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September 12, 2005
How to Save Your Skin from Kettlebell Swings, Cleans, and Snatches, Part II
Mark Reifkind, RKC, a man who has been hard on his hands with gymnastics, powerlifting, and now kettlebells recommends:
"I finally remembered a technique I used back in gymnastics for deal with overly thick and hard callous.
1) Soak the hands in hot water for at least 5 minutes. Hot baths work well but showers take forever.
2) Dry the hands and wait thirty seconds or so for the blood to come back.
3) Sand the hand with pumice stone or sandpaper callous remover.
The skin just sloughs off with very little effort and all the pads get nice and flat. Just enough to protect but not tear."
If your workout calls for snatches but your paws feel like they are ready to pop, do swings instead, preferably two handed to minimize the stress on the skin of the hands.
A special note on training in high humidity. Rob Lawrence, RKC Sr. advises, “When you are working out under humid conditions, the deadweight snatch is your friend. You can do multiple sets without ripping your hands. Snatch the weight, lower to shoulder, lower to ground, repeat.” The backswing and thus most of the skin stress is eliminated. You could do the dead snatch even if the weather is dry but your hands are raw.
Steve Maxwell, RKC Sr. has another idea: he wraps a washcloth around the kettlebell’s handle. Harder on the grip, easier on the skin.
In the military I trained with rusty kettlebells and it took months after my discharge before my palms finally lost their rust speckled calluses. If you like doing very high reps you may want to sandpaper your kettlebell’s handles as GS competitors do. Remove the paint and smooth out the iron. And don’t forget that nail polish…
Posted by james at September 12, 2005 6:04 AM
Comments
Rif means to cover the filed area of the handle with nailpolish. The KB comes with an acrylic finish.
Enjoy the pain!
Posted by: grandfist at October 24, 2005 11:31 AM
To finish becoming a woman.
Posted by: Josef at September 19, 2005 10:06 AM
ive heard about using a paper towel wrapped around to decrease friciton and allow the bell to rotate, it works quite well, also to decrease friction you can use talcum/baby powder (in conjunction with sanding your calluses )- NOT CHALK , this decreases friciton a lot, but you gotta make sure that bell dont take off - i havent found it to be a problem,
Posted by: hamad at September 14, 2005 3:14 AM
Nailpolish? I'm new at the KB stuff, so forgive me if this is the proverbial stupid question, but... What do you use the nailpolish for?
Posted by: Mike at September 12, 2005 9:19 AM