Boxers today have a very definitive goal of toughening their hands. If you’re one of these fellas who want to achieve the same, this article will be of use to you. While punching hard objects can be a way of strengthening the nerves in your hand, you can badly hurt yourself in the process.
Boxing will toughen your hands. If you punch hard surfaces, such as a punching bag, the nerves in your knuckles and wrist will strengthen over time. However, you do need to be careful of breaking or severely injuring your hand. You can assure your safety by starting out slow and taking more breaks.
Taking more breaks is essential for when you feel pain or just need more time to recover. Like your muscles, you can overwork your bones and joints to ensure they don’t recover properly.
This can cause permanent damage both to your knuckles and hands. If you want to avoid it, it’ll be best to take more breaks, especially when feeling pain or over-fatigue.
Likewise, if you’re just starting out, you might be eager to start your conditioning. However, it’s critical you start slow and build yourself slowly. Again, your hand works similar to a muscle, you must progressively overload resistance. If you do it all at once, you’ll be injuring yourself.
Before we dive into the article, if you want to buy the best boxing shoes for your money, do follow the link to learn more on the best ones you can buy to amp up your fighting skills.
How does boxing affect your hands?
Now that we know that boxing can toughen up our hands, we should also look at the other side of the coin. If we want to ensure the short and long-term health of our hands, we must also learn how to protect them properly.
Boxing will strengthen your wrist, fingers, and hands. It does so by allowing you to punch hard objects consistently. As a result, over time. Your hands will toughen up. Of course, you must watch not to break your hand or wrist by punching too hard or without taking any breaks. Wearing gloves helps as well.
So yes, wearing protective gear—is critical to ensuring your long-term safety. In our case, it’ll be to always wear hand wraps and boxing gloves.
I made the mistake of punching bare-handed for most of my Muay-Thai journey. Let me tell you something, it did not end well. I won’t lie, I did end up conditioning my knuckles to be extremely strong. That came with a price, though.
You can, if you’re careful, toughen your hands to feel very little pain when boxing. You can do so by involving various stretches and exercises that include using the knuckles and wrist, such as push-ups on the knuckles.
How to toughen your hands through boxing
While punching can, and will, toughen our hands, there are other ways we can go about doing so. For example, if we skip stretching our bodies, we’ll end up missing various benefits. One study even found a correlation between being flexible and not getting injured as often. Follow the link to read it.
Boxing alone will toughen your hands by strengthening the bones and nerves in them, so you’ll feel less pain. A fantastic way of doing so is knuckle push-ups. They’ll help you toughen your knuckles without taking too much time off your actual boxing training. Be sure to take it easy in the beginning, though.
Knuckle push-ups are a fantastic example of an exercise you can do that’ll eventually help you toughen your hands. At first, you’ll feel high levels of pain. I know, as I’ve been there.
After some time and consistent practice, your knuckles won’t hurt as much. Therefore, they’ll toughen up and condition themselves to the impact you’re making them go through. Such a scenario is what you want to do.
Avoid going too hard at first. If you do, you’ll only end up more hurt and regretting having started too strong.
If you want to learn about how to keep your joints safe in boxing, follow the link to an article of mine on the topic.
Does punching hard things toughen your hand?
If you want to toughen your hands, there are numerous ways you can approach it. First, you must include various stretches to ensure your muscles are flexible. There’s a correlation, as we previously saw, between how flexible we are to our likelihood of getting injured.
Punching hard things does toughen your hand. Over time, your hand, like a muscle, will accustom itself to the impact you’re making it go through. As a result, you’ll eventually feel less pain and be more comfortable punching hard objects. Your knuckles, wrist, and fingers will strengthen.
Consistently throwing punches, even with protective gear (hand wraps and gloves)—will ensure your hands toughen. As a result, if that’s one of your goals, you should definitely start throwing more punches around.
But, do be sure to do so wisely. If you’re an inexperienced boxer and are throwing punches with full force, you will injure yourself.
I’ll repeat myself, so you’ll understand me, it’s not that you might hurt yourself in the process; you will injure yourself if you’re going too hard without first working on your technique.
Will boxing hurt my hands?
Physical pain and boxing come hand in hand. That will be especially true if you’re trying to condition your hands, and more specifically your knuckles. In the beginning of your journey, the nerves are still not as strong as you’d want them to be. So, you’ll feel more pain in them.
Boxing will hurt your hands, especially the knuckles, in the beginning. If you feel any pain in the wrist or fingers, it’ll be best to stop all training and seek medical help. However, it’s normal to feel pain in the knuckles, as they’ll be more sensitive when you’re starting out. Over time, they’ll toughen and won’t hurt as much.
You must learn to make the distinction between good and bad pain. Whenever you feel pain in the knuckles when punching, you’re likely in the clear.
However, when you throw a fierce punch and your hand starts to hurt (either your wrist or fingers), you must stop all training and get that pain checked. You never know how much damage you can prevent by stopping your training and getting medical assistance.
Final words
To end this article, I want to emphasize the importance of keeping yourself healthy, regardless of what stage you currently are. Even if you’re an elite boxer, you must ensure to keep yourself healthy, as it’ll help you in the long-run.
Even if you look at the financial side of things, if you’re more healthy, you’ll also compete more and see more results. That will eventually lead to faster progression and making more money, if that’s one of your goals.
Thus, wearing protective gear at all times—will be ideal for when trying to condition your hands. In our case, wearing both hand wraps and gloves—is a must.
Do so and you’ll progress much faster while keeping yourself healthier.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you’ll also enjoy reading about whether you can reuse hand wraps.