Thokk Glove Overview - Problematic Safety & Expectations - Julian Schuetze

Hey everyone, Julian Schuetze here to review the Thokk Gloves. As is usual with my posts, this is more of an overview than a traditional review as I mostly operate off of a stream of consciousness rather than a structured review that covers every facet. There are many, many other videos that cover exactly what the gloves look like, how they operate, the materials, etc. I will not cover those aspects of the glove as I feel it would be redundant. Instead, I'm ​coming at these gloves with the perspective of a high intensity fencer and want to outline the safety issues I have with these gloves. Forewarning, this is not a kind overview. I have a lot of problems with these gloves and I will address all of them directly. 

Here's the TLDR: I do not think these are remotely sufficient for Longsword even with the addon, and I'm honestly disinclined to say these are adequate for any steel/synthetic weapon for high intensity sparring due to multiple safety flaws: Namely the wrist, top of fingers, and between the knuckles. The longsword addon does not do much to address most of these issues. And where I think these gloves do perform well, does not justify the $300+ cost.

Disclosure: These are my wife's gloves, which she won from SoCal 2017. But because we have relatively the same hand size, I fit in them perfectly fine. In fact, because she has wide hands but short fingers, these gloves don't fit her properly at all. So if you have short fingers relative to your hand width, these won't work well for you at all.

​As I mentioned previously, I participate in HEMA as a combat sport. I enjoy high intensity sparring and competition, and am willing to be struck quite hard and as such, my expectations of gear is quite high. My normal kit are progauntlets, or the HF armory gauntlets - both of which provide good protection for my use and I am happy with. Unfortunately, the Thokks fall far below these standards, and I will cover why I think these gloves are a safety hazard and are not particularly suitable for much at all. 

Firstly the biggest issue I have is the wrist protection - it's all soft material, and there is a legitimate gap where there is no protection at all. There is a large section of the wrist which the only protection is soft padding. Even medium powered shots to this area hurt a lot, and I would not want to take a strike at full speed there at all - I'm pretty sure it could lead to injury considering the pain I was feeling. If a sword were to sneak into the area where there's literally 0 protection, then...yeah. 

You could cut out some plastic to shape and insert it to protect the wrist better and it would solve this problem. But I really feel like this is something that I shouldn't have to do myself - this is a common sense feature that should be included from the get-go. But because of the way the foam is inserted in the underglove for the wrist, you'd have to make sure that the hard protection doesn't slide around. So I wouldn't consider this a particularly simple fix.

Second issue I have is how there's once again no hard protection on the top of the index finger and bottom of the pinkey. I once again asked to be hit there, and it hurt a lot with strikes that didn't even come close to a high intensity tournament. If you were to hold your sword in a hammer grip and cover this part with your thumb, then that's no issue. But if you wanted to hold your sword like a hammer, then there are plenty of clamshells that you can do that with. The quillion protects some of the finger, and the longsword addon protects the outside. But the inside of the top of the finger is an exposed area.

Then there's sections between the fingers and knuckles. The underglove has layers of soft padding and fingertip protectors (one of which came sharp and cracked, which hurt my finger a lot until I took it out and filed it down).

I had to do a modification almost right away with these. Because the glove material is stretchy, what I found would happen is that my fingers would start slipping under the fingertip protectors, meaning that if I got hit in the finger, the protector would go into my finger rather than the hilt of the sword. I just put some tape around the fingertips to lock my fingers in there so they stay where they should. This is a simple fix, but not one I feel like I should have to make - especially one that I almost immediately identified I would need to do after just a few minutes of wearing the glove.

The overglove has a couple very small...beads? of hard protection on top. These are very small, about 1.5cm long, and can be squished horizontally and don't cover the width of the finger. On top of being very small, then there's just nothing in between these sections. There's soft padding with the underglove, but both these sections are very wide - around 2.5cm long. Very easy to be hit there and the soft padding is just not enough. They remind me of motorcycle gloves in this regard. Because of that, I wouldn't recommend using these gloves at all without the longsword addon. Getting hit in these exposed areas is no joke. I was just tapping them with my sword, and my knuckles already hurt. I took the glove off and they were already red and pretty tender. If I were to receive a dedicated strike with a sword at these areas, I'm pretty sure I'd get a break at worst, a bad bone bruise at best.

When holding a sidesword, I found that the knucklebow protected the area that was already protected, and both sides are the exposed parts of the gloves. Any strike/thrust to these areas would just be hitting soft padding. Again, a dedicated strike that hits these areas I feel could easily cause physical damage to your hands. I couldn't particularly hold it comfortably with the longsword addon either, so I consider this a bust as well. 

Ok, so the longsword addon. This piece costs an additional 45usd and oh boy do I take issue with these. Both from how they don't particularly do their job well, but how they can give a false sense of impression that these are actually suitable for longsword sparring. IMO, if you are to use these gloves at all, this is not an optional piece. You need it.

The longsword addon does address covering the gap between the knuckles...sort of. My fingertips are still exposed while wearing these, however the caps and first layer of hard protection are what's visible...except for my index where it creeps up enough that those are partially exposed. I find that the addon doesn't sit forward very well, and through standard use will slip back a bit, which does expose the first layer of gaps between the fingers. The addon attaches to the gloves in a way that keeps them on the glove well, but doesn't secure them particularly well to the knuckle area so it can shift around a lot. Shifting, again, exposes your knuckles. Not good. 

