We often hear about the most common consequences of these hormonal fluctuations, such as sporadic menses, hot flashes, weight gain, and mood swings. For many women, menopause can also have a direct impact on skin health, most notably in the lips and mouth area.
Here’s what you need to know about this often-overlooked aspect of skin aging.
The tissues of the lips are also affected, both from direct hormonal changes and indirect actions caused by oral discomfort.
For example, women often slow down their intake of food and water because of perimenopausal weight gain. Hormonal changes and dehydration cause the lip tissue to degrade, become dry and lose elasticity.
A wide range of health problems can make a woman's battle to keep her lips healthy and youthful-looking even more difficult.
For instance, many older women who take medications for chronic health conditions experience thinning skin and dry mouth. Vitamin deficiencies, spicy foods, and lip biting can also exacerbate damage to the lips during menopause.
Additionally, the immune system may start to malfunction, which can result in infections. If a woman has the herpes simplex virus or oral thrush, she might develop cold sores, blisters, patches, or other skin issues along with peeling and pain.
Even healthy lifestyle choices such as regular fitness workouts can cause problems. Some women unknowingly damage their lips while exercising by biting on them or by allowing their bodies to dehydrate.
All of these conditions can make the lips feel hot and hypersensitive. Thankfully, there are a number of simple steps that can be taken to rejuvenate and treat sore, cracked lips.
Start by treating the underlying conditions and problems that may be causing damage to your lips.
According to recent studies, antioxidants such as glutathione can help improve the skin’s appearance. Favor antioxidant-rich foods, and make sure you’re getting all the vitamins and minerals you need.
Speak with your doctor about ways to improve your overall health:
It’s also important that you improve your total body hydration at home, work, and play by drinking more water and beverages containing electrolytes.
If you can't stop licking or biting your lips during workouts, give them a bit of love by coating them with a thick, beeswax-based lip balm that prevents you from directly licking the skin.
Make certain that it also contains natural products like grape seed oil, shea butter, and Vitamin E so you're actually conditioning and moisturizing the skin during your workouts.
If you also have a lip-biting habit, invest in a mouth guard that blocks your tongue and teeth from touching your lips. Finally, since sunlight can cause lip damage, make certain to always wear lip balm or lipstick that contains SPF whenever spending any significant amount of time outdoors.
]]>The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends that the average person consume .8 grams of protein per kilogram or .35 grams of protein per pound of body weight. However, if you want to build muscle mass with physical activity, then your guidelines should be adjusted. You essentially need to consume more protein than you are breaking down. Therefore, you should up the recommended daily intake. This means a 150-pound person (who is working out in order to build muscle) would need between 75 and 120 grams of protein per day.
You’ve probably heard people tell you that being sore after a workout is good -- that this is how you know you are building muscle. You might even be disappointed if you find yourself not feeling sore after a tough workout. The truth is, soreness doesn’t always translate to more muscle growth. In fact, research has shown that soreness is not an exact formula.
So what does it mean when you feel sore? Feeling sore is the result of muscle damage, however there is very little evidence to prove that muscle damage is necessary for muscle growth to take place. While muscle damage might speed up muscle growth, again the correlation between the two cannot be directly measured. There are a couple of factors that lead to soreness. Straining your body in a way it is not used to will cause soreness. There are also certain exercises that are simply more likely to cause soreness (a deadlift versus a lateral raise, for example). And finally, research suggests even your individual genes can affect the severity at which muscle damage leads to soreness in your body.
So what about training when you feel sore? Studies in both the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and the Journal of Applied Physiology found no connection between training sore muscles and a lack of muscle growth, nor is there evidence to suggest working out when you are sore exacerbates muscle damage. In other words, you can’t measure muscle growth based on how sore you are after a day in the gym. It’s good to keep your body guessing (more about that in #6), which will most likely lead to soreness, but it’s important to note that you won’t necessarily “feel” muscle growth through pain the next day.
How many times a week should you work out each muscle group for maximum growth? A study published by the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) looked at resistance training programs to determine what role frequency played on muscle growth. It was concluded that training muscle groups twice a week produced better results than only training once a week. There wasn’t, however, enough evidence to conclude that training three times a week versus two had a better outcome.
The popular belief that the heavier weights you lift, the more muscle you are building has been slowly debunked in recent years. A study conducted by researchers from McMaster University and published in the Journal of Applied Physiology looked at two groups of men, each training for a total of 12 weeks. One group lifted heavier weights (up to 90% of max capacity) for less reps (8-12), while the other completed more reps (20-25) with lighter weights (50% max capacity). At the end of the trial, gains in muscle mass and muscle fibre size were found to be almost exactly the same.
So if you can’t do a heavy weight workout one day, you shouldn’t skip the gym altogether. Doubling up the reps on lighter weights should give you the same muscle building effect. In a similar way, if certain exercises with heavy weights are causing pain, lower your number of reps. Fatigue is the key factor, according to the lead researcher on the study, whether that be achieved through heavy weights or a high number of reps.
Training programs focused on specific body parts used to be very popular. You’d work your chest and arms one day, legs another, and abs another. However, in recent years, studies have found that the safest way to build muscles in your entire body while also minimizing stress on the joints is to do what’s known as a push/pull program. The major muscle groups in the body can be divided into push versus pull. The push muscles are ones in which the muscle tissue contracts when a weight is pushed away from the body. The push muscle groups include the calves, deltoids, gluteals, pectorals, quadriceps, and triceps. For example, when you do a push-up, you are mainly working your pectoral muscles, triceps, and deltoids (with other ancillary benefits to other muscles). The pull muscles are ones in which the muscle tissue contracts as the weight is pulled toward the body. These include the abdominals, biceps, forearms, Latissimus Dorsi, hamstrings, obliques, and trapezius. When you do a pull-up, you are mainly working your biceps and lat muscles.
I attended a seminar led by Dr. Dave Tilley, and he emphasized the need to perform the same amount of push/pull exercises on each area of your body. So for every repetition of an upper-body horizontal pushing exercise you do during a given week, you should also do a repetition of an upper body horizontal pulling exercise. It’s important to balance both pushing and pulling exercises in order to prevent injuries.
You probably already know that varying your exercises is important, but you should also be varying your workout intensity. The idea is that to see muscle growth, you need to keep forcing your body to change. This means changing up your volume, intensity, and frequency -- while allowing for rest. It’s also important to note that one affects the other. If your volume increases significantly, your intensity will inevitably decrease. A helpful definition for intensity is a percentage of your 1-rep maximum, meaning the higher your intensity, the less reps you will be able to do. If you are using less weight (aka, less intensity), you will be able to perform more reps.
Finding a balance between these three variables can be a challenge, but keep in mind that rest is also key. If you aren’t properly resting between workouts, you won’t be able to change any of the three variables, and you won’t build muscle with a stagnant regimen. Enough rest will allow you to pick up your volume, intensity, or your frequency.
