Sunday 6.26.11

Taping your hands for pull-ups from CrossFit Los Angeles on Vimeo.

This video was posted on our Facebook page yesterday, but many of you don't have Facebook so we're posting it again here.

In the CrossFit community torn hands are often seen as a badge of honor.  It demonstrates that you are so hardcore you kept doing pull ups until your skin literally came off your hands.  That's how dedicated you are to fitness, and anyone who hasn't gone that far is just a wuss.

At The Compound we see torn hands for what they are:  an injury.  If you've ever torn your hands (and I have a bunch of times) you know that it makes it hard to train for a week or so.  What good does it do for your fitness goals to be so hardcore in one workout that you tear your skin, that now you can't be hardcore again for another week until your hand heals up?

In the above video, the guy demonstrating the taping technique talks about how it is a good method if you already have a tear.  It was this exact reason that I went searching for a good taping technique.  I had  torn my hands the day before and I knew that I had a 100 pull up workout to accomplish.  The technique worked great and my tear did not bother me or become worse during the workout.

Preventing tears in the first place is obviously the best way to go.  Take care of your callouses!  There are many online tutorials for how to deal with those from razor blades in the shower, to pumice stones, to my poersonal favorite:  the Pedi-Paws.  But sometimes despite your best efforts, a high rep workout involving pull ups, toes to bar, knees to elbows, kb swings, etc can still cause damage to your hands.  

My advice if you are prone to skin tears is to check the workout before you come in, and if it's a high rep workout involving one of the above movements, tape up before you tear!  I actually made my tape "grips" in the above video the night before, threw them in my workout bag, and they were ready to go the next day.

Take care of your hands!  Hand tears are ugly, unsanitary, but worst of all they keep you from doing things like smashing PR's in the CrossFit Total, which I have it on good authority may be happening this week!  bc

1 comment: