Find Outstanding Martial Arts Sparring Footware
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If you train in any kind of martial arts sparring, you know that protective equipment is critically important. Any man who has the stones to begin a sparring match without a jock on, wont be vertical for very long. Theres protective safety gear like the well-padded foot gloves that I wear when Im coaching, so I dont do a spinning kick and inadvertently kick someone in the head, kick someone in the face when they miss a block. But the protective equipment I want to sing the praises of today are the mixed martial arts sparring shoes.

Now, I use the mixed martial arts shoe for two extremely key reasons. The first is that after I did a series of practice bits against a wooden sparring dummy, I walked out of the gym having several bone-deep bruises on my feet. Now, bruises are a given for any contact sport, including MMA. Even a little bit of padding might have kept me from walking painfully for two days. My comrades and colleagues were making fun of my little tentative baby steps to avoid putting weight on the tops of my feet from a particularly sore bruise almost a crack in the bone.

The foot has so many tiny bones. And almost no meat. No fat. Very little protection. Poor bloodflow. At least that's how mine are. Pain sticks attached to my legs!

I guess Im not a fast study. Three weeks later, I did the same practice exercise and just about pulped my big toe when I miscalculated 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 big toe. The joint buckled, the toe swelled up to over double its regular size, and only pure devine intervention kept me from having an emergency doctor's visit.

OK, so kicking wooden dummies in bare feet is a stupid idea....

I went in search of things to save me from my own senselessness and found mixed martial arts sparring shoes. Those sparring shoes are different from tourney foot pads. Theyre light enough that you wont develop compensatory habits to adjust for the weight and while they dont offer as much protection, its the difference between kicking a wooden dummy with your bare foot and kicking it with a pair of sneakers on.

Additionally, they also improve traction on the floor, and stability when doing routines and drills. Given how much I like Kung Fu styles, and how acrobatic they are, that extra traction was appreciated. While its not fun to be tossed on your behind by a sparring partner, its worse to fall on your own because you slipped.

Plus, to be honest, it was good to come home from a training session in the dojo without feeling like I was being a sniveling, whiney brat because my feet hurt. Trust me, these things have saved my marriage my wife was teasing me about my new dance steps when I was busy beating the crap out of my feet and whining about it when I had to get up off the couch.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that I can dance? That's for another article. 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 mambo or kicking that wooden dummy!

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Yoshi Kundagawa is a freelance journalist covering the MMA world. You can visit his articles at <---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.martialarts3000.com/mmaspsh.html" >http://www.martialarts3000.com/mmaspsh.html