Holster Prima: Pocket Paradise

This review is part of the “Bottoms Up” series of reviews of Terry biking bottoms and contains affiliate links.

While driving home after my road workout yesterday, I was listening to the recent episode of the Girls Gone Gravel podcast about how female hormones relate to our training, which I found fascinating. Selene Yeager was the guest on this pod, and I’m ashamed that I had never heard of her but now I know what I’ve been missing! As Selene described different menstrual cycle stages and how they relate to hormone shifts, birth control, and how that can make a person feel at different points in their cycle, I immediately lined up how I was feeling with what I thought my hormones were doing. I have an IUD, so there is some guess-work involved for me–though one amazing tip I heard on the pod is that an Oura ring can tell you where you are in your cycle even if you experience “ghost” periods due to an IUD. Today I felt bloated all day (how attractive, I know – keeping it real here), likely due to PMS, and it impacted how I felt climbing this morning, how I ate, and how I dressed for my afternoon biking workout.

Of course everyone is different when they feel like a tick, but I prefer compression that comes up as high as possible over my stomach, the higher the waistband the better. For my ride today I pulled the Holster Prima bike shorts out of my drawer and wound up being really happy and also comfortable on my ~90 minute ride.

The Holster Primas feel like the engineered marriage of the Bella Prima and the Bella Max shorts with a high waist and another pocket. Here are some key ways in which these three shorts compare:

Holster Prima	Bella Max	Bella Prima
2 pockets, L and R (stretchy mesh)	1 pocket, R only (tighter mesh)	0 pockets
high waist	regular waist	regular waist
high compression	med-high compression (website says “high” but I feel medium-high)	high compression
2-inch wide leg band, no sticky gripper	narrow leg band with narrow leg gripper ribbon	2-inch wide leg band, with sticky gripper dots
Flex Air Carbon Chamois	Flex Air Max Chamois (adds 2 more foam layers in key places)	Flex Air Carbon Chamois
8.5″ inseam	10″ inseam	8.5″ inseam
$176.95	$169.95	$149.95

Right now, these are my three favorite bike shorts for training, racing, and long rides. I was a Bella-Prima-or-die girl for about a decade until I found the Bella Maxes, which I have been riding and racing in recently. And now the Holster Primas have changed the equation. None of these shorts are cheap–they are high-performance, treat-yourself purchases. But as someone who has been riding exclusively in Terry shorts since 2014, I promise you from experience that they hold up reliably to the price. When they finally wear out, you will want another pair. Note: for a slightly more affordable option that is very similar to the Holster Prima, check out the Hi-Rise Holsters ($129.95). They look exactly the same (pockets and all), but have a different chamois (Flex Air), and they are 75% nylon/25% spandex, whereas the Holster Prima is 74% nylon/26% spandex fabric.

I love almost everything about the Holster Primas. In fact, I was surprised to recently learn from Terry that they have been around since 2018, and yet while searching the Terry website I never saw them–I’m convinced I would have tried them before now. Maybe I was so myopically committed to the Bella Primas that I had tunnel vision.

One of the most surprising differences between the Holster Prima and the Bella Prima, besides the addition of pockets (I’ll get there in just one sec), is the lack of silicone leg gripper dots on the Holster Prima. I was very worried at first when I saw that there were no grippers. Do the leg bands stay in place, am I gonna regret this? After several test rides both with and without leg warmers underneath, I can confirm: yes they do stay in place. The 2-inch cuff at the bottom of the inseam has 2 layers of material instead of just 1, so it has slightly less stretch than the material above the cuff, ergo it’s a little tighter and that seems to be enough to keep it in place. I actually like it. I was skeptical! Like cuffs with grippers, once I have the shorts on I need to put the cuffs where I want them on my leg, but then they stay and I forget about them.

Pockets: I think they’re chef’s-kiss perfect in terms of access, size, and position, even while riding. The mesh fabric is stretchy and slippery in ways that allow me to reach in with one hand easily while riding and pull out a gel, or store my arm warmers after I yank them off. Compared to the pocket on the Bella Max, these are more functional I find. First of all, it’s super important to have an open pocket on both sides to be accessible to lefties and righties. I leave my right hand on the bars and reach for gels or what-have-you with my left hand. The Bella Max’s only pocket is on the wrong side for me, though I make it work. The Holster Primas have pockets on both sides, so I don’t have to do any acrobatics with my right hand unless I want to or I’m stopped. I also like the fabric of the Holster Prima pockets better: it’s stretchier and easier to get into and out of with gloves on. The stretchiness means that it also holds a ton of gels, chews, or bars and can also accommodate a hat, arm warmers, and even my Houdini jacket (but not all at once). I do wonder how the fabric would fare in a crash, but I don’t plan on testing that.

Chamois: The Flex Air Carbon chamois is my all-time favorite. For the girl with the world’s most sensitive undercarriage, this is the one I usually want when I know the day is going to be long or the “southern” bits might complain. I have also come to trust the Flex Air Max recently (in the Bella Max shorts).

Waist band: On me, the waistband of the Holster Prima comes up above my belly button to the middle of my waist. I think the height is perfect, and the amount of compression vs. stretch feels good. Here’s my critique: the top seam of the waistband feels fairly rigid and is hard to get over my hips to pull on, it almost feels like I’m breaking it. I don’t know if this is just a one-off with the pair of shorts I have, or if this is a universal experience, or if my hips are wide. Size-wise, I am at the very upper end of a Terry size small, I wear a small in Bella Primas and the Bella Max, so this is my usual size, but I don’t have this experience of tightness with the top of the waist band in any other pair of Terry shorts, so I assume it’s limited to the Holster Primas. I expected the top of the waistband to be stretchier. This band also makes it harder for me to quickly “drop trau” and pull them back on if I have to pee, but at least you don’t have to deal with bib straps! Maybe it will loosen up over time.

Overall, I’m a big fan of the Holster Primas, and it’s not only the pockets that do it for me. It’s the pockets on both sides plus the Flex Air Carbon chamois, the compression, the wide leg bands, and the high rise. They’re quite pricey, but for me they’re worth it for the ability to have my long-time favorite shorts — the Bella Primas — come with pockets and everything else.