New climber with hand care questions!

Hello everyone!

New climber here and I have questions about my poor hands. I went climbing for the first time today at my local climbing gym and I am hooked! I could have stayed for hours working on a  v1 I was trying to figure out. Problem is my skin on my hands tore off at the  primary contact points exposing raw skin. I know over time I will develop calluses on my hands. So here are a few questions.

- Do I let my hands heal before I go back and climb or just keep climbing in spite of the damage?
- I guess I had what are called flappers. Like flaps of skin hanging from my hands. I just tore them off and continued on. Should I have tore them off or try to put them back in place and tape them?
- Is there anything I can do to help them heal faster?
- Is there a way to get calluses faster?

In the gym today my hand grip was shot, forearms were rubber but if I rested for a few mins and did some stretches before attempting the problem again it was ok. But when the skin tore off my hands thats when it affected me and I stopped. I was a sad sad panda. I really wanted to figure out that v1! I was so close!

Any input would be great!

Thanks!!

Sounds like you need to let your tips heal, or you will have a bloody mess!

There are a couple different types of things you can get that will help your hands heal faster when you start climbing such as Climb On. It is useful to put on your hands when you first start climbing and will help them heal faster.

FrankPS wrote: Sounds like you need to let your tips heal, or you will have a bloody mess!

Its not really my tips. Its like various spots on my fingers. My tips held up pretty good. Hmmm after looking at my tips they are not worn at all. But yeah the raw spots started to bleed so I stopped. Didnt want to get blood on the holds. Seems a bit rude. How long should I wait before I climb again? If I wait till they heal all the way that seems like forever!

well you probably should wait until they heal all the way as a lesson anyways.

flappers are almost always a sign that you were gripping too hard, or hanging on too long when your feet cut, or not laying back into a straight armed grip so you can put more weight through your feet, or not shaking out your hands and resting enough between climbs, or getting your hands moist from too much sweat after your hands are already chalky but still getting on the climb again anyways before your hands dry out completely again.

look up the Open 3 Finger or 4 Finger climbing grip and start learning how to hold in that manner.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVYUHESJfns 
practice putting most of your weight into your feet on v-0

taping flappers back in place rarely heals back as strong as just going though the gradual conditioning of growing new skin.

Joe Burgess wrote:- Is there a way to get calluses faster?

Calluses are not necessarily a desirable thing.

Personally calluses are the last things I want on my fingers.

Let the skin heal before you return to climbing.

If you want to make it heal faster try something like J-Tree, Climb on , or Rhino Skin. Stop climbing and use whatever cream or lotion you prefer until the skin is healed.

Once your skin is healed return to climbing and then use that stuff immediately after a hard climbing session. But never before a climbing session. You can also get by using any high quality skin repair lotion. 

You build calluses by taking off/ rubbing the skin a little and then letting it grow back. If you keep climbing on raw skin you will never get a callus.

If you have normal skin you will build calluses by just climbing, the trick is to try and climb right up to the point where your skin is about to get raw and then stop. If you have really sweaty skin then you may want to use something to help keep your skin from sweating or else it won’t grow calluses or the calluses will get soft and rip off. I have sweaty palms even when I’m not climbing so I use an antiperspirant cream called antihydral to stop the sweating and then use Rhino Skin performance lotion (it has antiperspirant in it) instead of regular repair creams after I am done climbing to help speed skin repair while helping to prevent sweating. 

Finally, calluses, once you do build them may need to be maintained or else they will grow too thick. If they get too thick they will catch on holds and rip off (one great way to get a flapper). Most people use sanding blocks or finger nail files to sand down their calluses but I personally prefer to use a pumice stone (the things people use in the shower to remove dead skin from their feet). The pumice stone has a grit and texture designed for skin that removes excess dead skin without tearing up softer living skin, and seems like it is going to last forever, been using the same one for over a year. 

While healing, try O'Keefs hand cream for working hands.  Faster recovery.

I second O'Keefs working hands, much cheaper than Climb On and the other climbing branded creams and works just as well

Joe Burgess wrote: - Do I let my hands heal before I go back and climb or just keep climbing in spite of the damage?

Let them heal. If you keep going on torn up skin I think you'll quickly discover that it's not really an option.

- I guess I had what are called flappers. Like flaps of skin hanging from my hands. I just tore them off and continued on. Should I have tore them off or try to put them back in place and tape them?

Definitely don't tear them, because then you lose more skin than you have to. If the skin obviously isn't going to reattach, remove with a razor blade or snip with scissors and file off the excess with an emory board or file.

- Is there anything I can do to help them heal faster?

Moisturize, eat protein, stay off them.

- Is there a way to get calluses faster?

Callouses aren't really the answer either, because the skin around them can still be soft, and then the whole callus tears off, which is worse than not having callouses in the first place. For this reason a lot of people will grind off callouses with a file or emory board, or shave off the outer layer with a razor.

What you really want is an even, somewhat smooth layer of thick skin across the whole contact surface of your hand. That way there aren't any points sticking out which can tear off (like a callous). The way you get this is by checking your hands frequently and identifying potential flappers before they happen, and either doing a different climb that doesn't use that patch of skin, or just calling it a day and letting your hands heal.

