I didn't know what to expect at the gym on Friday. Tim kept saying that I was going to "love" the workout, but I can no longer tell when he's being sarcastic. (Especially after he once promised a workout I "LOOOOOOVED" -- only to spring a 2K row on us.)
Still, love it or hate it, I knew I'd have a strong reaction to the WOD, so I showed up hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Thankfully, it was indeed a good one:
"Mary" - As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 handstand push-ups
10 pistols
15 pull-ups
All bodyweight stuff I genuinely love -- even if I still favor doing pistols on my right side over my left. I was so excited, in fact, that I completely overlooked the following pertinent details:
That reason? I ripped my hands open and bled all over the place.
Without bothering to tape up my hands, I jumped right in with gusto.
Now that I'm doing a one-legged kipping handstand pull-up, I wasn't getting fatigued on the wall, so I expected to do better than my last attempt. After flying through the first four rounds unbroken, I glanced at the clock and saw that only a little more than seven minutes had elapsed. I can complete 10 rounds, I told myself.
The pistols betrayed me first. After five or six rounds, I was losing steam, and my weaker left leg was buckling. To complete the workout as RXed, I'd have to do the majority of the one-legged squats on my right leg.
With a few minutes left in the workout, I still felt fresh on the handstand push-ups and pull-ups, but my sweaty hands were starting to snag on the bar. I chalked up before my ninth round of pull-ups -- but realized too late that I'd over-coated my hands. I felt the skin of my right palm rip. The skin on my ring finger followed. A few pull-ups later, I felt the wetness of blood on the bar. Distracted, I slowed my pace to a crawl.
Result: 10 rounds as RXed. I hit my goal (and PRed!), though I'm kicking myself for not taking better care of my hands. Despite taking care not to kip wildly, I'd neglected to file down my calluses or to tape up to prevent rips. I need to be better about practicing what I preach.
Still: I love Mary. Bloody or not, I can't wait to meet her again.
I got up a little earlier than usual this morning to make sure I had enough time to tape up my hands before the 5 a.m. class. The skin of my left ring finger was torn in a couple of places, but it's my right hand that's been bothering me. During Monday's workout, I'd pretty much flayed several layers of skin off one section of my palm, and two days later, the flesh underneath remains red and raw. So this morning, I carefully applied more Neosporin to the wound, covered it with a big bandage, and wrapped it all up with athletic tape.
Tim had shot me a message last night, advising me to wear gloves to the gym today, so I scrounged up a pair of cycling gloves and pulled them over my mummified hands. I stared at my black-gloved hands. If these don't protect me, I thought, nothing will.
I'm glad I wore them. Tim had mercifully modified the previously-scheduled WOD, removing the pull-ups and knees-to-elbows and substituting ring rows and med ball V-ups in their place, but the workout still involved gripping various things.
For time:
30 deadlifts (225lbs / 135lbs)
Rest one minute
50 ring rows
Rest one minute
30 dumbbell snatches on each side (60 total reps - 45lbs / 30lbs)
Rest one minute
50 medicine ball V-ups
Oddly enough, I'd been so focused on the sorry state of my hands that I almost forgot about my sprained ankle. It wasn't until today's warm-up -- when I realized I still can't run properly -- that I remembered I needed to be smart about not putting too much pressure on my left foot. So I went with a relatively light barbell (205 pounds) and dumbbell (35 pounds), figuring I'd have trouble pushing off using my left leg.
I was right. The deadlifts felt uneven; I couldn't drive through the bottom of my left heel without feeling a twinge of discomfort shoot up from my ankle. And the snatches were lopsided, too. I winced each time my left foot stomped down onto the floor. To be honest, it's not that it hurt -- I winced in anticipation of the pain, and ended up favoring my left leg by shifting more of my weight to my right side.
The ring rows and med ball V-ups weren't affected at all by my hands or ankle -- but they were tough nonetheless. The first 30 ring rows came fast and smooth, but then I hit a wall, and was unable to string together more than 5 at a time. The V-ups, too, seemed easy at first. I kept me legs straight while transferring the ball from my feet to my hands, but with just two-thirds of the set completed, I found myself unable to continue without slightly bending my knees to shorten the lever.
