UKH

As a soft office-bound climber training on a hangboard I'm finding that the skin on my finger pads sticks better to the surface of my hangboard than to my fingers. This is inconvenient, and very distracting when I'd rather be thinking about one more pull up. I've filed down the calluses to stop them from being ripped off, but now the soft skin underneath just seems to ruck up like a poorly fitted carpet. Any tips?

Well I recently moved on to a narrower edge and found it damaging my skin, so I reduced the reps and used bigger holds and used skin cream. It got better and now moving back to small edge and low reps. Doing ok so far.

Reps on grit will either kill or cure your skin.😀

I suspect it would be the former.

Wooden fingerboards are much kinder to the skin than resin ones.

Otherwise, experiment and work out what is best for your skin. You should only file calluses if it actually helps; if your skin is left too thin and soft then either it's a bad idea or you are filing too much. My skin doesn't stand up to filing so I have always just used cocoa butter on my hands after a session and this stops any significant calluses forming or too much skin cracking. But you have to find out what works for you.

True that.

It's what happened to me at first.

Some of us just have naturally crap skin that's way softer and sweatier so tears easily. I know how you feel! I used to tape around the second joint of middle 2 on both hands before doing any foot on campus because it always wrecked my skin for days otherwise. 

I now use Rhino Dry and Tip Juice which sorts my skin out so it's no longer a massive limiting factor. Definitely worth a look IMO. I never understood what people meant by 'good skin' until I'd experienced what 'not shit' skin was like! 

That being said, if you're consistently trashing your pads on a wooden rung, it's indicative that you need to mix up the grip types, hold types and loading - this is also an important factor in avoiding injury. The last thing you want to do is ruin all your good psyche by getting an injury just as things start firing back up in the UK. 

It'd be interesting to know what training sessions you're doing (broadly speaking), how often, your training history etc. 

Hope this helps. 

Thanks: I'll give the cream a go too

Yes - I think I might have gone too far with the filing. I hadn't thought of applying a skin cream

I'm using a training program put together by Neil Gresham, and it seems pretty effective. Hangboard training is alternate days with rest sessions included in the program and a variety of grips. I haven't had any injury issues as the program includes antagonistic sessions. The program is structured into phases of 1-2 weeks with a couple of rest days between phases, and different exercises in each phase. It's pretty varied. The skin problems tend to build up towards the end of a phase. 

Yeah Gresh knows what he's doing so that element is fine. Sounds like it's mainly a skin recovery issue in which case you can consider simply taping and further care products like rhino and climb on to help it heal and strengthen. 

At some point though in a training plan your skin will just get sore because you're overreaching and that's normal. It shows you're putting the work in and it's normal to feel generally prettytpretty before a deload week. 

Get some hand balm and crack on  

Oh, innocent days... 

Nah in all seriousness this goes a way towards helping but the best injury prevention you'll ever do is knowing when to stop, when to not do that last rep, when you shouldn't have another go at that boulder... Etc. 

Have fun training and don't be afraid to skip the last rep if you feel tweaky