Treating rips

First, I'd like to say that I found no suitable sub-forum to post this, but if there is a better place for this post, I hope it will be moved. My question is about rips (from the high bar in this cse). I put it in "Getting Started" since I suppose this is a fairly basic question.

My question relates to what I've seen mentioned online several times and which is called "bagging". If I understand things correctly, you simply put your hand in a plastic bag overnight. Is this standard practice? My coach said he'd never heard of it (I'm currently living and practising in Taiwan). Is it useful? If so, why? I tried it and though I'm not sure if it helped or not, my hand was fairly wet when I woke up and my guess is that that's not so good. Is it supposed to be like that or is it because of the climate? I'm talking about actual liquid in the bag after 6 hours of sleep. If anyone has any other suggestions for how to treat rips that would be most welcome!

I'm interested in this!

What I do is try to prevent them by A) ramping up bar swings and other high friction work slowly and B) Using Tuf-Foot from www.tuf-foot.com to make the skin that I already have more durable.

A long time ago Coach mentioned making a supersaturated salt water solution and soaking the hands in it for ~10 minutes per day when you got rips... this may also be an effective way to thicken the skin as a general practice. I don't know, I've never tried it every day for an extended period of time.

Bag balm is pretty much the gymnastic standard for rips. Especially to those who train in the middle states of the US.

I also just had the misfortune of receiving 2 nasty tears while doing high-bar swings last night. Not fun! I'm trying Coach's protocol found here: http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5974. After soaking in warm salt water and cutting off the dead excess skin, I also applied a couple layers of "liquid skin." I cannot emphasize enough how badly this stuff stings (!!!) but it does provide a pretty good protective barrier and hopefully it will speed up the healing process.

My question now is how can one actually prevent rips from happening in the first place? I always assumed that the calluses at the top of my palms were a good thing... maybe not?

Calluses are a good thing; provided they are not too thick or in other words rise up too high off the surface of the skin. It is this extra elevation from the rest of the working surface that is more easily caught on the bar and "rips".

Three things to avoid this:

1) If possible, work with moderation and pay attention to the condition of your hands. It is better to stop a turn or two early and prevent a rip and begin again the next day then to spend the next week or so having to reduce your entire work load.

2) Keep the calluses sanded down to a reasonable thickness.

3) Preventative maintainence; if you feel a hot spot coming on a little bag balm after practice can quite often help.

When a rip does occur (happens all the time despite the best of intentions) a combination of salt water soak, bag balm and then medicated chapstick applications during the day as needed to prevent drying out and cracking have given our best results over the years.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

What is this "bag balm" everyone talks about? :?:

Bag Balm.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Anyone heard of using 'Tincture of Benzoin' to toughten the skin of the hands?

ahhh, thanks Coach

It looks like it works very, very well Zach

So this is what it looks like now (check theattachement).

My guess is that because I didn't know how to treat this, it has dried out and cracked.

If I understand things correctly, this is what I should do next time, apart from trying to prevent it from happening again:

1) Wash it clean with soap and water immediately

2) Bandage it in some way

3) Continue practising, preferrably something else

4) Afterwards, regularly apply bag balm or similar (I don'tknow what's available here)

Questions:

Should I keep it bandaged? For how long?

I assume I should clean it now and then?

What about the bagging I mentioned in my first post?

Thank you very much!

For me I wash, trim and soak regularly in salt water. Not the most pleasant but I've always had the best results. If it is really deep then you might need to bandage it the first couple days. Salt soak will really clean it out and depending on your tolerance, wake you up pretty fast.