Wednesday 11.14.12

Hand Care - Part 3: WODing with Torn Hands

Once you've torn your hands you have 2 choices: a)hide away in your house and not workout for a week until your hands are completely healed or b) figure out how to work through it and still WOD without doing any more damage. I don't know about you, but b) sounds much better to me....and maybe even less painful than CrossFitting after an entire week of sitting on my behind. :)

When you come back to the gym after tearing your hands, you have a few options:

1) Cover your hands. You can do this with athletic tape or with gymnastics grips. These grips are also an alternative it avoid tearing your hands in the first place. Grips, gloves and the like are not something that you should be wearing or need in CrossFit on a regular basis. I wouldn't recommend that you wear them all that often because they slow down the process of building up the calluses on your hands, they can actually hinder your grip, and if we're really preparing for life, how often are you wearing gloves or grips? However, if your hands are already torn, or the WOD is something like Murph with 100 pullups and you know its likely to tear up your hands, grips might be just what you need. On the same token, hand coverings have their place - but certainly not during Olympic lifting. It's very important to be able to feel the bar during this type of lifting, not to mention that your grip is actually better barehanded.

Another option is to buy athletic tape from any sporting goods store and make some hand coverings/grips yourself. This video shows one way to tape your hands:

2) Modify movements. If you have torn hands and the workout calls for pull ups, do ring rows. Toes to bar? Do toes to rings instead. Knees to elbows? Do them laying on the ground instead of swinging from a bar. Ask your coaches and we can help you out.

Unless you're in the middle of a major competition (in which case, odds are that no matter what anyone tells you, you're going to finish the WOD regardless of what your hands look or feel like), there's no reason to continue ripping your hands apart once they're already torn up. Doing so will only make the healing process longer and more painful. Practice preventative measures, and WHEN (not if :)) you do tear your hands, take care of them! 

WOD
30 HSPU
50 back extensions
30 K2E
30 front squats (95/65)
30 DB push press (40/30)
50 KB swings (53/35)
20 calorie row
10 muscle ups