Ginger has long been used as a remedy for things like an upset stomach, but there is also research to support its ability to reduce muscle soreness. Researchers at The University of Georgia performed a study in which they had participants consume a ginger supplement for 11 days prior to a workout. The results, which were published in the Journal of Pain, showed that the supplement group saw 25% less “exercise-induced pain” 24 hours after the workout, as compared to the group who did not take the ginger.
If you’re trying to build muscle, you don’t want anything slowing you down or keeping you out of the gym. Muscle pain can slow you down, so consuming ginger and other foods that are said to have anti-inflammatory properties, like cacao, green tea, sweet potatoes, salmon, turmeric, manuka honey, tart cherries, and cottage cheese, are a great addition to your health and fitness program.
Eating a high-protein diet, balancing your workouts with recovery time, changing up your volume, intensity, and frequency, and focusing on a push/pull program will all help you build muscle and gain strength. Taking preventative measures to reduce muscle soreness and protect your body from injuries, like hand rips, is also important. So when you do get an injury like a hand rip, proper treatment will get you back to your workouts -- and strength building -- faster.
]]>Obviously, preventing hand rips from the outset is always a priority, and there are several things you can do to protect yourself. It’s also important, though, to learn the proper way to treat a hand rip so that it heals as quickly as possible. With this in mind, RIPT compiled a CrossFit guide to treating your hand rips so you can get back -- and stay -- in the gym.
Let’s start with a few basics. Hand rips are wounds caused by skin tearing off your hands. The friction created by lifting weights or bars will often lead to rips, which explains why this is one of the more common problems CrossFit athletes come across.
According to the CrossFit Journal, there are two main causes of hand rips:
Remember back to when you first started doing pull-ups or lifting weights. You probably ripped your hands quite often because they were so soft and you had no calluses. Don’t be fooled into thinking calluses are all bad. Calluses are produced by friction and are the body’s way of protecting itself.
A callus is a thick, rough, and raised are of the skin caused by friction and pressure. The more you work out with a bar and lift weights, the more calluses you’ll begin to develop. The problem is that when calluses get too thick and form a cliff or rough edge on your hands, they are much more susceptible to ripping.
So you’ve gotten a rip -- now what? Follow these easy steps.
Even with the best prevention methods, skin has a natural threshold. In fact, many athletes find that between 65-85 reps on a bar will cause skin to rip regardless of preventative measures. It’s still good practice to do what you can before stepping into the gym, though, so below are two major steps you can take to prevent rips.
According to Devin Glage, co-founder of RIPT, the key to preventing rips is in the shaping and smoothing of your calluses. You want them thick enough to protect your hands, but smooth and supple enough so they don’t catch on the bars or weights. So you’re looking for a smooth, slightly-rounded callus that doesn’t have any hard or jagged edges. The American Academy of Dermatology recommends filing the callus with a pumice stone to remove the dead skin. You can easily do this with the RIPT Grindstone, which is a synthetic pumice stone. If you have white flaky skin on your hands, then what you need is a grindstone to buff and smooth the skin.The best method for using the grindstone is in the shower when both the stone and the skin are wet. Using light pressure with the grindstone, you can softly shape your calluses so that they still protect your hands but aren’t too thick with hard edges that would cause a rip.
You might have heard that you can shave, cut, or use a pedicure grater to get rid of your calluses. However, a razor doesn’t give you enough control and you will end up with a convex shape. Using any of these other methods will also create the wrong shape. You’re aiming for a concave shape, which won’t get caught on a bar, rather than a convex shape, which will actually eliminate the protection you want on your hands. You also run the risk of taking off to much skin when you use a razor or other method besides a pumice stone. Removing too much skin can lead to bleeding and infection. A rock-based pumice stone is also too abrasive and will make it hard to achieve the concave shape.
When thinking about the ideal thickness of your calluses you want to make sure that they are thin enough that you can keep them moisturized. Dry skin is more likely to crack and rip than healthy, moisturized skin. The chalk that you use in the gym will dry out your skin even further. A great solution is applying Daily Dose after your shower every day to hydrate your hands and keep your skin pliable.
It’s important to practice good maintenance of your hands to keep them from ripping as much as possible, but don’t expect to never have a wound as a CrossFit athlete. And the next time you get a rip, follow the above steps so that you can get back to working out at full capacity quicker and safer.
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Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there on the subject. Below is RIPT's roundup of some popular myths concerning hand care and rip treatment. Use this information to take better care of your hands, get back in the gym, and stay on top of your goals.
This one is partly true, but moisturizing alone won’t solve your problems. Dry skin is more likely to crack, so keeping your skin moisturized is important. However, super soft hands will also rip. The key is finding a balance, and this means paying special attention to the size and shape of your calluses. Once a built-up callus forms a hard shell that you can pinch it is more susceptible to ripping. According to the CrossFit Journal, calluses should be smooth so they protect your hands, but they should also be shaped so that there aren’t any ridges that can get caught and easily rip open. In short, keep your hands moisturized and your calluses smooth and rounded.
No matter how well you protect your hands, rips are sometimes inevitable, so it’s important to know the fastest and safest way for your hands to heal. Whenever you get a rip, disinfecting the wound is important, but reaching for the Hydrogen Peroxide or rubbing alcohol can actually cause more harm than good. In fact, case studies indicate Hydrogen Peroxide can harm the tissue, which will delay the healing process. Instead, run the skin under cool water for at least five minutes to clean the area. Use soap around the rip, but not in it, to remove excess debris and keep bacteria from getting in. Then you can apply an antibiotic cream, or an all-natural solution like RIPT’s Quick Fix.
After you’ve cleaned your rip, a common misconception is that you need to let the skin “breathe.” In reality, an exposed rip is more susceptible to infection. Treat a rip like any other wound by covering it to keep out water, dirt, and other germs that could slow down the healing process. This will also keep you from causing further damage to the area while you are asleep or going about your day.
According to the International Journal of Consumer Studies, washing your hands in hot water isn’t more effective when it comes to killing germs. It can, however, cause skin irritation. Besides that, running your hands under scalding water can break down the outer protective layer of your hands, which keeps bacteria out. Therefore, it’s best to wash your hands and clean out rips with water that’s a comfortable temperature.
Calluses are the body’s natural response to repeated friction on a specific part of the body. For Crossfitters and gymnasts, calluses form because of the friction of your hands against the bars. The only way to stop calluses from forming is to stop the friction that caused them in the first place. So in the case of athletes, whose training requires this repetitive friction, it’s important to shape the calluses so they don’t get too thick and cause a rip. There is no scientific evidence to back up the theory that shaving or shaping a callus will make it grow back faster -- only the repeated friction will have this effect. The American Academy of Dermatology actually suggests filing down a callus as part of their recommended care. This is also why RIPT includes a grindstone in their 3 Phase Hand Care Kit.
