Wrapping your hands for boxing – I always say, use the way that makes you feel comfortable
In this video, I demonstrate a quick way for wrapping your hands for boxing – or bandages as I have always called them. There is nothing (and should be nothing) complicated about wrapping your hands for boxing.
My way is simple, but is not the only way, again as I always say, use the way that makes you feel most comfortable and is quickest to perform – try to keep your wrist fully supported and protected and keep the knuckles covered to prevent injury when you are punching. I like to loop around the thumb once just to give the thumb a bit of support too.
Wrapping your hands for boxing before training really is an absolute must. If you damage your knuckles, hands or wrists, it can stop you from training regularly whilst your waiting for injuries to heal. Make sure you concentrate on wrapping multiple times around your wrist, this will keep your wrist straight and supported when you are punching.
Likewise ensure you are wrapping multiple times around your knuckles too. This will provide extra padding within your gloves and stop bruising of the knuckles.
Keep your fingers spread as you put on the wraps, this will make it easier to close your fist once you have finished. If you put your wraps on with your fingers closed, when you try and form a fist, you will find it crushes your knuckles together. Not only will this make it extremely uncomfortable, when you start punching it will damage your knuckles too.
I always advise when buying wraps to buy the wraps that are slightly elasticated and have a “bit of give” in them as they are (in my opinion) easier to use and mold around your hands.
There are other alternatives now to the standard wraps, with gel filled protectors and other solutions that some of my students use, but call me old fashioned, as I still prefer the wraps method. But if you do go down the route of buying the gel type wraps, make sure you buy ones with wrist support too.
There are a few trainers out there who encourage their boxers to punch the bag without wraps or gloves as they believe it toughens the knuckles up. But as I said previously, if you want to train regularly and without injury I would avoid following this line of thought. I managed to go through my whole career (Amateur and Pro) using wraps and gloves with very little injury, so my advice is to always to do the same. Plus, lots of people who want to benefit from boxing training and who work face to face with customers would probably rather not go to work with reddened scabby knuckles :-).
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