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A 70 year old farrier told me my hammer grip was all off
He watched me work a knife edge for about 5 minutes at a demo in Cheyenne and said I was holding it like a claw hammer. Told me to choke up two fingers and let my wrist do the work, not my elbow. Took me a week to unlearn the old habit but now my shoulders don't burn after a full day. Anyone else get a grip tip that felt backwards at first but actually fixed a nagging pain?
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miles_sanchez21d ago
Had a guy in Montana tell me something similar about my rasp work, but he said to drop my pinky off the handle entirely. Felt like I was gonna drop the tool for the first hour, but it forced me to stop death gripping and let the weight of the rasp do the cutting. Turns out my elbow pain was from squeezing so hard my forearm was doing all the work. That was three years ago and I still catch myself doing it when I'm tired. It's weird how the smallest hand position change can reroute the whole chain of pain from your wrist up to your neck.
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lisak2620d ago
Laramie, 2019, I had an old horseman tell me the exact same thing and I switched it up for two weeks. My shoulders felt fine but my wrist started screaming after every shoeing and I couldn't grip a beer bottle without dropping it. Went back to my old way, elbow driving the hammer, and the wrist pain vanished in three days. Some of these old timers just repeat what they heard in the 70s, they don't all mean it works for everyone.
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