A callus forms to protect you. It’s part of your body’s immune system response to the repeated friction. If you’re an athlete, the formation of calluses is a good thing -- they’re like a shield for your hands. What you should be careful of is calluses that become too big or hard because then they are susceptible to rips. A smooth, moisturized, well-rounded callus won’t get caught on a bar or a weight and rip.
There is some debate about this, but studies have shown that covering a small wound with an antibiotic cream (like Neosporin) has no effect on healing time. Using petroleum jelly is just as effective, as it keeps the area moisturized. With antibiotic creams, you also run the risk of one of the ingredients irritating the skin.
You might have been told that it’s important to keep a wound dry, but you could actually be slowing down healing time. Blood vessels regenerate quickest when wounds are kept moist and covered. Vaseline or RIPT Quick Fix will do the job. RIPT's Quick Fix is an all natural formula that contains essential oils known to decrease skin inflammation and nourish the epithelial cells while they work to close the wound.
Vitamin E has been widely studied, and yet there is no scientific evidence to back up the claim that it’s good for healing wounds. One study conducted on patients with postoperative scars concluded topical Vitamin E had no benefit. Another study compared the effects of Vitamin E with a regular moisturizing cream. The Vitamin E was found to have no effect on the appearance of scars and actually worsened the look of the scar in some cases. It also caused skin irritation in several of the participants.
Scabs form when the wound is too dry, and we already know wounds heal quicker when they are kept moist and covered. According to Dr. Thomas Erskine, who is the director of the Center for Wound Care in Vacaville, CA, a scab slows down the regeneration of new skin cells. A scab can also trap bacteria and inflammatory tissue, further slowing down the healing process.
Hopefully, by busting these 10 common hand care myths, you have more knowledge to keep your hands healthy and ready for workouts!
]]>To enter, you just need to register your email, so we can notify you if you win. You can also earn 1 extra entry in the draw if you can help us get the word out:
You can earn 3 extra entries for each friend or family member that you invite that signs up. To do this, just click on the "Referral tab".
Enter below for your chance to win.
The draw for the winner will take place on December 22, 2017 at 12:00pm, and we'll notify the winner that day.
Good luck!
Huge RIPT Product Giveaway ]]>
Don’t stress: If you get going on your gift-buying now, you’ll be done all your stocking stuffer shopping before the anxiety kicks in.
For your health and fitness-loving loved ones, we have compiled a list of practical, healthy, performance-enhancing stocking stuffer products for 2017. And it begins right here at Ript Skin Systems:
Tis the season for chapped lips!
RIPT’s hydrating lip balm—minty fresh and pomegranate flavors—is the most effective chapstick you’ll find. And like all our products, it’s made from 100 % natural ingredients.
Our muscle rub helps ease your stiff and sore muscles after a big training session. Made from our proprietary blend of essential oils and waxes known to counter inflammation and bruising, that’s not even the best part: The best part is how easy it is to pack around with you. Unlike other sticky, messy, break-open-in-your-purse muscle creams and oils, Ript’s version comes in a solid lip balm-like container and won’t defile the contents of your purse or gym bag.
We love the Blonyx brand for its no frills, simple yet functional approach to improving performance.
We recommend Blonyx’s Creatine + HMB and their Beta-Alanine. Creatine is the most well-researched supplement out there and is proven to help with both building strength and recovery. And if your loved one is planning on doing the CrossFit Open in 2018, this is the best time to get on Beta Alanine (as it takes a few weeks of use to see the benefits)—proven to help with muscular endurance, which is exactly what you’ll need more of during the Open.
Collagen is the main structural protein in our bodies—in our tendons, ligaments and skin. Supplementing with collagen helps strengthen your tendons and ligaments. It’s especially important as you age, because your body’s natural collagen production declines the older you get. It’s also proven to improve skin, hair and nail health, and it’s great for gut and liver health, too.
One brand we like is Great Lakes.
If you’re a hand sport athlete—gymnast, weightlifter, CrossFit athlete, rower, rock climber, or even just a casual gym goer, this hand care kit is for you. It comes with our synthetic GRINDSTONE to help keep your calluses thin and pliable, a tube of our DAILY DOSE to keep your hands moist and rip free, and a tube of our QUICK FIX to quickly heal any rips that do inevitably emerge from the demands of your sport.
‘They’ constantly say if there’s a supplement we all should take, it’s Vitamin D, especially if you live in a place that doesn’t see much sun for many months of the year. They even suggest newborn babies take Vitamin D, so it must be necessary. Read more here about liquid versus gel capsules here to find out the best kind for you.
So many bathroom and toilet sprays feel poisonous when you breathe them in. Not RIPT's Deuce. It smells good and it works better than any other air freshening product out there.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard about the importance of gut health. In short, many people’s guts aren’t healthy. Their gut bacteria is messed up, which means they don’t absorb nutrients properly, which means their digestive and metabolic health isn’t in tip top shape either.
Probiotics are essentially the good kind of bacteria, and taking a probiotic supplement is a great place to start to heal your gut. The higher the CFU count the better—CFU stands for colony forming units and quantifies how many bacteria are present and capable of dividing and forming colonies. Aim for a CFU count of 50 billion or more. If you have been on antibiotics in the last year, it’s especially important you take a probiotic supplement.
Zinc is a great booster for the immune system, which is especially important during the flu season. It’s also great for wound healing, metabolism, as well as for hair and skin health. Read more here.
Every hand sport athlete has found himself looking for tape at one time or other. Good news is, we sell it at RIPT, so you can add a roll of athletic tape to your order when you purchase our Hand Care Kit, our Muscle Rub, our Lip Balm and Deuce.
Happy Shopping!
]]>If you’re reading this, it’s not too late this year. But you can’t wait any longer. You need to start today. December will thank you if you do.
5. Order online, and do it NOW
It’s always appealing to order online to avoid the malls closer to Christmas, but there’s nothing worse than ordering a gift that doesn’t arrive until after Christmas. So we often find ourselves not risking leaving our gifts to the snail mail gods and reluctantly hitting the crazy mall instead.
The key is simple: Order online gifts now. And start with stocking stuffers.
RIPT has a handful of stocking stuffers in the $25 range for gym-goers, and for anyone who want nice smelling bathrooms.
• 3 Phase Hand Care Kit: This kit includes one tube of both DAILY DOSE and QUICK FIX hand balms as well as our GRINDSTONE (synthetic pumice stone). All are made from 100 percent natural ingredients and are perfect for CrossFit athletes, weightlifters, rock climbers, gymnasts, rowing, or any other hand sport athletes.
