is also popular among professional heavyweights as they use traditional materials, real leather and horsehair. These materials are much more expensive than synthetic ones and don’t offer as much protection as more modern gloves, ideal for hefty punches in a professional match, but not so much for casual training from home or sparring in a boxing class.
As long as the materials are high-quality and durable, and the manufacturer has enough knowledge of combat sports to understand the need for a long-lasting pair of boxing gloves, you can save yourself a lot of money and get a great pair of gloves.
Training Like a Boxer from Home
You can teach yourself to box, but it’s better to start in a class so you learn the proper punching technique and reduce the risk of injury from strong punches with a poor stance.
Punches you’ll need to learn are:
- Jabs
- Crosses
- Uppercuts
- Hooks
With each punch, you’ll also need to learn how to position your feet to generate power in your lower body and increase the strength of your punches, and move back into a defensive stance with your fists by your chin after each strike.
However, once you’ve learned each punching technique, you can easily train like a boxer at home, as long as you have the right equipment, and comfortable sportswear to train in.
What Boxing Equipment Do You Need for Home?
When training at home, you first need to ensure you have enough space to train in. If you have lots of objects or furniture in each room, you’re risking falling over, breaking things or hurting yourself by training there, so you should choose an emptier room, or consider training in a garden or a park.
You can train alone, to reach fitness goals or as a hobby with the following equipment:
- Boxing gloves
- Punching bags
- Skipping rope
Boxing training is a great cardiovascular workout and can help you burn lots of calories as well as increase your muscular endurance, so heavy or free-standing bags are a great addition to your home for boxing training. Skipping ropes are equally useful to get your heart rate going faster and help lose weight and tone your muscles, but they’re also great to help you improve your footwork.
Being quick on your feet is a crucial aspect of boxing in order to move quickly around your opponent and switch from one punch to another for a slick combination that will overwhelm an opponent. But having great footwork will also improve your balance and agility, improving your overall quality of life.
Whether you’re training for fun, fitness or fighting for real, you always need a good pair of boxing gloves with you. Punching bags are designed to offer resistance to your punches, so without the padding in the gloves, you risk breaks and fractures of your knuckles as well as spraining your wrist and injuring your shoulder and neck.
If you’re doing MMA training, you should get specialist MMA gloves for training with a grappling dummy, but you should also get boxing gloves for training with a punching bag, or invest in a lighter punching bag for improving your shot speed, rather than power.
Buy the Best Boxing Gloves – Maxx Pro Boxing
If you want to start boxing training from home, you’ll need to order durable, high-quality specialist boxing equipment so you can train safely and comfortably from home. For training alone, you’ll need a punching bag, but if you’re training with a partner or friend, you can greatly benefit from focus pads as well, so you can train together and encourage each other to improve. But either way, you’ll need a great pair of boxing gloves.
Browse our range of boxing gloves today, so you can start training in no time.
