Randall Pleasant wrote:If you wear a lot of protection then you will not feel a lot of blows, thus your sparring partner will start hitting really hard so that you do feel the blows. These overly hard blows are what can break fingers, hands, heads, etc.
This is something we've discussed a lot at WSTR. It was common place for us to wear standard leather gauntlets when sparring. We've now made it pretty much mandatory to have lacrosse/hockey gloves on for sparring. We wear fencing masks. And guys are required to wear cups. I also have forearm pads I sometimes wear. Other than that, we're in normal gym clothes. We had someone get their thumb crushed during a bout and that prompted the heavier gloves.
We've having a debate on sparring and calling shots; having a spotter call the shots vs. the contestants calling hits themselves. Spotters tend to call hits when a sword swipes the pads/gloves and I don't consider that a 'hit'. So, bigger padded gloves and forearm pads present a larger target for 'false hits' to be called on.