• DEUCE—The Anti-Stink Toilet Spray: Our anti-stink bathroom spray is a proprietary blend of essential oils and other natural stink-blocking ingredients. Spraying it forms a semi-impenetrable barrier in the bowl and prevents you from ‘poo-bombing’ all those that want to use the bathroom after you. Unlike most bathroom sprays that smell like chemicals, ours actually smells good and doesn’t make you feel like you poisoned yourself.
BUY NOW and eliminate stress later!
4. Weekly grocery store purchases
Since stocking stuffers tend to be the most last-minute and almost forced-feeling purchases, make a point to pick something up for your stockings every time you go grocery shopping between now and Christmas. You’ll find yourself with enough stuff to fill all of the stockings well before the full Christmas stress hits. Painless!
3. Spread out the baking
Christmas cookies are durable, and they usually do well in the freezer. Instead of devoting an entire day to Christmas baking near the end of December, whip up a couple batches of your best Christmas cookies on three or four days different days in November and freeze them until the holiday season starts.
2. Pre-made appetizers
If you’re hosting a holiday party, appetizers can feel a bit like stocking stuffers: The most stressful and time-consuming part of the meal.
If you know you’re hosting some dinners in December and have ambition to make homemade appetizers, start now and throw them in the freezer. Or tie them into your dinner prep. For example: Making meatballs for dinner one night in November? Make extra and throw them in the freezer to be served at your holiday party.
1. Start a list
Start a note in your phone about what you’re planning on buying everyone. If you have a brain wave and gift idea, add it to your note right away before you quickly forget. If you do end up having to hit the mall in the last few days before Christmas, hopefully you will know exactly what you have left to buy. Because there’s nothing more annoying than wandering around the mall without a real plan, hoping that an idea will magically come to you.
Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, there’s a reason they call it the most wonderful time of year… It just takes a little planning!
]]>Ah, the CrossFit Game Open Season is once again upon us.
The haze of chalk dust is in the air, sweat drops glisten on the rugged rubber floors. The nervous adrenaline flows so thick innocent bystanders can almost taste it. Dave Castro's cryptic social media vagaries haunt the dreams of top contenders who have been practicing their inverted, underwater, target shooting for months... blindfolded and holding a dumbbell in one hand no less.
The average Joe's among us have been diligently working on getting our first muscle-up, toes-to-bar and even kipping pull-up in anticipation of moving just a few thousand places up the leaderboard this year.
]]>The haze of chalk dust is in the air, sweat drops glisten on the rugged rubber floors. The nervous adrenaline flows so thick innocent bystanders can almost taste it. Dave Castro's cryptic social media vagaries haunt the dreams of top contenders who have been practicing their inverted, underwater, target shooting for months... blindfolded and holding a dumbbell in one hand no less.
The average Joe's among us have been diligently working on getting our first muscle-up, toes-to-bar and even kipping pull-up in anticipation of moving just a few thousand places up the leaderboard this year.
Then, disaster strikes.
You're working with your coach on perfecting your front-C in an effort to make your bar muscle-ups more efficient and BAM! Deep palm flapper. As the sweat and chalk mix with blood and the stark reality of going into the for-sure-to-have-pull-up CrossFit Games Open with an injury starts to sink in.
As the cloud of self-pitty starts to rain down, the middle-aged soccer mom (who always seems to beat you on the leaderboard) saunters over with a smirk on her face and delivers a devastating piece of advice:
Should have bought a RIPT hand care kit... bro
The truth is hard to hear sometimes.
"What is a RIPT kit?" you naively ask.
Only everything you need to turn your hands into the high performance racing slicks that you need your hands to be to even have a chance at completing the Open un-shredded.
Did Michael Schumacher dominate Formula 1 Racing for so long by constantly beating the piss out of his tires until they exploded. No (well maybe sometimes). The point is, your hands are your primary contact point with moveable objects, and surmountable obstacles. How much time and money do you spend picking dressings for your other primary contact point? Custom Hello Kitty Reebok Nano 11s ain't cheap. Why do most people not even give an inkling of a thought to how they treat their hands? Or worse, see it as some kind of trophy to embrace the world with a gnarly, oozing, blistered... you get the idea.
Time to get over yourself and start taking proper care of your tools.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe - Abraham Lincoln
So now that you've seen the light, and our hypothetical story above hasn't actually happened yet, what should you be doing to prepare your hands for the Open?
This is the stage you're hopefully in. No problems yet, but starting to develop some thick calluses on high-friction bar contact points. The signs you're looking are little white fleck of dead skin forming around the edged of the calluses and the constant urge to pick and bite at them.
If your hands look like this (or worse) it's time to follow the direction in the video above. You're trying to achieve a shape similar to an upside-down dinner plate. Thickest (we do want protection from the callus) in the middle, and contouring to a tapered edge that is thin and flexible. This tip right here will take care of 90% of your hand care needs. The Grindstone is your new hand care best friend, and hardly a shower should go by without a few swipes and polishes from it's fine grit surfaces.
Top this step off with a quick swipe of your Daily Dose hand balm to keep things hydrated, and your good to go. Rips be stressin' like Rich when Mat Fraser walks in the gym.
So you went and did it. You went for just one more rep, when your hands were telling you not to. Don't worry, we've got your covered (literally).
The #1 thing to accomplish with a new hand tear or callus rip is to make sure that the new layer of epithelial (fresh skin) cells are stretched out when they heal. We will now share with you our (patent pending) method for fixing your hands...quick.
Pro Tip: Perform this procedure before bed with clean dry hands.
Layout 2 pieces of tape. 1 the length of your paint stir stick, and 2 about 1/2 that length.
Place the stir stick on the back of your hand lengthwise and tape around the wrist and middle fingers. Make sure you stretch your hand wide open during the process. This splint job, if done correctly should hold you hand wide open, preventing you from closing it and making a fist. Some wiggle room is okay.
Now that your hand is stretched wide open, jam a bunch of Quick Fix Balm into the wound. This will fill it with a bunch of skin nourishing ingredients (Paleo of course), cover the wound to protect it from the elements, and keep it hydrated while it's healing.
Overnight, a thin layer of new skin will form, but because you slept with your rip stretched wide open, you will now be able to open and close your hand (i.e. use it normally) without cracking or re-tearing. Typically it's these re-rips that make the healing process take so long. Each one is a fresh tear and will require the process to start again from the beginning.
The moral of the story here: Don't be a hero with your hands, so you CAN be a hear in the Open workouts.
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Ripped hands are like a flat tire. They limit your client’s performance and fun at your gym.
Why not have an immediate solution close at hand (no pun intended)?
RIPT Skin Systems’ hand care kit was created to solve a problem that many clients will encounter at some point: torn hands.
