Rock climbing training – Toughening and repairing your fingers

Aside from the obvious aches and pains, I’m sure that if you ask any regular rock climber, the pain they’re all keen to avoid is damage to the skin on their hands and fingers. Climbing places a great deal of stress on your skin, which can easily lead to painful sores or tears. This week I would like to give you some tips on how to toughen up your skin to prevent such injuries. Next week I’ll tell you how best to heal them quickly if you do happen suffer with them.

How to Toughen Fingers

Your girlfriend or boyfriend is not going to thanks me for this, but tough skin on your fingers is essential if you plan to climb regularly and at a high level of intensity. With regular, hard climbing the skin on your fingers will eventually toughen up, but there are several ways in which you can speed up the process…

Surgical Spirits

Not long after I started climbing I found myself complaining to friends about painful skin tears on my fingers. Funnily enough, it was a non-climber that suggested that I use Surgical Spirits to toughen them up. A tad skeptical I decided to ‘Google’ their advice. Imagine my surprise when I found that it’s a common practice! The stuff is about £1 from any chemist and all you need to do is dab some on your finger tips using cotton wool or a cloth. Try it once or twice a day for a week and you will notice an improvement – I did! Surgical Spirits doesn’t dry out the hands like you would imagine, it just firms them up nicely.

‘Use it or lose it’

Speaking from personal experience on this one, I find that if I spend several days climbing, or have a heavy week training, then take a week off my fingers pay! The firm skin seems to wear down and come away – sounds nice I know. It leaves them with raw and tender skin underneath, then I’m back to square one! This leads to my next tip . . .

Callus builder

I came across this device on Amazon. I had a £10 gift voucher, with which I bagged myself a Grip-master, leaving me with £3 change. Hmmmm, how to spend the remaining £3?. I searched a bit more, and discovered the callus builder (reasonably priced within my £3 budget). I decided to give it a go. It’s essentially a sprung surface folded in two, with rough, sandpaper like edges on the outer layer. As you squeeze it this offers slight resistance whilst rubbing lightly against the fingers keeping them firm. I find this great for days off or on wet days, when I can’t get to gym.

I hope you find this rock climbing training advice useful, watch out for part 2 next week – repairing damage to the skin on your fingers.