Hitting the bag: Bag Gloves or Padded/Sparring Gloves?

[black panther]

Many, many years ago when I first stepped into a boxing gym I used to hit the bad with bag gloves:






My shoulder has been fucked for almost a year now and I can't hit the bag much without my shoulder giving out. But when I started uni I noticed most guys would hit the bag with heavier sparring gloves, like 16oz:




Which ones do you use? The much thinner "bag gloves" ; do they strengthen your hands/get them used to impact? Is do think it's better to use heavier sparring gloves to protect your hands and provide some resistance training? Interested to know what you guys think.

[dberry]

Well, the idea of gloves is to protect your hands, boxing gloves are the best design for this, I like to use 12 oz. gloves for bag work, they're close to the weight of fight gloves (10 oz) and offer a bit more comfort for mine. I think 16's are a bit to heavy for bag use, in fact the only reason I own 16's is for sparring, I know a lot of boxers that use 16's for the bag though, it's a personal choice.

[coachster]

Beginners should use bag gloves or mitts so that they can feel the contact of the knuckles when the punches land. This helps to ensure that punches are being delivered correctly with the knuckle part of the glove/hand. When a beginner hits a bag with 16oz gloves on it is hard for them to know if the fingers, thumbs, palms etc are landing on the target as the extra padding absorbs all impact on whatever area has landed. Once boxers have developed a little bit I don't see any harm in using bigger padded gloves to protect the hands a bit more.

[dberry]

Salient point there coachster, that's why I still like to use tens or twelves on the bag, it would be important to make sure the bag mits allow you to form a proper punch and to hit the bag with the knuckles correctly, I've had some bad experiences buying bag mits in the past. It's also worth mentioning that hitting the bag with only handwraps on or bare knuckles for a couple of rounds at the start of each session is something I have been doing for years.