Get A Grip

Courtney, beating my pull-up PR. Maybe it was the grip tape

Precious, precious hands – think of all they do for you all day long: typing, pointing, clicking, cleaning, jerking (a barbell). Proud of your tears though you may have been the first one, maybe two, times you tore your hands doing pull-ups, it gets old. Fast. Tears, the hand injury, not the salty stuff from your eyes, do not lead to stronger hands or skin (maybe better pain tolerance though). With a tear, you’re pretty much starting over with that little missing patch.

Tears prevent you from doing most of the stuff we do in every day and not just what we use our hands for in the gym. Starting out with hands not used to the movements we door coming back from a workout hiatus may mean an inevitable tear, especially if your grip has worsened. However, tearing should not be a regular occurrence, even with repeated high-rep pulling-motion workouts.

How do you avoid tears? There is only one answer: hand maintenance. Not gloves, not chalk, not tape, not even an entire roll of tape will effectively prevent tearing.

Hand maintenance includes: 1) skin maintenance 2) grip improvement

1) Skin Maintenance

This means using a pumice stone as your first line of defense, a Ped Egg or callus shaver when necessary, and lotion on a regular basis to ensure that skin doesn’t bulk up on the palms. Any excess callus skin has the potential to turn into a tear. Dry skin caused by overuse of chalk or frequent hand washing, or other, can result in skin cracks which are as painful as tears. Put on lotion before bed if you don’t like having it on while awake.  This is a great 4-part series from CF Virtuosity in NY on hand maintenance. Here’s a great inspirational quote from it:

Your hands tell the truth about you. The strength of your handshake sends a signal of confidence. The calluses reveal your work ethic. Soft weak hands are the hallmark of a weak spirit. Putting your hands on that hard, cold steel transforms the hands and by extension the person attached to those hands.

When it does happen, know what to do so that you can continue training while the wound heals quickly. The CF Virtuosity Part II has some good suggestions.

2) Grip Improvement

The only thing that’s going to significantly reduce friction on the bar is a better grip. The only way to improve your grip is more grip-demanding exercises like the ones we do every day. With this, grip technique is also very important. Check out this video from Coach Rippetoe on grip.

Much like when Forrest hears an unweighted bar clang to the ground, or when Mariessa sees clouds of chalk, I cringe when I see people willy-nillily mummy wrapping their hands in tape or slipping on their globo-gloves.  The mummy-wrapped hands make it look like you’re about to go punch your Pantera-poster-covered walls. The gloves remind me of the big, sometimes bedazzled (I’m not joking – I used to go to a globo in West Hollywood) globo-men that wore the string-T, neon short-shorts, the fanny pack and toted the gallon of water around through their 45 min circuit of 2” hacksquats and bi curls. To be fair, if you went back into some CrossFit Hollywood picture archives, you’d surely find a picture of me in my first couple weeks of doing CrossFit wearing my blue Pearl Izumi biking gloves before I got wise.

Gloves may be useful if your skin is very soft or if aren’t coming in often enough to build up your grip to reduce the risk of tears sufficiently. Check out this parable from CrossFit Fire.

Tape may be useful if you’re already injured (torn) or near-injured (cracked calluses or partial tears), but usually it represents the failure to maintain your skin (see #1).  There’s a great tutorial for making tape grips efficiently here. I’ve got a great way that I learned and I’d be happy to teach you if you ask me.

“I don’t want man hands” or “My hands need to remain soft” are not really good excuses for using the grip-tapped bars or for wearing gloves. Taped bars and gloves increase friction and gloves allow slipping between your hand and the bar/barbell if your grip isn’t really solid (most people’s grip is not, especially at high reps). Coach Mark Rippetoe said, “…gloves are a completely useless piece of material that create an unecessary moveable surface between your hand and the object being lifted/pushed” (Starting Strength 2ed., 2007).

Also, taped bars may make it easier to hold on now, but that isn’t exactly helping you prepare for the unknown and unknowable (I mean, in the Appocalyse, okay or something more realistic, how likely is it that when you’re gripping on to something for dear life it will be wrapped in nice grippy, pretty pink grip tape?…).

For those days when you’re just feeling tape-y, or if mummifying is your latest way to get wound up for the WOD (pun intended), you now have the option to purchase your tape. That’s right, tape will no longer be free. Each roll of tape will cost you. After you pay, Forrest will cut off a sliver from the tip of your finger, and on your second roll, you will have to sign over a small chunk of your soul (his words, not mine).  So, I suggest you 1) maintain your skin and 2) keep a-cleaning and a-jerkin’ to improve your grip and if you must, 3) learn how to efficiently make grips if you are one of the tape-happy and reuse them as you can.

WOD 4/21/2010

A. 2 Rounds
500M Row Max Effort
rest 3 minutes
2 min Double Unders Max Reps
rest 2 minutes

B. JT
21-15-9
Hanstand Push-Ups
Ring Dips
Push-Ups