The Angles90 Grips are a compact, lightweight solution to doing neutral and rotating grip exercises. More than that, the Angles90 Grips can also be used as gym handles. These ergonomic Pull-Up Handles from the Italian brand Angles90 promise great versatility. In this review, we’ll go over all the ins and outs of these Pull-Up Handles and Gym Grips. We’ll test them for Calisthenics exercises, including push and pull movements, and assess how well the Angles90 grips perform in the gym.
You can also watch my Angles90 Grips Review on YouTube:
🔑Key Takeaways
- The Angles90 Grips have a very comfortable, ergonomic shape. They fit perfectly into your hands.
- You can easily adjust the length of the straps so they fit more pull-up bars and other gym equipment.
- The ergonomic shape is less well-suited for exercises where your grip style needs to change, such as skin-the-cat or back lever.
- The straps dig into your knuckles during push exercises, making the Angles90 Grips a poor fit for exercises like the chest press.
- There are better options, including Gymnastic Rings, which are far superior to pull-up handles.
First Look at the Angles90 Grips
The look of these handles is simple but striking. In bright orange, they stand out immediately. The Angles90 Grips have an ergonomic, slightly bent shape designed to fit a closed fist better while hanging. The grips also curve slightly inwards, all to make your grip on them as comfortable and strong as possible with the limited surface area available.
The bright orange contrasts with a black logo in thick lettering. The straps are likewise black, giving the handles a nice, contrasting appearance.
The handles have slits at either end to adjust the remaining strap length. You can wrap the straps around the slits to shorten them and adjust the height.
The handles are 13,7cm long, with a tapering girth of 34mm at the centre and gradually narrowing at the ends. They are made of plastic and feel quite smooth to the touch.
Exercising with the Angles90 Grips
For good Pull-Up Handles, we want a good grip and flexible, durable straps that allow for greater versatility, such as neutral- or rotating-grip exercises. They need to be at least alright as stand-ins for a normal Pull-Up Bar, and provide a good addition in exercise variety. We also want them to be easy to use, not too hard to attach or remove and ideally suitable as gym grips, too.
The first thing I noticed is the texture. These grips are quite smooth. They feel good when you first grip them, but they also get slippery fast. If you’re in for more than one exercise, Liquid Chalk or Calisthenics Gloves might be necessary. For just a pair of handles, that isn’t ideal. The ergonomic shape, though, makes them feel very comfortable in your hands. They fit nicely in the hand and provide an optimal shape to close your fist around.
The Angles90 Grips are great for exercises where you don’t change your grip style. Exercises like Pull-Ups and Leg Raises keep your grip the same, and this is where the Angles90 grips excel.
Things change when you’re doing exercises where your grip actively changes, such as with a skin-the-cat. The shape of these grips is for a specific hold, which is intuitive and natural to grip, and to keep holding them like that. It is doable to do these exercises, but a bit uncomfortable, and you can really feel that “bulge” shape shifting. The discomfort when the handles move inside your hands does detract from one of the core features we’re looking for in Pull-Up Handles: versatility.
The strap goes through the centre of the handle, and you place your middle finger through it. It’s not a problem with pull exercises, as the straps form a loop that is wide enough for your finger to fit through unobstructed. The straps are also long enough that they don’t cut into your fingers during rotating exercises.
For push exercises, this is not an ideal placement at all. The straps pull taut over your knuckles, the backs of your hands, and even your forearms. Especially your knuckles bear the brunt of the strap digging in, for example, while doing chest presses.
A nice feature of the Angles90 Grips is the ability to shorten the straps. You do this by winding them around the grips and through the slits. You can do this in three “settings”: long, medium, or short. The difference is simply whether you don’t use the slits (long), use one slit (medium) or both slits (short) to shore up the strap.
The straps remain equally flexible in all three settings, and the loop for your middle fingers remains open as well. I like the medium setting for my pull-ups since the shorter straps do mean less swing and a more “pull-up bar” feel. I also like the medium or short setting for use as gym handles.
Pricing Overview of the Angles90 Grips
The Angles90 Grips cost €34,99 excluding shipping. They sometimes have promotional shipping.
Conclusions About the Angles90 Grips
There is some good and some bad with the Angles90 Grips. They look nice, and the ergonomic shape is very comfortable to hold for standard pull exercises. That’s where these Pull-Up Handles work best. That same shape that makes them comfortable for exercises like pull-ups, makes them less ideal (and even a little uncomfortable) if you want to do exercises where you grip changes, such as skin-the-cat or even just the backlever.
The grips are quite smooth, and if you start sweating, you’ll need to either dry them and your hands or use Liquid Chalk.
The Angles90 Grips are wholly unsuited for push exercises, in my opinion. There is no way to prevent the straps from digging deep between your knuckles when doing chest presses or other exercises where you push the handles away from you.
I don’t recommend these Pull-Up Handles if you want to do push exercises or more advanced movements like a skin-the-cat.
That makes the Angles90 Grips a specialised tool for pull exercises. For this, these grips are very comfortable. You can do your neutral-grip and rotating-grip pull-ups very comfortably with these grips on a horizontal bar. Being able to adjust the strap length is also a nice feature, giving you the option to adjust the height and stability somewhat. They are also good as gym grips for, again, pull exercises, but not push exercises.
Are these the best Pull-Up Handles? No, they are not. But in my mind, that doesn’t even matter. You can do everything Pull-Up Handles can do with Gymnastic Rings and much more. The rings do not necessarily need another pull-up bar to hang these mini-pull-up bars from. Gymnastic Rings are superior in every way, from cost (if you include the need for a pull-up bar) to versatility.
If you want to create your own gym setup that can handle all your push and pull exercises and all grip styles, you should consider recreating our budget-minimalist Calisthenics Home Gym.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Angles90 Grips
Here are a few more frequently asked questions about the Angles90 Grips we found:
Does Angles90 ship worldwide?
Yes, Angles90 ships its flagship product, the Angles90 Grips, worldwide. Shipping times vary and depend on your distance from Italy. Shipping costs also depend on your distance from Italy.
Are the Angles90 Grips worth it?
The Angles90 Grips are good for standard pull exercises like pull-ups, with neutral or rotating grip positions. They are less well-suited for exercises where your grip style changes, like a skin-the-cat, and the Angles90 Grips do not perform well with push exercises as the straps dig into your knuckles.
