Tom Rowland Podcast

A callous is created as a beautiful response from your body to adapt to a stimulus.  You are doing something that is wearing off skin in a certain area like pullups, poling the boat, rowing the boat, lifting weights and your body develops a callus right at that spot.  It also develops a callous only as thick as the work you are doing with it.  So if you only do a little poling or lifting or a few pullups, you will have thin, small callouses.  If you do a medium amount you have medium callouses.  This is where the problem comes in.  When a callous tears it is usually because you are asking more from your body than normal.   Ripping a callous is really about friction. Friction pulls on the skin and you can usually take it.  If you go a little more than normal, your body produces a little more callous without tearing but when you ask a lot more than normal it can tear if other factors are present as well. Excess friction can be caused by more reps but you can also be aware of other ways that friction can become