While many hand care products exist on the market, RIPT is not your average department store hand lotion. It has a bunch of high-potency ingredients to promote skin repair. If the ingredient doesn’t do this, it’s not in a tube of RIPT.
We’ve put our product in lip balm tubes because they are small enough to fit in your pocket. As much as we would have loved to sell RIPT in a platinum skull, or severed gorilla hand, no one would have used it. The best hand care in the world is no good if it sits on a shelf somewhere.
Our 3 phase kit combines pre and post rip proprietary moisturizing formulas (all natural of course) with a fine-grit synthetic pumice stone. This complete reinforcement kit protects and soothes damaged skin, smoothes and conditions existing calluses, is easy to carry and convenient, and most importantly, fixes hands fast!
As box owners know, a profit center like a pro-shop or retail section stocked with useful and market relevant products can provide a much needed boost to your bottom line, while increasing average revenue per client.
Educating your clients on proper hand care as well as having a system to offer them will help both position you as an expert in your field as well as generate some profit. With RIPT you also get the bonus of full control over how fast product moves off your shelves:
Program “Murph”, and you’ll sell the whole box!
]]>The latter pieces considered how to pace when the rowing machine is on the meters setting. When a workout is in calories, though, the story changes completely...Or at least changes considerably.
Like with meters, your first step is to figure out your intended speed for any given workout
It's easy to do this if you already understand how to pace a row when you’re measuring your speed in meters. Then all you have to do is convert your split time in meters to its equivalent calories per hour speed.
So for example, if you know you want to hold a 2:00/500m split for a 100-calorie piece on the rowing machine, before you start rowing blindly and hoping for the best, figure out how this converts to calories per hour. In this case, a 2:00 split is equivalent to 997 calories per hour. So you’re best aiming to hit around 1,000 calories per hour, give or take, during your 100 calorie piece.
Check out this graph, which shows calorie equivalents for splits ranging from 1:20 to 2:40/500m.
One more important consideration with CALORIES:
In a recent CrossFit Journal article I wrote, the founder of Concept2 explained that when it comes to rowing in meters, you don’t get a whole lot of “bang for your buck,” so to speak.
In other words, when you consider effort in rowing, the way the rowing machine is designed (so that it factors in water resistance), means you need to work very very hard to go just a tiny bit faster. The same isn’t true of something like thrusters or power cleans, where working a bit harder pays off in your overall time. The Concept2 founder used a graph that measures effort in watts to explain this concept. Check it out here. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try hard on the rowing machine: It simply means if there is one place in a multi-modal workout to hold back a bit, it might be on the row as you’re probably not going to win the workout there.
When it comes to calories, though, THIS IS NOT the case. In fact, when we consider effort-to-reward during a calorie row, it looks quite similar to effort-to-reward with a movement like a power clean. Check out his graph in the CrossFit Journal article that emphasizes this point.
On top of this, when it comes to calories, the slower you row the more work you have to do! For example, if you rowed 27 calories at a 1:20/500m split, it would take you 37 seconds and you would row 229 meters. If you rowed 27 calories at a 1:40/500m split, it would take you one minute and five seconds and you would row 323 meters. In other words, if you’re slow at a calorie row you get penalized TWICE: Once for being slower, and another time for having to row a further distance! Can you imagine doing Helen, where slower runners had to run 500 meters, while faster runners only had to run 400 meters? BRUTAL!
In meters, more time can be made up on the barbell, but this is less true when a row is in calories...
All this is to say, if you’re rowing in calories, it might be wise to row a little bit harder than you would in meters as you’ll be rewarded twice as much for your effort.
Let’s look at a couple different common CrossFit workouts with a Calorie Row.
First I would consider the time domain of the workout. This workout should be in and around the same time domain as your 2-km row (It took me 7:51 in 2015, which is within 30 seconds of my current 2-km row time). If the workout were in meters, I would row slower than my 2-km row time to conserve energy to hit the thrusters hard, but since the workout is in calories, I would try to aim relatively close to my 2-km split time.
This means, if I the row were in meters, I would hold around a 1:58 split on this workout, but since it’s in calories, I might aim closer to a 1:54 (meaning around 1,100 calories per hour).
If this row were in meters, I would recommend rowing very conservatively, as way more time could be gained on the toes-to-bar, walls balls, cleans and muscle-ups. Going too hard on the row would simply hurt the rest of your performance and make you slower in the end. If this row were in meters, I would hold a casual 2:00/500m split and come off the machine fresh and ready to attack the toes-to-bar. Sure, I might be a bit slower than my competitors, but maybe only 10 to 15 seconds, which could be made up in the next two minutes of the 14-minute workout.
HOWEVER, this workout being in calories means an entire minute or so could be gained by pushing a bit harder. Instead, I would row close to my 2-km row time, knowing that 60-calories at a 1:55 split is around 800-meters. I know I wouldn't be destroyed at that pace for just 800 meters.
At the end of the day, your pace is your pace and your current fitness level is your current fitness level, BUT tinkering with your speed within reason is worth considering when the row is in calories. It’s certainly worth playing around with before the 2017 Open begins.
Happy rowing!
]]>Since the Community Builders house in McDonald was damaged by the recent Hurricane Matthew, we (myself, the president of Community Builders and my good friend Julie Roberts, and her two 9-year-old children) booked a resort 20 minutes away. This resort wasn’t open the first time I was in Haiti three-and-a-half years ago, so it was hopeful to see that economic progress is happening to a certain degree, albeit very slowly.
As spoiled as we felt having air conditioning in our rooms, somewhat reliable internet, and endless authentic Haitian food at our fingertips in a country that has so little, we justified it by knowing tourism will help stimulate the Haitian economy.
We woke up the next morning and went for a tour of the town of McDonald to meet all the recipients who would be receiving funding to start a business—a micro-credit, pay-it-forward loan. Our friend Gabriel Nixon, the principal of the school and our Haitian connection to McDonald, also gave us updates on all the micro-credit loans we funded the last time we were in Haiti in May.
We met Mme. Gesse, a mother of 7 children, who is planning on using the micro-credit loan to start a second-hand clothing business. Then we walked to Mme. Jeannine's small concrete home, a widow with 8 children and 4 grandchildren, who all live in the same one-bedroom home. She already runs a little store, so the loan she is receiving will help her continue to build her small business selling things like charcoal, wood and soap. We walked another 800-meters or so and stopped at Mme. Carol Fortune's home, a mother of 6 children. Her plan is to begin a homemade bread business, which she hopes to sell in the nearby public market. Finally, we met Mme Loucila, a woman Nixon called "very good in business." She intends to begin a business selling umbrellas, to protect people from the powerful Haitian sun. (Each of the latter four women have now received US$200 to kick start their business). I took pictures with each of them to show all the generous donors—people who gave money to my GoFundMe campaign—exactly who received money, and how it would be used.
