these are really nifty. i am a long time karate practitioner and instructor. mostly, when i am hitting focus mitts or heavy pads, i do not wear anything on my hands. i come from an old school karate background, and believe that it is important to be able to hit with bare fists properly, and to condition one's hands over time to be able to do so. but when i hit our dojo's heavy bag, which is quite hard, for long period, i think it best, especially as i am now in my fifties, to use some hand protection. i was using bag gloves, but i hit rather hard, and after an hour of bag training, my hands would ache in not a good way. so i started using boxing wraps under the bag gloves. that is fine, but it takes a long time to put them on. as i still prefer to do other parts of class with no gloves, it was inconvenient to have to stop and wrap my hands when it came time to hit the bag. also, the wraps are really bulky if you do them right -- they are not meant to go under brag gloves. these things are great, though. they go on very quickly, because the majority of the knuckle protection is in the glove part of the wraps, so one need not spend time doing all the wrapping between the fingers. you just put them on, and then the wraps are mostly for the hand and wrist. i have only been using them for a little while, but the gel component of the gloves seems to me to give really good protection. and they are not too bulky -- they fit nicely under my (slightly too large) bag gloves. so if you are not accustomed to hitting without gloves, or if, like me, you are getting old and want to give your hands a break, these are a really good choice. i am not sure how they would be for actual boxing, as that is not my martial art.