Is it just me....Am I just an old MA Dinosaur

Trained striking (Palm, fist, shoulder, arm and elbow) the majority of my Martial arts life (over 45 years; Jujutsu, old school TKD, Long Fists, Wing Chun, Bagua, Xingyi, taiji, Sanda), on a heavy bag, trees and walls, without wrapping my hands and without gloves. As a matter of fact the time I let some younger MA guy talk me into gloves, I first went to MMA fingerless gloves and my knuckles started hurting, and they never did with bear hands. Then they said,"No, use boxing gloves" So I gave it a try. After years of not using gloves, after light striking to get use to it, I decided to go full power. Not being use to the added distance between my fist and the bag due to the glove padding, and having years of muscle memory behind me, I hit the bag, at just slightly the wrong angle, and hurt my wrist. (I have tried 2 pair of gloves, one pair was recommended by a couple JKD teachers I had) So I took time to let that wrist (right wrist) heal, then went back and did the same thing, and tried again with the left and hurt the left wrist. The right was still not going to have any of it, even after light striking.

I am now back to my old school, dinosaur, hearing the voices of all my old teachers in my head, hitting without gloves or wraps. and you know what, my wrists are fine and my hands are ok to.

Now I read, what I am assuming are younger, more up to date, martial artists saying hand wrapping is essential. But I'm not going to listen this time.

Now is this just me being an old, stuck in my ways, cantankerous old man MAist? I can tell you, I'm not going to change again, but am I wrong thinking you need to condition your hands and wrists, without wraps and gloves?

 

I never wrap my hands. Can never be bothered. Gloves protect the knuckles, wraps defend the wrists. Punch properly and the wrists won't get hurt.

 

Just to add: if you're taking part in combat sports and hand wraps are an option you should take them anyway. I should point out I never fight competitively without wraps.

 

Agreed, but I think this is where the attitude of you "MUST" have hand wraps and/or you "MUST" where gloves if you train on a heavy bag comes from.

Nothing wrong with it, I'm all for it, and if that is how someone wants to train a traditional art, that's OK too. I'm just not good at being told how wrong I am for not doing it when I have absolutely no problems with my hands or wrists at almost 60 after over 40 years of training this way. Now my knees and hips are a different story, but my hands have no problems and even though I do have arthritis in my shoulders, they are not much of a problem at all.

 

Perhaps you've just been lucky....

Survivorship bias - Wikipedia

 

Interesting!

 

It's why you can ignore the majority of inspirational speeches!

 

Could be, or perhaps I trained correctly too. Seen a lot of folks who don't though

No problem with folks wrapping hands or using gloves and I am not railing against them. or trying to inspire others to stop using them either.

 

To be honest, from your list of martial arts trained, it doesn't sound like you're doing a martial art that requires common use of wraps and gloves. I've done karate, bjj, minor bit of wrestling, minor bit of jui jistu, mma, and boxing. The only martial art I would say required wraps and gloves for bag work consistently was boxing. I'm sure people who do muay thai and kickboxing require the use of wraps and gloves more often as well.

The major reason for this I think is due to 1.) you can hit a lot harder with gloves/wraps, 2.) you have to train hitting hard in boxing to be able to implement that amount of force in split second decisions that happen in sparring/fighting, and 3.) boxing technique tends to generate a whole lot more force in the punches than most other martial arts. I mean, it's all about footwork and punching, there's literally nothing else. Also, compared to boxing, when I hear of what most people do for bag work it's nowhere near the intensity or duration that boxing requires to hone your skillset.

That said, wraps protect your hands and wrists, gloves . . . meehhhh, not as much as people think. When I was boxing, no wraps and light gloves with minor wrist support were my go to for training speed. There's no way my hands could handle hundreds of full cross or lead hooks without wraps no matter how great my technique is. A boxing bagwork routine can easily have you throwing near 1,000 punches in a session, and depending on your goal the majority of them could be full power punches. There are also different bags for different methods of training. There were heavy bags in the gym I trained that felt like you were punching the side of a brick building, and there were banana bags you felt you could punch straight through. It just isn't really feasible to punch the former as hard as you can without some protection in my opinion : P.

