Every time I practice on uneven bars my hands rip and bleed. What can I do to prevent this?

You're going to hear this a lot: Your skin has to toughen up if you want to prevent them. There is something for when you have rips and have to compete or workout. It's called RipGuardian: http://bit.ly/fOo8Lw. If you mention that you have a rip on Twitter they'll often reply and use your Twitter name as a discount to try it out.

Hello s:

Wear grips (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grip_%28gymnastics%29).

excon

I'm not a gymnist, but I know what hands need to do to fontion, and to protect themselves, and the skin on the part of your hand you grab things with is in a balance. It needs to be soft enough to be able to feel things obviously so you can, well feel things,(and the top digit of your fingers will always stay soft) but it has to develop, not a plate, but a pad of thick, tough skin on places with muscles or in the middle of knuckles, which is in affect dead so that it cannot feel pain, and will not bleed if punctured. This is natures way of protecting our hands. For bars that are more likley to cut, scrape or burn your hands, or that are coarse like sand paper, having these "knuckle pads" will help, even in the areas that don't have them because when you grip something, they will close off any unprotected skin. Also, theses "pads" will loose some of the grip they had when the skin cells were alive, but this does not matter because you grip with your thumb, not just the stickyness of your fingers. The best way to get them is to not do anything to protect your hands for this can only be a temporary fix. Simply let nature realise that your hands go through a lot of stress and your body will adapte to physical changes. If you want to get them faster, try working out with things that only involve your hands, like chin up bars, climbing ropes, or a chin up ladder.


I have been using these things for about two months, and I developed the pads after about two and a half weeks. Its true that some peoples hands are softer than others, but this is just my advice, from personel experience. When they first develop, your knuckles where the fingers meet the hand will shedd off some of it each day, but it goes away after three weeks. (your middle and ring fingers will get the strongest ones.)

Good luck to you and your gymnastics.

And sorry for the overly long explanation.

Omg! Really? If you're a gymnast this should be a requirement! GRIPS! I was a gymnast for 16 years I was NOT allowed on bars without them, maybe they need a new coach who knows what there doing, its not your fault, but its NOT true the more you do it the tougher they will get.