But that is not what happened so I gave my layout and attempts to perfect it a break.
I promise I will continue and I will re blog about this.
This is about something I keep on being disturbed about. My hands.
I started using wick grips circa 15 years ago until 2 years ago when I started using leather palm grips. Either way, there was something wrong with it. Whether or not it was that they were only perfect the first day I used them, or whether it was that they hurt my hand or did not feel secure on the bar etc.
Then I attempted the dowel grips cause they are made for you to stay on the
bar when doing giants etc. Think BIG HIGH swings. But they made me too scared to get used to. They take a while to break in and get used to cause
you have to grip the bar a certain way (really over grip and pull back on the
bar, with the material of the grips placed close to your fingers, not your
wrist). I still keep these in the back of my mind to use in the future.
In the end I gave regular Club Med gauze grips a try. They barely protect your
hand but they do give you a good feeling of the bar and not much bulk
between hand & bar, and the gauze sticks to the gauze on the bar. Kind of.
At least they don't require me to believe in magic, which is what the dowel
grips demand of me. "Believe that you will stay on the bar with only your
fingertips touching it."
Yeah, believe that you won't peele of right now, cause you can't hold on to
147 pounds with your fingertips! Yeah, I rather believe that air planes can fly
and don't fall down. And I have a VERY HARD time believing, maybe trusting is a better word, that. Cause I know that it is true: both that air planes fly and
that dowel grips make you stick to the bar. I just don't trust it.
So I love, Love, LOVE my gauze grips! Granted they (and my hands) only last
for about 8-12 turns, but that is the price I pay for feeling secure on the bar,
no fear at all. Nada, nishta, nil, zero, ingen Fear. At. All.
I have tried to fly on other kinds of bar that don't have gauze on them, like a taped bar and a wick bar. I didn't like the taped bar cause it felt slippery to me. But that could be cause I am used to the gauze bar that no matter what is less slick than tape alone. For naked/no grip hands I would probably recommend just a taped bar and lots of chalk.
I also tried the wick bar up in Sonoma Valley and it felt good, actually it felt really good. They don't like people to wear grips up there cause I think the bar lasts longer that way. I have heard that a wick bar can last 6 months without changing the wick out, which is a thing that is increasingly irritating and time consuming with the gauze bar, the constant changing of gauze.
There is also a leather bar I know, and Dylan Ehrenburg & Steen Shoar have
been wrapping their bars with thin beach towels, which last for about a week (but that is a week full of classes). Usually you have to re wrap a gauze bar every class or every other class.
It could be that there is a relationship between grips & bars, like that the grips depend on the bar a lot. For example: no grips = taped bar.
I already see a relationship or a pattern in the material that is being used in grips & in wrapping bar: tape, gauze, leather & wick.
For right now I am trying out a new kind of grip (for me). They are Ebeth Feldman's tape grips and I will try them next time I am in lines, cause being the baby that I am (kill me!) I don't like to try anything new OOL.
In the mean, and I mean MEAN time, I will continue to rip my hand open & only take 10 turns.
I can't wait for a change to happen in my relationship to hands on bars.
Below are my grips throughout 15 years of flying, from left to right:
Richie Gaona wick grips (they are missing the wrist wrap part), leather palm grips (and I have tried a variety: 2 holes, 3 holes, home made etc.), 2 finger dowel grips, Ebeth Feldman's tape grips (I have not tried them yet, but I am very excited about them) & Club Med grips (basically a piece of gauze made into grips).
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