Just as gymnastics is best learned in progressions, gymnasts should adjust to wearing gymnastics grips in progressive succession, also.
We suggest young gymnasts, unaccustomed to executing their skills wearing something on their hands, begin with a palm guard before advancing to the, well, more advanced dowel style grip.
Gymnasts will definitely benefit from having a barrier between their hand and the bars or rings. While no grip fully protects against what is known in gymnastics world as a “rip” — a tear in the skin of the palm due to heat and friction from the forces exerted in performing bar skills — palm guards and dowel grips do a lot to reduce wear and tear on an athlete’s hands from uneven bars, parallel bars and rings work.
To start out, we recommend our lightweight leather in our Lightweight 1st Palm Guard, our Pink Pixie and our Gecko Palm Guard styles. These beginner gymnastics grips use an easy on-off velcro hook and loop closure and are made with our softest leather we like to call our “baby suede”. Super easy to break in and wear, your beginning gymnast should begin wearing these one to two days a week in their workout.
The lightweight leather comes in three styles and several colors for both male and female gymnasts, all with the two finger holes design. Their small size and two finger hole design are perfect for little hands!
Female gymnasts usually continue to use two finger hole designs through out their progressions as gymnasts and wearers of grips. Male gymnasts will likely want to transition to a three finger hole style on high bar, as their hands grow larger.
As with all grips and guards, you’ll want to customize the finger holes, very carefully, to fit your little one’s fingers. We strongly suggest you use sand paper to do this. Attempting to cut them will tear the holes making them unwearable, unsafe and violates our and your manufacturer’s warranty excluding them from our return policy.
Gently sliding a piece of rolled sandpaper through the hole will do the trick. It just takes a bit of time and a little patience with frequent sizing checks. It’s worth it, though, as once they’re too big, they can’t be made smaller.
Though they may be little and only a beginner, your gymnast will begin to feel like the bigger gymnasts once they get their very own first pair of palm guards!
TEN-O Gymnastics 