Cycling 101: Do you need cycling gloves? What are the types of cycling gloves?

 Cycling Gloves are always an area of contention for beginner riders, a lot of them find it to be a pretentious or an unnecessary expense.

Today we talk about the need of cycling gloves, and what are the kinds you need? 

Do you need cycling gloves? 

YES and NO! You don't technically need cycling gloves to start cycling or to enjoy cycling, but gloves make riding a better experience. 

How? 

They improve grip by preventing the sweat from your palms from reaching the handlebar, and make it slippery, even if you have the best of cycling grips, when they are sweaty they don't feel good, you lose comfort, and also you're prone to slipping your palms.

They also prevent injuries, I once hit a deep pothole that I missed seeing, and rolled over the bike, and I ended up using my palms to stop my fall, and the gloves took most of the damage, and I escaped with minor scrapes. Because the gloves took all the damage ( They are like helmets, but for your hands ), and on bumpy roads, gel padded gloves are a life saver. 

What kind of gloves do you need? 

There are too many combinations, but we can broadly categorize them as per the weather needs: 

Half Finger: 

The half finger gloves are perfect from summer, some of them even have a microfiber corner to easily wick the sweat on your forehead.  I have these from Firefox, which have gel padding, and pull tabs to remove them easily 

Full Finger: 

You see the neon and the blue gloves in the image above? Yes, I have two sets of full finger gloves, the blue ones are the ones I wear normally, and then the neon green ones are the ones I wear when riding in cold weather. 

The blue ones are MTB gloves from Decathlon, and the neon green ones are Fleece Gloves from Decathlon, made for winter cycling and are good enough for a temperature that is below 10 Degrees Centigrade. 

The blue ones have a memory foam padding ( which isn't a good as gel padding, but still better than no padding) and the green ones are too thick to need padding. 

Both have conductive touch points on the thumb, and two fingers, and microfiber to remove sweat from your forehead. 

Here is a video of me talking more about them: 

Some of the best gloves I could find on Amazon: 

Padded Half Finger: https://amzn.to/35KVcHC Padded Half Finger: https://amzn.to/3qrPZfK Full Finger with Grips: https://amzn.to/35HXbwc