Pull on a pair of gloves and start working on your computer. Can't hit the keys, can you? And you can't effectively work a telephone, or do anything requiring serious and fine muscle control.

You can't knit or cook or fix a car or anything. The extra padding gets in the way.

And you can't learn the martial arts, because you can't really feel what you are doing...all you can do is bash and smack, and hope that you are doing it hard enough.

The gloves are just too big and bulky, and you can't really feel through them.

Feeling is essential to the martial arts; you can't really learn the martial arts unless you can feel what you are doing.

When you hit somebody, you have to feel the bone under your knuckle.

Then, finding out what that feels like, you have to be able to feel the resonance of the tissue under the bones.

Internal energy requires radar, you see.

If you shout in a canyon you listen for the echo.

If you strike somebody with internal martial arts, you have to feel for the echo.

You have to feel the energy moving through the other persons body and coming back to you.

Without this ability to feel, you can't develop internal energy in the martial arts.

Now, the question comes...but protective gear is necesary so people don't hurt each other?

Nope. When you wear protective gear you think you have to hit harder to make it work, so you actually lose control, and you become more dangerous.

I discovered this when I wore gloves and protective gear when learning Kenpo Karate. I kept breaking bones.

But when I moved to a classical art, no gloves or protective gear, I stopped breaking bones.

I bruised more, but people knew how to hit hard without hitting too hard. They had learned, you see, because they didn't have gloves wrapping their perceptions.