What are the best type of gloves to wear while mountain biking?
What are the best type of gloves to wear while mountain biking?
There are hundreds of designs and manufacturers who make cycling gloves. A lot of cyclists make their choice of which glove to wear when cycling based on the price. If you only consider pricing when evaluating cycling gloves, it will only take a ride or two for you to start kicking yourself and wishing you hadn’t based your cycling glove purchase decision on price!
There are many variations and design features that you should consider before choosing which cycling glove is the best fit for your MTB cycling adventure.
Full finger cycling gloves versus fingerless (aka half finger) cycling gloves? This can be all about your own cycling glove preferences but you'll often see road bikers and gravel bike riders wearing half finger or fingerless gloves for added comfort during their ride. If you are mountain biking, full finger gloves will provide more protection against single-track obstacles such as trees, breyers or tree limbs. Full finger cycling gloves will also help protect your skin if you were ever to have an OTB situation.
Padded cycling gloves versus non-padded cycling gloves? Both full finger and fingerless cycling gloves will often provide options of having extra padding built into the glove. After breaking my wrist while snowboarding in college, I have experimented with using padded and non-padded cycling gloves. Cycling gloves with large or oversized padding are oftentimes not preferred while mountain biking because it can throw off your grip or make regripping the handlebar difficult in times when your grip is needed the most.
Ventilation and heat control of the cycling glove. Having a breathable mesh material on the top of the gloves will help ventilation. Full finger gloves are obviously a little warmer than half fingered gloves.
Consider finding a cycling glove that provides comfort while wiping your eyes, face or nose while riding. Sweat in your eye, the recurring itch and needing to wipe your nose are quite frequent when cycling. That is why it is good to have a glove that has comfortable material for this purpose. Clarino leather is awesome. Our gloves feature this on the inside riser of the thumb and the entire palm of the cycling glove.
Cold weather cycling gloves. All cold weather cycling gloves are full fingered and typically made of material that is thicker and allows less wind penetration so your hands stay warm while cycling in cold weather. Most cold weather cycling gloves will cause hand sweat unless it is almost freezing outside.
The area that you live in and it's temperature and weather patterns are also a factor.
Velcro closures on cycling gloves. We are not a fan of Velcro closures on cycling gloves because over time and machine washing the Velcro tends to curl, fray and lose it's sticking power. None of our MTB gloves have Velcro but instead have an expandable 2ml Neoprene band for easy on and off.
Check out our collection of cycling gloves here.
