Do games athletes wear grips solely to protect their hands or to get a better grip on the bar?

Wearing a leather grip or strap around the bar can help improve your grip endurance and reduce the amount of hand strength you need to hold the bar. It may feel awkward at first, but it is recommended to wear them in order to keep your hands healthy for longer periods of time.
 
Transcript: "It's actually a little bit of both. Using a grip really well can help to improve your grip endurance over time. Most athletes now will throw a leather grip or something over the bar and where the strap holds on puts a lot of the pressure on your wrist instead of on your fingers when you would be gripping a bar with just your naked hand. So because of that it reduces the lever and it also means that you use less hand strength to hold the bar. You just rely on some passive tension through the grip material. There are some things, I never used to wear them on rings because I like the feel of the wood rings in my hand, but over time you have to give a little bit because at a certain point the sport progresses and we're doing 50 ring muscle ups in a workout and if you rip your hands and it sets you back 3, 4, 5 days of training where you can't work on other gymnastic skills because you've got ripped up hands, you need to avoid that and put together more good days in a row. So they sometimes feel really awkward when you first start using them but my general recommendation is the same as learning hook grip for weightlifting. You just have to put them on, start getting used to them, you will get used to them. You don't have to wear them all the time but there are certain times where you'll really want them either for grip strength and endurance or just for protection to keep your hands healthier for longer periods of time."