Hand Care

This is what happens when you don't take care of your hands properly. I'm embarrassed to admit this is my hand after my WOD yesterday. I know better too. I had it coming and even said..."I better take care of these calluses or I'm going to rip up my hands on the next heavy pull-up WOD." I was 'protecting' my upper calluses because those were the ones I was worried about, so I gripped the bar more in my palm (which I also know I shouldn't do) and voila...rriiiiiipp!!

So, how should we take care of our hands? Over time and many WODs you will develop calluses. Those are good. They toughen up your tender skin. But a callus itself needs care. It needs to be shaved or filed down so that it's level with the rest of your skin. A rule I've heard is if you can pinch it, it needs to be filed.

There are a ton of ways you can do this. You can soak your hand and scrape the dead skin off with a dull knife like this. You can can use your average razor, but be careful not to shave off too much. I've heard of people using a little dremel to file them down. A pedi-egg is another option. Look...Tweezerman even has a callus shaver.

Keith from CrossFit Vituosity wrote a great 4-part series on hand care. Here is part 2 where he addresses taking care of a torn callus.

Whatever you do, get your calluses to be flat/even so they won't cause friction on the bar. Then repeat as necessary and you should be fine.

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WOD:

100 ft walking lunge (knee should gently touch the ground each step)

21 pull-ups

21 sit-ups

100 ft walking lunge

18 pull-ups

18 sit-ups

100 ft walking lunge

15 pull-ups

15 sit-ups

100 ft walking lunge

12 pull-ups

12 sit-ups

100 ft walking lunge

9 pull-ups

9 sit-ups

100 ft walking lunge

6 pull-ups (careful on the 5th pull-up here--you might rip a callus! *wink*)

6 sit-ups

Bonus Round a la CFG:

100 ft walking lunge

3 pull-ups

3 sit-ups