Weightlifters, guitar players, bricklayers, and more take pride in the work they do with their hands and get calluses. Most of these sportspersons and musicians wear their calluses as a badge of honour. It is considered as evidence of their hard work and dedication. It’s a matter of pride that your body literally needed to toughen up because of your hard work training. Treating calluses and caring for them is necessary to avoid painful tears that can delay your workout.
It is necessary to take essential steps to prevent calluses. However, developing an initial layer of callus while hard exercise or workout is a natural response of our body. Calluses are actually protecting the body against the folding and friction between your skin and the bar when you lift weights. You should spend some time preventing calluses and care for your callused hands. Below we mentioned various methods you should follow to find which fits best with your routine.
How to Prevent Calluses at the Gym?
Grip:
Some people focus on using protective accessories but that’s not the permanent solution. It’s important to work on your grip techniques. Because the right technique is a permanent solution to prevent calluses. However, pain is normal while gripping if you have calluses initial layer in your hands.
While doing exercise such as deadlifts, pull-ups, rows etc, you should use one technique to keep the bar gripped between the base of your fingers and your mid palm. It is necessary to try placing the bar in the crease between palm and fingers to minimize the risk of calluses. When you hold the bar farther towards the palm, your skin gets more folds and pinched which lead to friction and cause calluses.
Another technique is to keep your grip slightly lower in the mid palm that puts the bar over existing calluses. In addition, if you feel pain with the first method of gripping, try another. Optimally you can prevent skin folding and pinch through proper grip technique to prevent your hands from pain and excess
calluses.
File down callused areas regularly
If you are suffering from calluses and the skin is irritating you then you should use the callus performance removing tool. It helps you to carefully file away the hard excess skin that forms calluses. It is necessary to use a proper callus remover tool and avoid a stone or nail cutter to cut that hard skin. Moreover, this process is not painful.
Tips to care your Callused Hands
Soak your hands in warm water
Warm water will keep your skin soft and prevent your skin from developing painful calluses. Some people having calluses also use Epsom salt in it which makes it easier to remove calluses.
Moisturize your skin
It’s necessary to moisturizer your skin regularly because dry and hard skin cause calluses. After filing your skin, you should use a callus performance healing salve to heal your callus hand. It contains coconut oil, almond oil beeswax and much more which are good ingredients to moisturize your skin.
Treat torn calluses as soon as possible
If a callus has already torn, file away the extra dead skin that’s easy to remove. Remember, leaving flaps of skin or fixing them down increases the likelihood of tearing again. If a blister has formed, allow it to drain. Then carefully clean the area and let it dry. You should also use a healing salve after drying it for healing. Allow your callus skin to heal before continuing workouts to prevent it from more damage.
Final words
Our hands are used as the first point of contact with the bar. If someone is suffering from a torn callus or open blister then it makes every rep painful. Not only from the time of injury but to the time the wound fully heals. In such a situation whichever methods you choose for treating calluses and taking care of your hands before, during, and after a workout is necessary for continuing your training.