Boxing Gloves vs Muay Thai Gloves - THAT'S THE QUESTION!

Muay Thai gloves are more flexible to allow your hands to expand and contract easier. This is ideal grabbing easier - for the clinch, or catching a leg, or an arm. Boxing gloves will be a lot more rigid and inflexible, if will be a little more difficult to grip your opponent. So, Boxing gloves can be used for training – but if you want to compete you should lean towards using Muay Thai gloves.

These are necessary for training; when using a heavy bag, using Thai pads with a partner (described below), and eventually sparring. When choosing gloves, if you use a 16-ounce (oz.) pair it will help with shoulder and arm strength, these are more ideal for your partner especially if you have a hard punch. In most gyms these are the recommended go-to set of gloves. Once you are familiar with what you want in pair of gloves and your purpose behind them - you will want multiple pairs of gloves for the different training you will be doing. Below is a general description of the gloves that are available for training.

Types of Muay Thai Gloves

Bag Gloves

8-10 oz.

These are the lightest gloves available and are specifically designed for the heavy bag or pads. These gloves are not meant for heavy hits on a hard bag. There is not a lot of wrist support, so wearing your hand wraps would be ideal for these gloves. Thankfully, modern designs in are integrating more wrist support.

Training Gloves

12-16 oz.

These can be used for all aspects of training; heavy bag, pads, clinching, and other partner training. These have much more wrist support that the bag gloves, and smaller in size to official sparring gloves. These should be your go-to pair of training gloves if you are only looking for one pair of gloves.

Sparring Gloves

14-16 oz.

These are a little bit larger in size compared to training gloves. Typically 16 oz. is what you want to use, unless your punches are quite devastating – you may have to use an 18 oz. or don’t hit so hard! The larger size is for that added protection to your sparring partner. Get these gloves if you will be sparring quite often, and keep separate gloves for other types of training.

So - it all depends on the type of training you want - I used both and its only when clinching or catching a kick I found a difference.