Discover Fine Mixed Martial Arts Sparring Footware
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If you practice any kind of martial arts sparring, you know that protective equipment is crucial. Anyone who has the stones to begin a sparring match without a jock on, wont be vertical too long. Theres protective safety gear like the heavily-padded foot gloves that I wear when Im instructing, so I dont do a spin kick and unintentionally kick someone in the head, kick someone in the face if they happen to miss a block. But the protective equipment I want to talk about today are the martial arts sparring shoes.
I like the martial arts shoe for two extremely precise factors. The first is that when I did a series of practice drills against a wooden sparring dummy, I walked out of the dojo with several bone-deep bruises in my feet. Now, bruises are the price you pay for any contact sport, including MMA. Even a small bit of protection might have kept me from walking funny for two days. My friends and colleagues were making fun of my little mincing steps to avoid putting weight on the tops of my feet from a particularly sore bruise almost a fracture in the bone.
The foot has so many miniscule bones. And almost no meat. almost no fat. No protection. Weak bloodflow. At least that's how mine are. Pain sticks attached to my ankles!
I guess Im a slow learner. A few practices later, I did the same practice drill and about destroyed my big toe when I mis-judged the distance to the wingchun wooden dummy on a kick instead of contacting it with the arch of the foot, I did a direct full force kick with the point of contact centered on the toes. The joint suffered, the toe swelled up to double its normal size, and only pure devine intervention kept me from having a broken toe.
OK, so kicking wooden dummies in bare feet is a foolish idea....
I went looking for things to save me from my own senselessness and found martial arts sparring shoes. Those sparring shoes are different from tourney foot pads. Theyre so light that you wont develop compensatory habits to adjust for the extra weight and while they dont offer quite the same protection, its the difference between kicking a wooden dummy with your bare foot and kicking it with a pair of sneakers on.
On top of that, they greatly improve traction on the floor, and stability when doing workouts and drills. Given how much I like Kung Fu styles, and how acrobatic they are, that extra traction was quite attractive. While its not fun to be thrown on your behind by a sparring partner, its even worse to do it on your own because you slipped.
Also, to be honest, it was good to come home from a session in the dojo without feeling like I was being a sniveling, whiney brat because my feet were hurting. Trust me, these things saved my marriage my lovely wife was making fun of my new dance steps when I was busy beating the crap out of my feet and whining about it when I had to take out the garbage.
Didn't I mention I can dance? That's another story altogether. She saw the movie Shall We Dance and I soon became a regular customer at the local Arthur Murray dance studio. I don't know what hurts more, learning to tango or kicking that wooden dummy!
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Yoshi Kundagawa is a writer covering the mixed martial arts world. You can his free reports at
http://www.martialarts3000.com/grshdispsh.html
