POWERHANDZ Pushes The Limits Of Athletic Training Gloves

Athletic training gloves have, by and large, stayed relatively the same through the years. Functionally, the use case for them has pertained to working out in the gym, lifting weights and other muscle-building exercises. Aesthetically, Nike’s foray into outfitting NFL teams has helped popularized gloves as a cool accessory to have among fans. New entrants in this market segment are more high-tech-based than a practical union between these two key facets.

According to the SFIA, conditioning activities had a domestic growth spurt of nearly eight percent between 2010 to 2013, in terms of net participation. Working out with weights, specifically, has shown signs of a steady rise among age groups as early as six to 12-year olds to as late as 55 to 64-year olds, close to 15 percent uptick per grouping. Therefore, the increase in participation levels has also projected out consumer spending on sports recreation clothing to 57 percent from 2014 versus 2013, with a 6.5 percent net for those spending as well during this time frame.

Yet, one wouldn’t necessarily first think of basketball, as a sport and its skills, to be the conduit towards establishing the genesis of an athletic training gloves brand–redesigning the very nature of this product category…

Former Sacramento Kings’ point guard, Jason “White Chocolate” Williams, drew the inspiration behind conceiving training gloves that can be applied to basketball, whom once upon a time was deemed as one of the best ball handlers in the NBA. For Darnell Jones, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of POWERHANDZ, he recalls to SportTechie that there was a Williams interview where he mentioned that while working out on his ball handling, he would dribble the ball with gardening gloves, making the ball more difficult to handle. That interview elicited the revelation by Jones to try it out for himself, paving the way to start a company around this basis thereafter.

When Jones attempted to practice these dribbling drills with gardening gloves on, too, he felt that its effects were not enough as is. It would be more compelling to add something to make the exercise more difficult. Therefore, he began using ankle weights around his wrists coupled with the gloves, which contributed along the lines desired.

“When I initially started wearing them, it was the most difficult ball handling drill I had ever done. The ball was constantly slipping out of my hand,” says Jones.

“I noticed a mental benefit immediately after removing the gloves, because I now had one of my senses back being touch (dexterity). However, after maybe a month of working with the wrist weights and gloves, I really started to notice a difference in my handle; I was able to do things with the ball I had never done,” Jones continued.

Thus, Jones and Danyel Surrency Jones, POWERHANDZ’s Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, really wanted to create a product that was equally functional and aesthetically pleasing as well, with the enhanced, nuanced feature set that isn’t offered elsewhere on its own. It’s important for POWERHANDZ’s gloves, design-wise, to be easily recognizable from standard training gloves, feeling good and different when athletes wear them.

The first step POWERHANDZ went through in its research and development was searching for an existing product. They then began the patent process. Once that’s approved, they developed a working prototype and start seeking out manufacturers. Several different manufacturers around the world, in fact, were sourced out in order to make sure they could carry out a high quality product, where it can withstand the high intensity training by users. Numerous revisions took place, adjustments and improvements that, indeed, carried out the intended finished product ideal.

POWERHANDZ’s flagship product is the Anti-Grip Weighted Training Gloves (available for sports like basketball, football, baseball, soccer, and golf). They have weight distributed across the top side of the glove as well as an anti-grip-based material on the palm side of the glove, serving the purpose of making the user work harder during drills. The weight resistance on the gloves aids strength in the hand and arm muscles. Increased hand speed is another byproduct of wearing these gloves. And after completing workout exercises, athletes could potentially have heightened confidence when they take off the gloves.

“The hand has several different flex points and not a lot of muscle or fat separating it from the skin,” states Jones, in terms of the concerted effort to have the gloves constructed in the way that they are.

“So, we needed to make sure it was comfortable and flexible enough to allow the hand to move freely. We also strategically placed weight all the way to the finger tips in order to make sure we were increasing finger strength,” added Jones.

Although POWERHANDZ offers gloves slightly tailored for the aforementioned specific sports, the similarities with all of them presides with the iron sand that’s used for the resistance component. The difference between the gloves lies in in the material used on the palm. The topside of the gloves are made with highly durable four-way nylon fabric. The palm of the different styles are synthetic and genuine leather.

Having beta-tested the gloves among pro athletes, trainers, strength coaches, and amateur athletes, such feedback propelled POWERHANDZ forward. There are very few sports where the hands are not instrumental to excel in them, and even less products regularly used to improve hand speed and dexterity. POWERHANDZ is currently in the process of doing a specific, scientific study to support findings with its products, with regards to skill development stemming from an athlete’s hands.

Conversely, it’s quite important for POWERHANDZ to handicap the athlete in their training at first and then see the results from that when they take off the gloves. As with any method of training, the user should want to make the task more difficult. It can be as basic as doing a bench press rather than just push-ups, or running with ankle weights on rather than without them. For example with basketball, guards can wear these gloves while performing cone dribbling drills whereas big men during catching post-entry passes.

“Like any other type of training, success happens over repetition,” believes Jones.

POWERHANDZ pushes the limits of athletic training gloves, as how they’ve been typically produced for. Potentially, it changes the way athletes can improve their hand-eye coordination by placing extra friction between the hands and the respective sport’s object.