Headgear, how much power does it take off?

CoolKnees

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Sparring with 16oz and headgear, typically how safe are you?

If you are only doing mid to light sparring, would the punches feel like nothing?

EDIT: In comparison to doing the sparring without the headgear.
 
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Physics bro. The force is still going through the headgear into your skull. Even the lightest jab, will still move your head.

All a headgear does is prevent cuts and bruises. The glove is there for protection. The glove have at least 3 inches of foam while the headgear is barely 1 inch if even that.

There's also a believe that headgear is actually worst for you in terms of concussion protection. Cuz it's bigger and heavier. It's sole purpose is to prevent scratch and bruise.
 
Sparring with 16oz and headgear, typically how safe are you?

If you are only doing mid to light sparring, would the punches feel like nothing?
You'll still feel punches. The force of the punch will be distributed maybe a little more with the headgear, but you'll still feel it.

It's more of a thudding force than a sharp one if that makes sense. Also, as freaky says, it appears headgear doesn't do much to reduce the chances of having a concussion. If anything it might increase your chances due to the sort of impact that results.
 
Physics bro. The force is still going through the headgear into your skull. Even the lightest jab, will still move your head.

All a headgear does is prevent cuts and bruises. The glove is there for protection. The glove have at least 3 inches of foam while the headgear is barely 1 inch if even that.

There's also a believe that headgear is actually worst for you in terms of concussion protection. Cuz it's bigger and heavier. It's sole purpose is to prevent scratch and bruise.

Doubt it... the headgear is still absorbing some of the force so a punch with and without cannot be the same power.
 
Doubt it... the headgear is still absorbing some of the force so a punch with and without cannot be the same power.

It may absorb some small amount of power, but not nearly enough to make up for all the negative effects.The only thing headgear does is prevents external bruising and give a false sense of safety (for fighter and spectator both). The brain will still rattle around on the inside of the skull at each hit, causing KO´s and long term damage.
Studies are very clear on this.
Sorry.
 
As the others said: For Bruises and cuts. Some models will prevent damage to the nose. But you don't wear it to avoid brain injury. It also makes your head heavier, bigger target, limits your vision (specially against kicks), takes away some of your concentration every time you need to readjust it after trading blows...
If i can, i always choose not to wear one... even in comp.
 
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Doubt it... the headgear is still absorbing some of the force so a punch with and without cannot be the same power.

Headgear is mainly to protect from cuts/abrasions/etc. Also, see the post below referencing amateur boxing getting rid of headgear.

Some other factors that haven't been mentioned yet as negatives to using headgear:

1) More mass on your head for added whiplash effect when you do get hit.

2) Your head becomes a bigger target, so you may actually take strikes that you'd normally be able to evade or slip without headgear on.

3) Some people will see that you have headgear on and subconsciously or consciously go harder because of it.

4) Others (while wearing headgear) will try to walk through more shots than they would without it on because of the false sense of security.

5) Vision more obscured while wearing headgear, causing you to take more shots than you would without.
 
I read a study about that. There are a few in fact at least if you alos include the NFL helmet studies no diea about fighting ones. Apparently headgear does reduce some of the force of punches. At least with mid velocity ones (forgot what the exact defnition was). Weaker shots do about the same damage with or without headgear. Stronger ones as well. But mid ones get reduced the most.

But it doesn't limit rotational forces like when you head twists around. Which apparently are the worst shots for the brain.

And then there are things that are not included in the study. Like headgear impairing your vision, making for a bigger target and giving you false confidence (and shots hurt less superficially) so you might get hit more.

In the end the only thing that saves you is a healthy lifestyle, having good defence, being reasonable with the damage you take in training/sparring and that's it.

Obviously we are all hoping for medical advancements especially now with CTE being much more of a topic with the NFL and even sports like soccer and moe research and studies being done in the field of degenerative brain diseases.

