Those little stickers on the top tube when you buy a mountain bike sure are ominous. “Mountain biking is inherently dangerous,” it warns. But we already knew that. The question is, how do you mitigate risk of injury? Most of us start with a good pair of mountain bike gloves, and that’s a great start. But there’s a good reason you should consider mountain bike hand guards, too.
The best mountain bike gloves on the market can only do so much to protect your hands from abrasions and impacts. They largely serve to protect your palms from your grips, allowing you to avoid blisters and soreness. They will certainly give you a layer of protection from light scrapes from passing branches, but as your speed increases, so too does your risk of encountering an impact that your gloves just can’t counter.
That’s where mountain bike hand guards come in. Our VC Guards add a layer of protection between you and potential impacts from trees, branches, brush, and anything else lurking trailside. VC Guards pull double duty in this sense. The mountain bike hand guards protect your hands of course, but also they protect your gloves from damage.
Mountain bike hand guards like our VC Guards also protect your brake levers, shifters, and handlebars from damage. Brake levers stick out like a sore thumb during a crash, and they’re very likely to take an impact they can’t handle. VC Guards help protect your expensive brake levers from impacts that would otherwise scrape or even snap those pricey components.
Mountain bike hand guards will take the bumps and scrapes on behalf of your knuckles. This becomes even more important the faster you go. Enduro riders, that’s you! When the trails are tight and the trees crowd in, VC guards could be the difference between a minor impact you don’t even notice, and a race or ride-ending knuckle-buster.
Don’t believe me? Pro downhill mountain bikers like Sam Hill already use mountain bike hand guards to protect their digits. And they’re a growing presence at endure races for the same reason.
What makes VC Guards better than the rest?
Any old mountain bike hand guards will do the trick, right? Well, maybe. But with the wide variety of brake levers, shifters, and cockpit setups out there, you can bet not all mountain bike hand guards will offer you the same amount of protection or ease of use.
VC Guards are adjustable, allowing you to place them inboard or outboard to suit your needs and your cockpit. It’s easy to adjust VC Guards, too: just loosen the single bolt and slide the guards into the perfect position. Then snug it all back up.
And VC Guards offers two types of brackets. The longer bracket features a shallower curve and is perfect for just about any brake lever on the market. The shorter bracket has a deeper curve to position the VC Guards perfectly around Shimano brake levers, and to bring the guard closer in toward the handlebars for a sleeker look.
Perhaps more importantly — for the fashion-conscious among us anyway — VC Guards are customizable. You can use the VC Guards website to customize your VC Guards to match the color scheme of your bike. You can add your name, too.