Avoid Giving Rough High-Fives! Proper Care & Feeding of Your Fabulous Ten! With Video Tutorial

Oh, your hands live a rough life with barbells and pull up bars. Let’s get your money-makers ready for soft hand shakes and non-revengeful high-fives.

It’s annoying to rip your hands and it's more annoying to listen to someone whine about their ripped hands. Yes, your hands WILL demand r-e-s-p-e-c-t (singing it right now) especially when you begin to push them to their limits. Pull ups, barbells and ropes will take down burly men if their hands give out first. These tricks will prevent you from ripping, thus no whining. What we're going to do is to shave down the skin that is on top of your calluses (surprise! you don't need it) There is nothing brutal about this, there should be no pain or tears involved if you do it exactly as I tell you. 

Your Hand-Care tool kit should include: 

1. Tweezerman callus shaver which you can purchase at Walgreens or here: 

Buy me to prevent painful rips!

How to Use the Tweezerman:

1. Apply lotion to your hands and let it dry. Usually 2 minutes.

                                      2. Grab the shaver by handle. 

3. Hold the shaver to your palm with the razor tip above the calluses. Shave in 

    slow, downward strokes towards the bottom of your hand. Apply a 

    reasonable amount of pressure to make sure the blade gets to the 

    skin. Shave only parallel to your fingers to avoid hurting yourself. 

    To help you navigate this, I am showing you the starting point in this pic and sending my youtube video

Start with shaver here

Remember the Tweezerman when you know your WOD will include ferocious amounts of pull ups (You know who you are, Murph!) As for regular maintenance, try shaving down once a week for good measure. Your hands will send their deepest gratitude.

2. A pumice stone.

These come in all shapes and sizes & in this instance, size does not matter :) Use this guy when your fingers and hands are getting mangey. Sometimes, I use this just when I notice  my hands are feeling rough and I can do this really fast in the shower. Outside the shower, you can use a bowl for water & let your hand(s) sit in there a few minutes to soften first (just like a pedicure). Next, scrub fingers/palms back and forth in all directions with the pumice stone. Lastly, apply some lotion, vitamin E or olive oil and Wa-La; you regain that sexy hand luster. 

In case you do rip/tear!! First you want to wash the yuck off your hands to get them clean. You will feel the burn, sorry, no way around it. Then, my Best advice EVER…get the blue latex doctor gloves & put those bad boys on before your shower. They will allow you to wash with soap & not suffer further with burning pain.

I like to put these on & ask my closest friends to bend over