Before you make your mind about whether you need a pair of weightlifting gloves , let’s evaluate the pros and cons of using gloves when you’re lifting that barbell. Especially if you’re new to the weight lifting scene, this is important for you to know.
Pros:
- Weightlifting gloves do provide you with a better and safer grip, period. If you’re one of those who has excessively sweaty hands, a pair of gloves should be on your list of most essential work out gears. These gloves will prevent any unfortunate and dangerous situation due to your slippery palms which may lead to serious injury and can put a full stop over your weight lifting career.
- Weightlifting gloves can protect your palms to form calluses or blisters. While calluses are usually not such a health hazard, rather just an aesthetic issue – blisters can be very painful and will leave your hands of no use for a full day. These painful blisters can hamper your regular weight training routine big time. Gloves will surely help here, no doubt about it.
- These gloves can improve one’s lift capacity and weight training performance, specifically those gloves which comes with wrist wrap. This will tighten one’s grip, hence the strength of grip will increase and will result in enhanced lift performance.
Cons:
Weightlifting gloves will make one’s job difficult when it comes to real performance. Despite their beneficial features like protecting your fingers and palms from calluses and blisters and providing a safer and stronger grip – it can work as a barrier between your hand and those barbells, giving you a false sense of better and stronger grip, when actually you have a poorer grip with bare hands. The thickness of these gloves also acts such way that you won’t be able to grip that bar with adequate firmness.
Long time usage of these gloves could ultimately lead you to have a weaker and poorer grip, but at the same time, you’ll have a false sense of grip strength. If you do weight lifting with bare hands, that will train your grip to achieve natural strength over time – but with thick gloves, your hands will not get that required “training”, and you’ll never achieve a natural grip.
These gloves are also very expensive. Most of these gloves will have a relatively small life span because it will get rubbed with the weight constantly and will wear and tear sooner than one expects. Therefore, you’ll have to be ready to replace gloves more often and this frequent spending can be a burden to one’s overall investment in gym accessories. Though if you do proper research before buying a pair and only invest in gloves which have better user reviews than others, you may save some bucks here.
Should we use weightlifting gloves?
Honestly, there’s no definitive answer and it really depends on the exact requirement of each individual. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your weight training program and what’s your ultimate goal. If the calluses and blisters are not a problem for you, then you don’t need them. If you don’t have a sweaty hand, you don’t those gloves either. Bare hand training (or with some chalk applied on your palms and fingers) is hands down the best and most natural way of training. However, as mentioned above, if you do have sweaty hands or blisters give you a hard time frequently – you have no other way than to buy a good and sturdy pair of weightlifting gloves.