How To Improve Your Grappling Techniques?

 MMA is a multi-dimensional sport that requires different gear to hone different skills. For example when you are improving on your punching skills, use boxing gloves instead of MMA gloves as they offer more protection due to their all-round padding. But when you want to improve your grappling techniques, use only MMA grappling gloves. They will help you with your ground work. The recommended weight for these type of gloves is 4-6oz. they are open fingered and much smaller in size as compared to boxing sparring gloves.

• Earn Your Badges

Just because you regularly go to your gym, doesn’t qualify for you to progress in MMA training. This game is earning your scars. The harder you work in the gym, easier it will be to compete at the highest level. Don’t be afraid of grappling and taking a blow to your face. If you aren’t tough enough, you are in the wrong sport my friend.

• Get a Qualified Coach

Good coaches are hard to come by, but if you are lucky enough to find one. Stick with him and work really hard. A good coach will tell you about your strengths and weaknesses, and work with you to improve your skills.

• Work with Heavy Bag

If you don’t have a sparring partner then you can use a heavy bag to work on your clinching technique. Even though it is nothing working with a sparring partner but most of the time when you don’t have anyone around and you’re left to train on your own in the gym. In such times, make heavy bag your best friend and foe if you like. While you are working with it, you can use the spaces around it to help with your movement.

• Get Manhandled

Find someone in the gym who can manhandle you. Don’t be afraid to take on such a challenge, put your ego behind you and spar with the best guys you can find. Keep changing your sparring partners, spar with heavier, faster and bigger guys than yourself and then spar with guys with unbound endurance and technique. This is the only way you can improve, and there is no easy way around.

• Repeat Drills Over and Over Again

Use about half an hour every day at the end of a training session to repeat what you have learned and then when you arrive next day at the gym practice again those skills for another 30 minutes. Repeating again and again will help you improve your grappling skills.

Always remember to use quality grappling gloves for your training. 

The Difference In MMA Gloves

                                                             

 

In the earlier days of MMA, and in some gyms these days, the typical way of sparring or going rounds on the heavy-bag employed the use of boxing gloves instead of MMA gloves. That is because it was believed that boxing gloves protect the hand more, and your sparring partner too.

Lately, the game has changed. To simulate an MMA bout, one would need to train like it’s an MMA bout. That means using ‘everything that is MMA’. Hence the creation of the different types of MMA gloves such as, sparring, heavy-bag and fighting gloves. While MMA gloves might be lightly padded, according to scientifically tested experiments, MMA gloves are only slightly lighter when it comes to strike pressure as opposed to a boxing glove. Meaning the effects are not that different.

According to science though, the heavier something is coupled with the speed or pace it is travelling results in stronger weight. Meaning, surprisingly, a boxing glove ought to hit you harder than an MMA glove.

The difference, though, between the two is ‘physical’ and ‘apparent’ damage. Boxing gloves are said to damage you more without showing signs. MMA gloves have more of the cutting effect. This means boxing gloves provide volume based damage; this can result to nastier brain damage while MMA gloves will bruise and cut the surface more.

Don’t get it wrong though, getting punched by either is a painful ordeal you’d rather avoid…. but this is the Hurt Sport, you’re bound to get punched.

Here we will elaborate what MMA glove should be used for different purposes.

• MMA Sparring Gloves:

Like boxing gloves, MMA Sparring Gloves were created to minimize any potential damage one could cause or incur during training. The padding on the knuckles all the way to the wrists are soft but heavily padded. This cushions against shock-impact and ensures the knuckles from collapsing on each other. The wrist-support with sparring gloves is not as fortified as its heavy-bag and fighting counterparts but the soft cushioning will prevent otherwise unfortunate injuries from taking place. Remember when you’re sparring, you have to worry about two people - yourself and your partner. And the point is not to hurt, but to train. Hence if you use these gloves how they are meant to be used, you will never have an issue.

• Heavy Bag MMA Gloves:

These gloves are much more padded than MMA Sparring Gloves, BUT, probably hurt much more too. That is because of multiple layered cushioning that is compressed and condensed into a hard layer over the knuckles, fortifying them against force that bounces back from the bag. The wrist support is wider, thicker and with some brands, are padded. The palm can also consist of inner-grip pipe for helping with punch formation while filling in the empty spaces inside the glove. This helps with keeping the fists integrity intact.

• Fighting MMA Gloves:

These gloves are the least padded out of the lot. They should not, in any given situation, be used for sparring or for rounds on the heavy bag; if you do, you will only be injuring yourself and your sparring partner. These gloves are normally worn with hand wraps which end up filling it on the inside. The wrapping also provides extra force for lesser padded MMA gloves. This is also necessary as relying on an MMA glove’s wrist support is not enough, you will NEED tape or hand wraps to keep the base of the of the hand (along with the wrist) secure. The padding only blocks the knuckles and manufacturers do not normally pay TOO much attention to the padding around the wrist area. Fighting gloves do not typically have padded thumbs, but rather free thumbs for better grip.