I Hate Steel Handles

Every hammer thrower you meet will be quick to show you the callouses, blisters, and bruises on their left hand.  We aren’t looking for sympathy.  And even though I’ve written about this topic briefly before, I am not whining either.  Since we don’t tend to be the biggest of throwers, it is one way to show that we work just as hard.

Since moving to Kamloops, I have noticed that my hands have slowly gotten worse.  I’ve now added swollen to the list of ailments.  When talking with Kibwe last weekend, we realized we couldn’t even make a fist with our left hands  When I attempt to make one, my fingertips can’t even come within an inch of my palm.  Even using my other hand to squeeze my left hand together can’t get the job done.  The only thing I’m thankful for is that I’m right-handed, since I will surely have some arthritis to show for this in a few decades.

I used to think think that things have gotten worse because I’ve been throwing more since I moved to Kamloops.  But after looking at my training journals, I realized that my training volume actually hasn’t increased since moving.   I started keeping meticulous training records when I began throwing at the University of Washington in the Fall of 2003.  During that year of training, I took 8,416 throws.  The next year, I tallied 9,267 throws.  Since then, I have continued to throw around 8,000 to 9,000 throws ever year.  My numbers dipped slightly during law school, but have increased again to around 8,300 throws last year.

Aluminum: The Pleasure Craft of Handles

Steel: The Culprit

I think two other things are to blame for making my hands worse.  First off, we’ve been throwing many more heavy hammers.  Before I arrived I rarely threw heavy hammers, and the thousands of throws I’ve taken with them since definitely put more strain on the hands.  Second, we throw inside for around four months every year.  Throwing inside causes more impact to our hammers, so we throw with durable one-piece steel hammer handles.  I hate them.  I truly do.  Yes, they do last longer … but they are the most uncomfortable handles around.  They often leave me cringing before I even release the hammer.  Even with the extra padding we put on them, they still hurt.  During the winter months I long for the comfortable aluminum handles that I can throw with once we move outside in the spring or on my trips home to Seattle.

Unfortunately, I’ll just have to wait.  As Leif Arrhenius noted in a recent blog post, there are some good remedies for blisters and callouses.  However, the only remedy for swollen and bruised fingers is rest, which is hard to come by in our training program.