General Warm-up:
400m Run
Group Mobility
“Pick Your Own Poison”
You may choose to make up a WOD that you missed from earlier in the week, do a named CrossFit workout – the girls and heroes. You may not create your own workout. A good idea is to pick a workout that you have done before and try to beat your previous score, or pick something you’ve always wanted to do.
Not a badge, but a product of too much chalk and poor hand care
Shave your hands, use less chalk
Tearing your hands in CrossFit is often treated as a badge of honor, or a right of passage that means you’ve officially become a true CrossFitter. The fact is, tearing your hands is an injury and hinders your training and therefore your progress. We don’t get excited we tweak our back or shoulder, so why would we get excited about ripping the flesh from the palm of our hands?
So…how do we fix/prevent hand tears? The answer is two-fold:
1. The most common reason people tear is from poor hand care followed by excessive grip work (pullups, barbells, kettlebells, etc.). When you look down at your hands and your callus’ look all gnarly and have little flakes of dead skin or they are built up and look like the front range is growing across your hand, you are primed for a rip fest.
The answer? SHAVE YOUR HANDS! Go to store and in the foot care aisle and pick up a cheese grater looking callus shaver.
Use this as often as you see dead skin or massive bumps on your hands. It’s also a good idea to use a pumice stone daily as a preventative measure. On a side note guys, this will also make your girl happy. FYI, they don’t like when you scratch their back with the palm of your hand. Keep it smooth and they will appreciate you touching them much more!
2. The other culprit to ripped hands is excessive chalk use. Don’t get wrong, chalk is great and a necessary tool in the gym, but too much of a good thing is just that – too much. Here’s what happens: your hands get sweaty so you chalk up to dry them off, they get more sweaty and you add more chalk, more sweat more chalk, and so on. Eventually this sweat/chalk combo turns into a sort of stick to the bar mud and rip you go.
The answer? USE LESS CHALK! Not only is tons of chalk use bad for your health, it’s messy!
Next time your doing high rep gripping exercises try a little less chalk. If you have super sweaty hands keep a towel close by and dry them off before you chalk up. You’ll be surprised how good of a grip you can get with a dusting of chalk on a dry hand.
The bottom line is, take care of your hands and use only the chalk you need. Torn hands are injured hands, and injuries prevent progress. See you in the gym with smooth hands and happy significant others! ~ Coach Sol