But even if at some point CTE and other brain issues (it's not like CTE is the only way of brain trauma not every issue from fighting has to be CTE) you can just get hit badly and die on the spot and then no medicine even in 100 years will help you
 
A little counter argument to everyone here who is anti - headgear

“I think we all know why this study was conducted,” Foster said. “I think you remember a few years ago, USA Boxing – and I’m not trying to throw them under the bus – but they came to the (Association of Boxing Commissions) and said, ‘Look, headgear is not shown to reduce concussions. It doesn’t do this, doesn’t do that, doesn’t help.’ So I find it incredibly interesting that the International Olympic Committee just financed a study on it, and in the end it basically refuted everything (USA Boxing) said.”

Foster’s suspicion, he said, is that international boxing officials might have been hoping for a different result, one that would justify the decision to do without headgear. Instead, the study found that, at least in laboratory tests conducted with a punch machine delivering blows to a head and neck mockup system that measured force, headgear could play “an important role in reducing the risk of concussion and superficial injury in boxing competition and training.”

In some instances, the headgear in the study reduced the force of the blows by half.

“I’d like everybody to read the study and draw their own conclusions,” Foster said. “But whatever you think about headgear and the ability to reduce concussions, no one can say that it doesn’t reduce cuts if it’s properly worn.”

http://mmajunkie.com/2015/09/does-h...udy-says-maybe-but-not-all-fighters-convinced

Here is a link to the study

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/17/1108?sid=298d5b6b-702a-4ecc-8a13-017989d2d99f

What are the new findings?
  • Laboratory impact tests show that a boxing headguard in combination with a glove offers a level of protection to the head and brain in a wide range of impacts.

  • The optimal benefits of current AIBA (Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur)-compliant headguards are realised in midrange speed punches (5–8.5 m/s) where the impact test results suggest that the headguard will reduce the likelihood of concussion and superficial head wounds.

  • In low-speed punches (<4 m/s) the addition of a headguard may have only a limited benefit, and in high-speed punches (>9 m/s) the headguard effects in terms of reducing the likelihood of concussion may be limited.

  • The headguard reduced the magnitude of angular head accelerations, including in impacts to the lateral jaw.
 

Those points were already made.

FWIW, instances of brain injury have gone up since the widespread use of headgear. Not down. Take that for what it's worth. There are a few confounding factors, but none of them point to headgear having helped the situation when it comes to concussive damage to the brain.
 
Not to mention that at most gyms, headgear goes on and people think "great, let's hammer away now.". Ugh.
 
The group of guys I drop in and spar with never wear head gear for all the reasons typically cited.
 


That's the study I talked about. even in the study it reduced force the most in mid power shots. For weak and strong punches it made less of a difference. As I said that is still a positive. But then you have the negative aspects that got talked about in this thread which are a factor as well. Also i wonder how realistic the study was anyway. Does the average punch fall into the high power shot category or the mid power category where headgear helps the most?

Also was the force measured inside the "skull" or was the superficial impact on the dummy measured.?

Granted I will just believe that the scienitists who amde this study now better and that it really resembles a head getting hit by a punch. Then you still have the other points being made against it.

There are studies about it concerning the NFL and their helmets. There are many more than this one about boxing because the NFL always tries to introduce better helmets. I also would suspect that these studies are a bit more thorough.

Even the most modern NFL helmets don't reduce more than 50% of the power (from what i remembered much less) from an impact. granted it is full on hits by 300lbs guys but still.

Also no helmets even for these mid power shots where they achieve the best results rotational forces aren't reduced and cant be reduced as in it#s literally impossible since the helmets are supposed to are firmly connected to the head. Rotational forces are the worst for the brain.

In the end it may or may not make a small difference but more liekly than not it is a small difference only.


Headgear even if it should work should never ever be seen as a way to protect the brain because even if it does it likely makes only a very small difference and that midnset is dangerous.