My personal highlight of the morning was when Tifi—the single mother of 4 children that I sponsored to start a mango business the last time I was in McDonald—ran up to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, an oddly emotional gesture from a Haitian (in my limited experience). I couldn't help but tear up.
The last time I saw Tifi, she looked so frail and unhealthy. This time, she was full of life. I brought some gifts for her children—school supplies, a basketball, and a ton of clothing donated by many people at my CrossFit gym (thank you)—and she looked so incredibly thankful. In that moment, I felt so inspired. Inspired by how donating just a little bit of money can provide people with such a life changing opportunity to empower themselves to build something to be proud of. My heart was warm.
Me, Tifi and her youngest child
Our last stop was the local school on top of the big hill in McDonald to see the solar panels they recently put on the roof to electrify the school.
As we were leaving, we hopped into our Pathfinder, which had allegedly just received four new wheels and had been inspected by a mechanic in Haiti. Julie got it started, and we rolled back a bit. A look of fear came over her face. Then we rolled a bit more. She broke hard, and then pulled the emergency break. We slowed momentarily, but then continued to roll and began to pick up speed. She tried to turn the wheel. No dice; it had locked up.
“No, no, no…NO,” she cried, each NO a little louder and more concerned than the last.
I looked behind me and saw that if we continued to roll backwards, we would eventually get to the edge of the cliff, where we would drop about 100 feet onto the row of houses below.
Seeing a realistic death 400-meters away, fight or flight took over my body. I don’t even remember doing it, but I opened the car door and jumped out.
Apparently we need to add long jump to the list of CrossFit skills because as I jumped, I somehow managed to get my foot run over by the front wheel of the car before tumbling to the ground.
Suddenly, I was standing up.
I don’t remember standing up, but I do remember that I was standing on one foot when I watched the Pathfinder with my very good friend and her two children pick up speed as they barrelled backwards down the hill toward the cliff.
Some thoughts that I remember running through my head in that moment:
“Oh my God, Julie’s going to die. How is this happening?”
“I must be dreaming. Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
“Why did I abandon them? I’m going to survive and they’re not. How could I bail like that?”
“Fuck, my foot hurts. Why are you worried about your foot, Emily? Julie’s in that car with her two kids!!”
"They have to be going 60-km an hour. This can't be happening."
And I remember hopping around on one foot horrified as I watched them slam into a giant rock, which sent their vehicle flying through the air before smashing into a brick house. The house crumbled upon impact.
Though I was relieved the car had finally stopped, and that it hadn’t gone over the cliff, the impact with which they hit had me fearing they hadn’t survived.
Nixon, who had also jumped from the vehicle just after I did (but conquered the long jump and had nothing more than road rash and bruises), ran down to the collision site. Knowing I was injured, he soon raced back up to me and told me the happiest words I think I have ever heard:
“Everyone is OK. Everyone is OK.”
“They’re OK? Are you sure?” I asked, not sure whether I believed him or not.
“Yes, they are OK.”
(In reality, the children are physically doing well, but quite traumatized, while Julie has significant whiplash, a neck injury, and soft tissue bruising etc…, but for the most part, they are doing well).
Then I saw little Shanan hop out of the car appearing unharmed, and relief overtook my body.
Julie and her kids moments before we went to McDonald
Relief was soon replaced by a surge of pain. I looked down at my foot, which was now throbbing. Much of the skin had come off the top of it. It was bleeding quite heavily, as was my chin, and I knew I just needed to get my foot covered with some pressure. The word infection started to travel through my mind.
Twenty meters away, I saw a clothesline with drying clothes. I hopped over, and yanked a towel from the line and covered my foot.
Suddenly a small, wiry Haitian man picked me up and carried me down the hill. I kept saying, “I’m too heavy. It’s OK. I’m too big for you to carry,” but he didn’t listen (most likely because he didn't speak a word of English). He was breathing heavily, and I worried his small legs would buckle beneath him, but he persevered and carried me a good 300-meters to the bottom of the hill without stopping once.
****
The journey home to Vancouver to receive medical attention took exactly 40 hours from that moment
As you would imagine, healthcare in Haiti is slim to none. For the life of us, we couldn’t get our hands on even a bottle of Polysporin (luckily Julie is a paramedic and had a first aid kit with a bottle of iodine, some gauze pads and tensors, and a bit of antiseptic cream).
For the record, I’m in no way blaming Haiti for their lack of medical services or basic medical supplies. When you travel to a developing nation, you’re choosing to go, and you’re choosing to put your life in your own hands to a certain degree.
It does, howerver, make me even more thankful for what we have in Canada. And even more certain the answer in Haiti is education and economic stimulation via empowering Haitians to build their own economy. Tourism will also be helpful.
Back in Canada, while things were certainly not perfect, they certainly took care of me at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH)—doctors and nurses monitoring me for 36 hours, and giving me IV antibiotics, X-rays, blood tests, a tetanus shot, morphine, antibiotic-soaked bandages, etc, and plenty of follow-up visits and wound care to come. I found out today there's a decent chance I will need a skin graft on one of the wounds, and as much as I was hoping I would heal without surgery, I am confident our system will take care of me and nurse me back to a full recovery. And I will forever be thankful for the American doctor I met on my flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami, who gave me antibiotics and calmed down my growing anxiety as I watched my foot swell more with each passing hour.
(The biggest North American frustration was my travel medical insurance company, who said that because I had already been to a “hospital” in Haiti (should it be considered hospital if there’s no Polysporin, let alone any other kind of useful services?) that they would only cover $1,000 if I went to the hospital in Miami. This is why I made it all the way back to VGH). Don’t get me started on my anger toward insurance companies).
I took detailed notes about all the families we met on Day 1 in McDonald, and Gabriel is going to send us a list of the other families receiving sponsorship in Cannot (a small village 20 minutes from McDonald) and never got the chance to meet on this trip.
My phone was lost in the accident—it flew out of the car with me and nobody was able to find it—so the pictures I took of the four families from McDonald were also lost. Julie took a bunch, so there will be some coming, and Gabriel promises to retrace our steps and snap some shots of the happy and hopeful recipients that we did get the chance to meet.
It was obviously not the trip we had envisioned, and I’m sad I won’t be able to tell all the great stories I was hoping to for the sake of all those who donated money to the cause, but I'm so relieved to be back in Canada with Julie and her two children. So thankful we live in such an amazing country, yet continue to be heartbroken knowing that if what happened to me happened to a Haitian, her story would very different.
]]>
Step 1: How to read the monitor (stroke rate and split times)
Step 2: Understand what an easy, medium and race pace speed is for you over various distances—500-meters, 1,000-meters, 2,000-meters and 5,000-meters
Step 3: Learn how to row a consistent pace throughout each distance (fluctuating more than + or - 2 splits off your target split during any given piece means you're not putting forth a consistent effort).
