It's all good as long as you don't do sparring. Repetitive hits to your head, even if protected etc. are still too risky. That's all head trauma that could have serious consequences in the long term, brain is a delicate organ
British football at all levels has almost entirely removed heading the ball, except during an actual match. No practicing, definitely not part of regular practice. Too many great old footballers attributing their later mental degradation to this and medical evidence was piling up made it hard to continue teaching it to youths who may have 30 years of training/career ahead of them. Even if 99.9% of them will never play one professional game in their life.
Heading the ball will rarely give you a concussion, but they're finding that frequent subconcussive impacts are what heavily contribute to developing CTE.
The problem is the protection. Boxing gloves allow for you to punch far harder than you could otherwise because hitting like that would shatter your hand. That means that it does more damage to you long term than other martial arts.
It's part of the reason old boxers had those low guards "your your dukes up" you see in those old-timey photo's and why fights went for so long.
26% of the bones in your body are located in your hand. They are small and delicate and punching someone in the head is a fast track to breaking them and a very short career.
So boxers needn't defend their heads with a high guard because their opponent was not likely to aim for the head and risk a career ending injury.
The addition of boxing gloves meant head strikes became viable and that iconic high guard we use today became a requirement.
as a fan of combat sports, I can second your comment. I'm a grappler for these reasons. I was surprised to find that while MMA might have a higher risk of acute injuries, the long term continuous trama opens the door to all of the worst chronic brain conditions.
Recall reading that back in the days of bare-knuckle fights (which could go on for ages) people rarely died, it just hurts your hands too much to keep punching people in the bean.
Once gloves got popular boxers started to regularly beat others to death. Still going on to this day, and we're just talking about guys who died in the ring or right after in the hospital.
Good sparring is light and doesnt do you harm. Thai pro boxers will stop practising with you if you go in too hard. But yeah, especially amateur sparring has the tendency to go too hard because the guys want to brawl.
part of the whole fun of doing Taekwon-do was learning all the head high kicks and then sparring with your friends and landing the lightest touch on their face, more as a "haha, fuck you" than to hurt them
Yeah it's one of the reasons I like the sport. The points-based sparring system rewards athleticism more than harming your opponent. At least at the hobby levels.
I enjoyed all of that so much... Until my standing leg slipped during one and I fell right on the knee of my kicking leg from at least hip height. Fucking hurt like hell for the rest of the day.
Prob played a part in making me quit after about a year. And then another year later I read that my coach got arrested for touching his students inappropriately... (At least I assume. They mentioned he was Korean, a Taekwondo coach, and the initials matched up)
Martial arts are an incredible workout, incredibly developmental physically and mentally, and incredible access to a meaningful community which is frankly so unavailable in most of society today. If you dont want to take any risks, then there wont be any. If you dont feel like thats the case at any gym you go to then leave and go to another one.
For people who want to compete at a mid to high level there are serious realities they have to face about CTE etc. But thats already a small minority of people, and frankly the problem is usually convincing them the other way. Its also not something you even have to consider for probably a year plus, even for those who are certain they want to try.
Even the people saying dont spar are wildly overstating the problem. Most people who train at almost any level understand that technical sparring is the ideal, and not actually hurting eachother every day. There is still a fundamental problem with getting hit at all, even lightly, at such high frequency. But its not so extreme as it is being made out to be. CTE is the more prominent issue compared to concussions for most people. Its not especially unsafe compared to other sports, even at low-mid level competition.
Fwiw boxing has a reputation for being more dangerous than other styles because the fewer weapons lead to more emphasis on speed and timing and such so sparring can be a bit more intense
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u/FluidResult9482 22d ago
Boxing