Result: 16:08 (not counting the three minutes of rest between movements).
I'm pretty fried. I did my best to hang in there, but the nagging injuries -- however minor -- are starting to add up. I hate missing class, but I think I'm going to have to sit out Friday's workout. Boo.
CrossFitters often revel in the fact that our workouts have bloodied our hands. "We're such badasses! We're SO hardcore!" But let’s call a spade a spade: IT IS NOT “COOL” TO HAVE CHUNKS OF OUR SKIN RIPPED FROM OUR HANDS.
Flayed skin is not a badge of bad-assery. It does not mean that you are tougher or better at working out. And it most definitely does not mean that CrossFit, lifting and/or gymnastics should be avoided because of the possibility that the skin on your hands might get torn.
All it means is that:
You’re a soft-handed newbie who hasn’t yet had the chance to build up thicker skin on your fingers and palms to protect them from tearing, or
You’re not giving your hands the T.L.C. they need to keep from getting shredded.
Torn skin is painful and annoying, and may put you out of commission for a spell. And THAT is unequivocally un-hardcore.
My first encounter with shredded hands occurred shortly after starting CrossFit, back when the roughest activity my hands saw was an occasional difficult-to-open jar of spaghetti sauce. And my latest (and greatest) rip was during yesterday’s Mary WOD, after neglecting proper hand care for weeks. Over the past year, I’ve experienced minor tears and major ones.
In this post, I’m going to discuss what I could (and should) have done to prevent bloody hand, and what treatment options are available to those of us unfortunate enough to gash open our hands doing high-rep pull-ups, kettlebell snatches and the like.
Hand Grooming
Those who are new to gymnastics, weightlifting or CrossFit in general often start with soft, callus-free hands. Ideally, to reduce the likelihood of hand tears, beginners should try to gradually build up calluses (through -- what else? -- handling bars) to the point where the skin on their palms and fingers are tough and thick -- but smooth.
Once some skin-thickening is achieved, the goal is to keep any calluses filed down. The goal is have a consistent, smooth palm surface, without noticeable ridges or fluctuating thicknesses of skin. A raised, rough callus will eventually blister and tear away from the surrounding skin, ripping open your hands and making a bloody mess. A general rule of thumb: If you can pinch a raised edge of the callus, it needs to be filed down. Constant vigilance and regular hand care is key to preventing tears.
You can use a number of different tools to keep your calluses in check, including:
Ideally, your entire palm surface should be one thick callus with no bumps or ridges in any one particular area. In order to do this, groom your hands always after a hot shower or bath (this allows the calluses to swell up). While the calluses are still “swollen,” I take a double-edged razor and very carefully shave the dead callus bumps down a little at a time until the bumps are about even with the thickness of the rest of the hand. With my younger students, I simply ask them to get a callus stone (you can buy one at any drug store), and gently sand the callus down even with the rest of the skin. Remember, whenever you groom or shave your calluses, don’t overdo it, since you don’t want to go too deep into your skin. Always leave enough thick skin so to facilitate your workout the following day. The goal is to maintain an even and consistent thickness of hard skin throughout the entire palm.
Also: Lube up your hands. Chalk and frequent washing will suck the moisture right out your skin, and dry, cracked hands do not feel awesome. So listen to the Silence of the Lambs guy: Lotion is important for skin care. (And remember to put the lotion in the basket.) Use Bag Balm or Udder Cream (it’s not just for irritated cows anymore!) or whatever suits your fancy.
This, by the way, is what a well-groomed pair of CrossFitting hands is supposed to look like:
My hands don't look like this. Being the idiot that I am, I’ve never been very consistent about filing down my calluses, and lately, I developed a few big ones with rough edges. I didn’t do anything about ‘em, and as a result, I tore ‘em wide open yesterday. Not fun.
Grip & Technique
A lot of CrossFitters rip open their hands doing high-rep bar movements: kipping pull-ups, clean-and-jerks, snatches. But there are ways to tweak your technique to reduce the chances of a nasty tear.
