So I received my Gympaws in the mail today and couldn't wait to try them out at the gym. So after putting them through their paces I'm giving them a 4/5 and generally a thumbs up.
First I'll start with what I like about them. I love the open design. Since they cover only the part of your hand that needs protection and the part in contact with your hand is neoprene, I found that my hands felt very comfortable and didn't get too sweaty. Next the part of the GymPaw that comes in contact with weights and bars is leather so any kind of textured metal is completely slip proof. If you happen to be doing pull-ups on a painted steel bar, there is a tiny bit of slip but nothing a little added grip strength can't fix. Finally, the gloves protect your hands perfectly. I felt no stress on the skin on the palm of my hand and after 2 hours of a variety of free weights, bars, dips, pull-ups and TRX exercises the Gympaws' leather was unscathed. If that changes, I'll post again.
So now for the minor disappointments. The first thing I'll mention is a nit-pick and probably not much that can be done about this without some space age materials. That problem is thickness. Gympaws are remarkably thin, I would guess about 5mm. However this means that when you wrap your hand around a chin-up bar, you are adding 1 cm to the diameter of the bar. For me, this is fine since this will just add to my grip strength over time. However, for those with small hands, this could be an issue.
Now for the big issue: build consistency. In the image below, you can see that the two pads are not exactly the same size:
This is minor and normally I wouldn't mention it, but when you add it to different stitching on the left and on the right side it adds up to a more prominent annoyance:
So for ease of comparison I put the two pads side by side in exactly the same spot. Here You can see that the stitching is slightly off between the two pads. Now in this image, the Gympaw on the right is the right handed one. It just so happens that the right handed Gympaw is also the slightly smaller one. With the stitching of the right Gympaw, you can see that the top of the stitching marked C ends higher than the stitching on the left Gympaw marked A. You can also see that the stitching marked C is right next to the end of the Gympaw where-as the left Gympaw is slightly away from the edge marked B. What this means is that your hand ends up sitting higher up on the right Gympaw which also happens to be the smaller one. Here's what these two tiny details cause:
On the inside you can see that the pad almost entirely covers my left pinky and most of my left ring finger. On the right side, when my fingers wrap around a bar all my finger tips make contact with the thing I'm gripping (which I like since I feel more in control). On my left side, I feel like I'm on shaky ground since pinky ends up being entirely covered by neoprene and the ring finger is half covered. You can see this from the back as well, here you can see both Gympaws are put on the same (there isn't one side riding higher than the other):
The issue isn't so much that some of my fingers are touching and some aren't since each person will have fingers of different lengths and there's no way the manufacturer can make sure everyones finger tips will contact the bar they are gripping. The problem is that one side is different than the other, so your brain immediately compares the two and judges one to be less secure.
To be fair, after I figured out why the two felt different and forced myself to focus on my work out again the brain forgot about it and I stopped noticing it after 20 minutes or so. Kind of like getting used to an itchy sweater. All in all I'm pretty happy not to have shredded hands anymore and it's possible that my pair is not representative of the average build consistency. Again, I feel this is a 4/5 product so walk away with that since the product over all is great!
First I'll start with what I like about them. I love the open design. Since they cover only the part of your hand that needs protection and the part in contact with your hand is neoprene, I found that my hands felt very comfortable and didn't get too sweaty. Next the part of the GymPaw that comes in contact with weights and bars is leather so any kind of textured metal is completely slip proof. If you happen to be doing pull-ups on a painted steel bar, there is a tiny bit of slip but nothing a little added grip strength can't fix. Finally, the gloves protect your hands perfectly. I felt no stress on the skin on the palm of my hand and after 2 hours of a variety of free weights, bars, dips, pull-ups and TRX exercises the Gympaws' leather was unscathed. If that changes, I'll post again.
So now for the minor disappointments. The first thing I'll mention is a nit-pick and probably not much that can be done about this without some space age materials. That problem is thickness. Gympaws are remarkably thin, I would guess about 5mm. However this means that when you wrap your hand around a chin-up bar, you are adding 1 cm to the diameter of the bar. For me, this is fine since this will just add to my grip strength over time. However, for those with small hands, this could be an issue.
Now for the big issue: build consistency. In the image below, you can see that the two pads are not exactly the same size:
So for ease of comparison I put the two pads side by side in exactly the same spot. Here You can see that the stitching is slightly off between the two pads. Now in this image, the Gympaw on the right is the right handed one. It just so happens that the right handed Gympaw is also the slightly smaller one. With the stitching of the right Gympaw, you can see that the top of the stitching marked C ends higher than the stitching on the left Gympaw marked A. You can also see that the stitching marked C is right next to the end of the Gympaw where-as the left Gympaw is slightly away from the edge marked B. What this means is that your hand ends up sitting higher up on the right Gympaw which also happens to be the smaller one. Here's what these two tiny details cause:
On the inside you can see that the pad almost entirely covers my left pinky and most of my left ring finger. On the right side, when my fingers wrap around a bar all my finger tips make contact with the thing I'm gripping (which I like since I feel more in control). On my left side, I feel like I'm on shaky ground since pinky ends up being entirely covered by neoprene and the ring finger is half covered. You can see this from the back as well, here you can see both Gympaws are put on the same (there isn't one side riding higher than the other):
The issue isn't so much that some of my fingers are touching and some aren't since each person will have fingers of different lengths and there's no way the manufacturer can make sure everyones finger tips will contact the bar they are gripping. The problem is that one side is different than the other, so your brain immediately compares the two and judges one to be less secure.
To be fair, after I figured out why the two felt different and forced myself to focus on my work out again the brain forgot about it and I stopped noticing it after 20 minutes or so. Kind of like getting used to an itchy sweater. All in all I'm pretty happy not to have shredded hands anymore and it's possible that my pair is not representative of the average build consistency. Again, I feel this is a 4/5 product so walk away with that since the product over all is great!
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