Bad Hands

One of my favorite things about gymnastics is swinging around on the uneven bars. Unfortunately combining another one of my favorite things with the uneven bars does not make for the best situation. While weight lifting, working on cars and swinging on bars has built up tough calluses on my hands, swimming seems to keep a lot of moisture in the skin, like pockets of water under the calluses. That makes for a lot of bad rips. I file down the skin but it only slightly prolongs the period I can swing before a rip. I would absolutely love to be able to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time playing on the bars. I can only do so many kips before missing a piece of skin from my hand the size of a quarter, much less attempt to do a toe-on shoot to the high bar or even a giant. Maybe I need to more finely sand the leather on my grips... they are pretty rough.

I attempted to get a picture of my palms. However, it is rather difficult to get the camera to focus and have two free hands to photograph. I settled for one hand, but the details are still fuzzy. The shadows of old healing rips can't been seen too well and my latest rip, underneath the middle finger, doesn't look like much. It is sufficiently deep though as a rather thick bit of skin came off. I know... so lovely right. Sometime I wonder if people notice when I shake their hands.