The entire palms of my hands and pads of my fingers are leather and I haven't had a flapper in years at this point, and my local rock is pretty sharp and crystally. If you get into hard outdoor bouldering some level of skin damage is unavoidable, but I think there's no reason an indoor climber ever needs to have skin damage.

In the gym today my hand grip was shot, forearms were rubber but if I rested for a few mins and did some stretches before attempting the problem again it was ok. But when the skin tore off my hands thats when it affected me and I stopped. I was a sad sad panda. I really wanted to figure out that v1! I was so close!

Any input would be great!

Assuming you aren't geriatric or suffering from some fatal disease, you've got a long time ahead of you to climb. Be patient! I know it can be frustrating to have to rest to avoid injury, but the earlier you get in that habit the better. Pulley, rotator cuff, elbow, and ankle injuries are all much worse than flappers and as you get on harder and harder routes you'll need to learn to take time off to avoid these injuries. I sprained my ankle in spring of last year, and it's held me back far more than backing off that climb would have.

if you notice while you're in a climbing session.. that the callousy skin right below the line of your knuckle is starting to pinch up... press it back down firmly to re-flatten it and wait a little bit before getting back on.
if you keep an eye on this your odds of flappering go down significantly

- Do I let my hands heal before I go back and climb or just keep climbing in spite of the damage?

Definitely let them heal (as others have said).

- I guess I had what are called flappers. Like flaps of skin hanging from my hands. I just tore them off and continued on. Should I have tore them off or try to put them back in place and tape them?

Flappers usually start out as blisters (but not always).  If you notice a blister forming, don't let it turn into a flapper.  I've actually had far worse and more numerous blisters from dirtbiking than I ever got climbing.   Whenever i get a blister, i very carefully drain it by poking a small hole at the very edge of the blister with a clean needle (sometimes you have to repeat several times).  I find it heals much faster this way.  The skin will sort of re-adhere to layer beneath, but only very weakly.  Eventually the outer bubble of skin will die and peel off, but by then new skin will have formed underneath.

Once the blister tears (a flapper) then the best you can do is keep it covered with a bandage.

- Is there anything I can do to help them heal faster?
- Is there a way to get calluses faster?

As someone else mentioned, you don't actually want calluses.  Calluses are actually thick hardened layers of mostly dead skin, and callouses tend to to turn into blisters or flappers.  What you want is your LIVING skin to be stronger/thicker.  As far as i can tell building skin is alot like building muscle, you have to damage the tissue just enough to cause growth, but not so much that you weaken the bond between the layers.  

One think I noticed that really toughened my skin quickly was climbing on real rock with sharp crystals/features crimpers, or flakes, on more slabby, or vertical routes instead of overhanging jug hauls.  When you grab these sharp holds it is painful, because the rock is poking into your skin, but you aren't hanging from the holds, so you aren't putting so much frictional force on your skin (which is what gives you blisters).  Unfortunately it's hard to find those kinds of holds/climbs in a gym.  Route setters just don't set those kinds of climbs.

Thank you everyone for the great responses! I have learned a lot. Sorry for delayed response. I guess you gotta wait before you can post due to spam.

So here is what I have learned from all this.
- Learn the proper grips. Most of the holds on the v1 I was doing are called jugs and edges from what I have learned. I was using  full crimps the whole time. The jugs are what got me. But I was not         crimping the jugs. It was more like a full hand grasp. The edges I was full crimping.  As I said before my finger tips are fine so doing the edges were ok. Im going to ask the people at my gym to show     me examples of the various grips.
- Learn to support my weight with my legs and not my hands. I have no clue on this one. From what I have read so far I think I need to not stick my ass out so far and try to keep my core close to the       wall. I think having my body so far from the wall put a huge amount pressure on my hands.
- Dont climb with sweaty hands. This was a huge problem. The sweaty hands on the jugs just tore me up. I really didnt use chalk that much. I didnt keep my hands dry at all. I just went for it. I had no       clue sweaty hands would be that much of an issue.
- Stop if I feel like Ill start tearing skin and call it a day. Booooooo!
- Calluses  are not really a good thing. Try to develop tough skin instead of calluses. If I get them file them down and treat them with a lotion of some sort.
- Treat your hands after every climbing session with a proper lotion, Not before but after.
- Dont tear off flappers! Try to cut them off to save as much skin as I can.

So far I have picked up some O'Keefs and a pumice stone. The O'Keefs has really helped. I have been putting it on all day.
I did try bandais today but I took them off at lunch. I was thinking they need to breath and dry up. With the bandaids on they were still really raw and like oozing.

Again thank you all so much for the suggestions and advice. I really want to learn the proper way so I dont injure myself like this. At first I thought it was just normal for this to happen as a beginner  until I develop calluses  on my hands. I was wrong on that one! Cant wait to get back on the wall. I thought about just wrapping it up with tape and going for it but that would just injure my fingers
more. Ill just heal up and go at it!

