Powerhandz makes multiple products that essentially add heft and resistance to workouts. The company name obviously focuses on the collection of weighted gloves, so we took on a test of their fingerless version.
Powerhandz set SPY a pair of their weighted gloves for review. Our thoughts below.
Fastening around the hands and wrists like any pair of weightlifting, baseball or golf gloves with a hook and loop closure, the Powerhandz pair adds about one extra pound to each hand. That extra mass on the end of each limb forces the muscles and connective tissue in the hands, arms and shoulders to work a little harder, regardless of the activity in question.
The idea is a common one in sports training. For example, professional boxers who might fight with nine-ounce gloves come fight night will spar with 16 or 18-ounce gloves while training. Hands that feel lighter fly faster. Sprinters will run with a parachute to increase wind resistance in preparation for a race. Competitive runners might jog with a weighted vest to make competition day’s footfalls feel lighter.
Powerhandz glove products take on those training principles and apply them to hand speed, strength and dexterity. If the philosophy is “train hard, play easy,” Powerhandz gloves add a little weight to any hands-based athletic activity.
What We Liked about Powerhandz Weighted Workout Gloves:
Your reviewer for this piece has been an amateur heavyweight boxer for longer than many of his readers have been alive. He sparred professionals over his career and trained for the Golden Gloves. Naturally, boxing became the sport of choice for this review.
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The Powerhandz’s snug, accurate fit made it easy enough to wear under standard boxing gloves. To stand up to the punches of a heavy bag session, the Powerhandz pair needed to show some genuine build quality. They passed that test, all seams holding and all weight remaining in place despite adding a couple of pounds to multiple power shots on a heavy bag.
Most Unique Feature: Comfort
Again, we turned to boxing for the test. The concern became how the gloves would affect the fists within during punches. Would the weights dig into the knuckles or distribute force unevenly throughout the hand?
In practice, the gloves are flexible in all the right places to allow the weight to shift with an impact or motion. That comfort allows the wearer to focus on the sport in progress and not how the hands feel inside the Powerhandz.
What We Didn’t Like about Powerhandz Weighted Workout Gloves:
In the fitness world, the user passes through thresholds or personal goals. For example, as the gym rat works through the weight rack or the dumbbell set, lower weights are discarded for higher numbers as strength increases. Maybe you start doing curls for a couple of weeks with 20 lbs. in each hand. Then you graduate to 25s, 30s, etc. As the workouts pass and strength evolves, weight or resistance increases.
The only weakness for Powerhandz gloves is that there’s no built-in or designed way to increase the weight. The resistance they add to a given activity remains a constant. A modular method to adding weight might come in handy. (Sorry.)
The Verdict: A little extra effort couldn’t hurt!
The Powerhandz weighted gloves do precisely what they’re designed to do. They add a little extra weight into a given workout to force a bit more effort and to increase strength and dexterity over the long haul. How effective they are all comes down to how often and how well the wearer puts them to use in the gym. We would have liked a way to increase the resistance by adding more weight, but for what they are, these gloves do a great job.
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