Blisters

[patbrookhouserIII]

Hi. I used to row fairly frequently about a year ago, never that seriously though. Now, I am going crazy trying to get fit for high school soccer try outs and am rowing pretty frequently, and a lot harder for half an hour normally. I am using some padded biking gloves that worked for me before, but I've still been getting some blisters at the base of my fingers. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do to prevent this?

[Citroen]

Simple - ditch the gloves.

[philrow]

Amen. Blisters and callouses are a part of rowing! I've never met a single rower, regardless of age or gender, that didn't have them. After about 8 months of rowing, going through blister hell including a 7-day training camp of 7 hours of rowing per day, I've developed callouses of steel. Heheh.

At best, try not to have a death grip on the handle. Otherwise, embrace the pain.

[iain]

Rowing OTW I went through more than 3 layers of skin to be rowing on open sores. This was partially through accepting "advice" to use surgical spirit to "harden up" my hands. The solution was the opposite. Hand cream (even a cheap one) does wonders. It delays the blisters bursting so that proper calluses form. Some people claim certain gloves help, but I never had any success and agree with the comments above.

Best of luck.

PS since restarting rowing, taking this advice has been costly. The loss of weight from regular training made my wedding ring loose and the hand cream allowed it to slip off! If you wear rings, be careful!

[patbrookhouserIII]

I won't be wearing any rings for quite some time, I'm 14!

[psucrewcronin]

I've been a believer that callouses are a rower's pride and joy because one knows what it cost to buy them. The only advice I have is to use bar soap because it dries out your skin. Hand maintenance is vital, and keeping intact skin is critical.

A few things I have done:

If a blister is still intact, take a sterile pin and go into fresh skin Outside the blister and then go sideways with the pin and then drain the blister by popping it from Underneath. The surface skin remains intact, and the result is skin that will callous and dry.

If you absolutely must, simple athletic tape on your hands works fairly well. Just be careful that it doesn't affect your grip on the handle.

Post row Hydrogen Peroxide treatment of open blisters. It burns like brimstone, but infections are bad news bears.

That's my two cents, but just remember
Ripped blisters are agony, but so is our sport.

[PJM]

I have been an indoor rower for over 10 years.As a novice I did get many blisters..on fingers and on my palms.Over the years I have tried a few different "tools" to try to combat blisters and sore hands.I went through many types of gloves from leather to gel/foam.The leather gloves would get wet..dry and get so hard that I had to ditch them.I found a great gel padded glove but went through them so fast and then couldn't find them anymore..
After the first Concept2 JVC I suffered from overuse and had my share of blisters but worse than that I had issues with my wrists, forearms and fingers beyond blisters.Rowing is very important to my overall health and fitness and I wanted to continue to do what I love to do.
I was told by one of my teammates to get a pair of weight lifter wrist straps.I have very small hands and wrists so that was going to be a challenge.It made good sense though..to have a strap to offer my wrists and hands support.
In my search for the wrist straps I found a web site that offered a product that looked promising.They were a padded hand grip attatched to a wrist strap.Not a glove in the true sense..no fingers.
I read through all the information and testimonials.It had alot of women info and there was a page that directed its use to indoor and outdoor rowers and was linked to this forum.
Price seemed good..availability was also good.I decided to order the product
They are called New Grips.I am now on my 3rd pair.I will NOT row without them.I have overcome most of my overuse issues and can row long or frequent with NO blisters..and no soreness or that numbness & tingling that comes from the inflammation of the carpal tunnel nerve system.
This has been a true find for me.I use a Grip Stick occasionally to exercise my forearms..the muscles that are difficult to work out with free weights.It can be done but that muscle needs to be isolated in just the right position.
The web site is www.newgrip.com/rowing.html
I am a Personal Trainer and would highly recommend these to any one serious about rowing.I hope that this helps to alleviate some of the blister problems for anyone.
Good luck to all in the upcoming JVC08

PJM

[Elamonta]

I often found using Model D ergs often caused my skin to get irritable just because of the material of the handle. That often caused blisters for me. Rowing on the water though, I have found the best way is to in a sense fight it out...if it hurts too much stop erging and as mentioned try some thin athletic tape over the blister to prevent further irritation. When I did a 100,000m row earlier this month (with a partner of course) my hands were shot for days...but my athletic trainer at school put some "skin toughener" on my blisters and that dries out the blisters and toughens the skin (obviously lol). That worked miracles for me throughout the spring semester. I don't know the scientific name of the chemical he used but I remember it being yellow and had a very strong smell. I wouldn't use gloves though, our coach actually forbids it as she says we lose "touch" with the oar or erg. Just remember to hang on the oar/handle like a monkey...not too tight, and if you do get blisters they won't be on the palms of your hand, they will be on the tops of your fingers...which will eventually harden up to the point that you won't get blisters anymore...at least they did for me.

[philrow]

OK seriously, I'm not trying to offend anybody here, but I have a story.

