Concept2 Forum

I started rowing at the end of 2015 to help alleviate upper back pain from a cervical spine injury. At first I started with just a few minutes on the lowest tension setting and added one minute per week to my routine until I made it to 26 minutes. I was pulling about 30Kg per stroke and feeling great! Since then I've stopped and started rowing many times due to severe colds, knee pain, etc. Throughout 2017 my rowing has been thwarted by hand pain even though I've reduced the force of my pulls from 30Kg to 10Kg. I can't seam to get past 10 minutes without pain in both hands. When I stop rowing for about a week, the pain goes away. Has anyone tried some type of Weight lifting gloves that uses either a hook or a strap to hold onto the rowing handle?

dont get hand pain as such and cant really help sorry. but since i restarted rowing i started getting blisters. was going to ask the question about gloves but my blisters have gone and calluses have formed so no real need for gloves now.
actually now thinking on it i believe there was a thread not long ago about hand grip style and pain in hands. how do you hold the handle? that could be some portion of the pain?

Used overhand steel lifting hooks for several weeks following median/ulnar nerve surgery on my left arm and hand in March 2016. Needed the left only but pull was better balanced wearing both. The cordura and velcro cuffs and attendant hardware chafed my wrists under load so I cut the tops off heavy hunting socks and doubled each tube as a pad under the cuff.

Are you really gripping the handle or just hooking the fingers? I only hook four fingers over the handle and the thumbs are useless.

I've never had hand pain other than the usual blisters.

Dangerscouse wrote:Are you really gripping the handle or just hooking the fingers? I only hook four fingers over the handle and the thumbs are useless.

I've never had hand pain other than the usual blisters.

I row exactly the same way--four fingers on top and the thumb hanging loosely below. Although I never had hand pain, I did get the expected blisters and they turned into noticeable calluses. When I shook hands, some people commented that the palm of my hand felt like coarse sandpaper. Then I started to wear three quarter length weight lifting gloves. They haven't affected the way I row and now my hands are free of both blisters and calluses. I lost my rower's "badge of honor" but regained normal feeling hands. For me it was a good tradeoff.

Thanks guys. I was intrigued by your technique of just holding on with your fingers. So I did a little research and found a few YouTube videos showing the technique of holding the handle lightly. I've been doing that for the last month and a half and have no hand pain! So thank you all for sharing.

Another benefit of not using your thumbs:

I used to have elbow problems and posted a question about it here.

One suggestion was to put your thumbs over, not under, the handle (so all the load goes through your fingers and your thumb does very little, if anything).

It helped and I haven't had any elbow issues since.