Should you wear weight lifting gloves in the gym? Probably a question you will ask yourself once you begin lifting. For added comfort you may have started wearing weight lifting gloves to help your hands feel more comfortable when gripping the bar. This is common as beginners are bound to find it tough when first starting out as they wont be use to lifting and gripping heavy weight. Let me explain to you why I believe you should NOT wear weight lifting gloves when training.
Wearing Weight Lifting Gloves
The one major issue I have with weight lifting gloves are their ability to take grip strength out of the lift. When you wear weight lifting gloves you are using less grip strength and protecting your hands. You are also taking a lot of work off your wrists and forearms. Weight lifting should help you build grip strength and toughen your hands up, not protect them!
Toughening your hands up and having a firm and solid grip will help you in real life situations such as carrying and gripping heavy objects, unscrewing a lid or even changing a car tyre. Who wants to look big and strong and not be able to unscrew a lid? Strong people in the gym will rarely use weight lifting gloves when training. When was the last time you saw a big strong guy in the gym throw on some weight lifting gloves?
Im not saying they dont but if they do its very rare and they are probably using them to help with a maximum lift. If you want to develop true grip strength forget about using weight lifting gloves. Let your hands get sore and adapt to the heavy weight. Not wearing any gloves will also force your forearms and wrists to get stronger. Here are a few other reasons why I dont recommend wearing weight lifting gloves:
Harder to grip the bar. Weight lifting gloves will make it harder for you to grip the bar and will make the lift feel unnatural. Reason being is that you cannot feel the bar properly through the gloves. If you are lifting with quite a thick bar gloves will make it feel even thicker and make it harder to grip.
Irritate your hands. Constantly wearing gloves can irritate your hands and cause them to sweat. Sweaty hands may actually cause eczema or rashes on your fingers. If you wear gloves try and only wear them when necessary. You dont need to wear them when bicep curling 20 pounds on the bar. Wear them on your heavy sets if you really have to.
Prevent Proper technique. Since weight lifting gloves increase the distance between your hand and the bar, proper technique is often sacrificed. The bench press for example requires the bar to be positioned close to the wrists when gripping it. Weight lifting gloves make this impossible to do preventing you from lifting with maximum force.
When you first start out, weight lifting gloves probably seem a good idea but try and get use to gripping the bar naturally without any gloves. You will get a better feel for the lift and develop incredible grip and wrist strength once you start adding weight to lifts such as the deadlift, bench press, barbell shoulder press and barbell row.