Last March, I got a shock intro to on-the-water rowing with my crew. Yea I had done some erging since January, and I was "complaining" about my severe blisters and torn up hands and doing so with a definite sense of pride. Aside from light rowing for technique in indoor tanks once a week, I had never been in a boat. "Rowing" from 6am to 5pm in some three or four sessions, with longer breaks of course but totaling about 7 hours per day, was pretty intense and challenging, again having never been in a boat. To make things worse, what technique I had built up from rowing port in the tanks was mostly useless to me as a novice, as from stepping in the boat for the first time I was rowing starboard at 7 seat in the 8+ and 3 seat in the 4+. All of this made my already extant supreme death grip of deathly death even worse, which lead to some severe mutilation of my hands and some major wrist devastation. I spent every moment back at the hotel walking around with two bags of ice, sometimes both on my feathering hand. The other varsity guys had some great responses to that:

bow in the hwt 4+: "Ok, you pansy."
2 seat in the hwt 4+: "Hahahahaha."
3 seat in the hwt 4+: "That's awesome..."
stroke in hwt 4+: "Dude..."
stroke in my lwt 4+: "Retard!" (it would later be discovered that the stroke was, in fact, clinically mentally retarded)
2 seat in my lwt 4+: "Take a stroke!" (him too)
bow in my lwt 4+: "Wow, you must be working really hard" (and him)
stroke in the lwt girls v4+: "LOVE, EMBRACE, DO NOT SHUN!"
the jv girls 8+: "Hehehe" (collectively)

These are almost verbatim responses -- I remember because of the profound impact they made on me. I tossed the ice, and got over the pain -- it really is just temporary. Sure, I used a lot of tape later in the week, after my coach me to "stop bleeding on the oar already, Polish boy." It took me a good 2 extra months to come up with some solid callouses. After I stopped fighting the inevitable, the former struggle turned out just find. The callouses are not obviously present -- somebody has to be paying a lot of attention to my hands to notice them. They don't bother me. I don't get blisters or irritation or anything while rowing, erging, jumping, hopping, skipping, or lifting weights, regardless of the duration of the row.

So I say... why fight the inevitable? What if you don't always have access to gloves? Will you not row in defense of your baby hands? :-p Again I hope not to offend anybody who rows with gloves... but really, "preventative measures" can prevent ultimately desirable conditions.

Phil

[RowtheRockies]

I often found using Model D ergs often caused my skin to get irritable just because of the material of the handle. That often caused blisters for me. Rowing on the water though, I have found the best way is to in a sense fight it out...if it hurts too much stop erging and as mentioned try some thin athletic tape over the blister to prevent further irritation. When I did a 100,000m row earlier this month (with a partner of course) my hands were shot for days...but my athletic trainer at school put some "skin toughener" on my blisters and that dries out the blisters and toughens the skin (obviously lol). That worked miracles for me throughout the spring semester. I don't know the scientific name of the chemical he used but I remember it being yellow and had a very strong smell. I wouldn't use gloves though, our coach actually forbids it as she says we lose "touch" with the oar or erg. Just remember to hang on the oar/handle like a monkey...not too tight, and if you do get blisters they won't be on the palms of your hand, they will be on the tops of your fingers...which will eventually harden up to the point that you won't get blisters anymore...at least they did for me.

When I received my Model D two years ago, I suffered some nasty painful blisters. I took the advice of just grit your teeth through it and they will callouse. They never did and I would resort to Athletic tape to cover open blisters, etc. Then someone mentioned to try the Model C wood handle. I did and I developed callouses and have not had blister issues for a year and a half. I switched back to the model D handle to get used to the feel for an upcomming competition and I am again developing blisters.

Has Concept2 changed the Model D handle at all?????? Mine is a hard plastic. The model C is a dense foam grip cover.

Rich

[gliderguy]

I blistered pretty quickly after getting my model D.

I started using sailing gloves and have since built up callouses. The gloves are great for my hands but I'm getting the most severe callouses just below the first joint of my middle fingers. I don't really grip the handle as mush as a wrap my fingers aound it to form "hooks".

A couple of days ago I tried a 10' warmup without the gloves. Not good for me, I'll stick with the gloves.

[Nosmo]

If people are getting carpel tunnel or otherwise having wrist problems from the erg, they are overusing their forearms and holding the handles too tight. The wrists should be perfectly flat at all times. Never had blister problems on the erg only OTW.
That said if you do have carpel tunnel or other wrist problems, it is to serious to screw around so definitely try the NewGrips.

[wiseleyb]

I found if you're just mindful of your grip, concentrate on not letting your hands rub, that fixed it for me.

[RogerR]

I like my blisters and callouses. I am an office worker and heavy business traveler spending much of my lifetime sitting in meetings, etc. The blisters remind me of the joy of the vigorous physical work I do during my workouts early in the morning. Back then when men were wood chopping, etc, nobody complained about blisters either...

[philrow]

Amen -- well said, Roger.

Phil