Should you wear weight lifting gloves for your training sessions? This is a very common question for both new and experienced gym-goers. Protection is a major factor when carrying out functional exercises.
It is critical to provide protection to your lumbar area, knees, shoulders and hands whenever you’re exercising because these are the major parts of your body that take on the stress of your every movement.
This is why whether you do weight lifting exercises or you cross train, you need hand protection to protect them during friction movements on either the pull up bar, from rope climbing and everything else that might harm them.
Although hand gloves are great for the protection of your hands, this is not the only benefit you get by wearing them while working out. Let’s go through the benefits and advantages hand protection has to offer.
- Better grip
Hands get sweaty during a workout. When this happens, your grip on the pull up bar loosens and your hands can slip, leaving you open to the danger of getting injured. A pair of leather hand grips will improve your grip on weights and you won’t have to worry about that or the weights slipping out of your hand while you’re holding them over your body. The textured leather palm design of the hand grip gloves was developed to enhance comfort and to give you a better grip. This works very well whether you are into cross training, gymnastics, powerlifting, weightlifting or Fitness.
- Minimizes the pressure upon hands
Since you use your fingers for different functions such as pushing, pulling and snagging, the pressure applied by the weights or tools you’re using goes directly into your palms. This can make your palms feel really sore and swallowed. The use of hand gloves helps to reduce some of that pressure making it easier for you to hold on to the bars or weights you’re using. Also, they increase the pressure capacity on your hands.
- Provide wrist assistance
A good pair of gloves should have a wrist band you can wrap on your wrists for better support. A band wrist can act like extra ligaments and tendons when you bend your wrists, getting you rid of a lot of the stress that’s on them.
- Increase your lifting strength
Hand gloves with wrist wraps distribute the weight across your forearms instead of leaving it all to your fingers. This will allow you to lift heavier rather than doing it with bare hands. If you want maximum performance from your weight lifting sessions, you should invest in such a pair of hand gloves. When the wrist wraps take some of the load off your wrists, it enables the intended muscle to reach its point of positive failure. This is especially great for deadlifts, pull ups and barbell rows.
- Reduces the formation of callouses and blisters
If you’ve been lifting weights for some time, you’ve probably realized that your hands are becoming dry and calloused from the barbells and dumbbells and what not. Weight lifting gloves won’t prevent the formation of callouses and blisters but it will considerately reduce it. Grip pads can also be a great help for this by reducing the hand friction.
Wearing weight lifting gloves is a matter of personal preference, but as you can see, there are many valid advantages to wearing them. If you are still not that convinced, the only thing left for you to do is give them a try.
If so, here are key features you should be looking for in a great pair of hand gloves:
- Leather or neoprene materials for providing a better grip and last longer
- Fingerless gloves allows your hands to breath and won’t build up sweat
- Built-in adjustable wrist wraps
- Tight fit for providing the best grip, but just enough so they don’t cut off circulation
I hope you’ve found this article helpful for deciding whether or not to give weight lifting hand gloves a chance. If you have more things to add, please leave a comment. We would be happy to hear your opinion.