And yes, I was wearing it correctly - I had the big loop around the palm, and the little loop around the ring and middle finger. Both sizes are L so they're matched. I'm not sure what's going on here, but it slides a ton, very easily. Just moving around a sword and switching grips is enough to start shifting it back and exposing my knuckles. 

What really makes me unsatisfied with this addon is if I hold the sword with a handshake grip, which is the entire point of having these fingered gloves, my pinky and ring finger are completely exposed. The cover fails to cover the exposed knuckles.  So there's 3 clear exposed areas when just holding the sword.

The last thing that bothers me was how even if someone were to hit my hand in the perfect spot with the cover, where the most protection was, the strike inflicted a significant amount of pain into my hand regardless. Did it break? No, but it also was not a very hard shot. If I were to participate in a particularly intensive match, I would be worried about my hands' health even with everything "going right". 

To recap on safety:

• The wrist has no hard protection and has a small section with literally 0 padding.
• The top of the index finger and bottom of the pinkey have soft padding and are exposed. The addon only mitigates one side of the index.
• Between the knuckles are exposed. The addon covers these, unless you go to a handshake grip which then the ring and pinky are exposed. Or, the addon can slide very easily, exposing these areas too.

Being hit in an exposed area with a harder strike, I'm quite confident, would lead to injury. Being hit in a non-exposed area leads to a high amount of pain, and depending on the area, I believe could also lead to mild injury. 

To accentuate this and to bring an outside perspective, Joshua Barnett recently wore his pair for the longsword tournament at SoCal Swordfight 2023, and here's what he had to say on the HEMA Florida Discord: 
"Regarding the thokks; barely made it out of the longsword tourney with hands intact. Fair amount of torn skin and bone bruising and I only fought four matches lol. [...] Also so many shots sneak past the wrist protection, still lumpy."

I judged his pool for those four fights, and I didn't see any major hand shots either. This is not the testimony I'd want to hear from $300+ gloves (including the covers) that claim to be suitable for this purpose. The gloves objectively didn't do their job well enough here. I also know multiple people who will outright tell you that these are inadequate for longsword. So I really feel it should stop being marketed as such since he was wearing the longsword covers and still faced injury. 

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Edit - 2/28/2023: RJ McKeehan, head of SoCal Swords had this to say about the gloves: "I did 3 sparring matches with a pair and was like nope these hits hurt way too much." - Once again, not a ringing endorsement. RJ is also a high intensity fencer, so once again it seems like these gloves aren't up to the task for this use case.

Worth bringing up, in contrast, Paul J. Barolet with Kron sparred with these for a few months and didn't receive any significant injuries until tournament where his thumb got a bad bruise. I'm not sure about Paul's level of sparring intensity, but I know that Kron also is generally quite intense. This to me is to illustrate that although I am concerned about these areas, you still have to be hit there in order for it to be a problem - which can be avoided through skill and/or luck. So my overview here is to outline potential for injuries and where that will have the highest probability of happening but doesn't mean that I'm doomsaying that your hands will be broken just by using them. 
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For singlehanded weapons, I don't really know. Messers I find can hit just as hard (if not harder) than longsword. So I wouldn't wear these for those as well. Sidesword, there are multiple exposed areas on both sides of the crossguard and you can't really wear the cover to deal with that. The side of the pinkey is also exposed, so that's out as well. Maybe sabre if you have a larger cup hilt on it? But then the issue of the exposed wrist rears its head again. I think maybe rapier is the best use as these can fit in most rapier guards I've seen, and provide way, way better protection than most leather gloves I've seen out there. But they still wouldn't be perfect, I saw someone break their pinkey at SoCal Swordfight 2023 while wearing them in their rapier match. I imagine it would have been a much worse injury with standard thin leather though. 

I have a couple notes on material quality as well. As mentioned before, I've found some of the fingertip protectors to not be shaped/cleaned up well which left sharp corners which dug into my fingers. So I had to clean those up myself. My cover was part of a bad batch of plastic which broke while shaping, so that also needs to be replaced. I also already have a tear in the underglove section. I'm not particularly thrilled at how much wear and tear I've experienced with these, despite only using them a few times now. 

What I've found I end up using these gloves for, is if I'm doing some more intense drilling, or some freeplay, light/friendly sparring. Once they start breaking in they do feel pretty comfortable. I just don't think these are good enough for intensive sparring or tournaments of...almost any kind. If I paid for these gloves, I'd be very upset as they don't reach anywhere near the level of claims that are out there. I basically consider these a mildly better Red Dragon glove, except that these have exposed wrists. So I find you definitely will have to mod something for that. 

I really didn't want to be too negative with this review, but to be honest I just barely see any redeeming qualities. Every time I think to myself "oh this aspect is decent" I look at the price, and at other gloves available, and I just don't feel like it's justified. The best use case I can think of these gloves are that they are good for rapier, and are good for very light sparring/freeplay. But then does the cost of $300+ justify those uses? I don't think so. But that's me. If you do not participate in hard sparring, have the spare income, and you just want some comfortable gloves that will do their job of keeping your hands safe from light incidental contact, then these are great. So, as with anything, your milage may vary. But I know for myself, and especially as a tournament organizer, I would not allow these gloves in my events due to insufficient protection.