When working with a barbell, some folks are inclined to grip the bar across the middle of their palms. This, unfortunately, squishes the fleshy pad below the base of your fingers against the bar, causing discomfort, added friction, blisters, and worse. A better way to go is to grip the barbell across the base of your fingers -- where the metacarpals meet the proximal phalanges.
Check out Mark Rippetoe’s explanation of how to grip a bar properly:
When doing pull-ups, keep your metacarpals in line with your proximal phalanges; i.e., your hand bones and the first bones in your fingers. This sucks because it’s harder to do pull-ups with your center of gravity an inch lower, and it takes more finger/ forearm strength. The first week or two or five, you might have to go back to using a band sometimes, or doing jumping pull-ups on a box, or using an easier band. I understand this might hurt your pride, your ego and your self-esteem like it did mine, but as long as I get the workout I need I see no need to care much if I beat my friends in an everyday training environment... Plus, I don’t have to worry about caring for ripped and bleeding hands.
As Larsson points out, “[t]his “training grip” eliminates tons of friction on the top inside of your palm muscles and skin, which is what causes the ubiquitous blisters there.”
Friction is further reduced if you keep your core tight during kipping pull-ups, keeping your movement compact.
For example, in this GymnasticsWOD video (which Tim posted on the CrossFit Palo Alto Facebook page yesterday), Carl Paoli doesn’t engage in the exaggerated lateral swing that many of us are used to doing. Notice the efficiency of movement; his legs aren’t kicking violently out front. He doesn't flop around. By keeping the kipping motion short and focused, there’s less of the skin-on-bar rubbing that might lead to shredded hands.
At a barbecue yesterday, I got to talking with Trish about her recent experiment with different ways of treating shredded hands. She’d ripped up her skin in a number of places during Memorial Day Murph, and decided to treat each tear slightly differently:
With Rip No. 1, she used scissors to cut away the flap of skin.
With Rip No. 2, she tore the skin flap off by tugging on it away from the point at which the skin was still attached.
And with Rip No. 3, she just left the flap in place.
All three spots were slathered with antibacterial ointment and bandaged. According to Trish, Rip No. 3 healed fastest. “It was like having a natural Band-Aid in place,” she said. Interestingly, Rip No. 1 -- the one subjected to the scissors -- was slowest to heal.
I’m now conducting a similar experiment. On my right hand, I’ve used scissors to snip off the flap of skin that tore away from my hand; on my left, I’ve left the skin in place. Of course, I washed both hands carefully (OUCH), Neosporin-ed the heck out of them, and kept ‘em bandaged and dry. I'll report back on the results in a few days.
But regardless, I know this much: It’s important to clean the wound and keep it well-covered with antibacterial ointment to prevent infection. No one wants a staph infection or necrotizing fasciitis.
I'm using Neosporin, but there are, of course, lots of other remedies that people swear by, including:
I know what you’re thinking: It’s a pain in the ass to keep your hands from ripping, and treating them sounds less than fun, too -- so why not just slap on a pair of gloves?
“[U]nless you wear gloves throughout your daily life, at some point you will have to rely on the pure, unadulterated gripping power of your bare-skinned hands to perform work,” so “develop[] that capability into your own hands as much as possible.”
“[A]nything between your hands and the object you are gripping reduces your proprioception -- your ability to know where the object is in space relative to your body.”
Not everyone agrees with this assessment, of course. Some athletes fiercely defend the use of gloves, arguing that the prevention of injury trumps the benefits of going glove-free. And Reebok has developed CrossFit gloves (available in the CrossFit HQ store) that numerous athletes wore during Games. But then again, they were in competition -- and did as many as TEN workouts (many with high-rep bar movements) over the course of a single weekend. Their hands were trashed. So before you rush out to plunk down forty bucks for a pair of fancy new gloves to bring to your gym, ask yourself whether they’re warranted. If your hands aren't wrecked, you probably don't need gloves.
Similarly, grips and tape aren’t normally needed in CrossFit. If you’re a gymnast, grips will certainly allow you to train harder and longer, but if you’re just cranking out a quick metcon, you’re unlikely to need to ‘em on a regular basis.