At least you don't have to figure out how to row in time with 7 others...
Once you have the above three steps figured out, you'll be in a good position to decide how fast to approach various rowing distances over multiple rounds during multi-modal CrossFit workouts. Let’s look at 3 different known CrossFit workouts with rowing:
Knowing more time can be made up on the thrusters and pull-ups than the row, the priority here is to be able to get on the barbell the moment you dismount the rowing machine.
Option 1 recommendation: If you don’t know your race pace (meaning your best ever 1,000-meter row time), row at your established medium 1,000-meter pace.
Option 2: If you know your 1,000-meter race pace, row at 8 to 10 splits higher than that. Meaning, if my best 1,000-meter row is a 3:30—a 1:45 split average—then I would aim to hold somewhere between 1:53 to 1:55 for Jackie. Why? If I go much faster than that, I will probably slow down considerably on the thrusters and pull-ups.
Option 3: If you know your 2-km row score, row at approximately 3-5 splits above that. So if my best 2-km is 7:28—a 1:52 average—I would hold a 1:55 to 1:57 pace on Jackie. For a good CrossFit athlete, Jackie falls in a similar time domain as their 2-km row race time, so you might think it's safe to hold your 2-km row average split during Jackie. But the reason I recommend sitting a little slower than your 2-km row split is because much more time can be made up on the thrusters and pull-ups just by going a few seconds slower on the row. Remember, 5 seconds slower is a world of difference when it comes to the effort required. Check out this CrossFit Journal story for a detailed explanation why.
Prioritize getting RIGHT ON that barbell
Christine is probably a 8 to 12 minute workout for a decent CrossFit athlete. It’s tempting to hit the first row hard as it’s relatively short, but you’re better off holding a consistent pace between all three 500-meter pieces.
Option 1: Row at your medium 500-meter row pace if you don’t know your 500-meter race pace.
Option 2: Row about 12-15 seconds slower than your best 500-meter piece. If my best piece is 1:40, then I’d aim to hold around 1:52 to 1:55 for all three pieces.
Option 3: If you know your 2-km test time, row at approximately 2 splits above that. For example, if I can row a 7:40 2-km time—a 1:55 average split—then I’d aim to hold a 1:57 in each 500-meter pieces during Christine.
I competed at those Regionals. Let me tell you, that workout was NOT about the row. So much more time could be made up on the pistols and the cleans. If the cleans are heavy for you and you need to be as fresh as possible when you get to them, then I would slow the row down even more than the recommendation below.
Option 1: Row at your medium 2-km row pace (If you know the cleans will slow you down, slow it down to an easy speed to make sure you’re completely fresh when you get off the machine).
Option 2: Row at your 5-km race pace split. If your 5 km time is 20:00—a 2:00 average split—split, then hold that for this 2-km piece.
Option 3: Row 7-8 splits above your 2-km race time. So if your best 2 km is 7:00—a 1:45 average split—then aim for a 1:52 to 1:53 split average.
Of course, the options for multi-modal CrossFit workouts that include rowing are limitless, so as a general rule, I recommend the following guideline:
Consider the time domain of the workout: Figure out how long approximately the entire workout will take you. From there, choose a pace that you could row at (medium pace) without absolutely killing yourself for that entire time domain. For example, if the workout is going to take around 15 minutes, then row each row during the workout at a pace that you could row at a steady state if you rowed for 15 minutes without stopping.
If the workout is in calories, then that's a whole other story! But I'll save that for the next piece: Calorie Rowing!
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To avoid flying and dying, you need to understand one simple thing: Pacing!
The great thing about the ergometer is there’s a monitor with a screen that tells you exactly how fast you’re going, so you don’t even need to guess!
Before I get into exactly how to pace the row during a workout like Christine or Jackie in Part 2 of this series, it's important you understand a few things:
Two important numbers you need to understand: Your split time (if the machine is on the meter setting) and strokes per minute.
In rowing, we measure the split based on 500-meters. If your screen says 2:00/500 m, that means you’re rowing at a speed that will have you finishing 500-meters in exactly 2:00. If you’re rowing 1,000-meters at 2:00, that means 1,000-meters will take you 4:00. 2,000-meters will take you 8 minutes and so on and so forth.
Strokes per minute is exactly what it sounds like: 28 s/m means you’re doing 28 strokes every minute.
The important thing to understand is that just because you’re rowing at a higher stroke rate doesn’t mean you’re moving the boat (or in this case, the machine) any faster. In fact, being an efficient rower means you’re probably rowing at a lower stroke rate than the person next to you, and are still managing to put forth a ton of power—meaning you’re moving faster doing less strokes.
Now that you know what the numbers mean, it’s time to get to know what various speeds feel like over various distances.
Our gym did Jackie last week—1,000-meter row followed by 50 thrusters and 30 pull ups. I asked the group of 15 athletes in my class if they knew what an easy 1,000-meter row pace is for them. (I qualified this by explaining I meant a pace where they could dismount the rowing machine and pick up the barbell within 5 to 10 seconds). Only 2 people raised their hands.
The only way to do this is to practice it.
Practice rowing 500-meters three to five times. If 2:15 feels easy, take 5 minutes rest and then see what 2:05 feels like. Try again with 2:00 and 1:55.
What you will probably discover is that going even 5 seconds faster over the course of just 500-meters is insanely more difficult. This is because the rowing machine is designed in a way that mimics a boat going through the water. In other words, it takes water resistance into consideration. Check out this story I wrote recently for the CrossFit Journal. It goes into this very topic. Basically, what you need to know is you have to work really hard on the rowing machine just to go a tiny bit faster. In my CrossFit Journal story, the Concept 2 Founder proved this point by comparing what rowing effort (measured in watts) looks like compared to other movements, concluding that you can save way more time in a CrossFit workout during high-rep power cleans than rowing.
Does this mean you should dog the row?
Not necessarily. It just means it’s really important to get to know your pace, as going out a bit too hard can crush you! I know for myself, if I rowed 500-meters at 1:40, I would tumble off the rower unable to do much for the next 30 minutes. At a 1:50 pace, I would be tired but could recover quite quickly, and at 2:00 I would barely be phased by the effort. 20 seconds for me is the difference between my warm-up speed and a full-blown effort! Just 20 seconds!
In an ideal world, you will get to know what an easy, medium and race pace is for 500-meters, 1,000-meters, 2,000-meters and maybe even 5,000-meters.
Once you know that, you’ll know how fast to hit the row during a CrossFit workout.
Knowing your pace is only good if you’re able to maintain a consistent pace throughout a piece. If your monitor says 1:52 one stroke, then 1:58 the next, 2:02 the following, and then back down to 1:56 the next, then you’re going to struggle way more than you need to.