I remember the study how in the NFL people died much more often pre headgear. But that was because of acute injuries not CTE. Obviously there was CTE back then and it also exists today in Rugby but with how much CTE is in the news in the NFL you'd think that rugby players would all be mass murderers and that 100% of them go co mpletely insane by age 25.

Same about pre headgear NFl or even the early NFl with leather helmets which couldn't possibly reduce a lot of the force even if players were smaller back then.


If the NFL wasn't trying to cash out in the short term and invested the energy and money they invest in new helmets and superficial stuff like that in serious CTE research (or if they had started earlier like when they first suspected that brain trauma is an issue) then maybe we would be able to help a lot of athletes with CTE.

People have known for 100 years that stuff like this happens in boxing. But boxing hasn't been mainstream in a long time, it's decentralized and people are in shock now that running headfirst into each other isn't healthy unlike the big bad sport of boxing so it's only now getting the attention.
 

That's a great study and exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

I'm assuming we should not be worried about low-speed punches because of the minimal force generated regardless. Fast (hard) punches will damage you the same, but if you don't spar hard it may not be a problem.

Those points were already made.

FWIW, instances of brain injury have gone up since the widespread use of headgear. Not down. Take that for what it's worth. There are a few confounding factors, but none of them point to headgear having helped the situation when it comes to concussive damage to the brain.

Not to mention that at most gyms, headgear goes on and people think "great, let's hammer away now.". Ugh.

See that's the thing, if its shown that headgear actively reduces damage then maybe we should focus on the underlying factors. I think its true that with more equipment on, people go harder. Even my own personal experience, first time I sparred with headgear I started going harder because I felt invincible, whereas I'm usually more cautious (I normally spar without it in MT).

If you stay defensively responsible + put on headgear + minimal hard sparring, I can't see why it wouldn't be the safest option.
 
That's the study I talked about. even in the study it reduced force the most in mid power shots. For weak and strong punches it made less of a difference. As I said that is still a positive. But then you have the negative aspects that got talked about in this thread which are a factor as well. Also i wonder how realistic the study was anyway. Does the average punch fall into the high power shot category or the mid power category where headgear helps the most?

Also was the force measured inside the "skull" or was the superficial impact on the dummy measured.?

I read the study a little bit more and it mentions this for the selection of the punch speeds:

A literature review (see online supplementary appendix A) identified that mean impact glove speeds in boxing ranges from 3.0 to 11.9 m/s, and peak impact force in gloved punches ranges from 1.4 to 4.8 kN and varied by punch type.The literature also demonstrates that punches delivered in competition or in combination during laboratory experiments have approximately half the impact force of single maximal-effort punches.

So most punches delivered seem to fall into the mid-range speed.

As far as where the force is measured, it looks like they installed accelerometers in the skull and calculated the forces delivered based on that. The criteria for concussions is:

According to Zhang et al,10 the tolerance levels for mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are 6 krad/s2 and 240 for angular acceleration and the Head Injury Criterion (HIC15), respectively. Rowson et al 11 noted a 75% concussion likelihood for a resultant angular acceleration of 6.9 krad/s2, which is similar to that reported by McIntosh et al. 12 McIntosh et al 12 reported 50% and 75% concussion likelihood for resultant linear head acceleration as 65 and 89 g, respectively.
 
That's the study I talked about. even in the study it reduced force the most in mid power shots. For weak and strong punches it made less of a difference. As I said that is still a positive. But then you have the negative aspects that got talked about in this thread which are a factor as well. Also i wonder how realistic the study was anyway. Does the average punch fall into the high power shot category or the mid power category where headgear helps the most?

Also was the force measured inside the "skull" or was the superficial impact on the dummy measured.?

Granted I will just believe that the scienitists who amde this study now better and that it really resembles a head getting hit by a punch. Then you still have the other points being made against it.

There are studies about it concerning the NFL and their helmets. There are many more than this one about boxing because the NFL always tries to introduce better helmets. I also would suspect that these studies are a bit more thorough.

