Adamant Barbell has the best and newest work out gloves, lifting straps and lifting hooks on the market today.
Work out gloves are useful for lifting weights. They can increase the amount of weight you can lift and they prevent blisters and callouses.
Gripping a steel bar tightly and lifting a heavy weight will rub hard enough on your hands to create blisters, if your hands are soft, or eventually callouses. Callouses aren't such a bad thing, because it's simply your hands adding extra padding to your skin so as to deal with the abrasion without suffering damage. Gloves do the same type of thing in an artificial form. They are extra padding over your hands to prevent damage and pain.
Straps are a popular way to lift heavy weights when doing deadlifts. You slip the straps around your wrists, wrap them around the bar, and grip the straps covering the bar instead of the bare bar itself. This serves two purposes: protecting your hands from damage and making it easier to grip the bar when lifting heavier weights.
When bench pressing, work out gloves with gel padding will create a nice layer of padding that allows you to lift even more weight without discomfort to your hands. A thicker bar actually helps with this somewhat too. Olympic bars are thicker than standard bars, and we even sell some special "fat bars" that are extremely thick.