Developing Callouses | Fitness

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Developing Callouses
by Bidz Dela Cruz

In one of my articles in www.gloves.com.mx entitled, “Gloves for Gym Workout”, I mentioned about developing callous to do away with the use of gloves. Callouses are not replacements for gloves but they are even the better option in working out (rather than wear gloves).

Gloves are not necessary in working out. Our coach back then in the powerlifting team always scold us if he sees us wearing gloves. Wearing gloves in the gym gives you minimum workout output. Gloves are restrictions in working out. They are a hindrance, dragging you from carrying heavier poundage or allowing you to do higher repetitions. When you are serious in working out, you really should develop calloused hands. Callouses will be your protection from the metal plates and bars. Having a thick palm covered with several callouses makes you endure the pain of the direct contact with metals. With gloves on, your grip are limited. The thickness of your gloves gives you an unnatural grip. But when you make a bare contact with your hands on the metal, you can be able to grip the bar more firmer, thus allowing you to carry heavier poundage or allowing you to do higher repetitions.

Callouses are also very essential in rock climbing. Rock climbers whether they like it or not, develop callouses as time goes by. This is their system of adaptation to be a better climber. Callouses are the rock climbers best friends aside from their belayers and spotters. Callouses protect their hands from cuts due to uneven surfaces of the rocks, they also serves as lock points when gripping a sloper (a type of rock hold where you use your open palm to stick to the rock), they also prevent you from slipping because the roughness of the rock compliments the roughness of your (calloused) skin. These are just but of a few of the many advantages of developing callouses for rock climbing.

In developing callouses, it is necessary to manage them as they inhabit your palm. It doesn't mean that once you have several callouses already, you are always assured of the advantages mentioned above. Callouses have a life span. It starts from a neat smooth skin, slowly emerging to form thick marks on your palm until it is fully developed (thick and rough enough to irritate a handshake with an non-calloused hand). When the callous reached its peak of thickness, constant exposure to water and continuous climbing will tear it apart from the palm and thus leaving a non-calloused spot, virgin and sensitive again for difficult holds. Sometimes, when the process where the callous is tearing apart from the palm is starting, difficult grips cause it to prematurely tear apart totally, thus giving you cuts and blisters (and a little bleeding). This is where callous management comes in.

Managing your callous is both an art and a skill. Sometimes you have to minimize the thickness of your callous by mans of sandpaper or nail file. There are times during the start of the separation of a developed callous when you have to cut the initial parts separated by a nail cutter so as not to lead to premature separation. Over cutting or over filing a callous might give you unpleasant cuts and blisters as you hold your next rock hand-holds. It is your hand, you are very much aware how you grip the rock, so you should know how much callous to file and cut.

If you are not into powerlifting, weightlifting, gymnastics and sportclimbing (rock climbing, wall-climbing and bouldering), and you have shook someone's hand with so many callouses, before assuming that he is a construction worker (I am not ostracizing the construction workers here nor saying anything that would belittle them.), ask him his/her sport first, you might just get surprised!


The author is a content provider of gloves

If you want to know more about gloves, rock climbing, fitness, health and the outdoors, visit www.gloves.com.mx

Keyword Tags: gloves, rock climbing, fitness, health, outdoors

About the Author

The author is a content provider of gloves If you want to know more about gloves, rock climbing, fitness, health and the outdoors, visit www.gloves.com.mx

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