Is heavy bag training without gloves harmful?

If you don't use gloves when hitting a bag, you can damage your wrist if you don't have any extra wrist support, so maybe spare an extra five or ten bucks and get yourself a pair of wraps. Also, when hitting a bag, even a light bag, it will cause calcium build up in your knuckles. this build up can cause arthritis and limit your finger dexterity. Sunken knuckes are almost guaranteed if you continue this practice for qhite a long while. Bag gloves are reccomended to prevent injury to your hand, especially if you are hitting with any power.

definitely use gloves, the bigger the better. I use 18 oz which really slow me down, but watch out when I get in the ring. The comp gloves feel like feather weights after training with 18 oz'ers. I've found 18oz + wraps is the way to go to avoid pain. used to train with just wraps when I was younger, then would not be able to punch a bag for a week b/c of the pain. sure, I'm a woman, go ahead and make fun, but it's true. no gloves = pain.

"A true martial artist should not wear gloves"

Sir, if you have 14 years of experience and train as a "true martial artist", then I find it miraculous that you can use a keyboard.

If you are working and hitting hard, regardless of how tough your hands are, you will split open your skin (after all, you will develop power by conditioning your hands, which will keep your ability to break your own skin the same, regardless of conditioning). Since you are working hard you will not be likely to notice blood marks on a bag until there are several of them, as the bag is in motion. So, in order to keep blood marks off of the bag, wear gloves.

I would not recommend hitting a heavy bag without gloves. Go to Ringside or Grant websites and shop for gloves. They are of excellent quality and fairly priced. Also always use handwraps with your bag gloves.

A true martial artists should not wear gloves. You should be using proper form to avoid injurying your joints. The skin will break from time to time. Once the skin opens up it is very important to clean it right away. Do not continue to punch with an open sore. Some people feel it is macho to leave blood marks on the bag. It is rude, and dumb. You are trying to develop thicker skin on the knuckles.

The goal here is to condition your knuckles. Also, you are training your punch.

If it is all done properly you should not have a problem.

Also, try a makiwara board.

You do not have to wear gloves at all. However if I do this for longer than a few minutes I will have severely damaged the skin on my hands and will have a very bad case of bleeding going on. However, generally speaking no one will force you to wear gloves. To prevent this wear a decent pair of bag gloves, not 16 oz. gloves as they are apt to tear also.

Get gloves, esp if the bag is hard. You could injure your hands & that could lead to arthritis down the road.

If you want to build callus on your knuckles dont use gloves , if your worried about that wear gloves .

Hitting the bag for short periods of time is fine. As long as you know how to strike and punch.

Nope. We rarely use gloves in our dojo. But you can always get the martial arts style gloves if you need to keep your hands looking nice for work, dating, etc.