Purpose: The impact forces imparted on the second and third metacarpal heads of the dominant, or trail fist during a punch delivered to a standard heavy bag from Mixed Martial Artists was studied. The purpose of this study is to compare the forces imparted on the second and third metacarpal heads during competition style MMA gloved and standard training wrap ungloved punches in MMA athletes.
Design: Cross sectional and exploratory design using a convenient sample.
Methods: Participants for this study will be a convenience sample of male and female MMA fighters between the ages of 18 and 55 years. There will be 9-12 participants in this study when data collection is completed. This study utilizes Tekscan FlexiForce®-Economical Load (ELF) and Force Pressure Sensor systems (Tekscan Inc., South Boston, MA) in order to measure the specific force that is imparted on the second and third metacarpal heads. This study will also utilize the Delsys Trigno™ Wireless EMG and Accelerometer System (DELSYS, INC., Natick, MA) in order to record the overall force that each punch produces. Each participant will perform four trials for each of the four conditions (2nd metacarpal wrap, 3rd metacarpal wrap, 2nd metacarpal glove, 3rd metacarpal glove).
Results: Data collection is on-going. A repeated measures ANOVA will be used to determine differences in the average force for each trial for each condition, followed by T-tests and post-hoc tests.
Conclusions: We hypothesize that there will be a reduction of force seen at the second and third metacarpal heads during the gloved condition when compared to the ungloved condition. It is also hypothesized that there will be less force observed at the second metacarpal head when compared to the third metacarpal head.