Protective Gear

[piccolo]

Hi people. Wondering what protective gear you use for contact drills / sparring? Especially for protecting or dampening against the "hitting through" type force that internal arts favour.

If you know of effective protective gear for this purpose, please let me know brand and armour material type if okay.

Wanting to train with a bit more power with training partners, and get used to landing hits. But also don't want to injure training partners!

[dspyrido]

It's not just the gear but the structure of how they are applied.

At a minimum:

GOOD: 4 or 8 oz for open grappling oriented training, 12oz to 16oz for boxing/kickboxing
I've owned a lot of gloves - they all do the job but better gloves last much longer & breath better
GOOD: fairtex, winning
OK: UFC (good for hurting not for protection), hayabusa (bit too tight for me)
BAD: everlast (fell apart in 6m), no name

Shin guards: get the mma type as they have straps at the top and don't slide down when grappling (and striking)
GOOD: hayabusa kanpenki (I've never needed another pair in many years)
BAD: No name ones which don't do full protection - usually used in kids karate, TWD classes

Extra:

Torso protection: I don't tend to use it but my coaches have pushed for it
Headgear: Many variations most don't really protect the nose except for the ones with a grill in front. Useful against heavy punchers who don't get control. My view though is don't practice with any hard head hits.
Groin guard: it's useful but you really don't want to test it out.

On materials - where there's a choice I will buy natural leathers for everything. Synthetic leather doesn't seem as good and plastic does not breath.

More importantly than equipment are setting training rules that define the impact and having good sparing partners who sticking to them. It's about an awareness of the comfort levels. Take a newbie and put all the padding in place & they will still go down on a kick or punch to the gut.

BTW this is not a "internal arts" thing. It's just courtesy.

Oh and you can pretty much forget about knees or elbows or headbutts done in any penetrating fashion. The use of any of the "3 stones" done with power will break bones and damage organs. Use them with great caution and control which means only very experienced people.

[johnwang]

Ask your opponent to hold on a kicking shield and runs toward you like a mad man. You try to use your kick or punch to stop it. Test this 15 times and record your result.