What are all the paddings available and which one is best for what? I know the following. Cleto Reyes - uses old school horsehair. JC Pacheco - Latex foam padding I'm curious to know what type of padding Grant and Winning use. EDIT: Feel free to share your experience with the paddings you've dealt with.
Not all Reyes use horsehair, only their standard pro fight gloves do. Their training gloves and safetecs don't have horsehair. Similarly one model of contest glove that Grant has uses horsehair, Blitz (UK) have a model of training glove with horsehair or maybe horsehair substitute, Rival's Guerrero fight gloves have horsehair, Everlast MX fight gloves I think also have horsehair as well as Adidas Glory fight gloves. The type of padding is described in most manufacturer's descriptions. Winning have a little diagram of theirs on the website.
10 oz. Top Ten Pro use horsehair too (pretty good gloves by the way, I have seen them in a discount for 55 bucks appx.). Everlast MX fight gloves combine foam and horsehair. Basically the layered padding hasn't been mentioned (whatever layers are used). Also I would hardly call orthopedic foam being a padding, it's just a vague (and not much honest imo) term used by some brands (Grant for exemple) for a particular layer of the layered padding.
Is "Gel" not the same thing as Injected Moulded Foam? They just aren't allowed to use the Ringside term IMF
Nope. Nomilk said, several of the companies using IMF/MIM paddings also put out gel padded gloves. Injection Molded Foam is what they use in Crocs (as an example). They also use it for the vinyl dipped karate safety gear. Of course, there are many different varieties and methods to target a specific purpose. Gel is what they use in several shoe inserts and insoles, knee pads, wrist supports for mousepads/keyboards.
Nice, so what padding would be best for sparring/fighting and what for training? ie. heavy bag, pads, etc. Also, what determines the oz on a glove? For example a glove might be 16oz but they don't weigh that. Is that the density of the padding itself or what?
Nearly all my gloves weigh spot on the weight they are sold as. My twins and fairtex gloves are all correct only an old pair of Blitzsport 16's weighed less at 13 and 14 oz ( I used these as heavy gloves for pads by unstitching the strapping and putting 6 and 5 oz of lead inside to make them 20oz, quite a nice tight fitting small glove now.
Oz. are purely the weight (of each glove, not total). 1 oz. = 28.3g. Nothing more. But gloves from some brands (well, almost all brands except perfectionists like Winning) do not necessarily weight exactly the stated weight. Here is the related thread. http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/f16/how-much-do-your-boxing-gloves-really-weigh-1839153/ Everything else is the matter of personal preference. From not very expensive gloves many people prefer Ringside IMF.
Traditionally it was simply the weight of the glove. Any variances (i.e. 16oz weighing closer to 14oz) were simply manufacturing errors. I would expect that some of the more modern padding materials may offer the same shock absorption as foam but with lower weights, but I couldn't tell you what materials at what weights. As for what's best? It's mostly up to personal preference, and for what purpose. Some guys like Winning's foam, some prefer something a little more dense, some like it with a little more "spring" to the punch. Best thing you can do is try out a bunch of gloves of various designs (can get expensive if you're fronting the bill). Maybe borrow gloves from friends/training partners, try them out for a couple rounds here and there.
there are just too many foams to list here is a quick list of the more common foams used in boxing gloves; Laytex Injection molds which are from laytex EVA F.EVA Artifical Laytex Poly Foam underlay PVC foam Gel those are the most common foams being used in gloves however they all range from shit to high end, and vary in a wide range of densities. sometimes it's hard to tell which foams are what even when you bring the foams to a local foam distributor half the time they have a hard time identifying what stuff really is and in the end they are just giving me their best guess. but in the end it doesn't really matter it all comes down to personal preference. as to the style of the glove and feel of the padding. that is why i'm the process of making completely different styles of gloves, cause i know in the end one guy might fall in love with one glove, while the next guy would hate that same glove and vice versa. Mike @ Gorilla
