Training chopsticks are designed to guide beginners and lifelong users alike to adopt a proper chopstick grip, allowing learners to extend chopstick tips wide apart. They allow learners to focus first on mastering the twirling of chopsticks between the closed posture to the wide-open posture, based on principles of the planetary gear train, without having to simultaneously learn to secure chopsticks using the required thumb pose. Such thumb pose can be mastered later as a second step. Furthermore, a variation of training chopsticks provides an elevated thumb rest to accommodate learners suffering from anatomical limitations. As a result, a learner can wield these training chopsticks to embrace large food items with ease, manipulate these large items with dexterity and finesse in the same way she can small items, and generate enough compression force to hold all items firmly between training chopsticks.