Gloves
Graeme Cunningham
Have developed a beuaty of a blister on my right hand. All the
experinced rowers just seemed to accept that you are going to get
blisters.
Does anyone use gloves, tape, anything?
ta
Graeme
Jonny Taylor
I use tape a little at the start of the season until my hands toughen up. I
go for micropore tape. It is very thin, so it doesn't interfere with the
feel of the blade, and isn't bulky enough to cause chafing of its own (like
the zinc oxide tape that some people use). It seems to help a little in
preventing blisters (though it won't prevent them entirely), but I find its
main use is to protect existing blisters when you have to do a second outing
with blistered hands. It does a great job in stopping the skin on top of a
burst blister from being ripped off by the oar handle. You just have to be
careful taking it off again (soak it in water...) or you will take the top
of the blister off when you remove the tape. A couple of weeks into the
season I will have weaned myself off the tape (by not using it for short
outings to begin with), and the familiar rowers' callusses see me through
the rest of the season - though I still occasionally use it for a
second-outing-of-the-day. The other thing about micropore tape is its
magical property of still sticking beautifully when you have dropped the
whole roll into the river several times!
Then there is the whole moisturiser/white spirit argument, which I can't
comment on since I have never used either, but doubtless others will be able
to argue at length over...
I think that most rowers (certainly everyone I know) takes a pretty dim view
of gloves. I can't say I've tried it myself, but as well as the total loss
of feel for the blade I suspect a sweat-soaked glove may actually make
blisters *more* likely.
Pogies, though, are a different matter altogether (they are sort of mittens
which cover both your hand and the oar handle, but underneath it your bare
hands hold the oar directly). I laughed at them until I had a two-week
winter training camp in Switzerland. There they were invaluable. I did find
I got sweaty under them if the temperature was anything other than freezing
cold, but on the coldest days they were the only way of staying sane.
HTH
Jonny
Iain Cheyne
news:3DEA52CF...@motorola.com:
> Does anyone use gloves, tape, anything?
We discussed this at length a month ago:
http://snipurl.com/rowinghandcare
--
Iain Cheyne
Remove the numbers and change "invalid" to "net" to reply.
Edd Edmondson
> second-outing-of-the-day. The other thing about micropore tape is its
> magical property of still sticking beautifully when you have dropped the
> whole roll into the river several times!
At risk of repeating what is definitely my answer to an FAQ: don't bother
with micropore - get Muller tape. Won't come off when wet/sweaty like
micropore does with me. I swear by it.
Suggested to me by my rock-climbing father, and rock-climbers generally
give their hands a far tougher time. Compare a typical boatie blister to a
rock climbers' 'flapper' and you'll see what I mean.
--
Edd
Christopher Francis Shea
> http://snipurl.com/rowinghandcare
As far as I could see the snippet below was the only reference to
cleaning the blade handle in the thread above.
>From: Henning Lippke (use...@sculling.de)
>Date: 2002-11-08 10:56:02 PST
>You can try this (from C2 website):
>The black rubber sculling grips will age over time with exposure to
>sunlight. This may result in some of the surface layer of black
coming off
>on your hands as you row. To alleviate this problem, you can clean
the grips
>periodically by scrubbing them with water and a non-abrasive pad.
Grips can
>be easily replaced when they wear out.
In my view this is a serious omission. In preventing infection to
blisters hygiene is obviously important. This involves more than
thoroughly cleaning your hands. You can scrub your hands as much as
you like and pour on gallons of white spirit. This will not prevent
infection if each time you go out for an outing, you hold a blade that
is covered in whatever cocktail has splashed on from the river, dead
skin, blood, spit and snot left by the previous user, (it's no more
hygienic if it's your own.) In my experience cleaning blade handles
is a much neglected pastime.
With wooden blade handles scrubbing with a scrubbing brush has the
added benefit of making the blade easier to hold, especially if the
handle gets wet. This enables a lighter grip, which reduces blisters.
Chris
Tim Granger
> Jonny Taylor <jonatha...@university-college.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:
> At risk of repeating what is definitely my answer to an FAQ: don't bother
> with micropore - get Muller tape. Won't come off when wet/sweaty like
> micropore does with me. I swear by it.
>
> Suggested to me by my rock-climbing father, and rock-climbers generally
> give their hands a far tougher time. Compare a typical boatie blister to a
> rock climbers' 'flapper' and you'll see what I mean.
Although if rowing blisters are nothing compared to climbing blisters,
surely we don't need such a heavy duty solution. As another poster
mentions, most people only need to use tape when their hands are getting
aclimatized to a new training level - so using something like micropore,
which can take the initial sting out of sore hands is good enough, and
also doesn't protect the hands too much so they don't get used to it.
Tim
Nick Suess
our rowers, especially the females, are using gloves. Most have been buying
cycling gloves, which really aren't up to the rigours of riggers, or rather
of oars attached to riggers, and don't last long. So I have recently added
to my product range some heavy-wearing amara and kevlar thread gloves, which
are proving popular over here. And just as with the famous Pelican Pads and
the Staempfli grips, I'm happy to sell by mail order world-wide.
Price AU$20 per pair, plus p&p. That's about US$11 or £7 Sterling.
Nick Suess
Scull Success
Bayswater, Western Australia
Ph +61 8 9271 0466
Allan Bennett
Christopher Francis Shea <URL:mailto:chri...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> This enables a lighter grip, which reduces blisters.
>
Not necessarily so. Blisters can be caused by very light, persistent
rubbing.
We used to produce blisters in the lab (for analysing the fluid produced) by
stroking the forearm with a feather...
Allan Bennett
--
Caroline Turnbull
weighlifting or cycling gloves with cut-off fingers really help.
However they do reduce the "feel" of the blades and I never wear them
for normal training or racing.
Pay attention to your coach when he/she tells you not to grip the
blade handles tightly, as that's the main cause of blisters. Relax
your grip as you slide forward and waggle your fingers as if you are
playing the piano. This will allow the skin on your hands to recover
between strokes. A loose grip during the power stroke (just using
your hands as hooks) will also ensure that your blade passes through
the water at the correct angle (not over- or under-square).
Keep practising - it gets better! My hands are still more or less
presentable after 27 years of rowing!
Caroline
chri...@blueyonder.co.uk (Christopher Francis Shea) wrote in message news:<959643f5.02120...@posting.google.com>...
Kit Davies
thread). If it isn't, it will try to correct itself in the water, and thus
in your hands, just when you are fully applying your power to the handle.
This will very quickly produce blisters.
Kit
"Caroline Turnbull" <carol...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:6345a9a1.0212...@posting.google.com...
Lowpulse
changed to Stamphli grips, my hands were much less blistered.
Merrill
Nathalie Pageau
Buy them fairly tight - they'll loosen up a bit over time and you don't
want a lot of excess material. This would hurt during the power stroke.