Should You Spar With or Without Headgear? (Pros and Cons)

Doing sparring is one of the best ways to improve your boxing skills. One of the most common questions about sparring is “should you spar with or without headgear?” While the answer might seem pretty obvious, it’s actually more complicated than what most people think!

Should you spar with or without headgear? If you are going to do light sparring, headgear isn’t necessary. But if you are going to do harder or more competitive sparring, then headgear becomes a very useful tool to avoid cuts and bruises. Contrary to popular opinion, headgear does little to protect you or prevent a mild traumatic brain injury. So if you are wearing headgear, the benefit that you get from it mostly has to do with the ability to protect your face from superficial injuries.

Headgear generally becomes more useful the more often you spar. After all, you don’t want to be walking around with a bruised up face, especially if you have an office job or you care about your appearance in general. But if you don’t care about this, sparring without headgear is definitely an option too. After all, using headgear has its cons, such as suffering reduced vision and others. If you want to know more about the pros and cons of wearing headgear and in which situations you should wear it, please continue reading.

Pros & Cons Of Using Headgear

As I implied above, there are some pros & cons of using headgear when sparring. Some of them are pretty obvious but some of them not so much, so because of this, I made a list of the most important ones you should keep in mind if you are deciding to spar with headgear or not.

Pros Of Using Headgear

1. Protects you from cuts and bruises: While newbies often talk about the fact that headgear might reduce the chances of a knockout (it hardly does) perhaps the actual biggest benefit people get from wearing a headgear is improved protection from cuts and bruises. In fact, aside from wearing sparring gloves and smearing some vaseline on your face, this is perhaps the best thing you could do to protect your dear face. Ideally, you are going to want to wear headgear that also features a decent nose bar. They tend to be more expensive than normal headgear, but they are so much more worth it too. Breaking your nose is a very common injury in boxing, which it’s sad because they are preventable in the first place.

2. Protects you from headbutts: Another very important reason why you might want to wear headgear is if your sparring partner has a reputation for headbutting. These are very painful for both parties, but aside from that, headbutts have the ability to do some serious damage to anybody’s face. I have seen many boxers that have left sparring sessions with a busted badly cut eyebrow that needs stitches, something that could have been easily avoided if they would have worn headgear. Of course, some of these injuries simply can’t be avoided, but in general, If you are going to be sparring with somebody with a reputation for headbutting, you should really consider strapping yourself with thick headgear just to be safe.

3. Sense of Security: The third pro of using a headgear is mostly psychological. It has to do with the fact that wearing headgear will often give you a sense of security when fighting. Beginner boxers often become more aggressive when they wear headgear, treating it as some sort of armor that allows them to take more risks, be more willing to exchange punches and fight inside. While this can also be reckless, I think it can also be a good way for beginner boxers to lose the fear of getting hit, something pretty common among people just starting out.

Cons Of using Headgear

1. Reduced vision: One of the things that I hate about headgear is the fact that It tends to reduce your vision overall, especially if I’m wearing one with a nose bar. This is the reason why I tend to skip headgear almost every time when sparring. It makes me feel claustrophobic, especially if I’m having a hard time catching my breath after a hard round. Wearing headgear means that you are going to get hit by angled punches that are easily seen with peripheral vision, but you can’t avoid them because the headgear is blocking your view. Some people who wear headgear even say that there is no point in that protection if you are going to receive more blows because of it. According to this AIBA study, the stoppages due to head punches are much less when people aren’t wearing headgear (that’s why Olympic boxers don’t wear gear anymore). I think that has something to do with the reduced vision.

2. Headgear is an extra cost: Another reason why you may not want to get headgear is the pricing of most headgear in the market. The truth is that boxing gear, in general, is getting more expensive by the day, especially the good stuff. This means that you are going to have to spend money on an extra piece of gear. You probably have already spent a lot of money on a new pair of gloves, shoes, mouthguard, and hand wraps. After buying all that, spending even more on headgear seems a little bit too much.

3. Does not protect against concussions: This one is funny. Most people think that wearing some mask on your face is immediately going to make you have a granite chin, but the truth is that headgear does very little to protect your brain from blows. It’s not going to reduce the chances of you being knocked out, and if the only reason why you might be interested in buying headgear is because of that, you should just skip this entirely. Headgear will drastically reduce your chances of suffering a superficial injury, but your brain is still going to get rocked inside your skull.

4. Sense of Security: I know I previously said that this is one of the benefits of wearing headgear. But that’s true mostly for beginner boxers who don’t feel very confident when sparring and need an additional sense of security to become more relaxed in the ring. But if you spar regularly with headgear you may get a false sense of security which will make you willing to exchange more which eventually will cause more brain trauma.

Recommended Headgear

If based on the information in this article, you decide that you need headgear there is one product that you should consider checking. It not only does it protects the head, nose, and face area really well, but it’s also quite affordable for the quality of the product. All of these things make it the best headgear for the price, and I highly recommend that you check it out in the future.

That headgear in question is the RDX Headguard With Nose bar click here to see it on their website (there is a 10% discount for your first purchase). It does a heck of a job protecting your whole head. Most people that used this headgear report that they have hardly developed any bruises, and haven’t been cut either. The nose bar of the headgear is also a welcome addition. Not only does it protect your nose & mouth area very well, but the manufactures tried to accomplish that with a minimal limiting of your vision.