A review of gloves and forearm protector for weapon sparring
Gloves are developed for protection against sparring weapons such as the kendo kote, naginata kote, HEMA gloves, taihojutsu kote.
Heavy foream padding kote was used by some koryu in bokuto kata training, this kind of kote is mainly used as a target to hit in the constructed kata training and by no means used for sparring.
Modern kendo players created the kote for the game does not provide freely movement of the fingers and wrists prevents it from a choice for sparring gloves thought there are 5-finger-kendo kote (not regonised by the AJKF) and naginata kote available on the market. However, the restriction of the wrist movement does not fill our requirement.
An innovative kendo kote くの字甲手 that is more flexible to allow more freely movement of the wrists.
The HEMA communities are most commonly use the gloves for Lacrosse. They are light in weight and offering more wrist and fingers protection while allow them to move freely.
At present a better glove designed for HEMA is available, the overlapping plastic finger plates ensure that the chance of a weapon making contact with your fingers is kept to a minimum, whilst providing maximum mobility.
The forearm and elbow are susceptible to heavy cuts where they can take severe damage.
There are many different kinds of arm guards on the market, such as ice hockey and police riot arm guards are a good cheap source for this, but be sure they fit your sparring gloves.
I've got a pair of riot police arm guards, the length (10.7 inches) is too long causes it to taper into the wrist when wearing, not only reducing mobility, but also causing some strain and pain. Secondly, it is unnecessarily thick (may be good for the riot police) causing it to become much bulkier, again reducing mobility and even causing problems with gloves. It also leaves a strip unprotected on the inside of the arm.
The SPEE HEMA arm guards share the same problems of over sized.
By combinning 2 TKD forearm guards or 2 shin guards for junior into one.
At present I can not find a suitable pair of forearm guards (ice hockey guars do not cover the inner part of the arms). I deside to hand made one for myself.
