PoleVaultPower.com

Hi there.

I am after a little help from anyone who has the same problem as me. I am a chalk user and use it with white tape. However I get really bad callous's or hard dry skin on my hands which quite often splits everytime I jump (painful). I have tried alot of things including: soaking in hot water then using a pumice stone to file it down, cutting of the hard skin with a special knife that was given to me by a medical centre, endless amounts of creams. I was wondering if anyone out there has this problem and has come up with a solution. It could be anything there has to be something out there that helps no matter how crazy. cheers guys

A lot of what you're doing FOR the condition is what is causing the condition. Callouses are just part of pole vaulting and a good part too. Something that you should consider is instead of using chalk to grip the pole, use an adhesive like Tuff Skin or Firm Grip (I don't even know if they make the stuff any more). What may be happening is that you are creating blisters instead of callouses because of slippage on the pole. Think of raking the yard without gloves and how long your hands are going to be without blisters after a while. Same thing. Take a look at most vaulters and by mid season the palms of their hands look more like paws than the do hands. Just let the callouses happen. Later.............Mike

Normal hardening of the hands is a part of vaulting, but if you are getting extreme callousing in just one or two places something might be wrong with your grip. Someone once asked Sam Snead where his hands were calloused and he held up his hands to show that they were smooth. The lesson was that because his grip on the golf club was secure and right for his swing there was no unusual pressure or friction on any part of his hand. I think this is true for the vault as well.