Even the most modern NFL helmets don't reduce more than 50% of the power (from what i remembered much less) from an impact. granted it is full on hits by 300lbs guys but still.

Also no helmets even for these mid power shots where they achieve the best results rotational forces aren't reduced and cant be reduced as in it#s literally impossible since the helmets are supposed to are firmly connected to the head. Rotational forces are the worst for the brain.

In the end it may or may not make a small difference but more liekly than not it is a small difference only.


Headgear even if it should work should never ever be seen as a way to protect the brain because even if it does it likely makes only a very small difference and that midnset is dangerous.


I remember the study how in the NFL people died much more often pre headgear. But that was because of acute injuries not CTE. Obviously there was CTE back then and it also exists today in Rugby but with how much CTE is in the news in the NFL you'd think that rugby players would all be mass murderers and that 100% of them go co mpletely insane by age 25.

Same about pre headgear NFl or even the early NFl with leather helmets which couldn't possibly reduce a lot of the force even if players were smaller back then.


If the NFL wasn't trying to cash out in the short term and invested the energy and money they invest in new helmets and superficial stuff like that in serious CTE research (or if they had started earlier like when they first suspected that brain trauma is an issue) then maybe we would be able to help a lot of athletes with CTE.

People have known for 100 years that stuff like this happens in boxing. But boxing hasn't been mainstream in a long time, it's decentralized and people are in shock now that running headfirst into each other isn't healthy unlike the big bad sport of boxing so it's only now getting the attention.

I do wear headgear in sparring most of the time, and I notice a big difference in how I feel after sparring and the following morning. If you're in a relatively safe gym, the majority of shots you take during sparring should be mid-power shots, so it would make sense that headgear would be good to have. Where I train I haven't noticed that anyone goes harder of lighter than normal when I'm wearing headgear than when I'm not, hopefully the people you're sparring with have enough control to not go ape shit just because you've somehow 'made yourself a target'. I also don't think I spar differently with it on vs. not, I prioritize defense in either case because I'm really interested in having good defense and intentionally spend a lot of rounds working on it.

I can buy the argument for it being useless in competition when people are throwing as hard as they can one way or another. I also buy that if you're wearing such bulky headgear that it significantly reduces your ability to see strikes coming it could be deleterious on balance. I wear a competition headgear even for sparring just because it doesn't significantly reduce my vision, and I've never felt that the cheek guards really did shit to reduce the impact of strikes to the side of the face (I have one with cheeks, and all it does over my competition version is restrict my vision). I also have a job where I can't go in cut up or bruised, so I'll wear it one way or another. But anecdotally I do find it helpful.
 
Two separate things:

- Does headgear reduce the power of punches?
- Is it a good idea to wear headgear to protect against concussions?

The answer to the first question is yes, the answer to the second one is maybe but probably not. Others have already argued why headgear can increase the damage you take despite reducing the power of single punches, so I won't go into that, just pointing out that you don't need to refute the first point in order to argue that you probably shouldn't wear headgear if you're worried about brain damage.
 
It's safer for you with no headgear. Your peripheral vision gets fucked up, leading you to get more blows from angles you can't see. The Olympic Boxing commitee banned headgear.

We never use headgear in my ITF Taekwondo club, and some of us spar full contact.
 
That's a great study and exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

I'm assuming we should not be worried about low-speed punches because of the minimal force generated regardless. Fast (hard) punches will damage you the same, but if you don't spar hard it may not be a problem.





See that's the thing, if its shown that headgear actively reduces damage then maybe we should focus on the underlying factors. I think its true that with more equipment on, people go harder. Even my own personal experience, first time I sparred with headgear I started going harder because I felt invincible, whereas I'm usually more cautious (I normally spar without it in MT).

If you stay defensively responsible + put on headgear + minimal hard sparring, I can't see why it wouldn't be the safest option.

No one is suggesting not to wear headgear in the gym. But to suggested that it is a top deterrent to reducing concussive damage is just false, and takes the focus off of what would really help.
 
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