Maybe you're running into a weird meeting of the martial arts world, where non combat sport martial arts are adapting safety techniques from the combat sports that aren't really relevant. Or in this day and age, it's probably just an insurance liability issue. They're not unnecessary safety tools, but it does sound like some of the people you have fun into are using them in an unnecessary way.

Also as an aside, there's a reason wraps and gloves are safety measures. There's a lot of dummies out there who have some nice arthritis and hand damage from stupid training methods out there : P.

 

Yes there are folks that have messed up their hands, that is for sure. Luckily I was trained how to hit many moons ago. But then MA was different many moons ago too. I have arthritis in my hips and my knees that is pretty bad, but my hands, at almost 60 years old, are pretty darn good.

And the person I ran into, who was most adamant about wrapping and gloves is an ex-Wing Chun guy turned MMA

 

Well you already know my answer.

You always wrap, whether it's the bag or a bout. Why? Because the wrap is meant to stabilize not just your wrist but then entire structure formed from the face of your first to your forearm. And one session isn't why, it's repetition. You're protecting your core tools over dozens of sessions.

And remember pain and inflammation are an occasional thing, especially with arthritis. What you had for breakfast can determine whether you feel more pain later on, whether you punch properly or not.

Most of all, and I think the worst offender....warm up first. The absolute worst thing to do is to just start punching anything. Cold wrists will always take worse punishment than warm ones. But people forget, they just want to start going to town and later on are like "why does this smart...I've done it a million times".

 

Wraps definitely protect the knuckle and and hand bones and connective tissue. "Punch properly and you won't get hurt" I have to argue that's not true, especially when sparring. There is no "perfect punch" in sparring or boxing and that's why wraps are so important. You might punch with good form 99 times, the wraps are there to make sure that 1 bad one doesn't end your career, and that the other 99 are structurally sound.

 

Well like said above, I might have Survivors bias too. I've never needed to wrap my hands even when I'm hitting the bag or pads as hard as I can. I think that wraps aren't as important as people make out. Some people have fragile hands and others don't. I just might be in the lucky minority.

 

Wraps are critically important for anybody who punches things a lot. Way more than gloves.

I'm at the gym but later I'll hunt down some good expert opinions online, but generally this is basic sound boxing health and it should apply to everything including MMA.

 

I don't think they're essential. I punch a lot. There's lots of TMA guys who think hand conditioning is a good idea and I don't. I know that even though I never wear wraps when I run my own gym I'll tell people to wrap their hands. It's just one of those things I guess....

 

Which one is more likely
A) you have special adamantium embued wrists

B) your just lucky that so far you haven't acutely injured your wrists, and your too young for any chronic injuries to show up yet.


If the answer is
A) congratulations!

B) you should probably change your mind.

However as Brexit/Trump has showed, people generally just do not like to change their mind after new evidence is shown to them.

 

I'll change my opinion if you can prove handwraps are effective in preventing long term harm.

 

You can't double blind that study....


But they do prevent major short term trauma, and often chronic injury is from repeated small short term trauma, so its an easy rule of thumb, as you yourself have said:

" I know that even though I never wear wraps when I run my own gym I'll tell people to wrap their hands
"
Anecdotally I never used to wear them when hitting a heavy bag in my TMA days, nowadays both my hands ache really badly in the cold, noone else in my family has any arthritis at all, even the 60 year old judoka.

Also annecdotally, the Thai's do it, and they wouldn't spend that money if they didn't have too.

 

And you know that some judoka get arthritis in their hips and others don't. Surely there must be studies done out there somewhere of similar results?

 

^ eh, what's that got to do with wraps?

I was explaining that I had no history of arthritis in my family, even though other members of my family had also trained in sports that tend to stress the hands/body.

If you want a comparison of general risk factors for arthritis, I'll have a look....