Joe Burgess wrote: 
- Learn to support my weight with my legs and not my hands. I have no clue on this one. From what I have read so far I think I need to not stick my ass out so far and try to keep my core close to the       wall. I think having my body so far from the wall put a huge amount pressure on my hands.

- At first I thought it was just normal for this to happen as a beginner  until I develop calluses  on my hands.

for the 2nd point.. it is quite normal to get a flapper as a beginner.. but not because you're supposed to ;)  it's a reminder... it's one of the gentlest injuries that climbing will inflict on you.   really concentrating on learning the proper grips will help you avoid an also fairly common but far worse injury, the finger Pulley or Tendon injury.

as for the weight in the legs... it's not so much about your core... sometimes it's better to have a stance far away from the wall and sometimes it's better to be right in close..
weighting the legs is more about maintaining a stance where you have at least 1 straightened arm and one straightened leg.  when you are open gripping properly on a low level climb.. you should be able to hang straight armed and not really be engaging the forearms at all.  it's about engaging the top half of your fingers, and the muscle that wraps around the back of your shoulder to your scapula.  

the idea is to climb easier moves using your back and shoulders and legs... so that your forearms are not already pumped when you reach the harder moves of the climb and need to start really locking off your arms at right angle or more...  
similarly using an open grip or crimped grip is the same idea, they use different muscle sets.

unless the setting at your gym is particularly intense... you shouldn't really have to full crimp anything on a v1 or v0...  slipping while you're on a full crimp grip early on in your climbing career is one of the top causes of finger pulley injuries

Hello Joe,
I am a 62 year old physician, who has been climbing for 50 years.
I agree with most of the advice already given by others.
I think most climbers experience similar hand and skin injuries from time to time, especially after a big wall ascent or an extended climbing trip.
You must be patient, and let things heal or, you are likely to develop chronic, slow to heal injuries
Your body needs time to adapt to the unusual demands placed on your body by your new found sport.
My advice is to let your fingers heal so that you have real skin (not scabs) covering the injured areas. This will usually take 1-2 weeks. 
In the meantime, hit the weight room, go running and hiking, do careful pull-ups, and do this with gradually increasing intensity. If you are trashing your skin as badly as you state, I fear you may be headed for more serious overuse injuries, such as tendinitis, pulley or joint injury. These can take many months to heal.Don’t get me wrong; I admire and can easily relate to your enthusiasm, but climbing is a sport which regards patience, and careful, intelligent training.  Your skin, muscles, joints, tendons, and even your brain will gradually adapt to the stresses placed on them. 
One last thing: my own belief is that Vaseline, or other cheap hand creams are generally as good as anything else for treating dry abraded skin.
You don’t need to spend a ton of money on this stuff. If someone says otherwise, invite them to show you the data.
Pete

Keep working on the climbing...
Vaseline is cheaper than re-packaged trick climbing stuff.
Use lots of good chalk to help you grip.
One day you will be like the rest of US... you will be able to crush out somebody’s cigarette with the tips of your fingers... and smile the whole time.
And “flappers” ... I always thought... happen to the backside of your fingers when a crimp fails and you remove all the skin from your second knuckle.

Have fun

Peter Lenz wrote: 
One last thing: my own belief is that Vaseline, or other cheap hand creams are generally as good as anything else for treating dry abraded skin.
You don’t need to spend a ton of money on this stuff. If someone says otherwise, invite them to show you the data.
Pete

indeed.  I just use unrefined coconut oil.

Also, make sure you keep them clean.  Gym holds can be gross and your hands touch all kinds of surfaces all day.  When I tear my hand skin, I do rubbing alcohol (to disinfect) ->anti bacterial cream (ie neosporin) under my bandage -> salve (climb on, j-tree, vaseline, etc) at night while I sleep.  Rubbing alcohol will dry your skin out, so make sure you pair it with a moisturizer like the ones everyone is mentioned.  happy climbing!

Update!

My hands are pretty well healed up thanks to all the great suggestions. I went to the climbing gym this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. This time around I kept my hands dry and chalked and really focused on my grips. I made sure not to full crimp. My hands held up great with no damage at all! I was not even close to tearing skin again.  I washed them very well after and used O'keefs after my climb. I also rested a lot more between attempts. I am listening to my body and stop at the appropriate time. On Sunday while working on another v1 I felt a very slight strain in my forearm so I immediately called it quits. Seems fine today but Im going to give my body a rest for a few days. Im really sore all over! Feels good.

I will for sure try Vaseline after my O'Keefs runs out. The O'keefs was pretty cheap tho. Like 6 bucks for a bottle.

One thing to add. The climbing community is so helpful. The more experienced climbers in the gym shared some tips and techniques that helped so much, Like how to switch feet. The different grips. Different ideas to figure out the route I was trying to climb. Using your feet on the wall instead of using the feet holds all the time. Stuff like that.

O and I nailed that v1 I was working on! It felt really good. I am working on another one at the moment. Had one hand on the final hold on Sunday! Was so close!

Anyways thanks again to everyone for the help!!