Are you a boxer or MMA fighter looking to increase your punch speed? Or you might be a baseball keeper trying to fasten your hand movement. Well, in both these cases, you need weighted gloves for your training, and we would like to answer all your queries about them.
Weighted gloves have proved beneficial especially in increasing the hand speed of different athletes in different sports. They have become the envy of training equipment as more and more academies are incorporating it in their regiment.
However, doubts remain regarding the authenticity of the claims and we would like to answer them all in this article. We also might suggest some of the weighted gloves that we believe to be the best, saving you the trouble of deciding which ones to buy.
What Are Weighted Gloves?
Weighted gloves are unlike any ordinary gloves. They do wrap around the hand, but they have weight added to them on the back of the hand and they are not meant for real bouts. They are only designed for training purposes. Normally weighted gloves range from 1 lb to 6 lbs but some weighted gloves have fixed weights while others have removable weights.
The idea behind weighted gloves is that once your arms and hands adopt to the added weight, they will move faster once the weights are removed. Moreover, they have also been proven to increase strength and help tone one’s arms.
If you want to know everything about the best boxing gloves read our professional review.
Do Weighted Gloves Increase Speed?
Research and experience have shown that weighted glove increase speed. As a subject starts training with weighted gloves, they feel a bit of resistance and fatigue at the start. However, gradually they get habitual with applying greater force and once the weights are taken off, their hand movement increases.
Boxers and fighters have been training with weights for a long time, but weighted gloves are a recent thing. Before weighted gloves, trainers advised using dumbbells which improved the speed of their athletes but caused other problems such as damaged joints. So, with the advent of weighted gloves, this problem was removed while the purpose was still achieved.
Do Heavier Gloves Make You Faster?
Multiple research papers show that heavier gloves improve hand speed and strength. One of these research is focused on baseball batters and another on boxers, and both prove that hand movement of the subjects was increased. The idea behind weighted gloves is simple, solid, and is an improvement to the age-old technique of training with dumbbells. So, it’s effectiveness is evident.
Almost all boxing and MMA academies are training their fighters with weighted gloves and they all acknowledge its effectiveness.
What Are the Benefits of Using Weighted Gloves?
1. Strength
Besides increasing the speed of one’s hand movement, It also increases strength. In one research, boxers who trained with weighted gloves progressed in punching strength. However, this increase in strength was not seen when boxers trained with dumbbells. The reason for this might be that weighted gloves feel more natural when boxing, or even playing baseball, rather than holding dumbbells.
Dumbbells require that the hands are wrapped around them, resulting in a form that is not similar to when playing the sport. Also, training with dumbbells with sprain your joints since you are holding them constantly.
On the contrary, the weighted gloves conform to your hand allowing you to train the sport as you would normally do. There is no chance of injury happening here. Moreso, when you get habitual of exerting more force with weighted gloves, you will keep exerting more force once you take them off.
2. Toning of forearms
Another advantage of weighted gloves is that it tones your arms unlike anything else. Since you are constantly applying force to keep your hands up, your arm muscles are under tension and the basic principle of muscle growth is repeated intervals of tension and rest. So, using weighted gloves will increase your muscles in forearms and burn fat resulting in more toned arms.
3. Stamina
Similarly, when you’re training with weighted gloves, you will be exerting more force than you would without the gloves. This will initially reduce your stamina but if done so for a long period, your stamina will also increase as your body adjusts to the increased exertion.
How Can You Increase Your Hand Speed?
There are multiple ways you can increase your hand speed as a sportsman. For decades sportsmen used dumbbells to increase their arm’s ability to move with force but it came with a drawback. Holding dumbbells require you to wrap your hand around them which is unlike the sport you are in. So you not only develop a wrong form but you also end up straining your joints.
Later, some coaches introduced resistance bands as they make you exert more force than you normally would. However, they too come with a certain drawback, which is a movement not aligned with the sport itself. This drawback rendered them useless and coaches had to look elsewhere.
Then came weighted gloves, a very recent invention that has been proved by far the most effective of all interventions. These are like simple gym gloves but with pockets in the back of the hand for the weights. In some cases, these weights can be changed while in others they are sewn permanently.
Some instructors recommend training with +/- 20% of the weight of the gloves used in competition. This means if a boxer fights with 10 Oz gloves, he should train with a 12 oz as well as an 8 oz glove. This will make him habitual of training at a greater resistance as well as a lighter resistance, resulting in a faster and stronger hand movement.
If you chose a glove heavier than 20%, it might sprain your ankles. Therefore, add weight that your arms can lift and increase only when they have become accustomed to the previous weight. This progression is the same as done when gaining muscle in other parts of the body.
So, if you’re convinced that weighted gloves are what you need to increase your hand speed and you want to know which weighted gloves will serve you the best, then we would like to help you with that as well.
MaxxMMA Adjustable Weighted Gloves are one of the best that we’ve come across.
Each glove has space for two 0.5 lbs weights. That means each glove will weight 1 lb when fully loaded. The neoprene material makes for a snug-fitting and is easily washable.
Once you understand the benefits of weighted gloves for increasing speed, don’t forget to complete your training gear by taking a look at our guide on the Best Heavy Bag Stand to ensure your heavy bag workouts offer superior stability and durability, allowing you to reach new heights in your training.
We hope we have educated you enough on the subject of weighted gloves. In case we have missed something let us know and we would love to answer that for you.