However, when your hands are already torn or if you know the day’s WOD is likely to destroy your skin, pulling out the athletic tape may be just the thing to keep you from a world of hurt. Plus, a few strips of tape are unlikely to be as heavily (and unnecessarily) padded as a big pair of mittens.
Right now, my hands are ripped up, and I can't easily grip anything without covering the places where my skin has been torn away. So tomorrow morning, I’m going to grab a roll of athletic tape and cover the spots that need protection. I’ll also make a handy-dandy tape-grip for additional protection.
If you love origami and want to get all fancy, check out these step-by-step instructions for making a super-slick grip out of athletic tape.
And if you just want to quickly throw on a makeshift tape grip before your WOD starts, you can always do this instead:
Grab a roll of athletic tape (the 1.5-inch tape works great).
Tear off a strip that’s a few inches longer than your hand.
Split the strip lengthwise down the middle until you’re halfway down.
Stick the unsplit half of the tape on your palm (over the rip), with the split ends wrapping around either side of the finger above the rip.
Use additional tape as needed to secure the ends of the tape around your wrist and around your finger.
Okay -- that's all I got. If you have other tips and tricks, throw 'em in the comments section -- given the current state of my hands, I'm certainly motivated to try them out.
As soon as I popped out of bed this morning, I tested my right groin and my left ankle. The groin felt pretty spiffy, all things considering. It was a little sore, but nothing a little stretching couldn't handle. The ankle, on the other hand, felt like crap. I still couldn't get up on the toes of my left foot, flex properly, or put much weight on it.
Yes, it's Labor Day in the U.S. Yes, I have the day off of work. Yes, I have a pulled groin and a sprained ankle. Yes, I still hauled my butt to the 5 a.m. class at CrossFit Palo Alto.
Why? Because I'm insane. But I'm not the only one. Five of us nutjobs showed up before dawn to get our WOD on. And it was a doozy:
"Mary" - As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 handstand push-ups
10 pistols
15 pull-ups
I knew I wouldn't be able to do the pistols with my left foot. I've always been terrible at single-legged squats on my left leg -- and with a bum ankle, it was a no-go. But my right groin felt okay, so I decided to crank 'em out exclusively with my right leg. I knew I'd pay for this decision with a super-sore right butt cheek, but what's one more pain in the ass (literally)?
The Terminator and I set up next to each other, and when the clock started, we went head-to-head. That man robot is fast. Every time I pulled slightly ahead, he'd close the gap. I did my damnedest to stay a few reps ahead of him, but we traded leads a couple of times.
It wasn't until the seventh round that I noticed that the pull-up bar was slick with blood.
The skin surrounding the calluses on both my hands had torn off. I've torn my hands doing pull-ups before, but this is the first time I've ever noticed it in the middle of the workout. I was leaking DNA everywhere.
My right hand was particularly bloody, so when Tim handed me a paper towel, I used it to sop up some of the blood. I then wrapped it around the bar so I could get a better grip to finish my pull-ups. I was determined to finish nine full rounds, but in the end, I was one rep short.
The funny thing is that during the WOD, nothing hurt. Not my ankle (except the one time I came off the wall after a set of HSPUs and landed awkwardly on my left foot), not my groin, not my right butt cheek, and not my hands. When the 20 minutes were up, I was more pissed about not hitting my goal of 9 rounds than anything else.
The pain didn't hit until a few minutes after the workout. Others in the class had torn hands, too, and one by one, we marched into the restroom to rinse off the blood and yelp as the water stung our hands.
(Want to see a barftastic photo of one of my hands post-workout? No you don't. I'm pretty sure you don't want to see this.)
As I type this, my hands are bandaged up like mummies. I feel like an absolute idiot for not taking better care of my hands and letting my calluses build up enough to tear my skin. My butt cheek has been seizing up all day, and my left ankle is still throbbing. But on the plus side, my groin feels like a million bucks!
Result: 8 rounds + 29 reps as RXed.
Special thanks to Rachel for cleaning the blood off my pull-up bar for me, and to Graeme for picking up the bloody paper towels I'd strewn across the floor.
