The MMA Starter Kit

What you actually need, when you need it, and how to buy it right.

To start MMA training you need Muay Thai gloves, hand wraps, shin guards, a rashguard, fight shorts, and a mouthguard. A 7oz MMA glove is worth adding as soon as light sparring and grappling begins. Here's what each piece does, why it matters, and how to buy it right the first time.

Budget around $600–$800 to start properly. Buy quality once and you won't be replacing gear inside twelve months.

What Is MMA? The Complete Fighting System

MMA isn't really one sport. It's a bit of everything. Striking, grappling, clinch work, takedowns, ground fighting. Muay Thai handles the stand-up, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu handles the ground game, and MMA is where both of those worlds run into each other in the same ruleset.

It's the most complete combat sport there is and honestly, it's a lot to take in at first. One session you're learning combinations, the next you're trying to figure out how to get back to your feet after a takedown. Some nights you'll click with it, other nights you'll drive home wondering what on earth just happened.

That's completely normal. Everyone in that gym had the exact same experience on day one — including the people who look like they've been doing it forever.

The one thing I'd tell anyone walking in for the first time is to just make sure you've got the right gear sorted. Not the most expensive kit in the room. Just the right stuff. Here's exactly what that is.

What Gear Do You Need to Start MMA Training?

Muay Thai Gloves

For your striking sessions, bag work, pad work, drilling combinations — you need Muay Thai gloves. Not boxing gloves. This is the most common mistake beginners make so let's sort it out now.

Boxing gloves are built for one thing: punching with a closed fist. They're tight, rounded, and completely the wrong tool for MMA. Muay Thai gloves have a more open palm so you can clinch, grab, and transition between striking and grappling — which is exactly how MMA works in practice. On top of that, Muay Thai gloves spread impact across a bigger surface area, which is safer for the amount of bag, pad, and partner work you're doing every session.

Size: 12oz for pad work and volume drilling, 16oz for sparring. If you're only buying one pair to start, go 16oz.

A lot of the cheaper gloves online are made from basic synthetic that starts cracking and falling apart before you've even got comfortable in the sport. The GOODNYT Muay Thai Boxing Gloves are built from a premium microfibre that's lighter than leather, lasts longer, and holds up in any conditions — a sweaty gym in summer or training outdoors year round. You notice the difference the first time you put them on. Available in Sand/Smoke or Smoke/Sand at $209.95, or White/Sand at $189.95.

7oz MMA Gloves

Once sparring and grappling sessions start — and they come around sooner than most beginners expect — you're going to want a pair of 7oz MMA gloves. The open fingers let you grab, clinch, and grapple without having to change your hands between striking and ground work.

They're not there to replace your Muay Thai gloves. You'll still use those for pad and bag work. The 7oz gloves are for when training starts to feel more like an actual fight.

What to look for: solid padding across the knuckles, an open palm design, and a wrist strap that locks in properly.

The GOODNYT 7oz MMA Gloves come in Black/Sand and White/Sand at $79.95. Same microfibre build as the Muay Thai gloves, built to handle both sides of the sport. Grab a pair here.

Hand Wraps

Not exciting. Not expensive. Completely non-negotiable.

Wraps go on before the gloves, every single time. They support the small bones in your hands against the impact of striking and stop the inside of your gloves from breaking down in sweat. Skip them and you'll feel it within a few weeks — either in your hands or in the smell coming out of your glove bag.

Grab two pairs so one can wash while the other trains. 4.5m is the right length for an adult hand. Mexican-style stretch wraps are more forgiving than stiff cotton ones while you're still figuring out the technique. Your coach will show you in the first few minutes of your first session.

Shin Guards

You're not going to be thrown into sparring on day one. But the moment any contact drilling starts shin guards are mandatory — and in MMA that phase kicks in faster than most sports because striking is literally half of what you're there to learn.

The cheap ones compress after about twenty sessions and stop doing their job right at the point when your kicks are starting to carry real power. What you want is dense foam that holds its shape, full coverage from just below the knee to the instep, and stitching that doesn't come apart under daily use. Sizing goes by height: Small under 170cm, Medium 170–180cm, Large 180–190cm, XL over 190cm.

You'll watch other beginners go through two cheap pairs in the time one good pair is still doing its job.

The GOODNYT Muay Thai Shin Guards are made in the same factory as the gloves — same premium microfibre, same standard throughout. Sand/Smoke and Smoke/Sand at $209.95, White/Sand at $189.95. Shop shin guards here.

Rashguard

If you're grappling — and in MMA you absolutely will be — a rashguard is not optional. It protects your skin from mat burns and bacteria, keeps your sweat off your training partners, and gives your muscles compression that actually helps over a long session. Most gyms make them mandatory for any mat work.

It's also the quickest way to look like you know what you're doing when you walk in.

What to look for: fitted enough that it won't ride up mid-roll, flatlock stitching so seams don't dig in on the ground, and fabric that wicks sweat and dries fast. The GOODNYT Staple Series Short Sleeve Rashguard is $89.95. Black on black, clean logo, no fuss. The kind of thing you just pull on and forget about, every class, for years.

Fight Shorts

Regular gym shorts are not built for what MMA does to them. The second you start throwing high kicks or sprawling on a takedown they bunch up, restrict your movement, and get in the way. Fight shorts are cut specifically to move with you above the knee — wide waistband, stitching that won't blow out when you're scrambling on the mat.

The GOODNYT Staple Series MMA Shorts are $89.95. Same black on black as the rashguard, designed to work as a set. Both pieces together come to $179.90 and you're completely sorted from the waist down for every session.

Mouthguard

In MMA the contact comes from more angles than almost any other sport. A knee in the clinch, an elbow in a scramble, a stray shot during drilling. You don't need one for your very first session but the moment any contact work begins it's non-negotiable — and that moment tends to come earlier than new students expect.

A standard boil-and-bite from any sports store does the job for the first year. About $25, moulded at home in two minutes. Custom dental versions are worth it eventually but not until you're sparring regularly.

Built for the Full Range

Here's the thing about gear when you're starting out. You don't want to show up looking like you've sponsored yourself. And you don't want to spend $400 on gloves before you even know if you're going to stick with it. But you also don't want to buy something that falls apart after three months and have to do it all again.

That's the gap GOODNYT was built to fill.

The gear is minimal by design. No loud colourways, no oversized branding, nothing that dates. The kind of kit that looks clean on day one and still looks clean two years later when you actually know what you're doing.

GOODNYT is designed in Australia specifically for Australian conditions: the humidity, the heat, the year-round training that doesn't really have an off-season. And it's hand-crafted in Thailand, in the same factories that have been producing equipment for fighters competing at the highest level of the sport for decades. That's not a marketing line. That's just where the real craft lives.

You get Thai quality at a price that doesn't punish you for being a beginner. That's the whole point.

The combat range covers your striking: Muay Thai gloves, 7oz MMA gloves, and shin guards. The fightwear range covers the mat: rashguards and fight shorts built to move with you through every scramble, every roll, every round.

Shop the full GOODNYT range at goodnyt.com.au →

Thai crafted. Built different.