Heed Blisters & Rips Before Doing Pull Ups With Kips
They suck, you hate ‘em, so read on for some educatin’.
A tweep of mine, Shiela-Rae (follow her here), recently and without shame posted a picture of a gnarly blister she received from doing a number of pull ups during a CrossFit WOD. Seeing the picture made me cringe and in turn I empathized as I had recently experienced the same pain. It also inspired me to share what I had learned from one of my trainers at CrossFit Bartlett; having the correct grip during pull ups will save your hands! Shiela and I made a common mistake, we, like many CrossFiters, like to place the bar in the middle of our palms because it is where we feel strongest in our grip. However, as you can see in the annotated picture of Shiela’s hand, the bar should be just above where the fingers meet the palm. The grip will feel weird but work through it, develop finger strength, and your hands (especially your palm) will certainly thank you later!
Now before you run off and start doing pull ups until your arms fall off, there’s one more thing you should know … maintain your calluses! That beautiful, enameled, hardened skin that you’ve worked so hard for needs the occasional TLC. Changing your grip alone will not keep your hands rip free; I unfortunately learned the hard way. If your calluses develop too much they will snag on the bar and eventually rip, and now your callus is totally gone (note the picture below). Get a pumice stone at your local drugstore and keep those hard earned calluses maintained.
Although having correct grip will save your hands in most cases, there are still high-rep WODs and plenty of other things that will inevitably result in a rip(s). If that is the case then you should do yourself a favor and check out Jessica Camacho’s excellent blog entry titled, “A CrossFitter’s Hand (Repair) Job”. You can follow Jessica’s tweets here.
Now go whip those hands into shape and remember to show your calluses some TLC!
Progress from WOD#1 - WOD#28. I also have to confess something, I slightly flexed my arms in the 2nd set, my friend called me out on it. Overall, I’m satisfied with my progress but I was hoping for more of a dramatic difference between the 2nd and 3rd set.
You have a choice every day, to be the same or become better. Make the choice to be better!Justin Emmons
6-Week Shred
Taking a brief scan of my blog or Twitter you’ll quickly see that I’ve been posting quite a few pictures of food. The question is, why? At CrossFit Bartlett a few of us are currently in the middle of a challenge, the “Six-Week Shred”. The challenge is to follow a strict Paleo diet for the first two weeks and then we’re on our own for the rest (there’s an underlying assumption that we’ll continue with the strict diet). The person with the most relative body transformation wins. I’m taking pictures for fun but it’s also a documenting process, creating a visual of the meals I liked and didn’t like. I’ve been cooking for myself for most of the meals so far and I love it! It’s become a creative process, seeing how to keep it simple yet absolutely delicious and I believe I’m succeeding. It’s no surprise that I love cooking all this food, the Myers Briggs (a personality and career test) I took a few years ago said I would most likely enjoy being a professional chef. Who knows, I certainly don’t, but for now I’ll just stick with my extra virgin olive oil and iron skillet. Until next time
Bon apetit