Think about what it would feel like to run 2 km, where you change your pace every 2 to 4 strides. Not only would it feel awkward, but it would require so much more energy than running at a consistent pace. That’s exactly what’s going on every time you see your monitor make big fluctuations in your pace.
I consider a big fluctuation for a CrossFit athlete to be + or - 2 splits off your target split. This means if your target speed is 1:55, any time you drop below 1:53 or above 1:57, you’re getting off track.
When we used to erg five days a week during the frozen Ontario winters, we used to practice this. We were so in tune with our bodies and our speed that we could literally flip the monitor up and row for 30 minutes and know what speed we were rowing within 1 split. In fact, coaches would tell us to row 30 minutes at a 2:00 pace and I could close my eyes for 20 of those minutes and be confident I was hitting my target.
While that kind of consistency takes a ton of practice, your goal should be to become as consistent as possible with your speed.
Now that you know what your race pace feels like and your warm-up pace is, and you know how to hold a consistent speed throughout a piece, Part 2 will go into how fast you should row during a multi-modal CrossFit workout! Stay tuned.
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So you drop a stinky deuce in the bathroom at the gym.
You look around for something to fix the problem. But there’s no bathroom spray. No matches. No nothing! You’re stuck.
You think if you’re lucky, you might be able to sneak out unnoticed, but just as you think you’re in the clear you make eye contact with another athlete, who's unmistakably approaching the bathroom. Just your luck, it happens to be the man you have been checking out in recent days. There’s no hiding what you did now. He’s going to know you take stinky poos sometimes. Tragic.
Sigh.
You spend the rest of the workout feeling awkward and embarrassed about the putrid odor you left for the other members to deal with.
****
If you’re a gym owner, you are responsible for the energy in the room. Working out at a high intensity is an emotional enough experience for most. Dealing with foul bathroom stench only adds unproductive and unwanted stress to the equation for your athletes.
There’s a solution: RIPT Skin System’s Deuce Anti-Stink Toilet Spray—a natural product that ACTUALLY WORKS! Instead of masking the smell and making it even worse like many air fresheners do, Deuce creates an oil barrier and seals the smelly deuce in the bowl, eliminating the foul odor and cutting it with a natural, fresh one from essential oils.
So for the sake of your own health, your current client’s health and to attract prospective clients to train with you, get on board the Deuce train!
Available in gym sized bottles to keep in the bathroom, and personal "stealth" size so you can poo like a ninja.
Yes, Deuce is available for wholesale!
So it’s not surprise household air fresheners and bathroom sprays have existed for a long time.
In fact, smell killers—in one form or another—have been around for thousands of years. One of the oldest forms of air fresheners is incense—it was burned so the smoke created could mask unpleasant odours.
The bathroom stink problem has been around as long as humans: Incense was the ancient solution.
More modern air fresheners attempt to do the same—they mask odors, or at least they try to. But as we have all experienced, they don't always work all that well. Sometimes, instead of hiding the odor they make the smell even worse. Kind of like the girl with the bad make-up—the one whose trying to cover up a pimple. She might think she has done a good job and that onlookers will think, 'She has really nice skin,' but really all they're actually thinking is, 'You’ve got a shit ton of make-up on that pimple, girl.'
Not only can products like Glade plug-ins or your apple cinnamon room spray exacerbate a smell, especially in the bathroom, they’re often dangerous for your health to boot.
Since the 1904s, air freshener manufacturers have used a variety of chemicals to market products that don’t involve burning like the old-fashioned incense method. But the chemicals they have been using aren’t any better for you than inhaling smoke.
A 2007 peer-reviewed study that tested 74 air freshener products reported a total of 350 chemicals and allergens were present in various products—chemicals including benzene, formaldehyde, styrene, butane, propane and phthalates (phthalates has been linked to early puberty, autism, obesity, and birth defects. Often the label will say “fragrance” or “parfum.’ Read between the lines: This means phthalates).
Further, two other chemicals that are sometimes used in air fresheners are PEG-40 (known to be dangerous to human health) and 1,4-dichlorobenzene (believed to be a carcinogen. Testing has shown it causes various cancers in rats, as well as other lung diseases).
The point is, if you haven’t already, it’s time to ditch your old method of keeping your air clean. This is where Ript Skin System’s Deuce—The Anti-Stink Toilet Spray—comes in.
A proprietary blend of essential oils and other natural stink-blocking ingredients (biodegradable ingredients that you can actually pronounce: things like sweet almond oil, sweet orange peel oil and lemon peel oil) forms a semi-impenetrable barrier in the bowl and prevents you from "poo-bombing" all those that want to use the bathroom after you.
And here’s the best part: IT WORKS. I have personally been using it for the last two months and have discovered it cuts through putrid bathroom odours and doesn’t leave you with an even grosser perfumey smell to deal with.
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You can’t possibly say no because it’s such a seemingly small favour. Then again, it’s not!
Your palms and fingers get all gooey and gunky, and worse yet you end up stinging and burning in weird places all night because no matter how much you wash your hands after the rubdown, the residue is powerful—so whatever you touch with your hands feels the burning effect for hours.
Nobody enjoys this!
There’s finally a solution: RIPT Skin Systems’ Sore Muscle Rub. Like the hand care products—Quick Fix and Daily Dose—the Sore Muscle Rub comes in a convenient, no mess, chapstick-like cylinder. This means your hands stay free from the mess and the burning sensation.
So when your significant other needs some muscle rub love, you'll be happy to oblige with RIPT Muscle Rub.
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Here’s how the conversation often goes:
Client: “I really want to get a muscle-up. Can you teach me after class?”
Me: “How many chest-to-bar pull-ups can you do?”
Client: “Maybe one on a good day.”
Me: “What about ring dips?”
Client: “One. In a band.”
Me: “Johnny, you're not ready to work on muscle-ups. Once you can do 10 chest-to-bar pull-ups and 10 ring dips, then we can start looking at the muscle-up.”
Client: "So you don't think I will be able to learn one today?
Me: small chuckle.
Client: Sadness overtakes his/her face.
******
I love the concept of prerequisites for learning gymnastics. It helps me explain to an athlete, who can barely do a push-up, who asks, “Can you teach me a handstand push-up?” why it wouldn’t be wise for her to start working on handstand push-ups just yet.
“You would probably would fail Physics 400 if you didn’t take 100 and 200-level courses first.”
“Babies walk before they run, and run before they can jump.”
The point is only to say you can’t skip steps when it comes to learning gymnastics.
THAT BEING SAID, getting two coaches to agree on exactly what the prerequisites should be for teaching various gymnastics movements, is a whole other ball game. Answers vary even among top-level gymnastics coaches when it comes to questions like:
Should I learn a strict pull-up before I start to kip?
How many ring dips should I be able to do before I work on getting a muscle-up?
At what point can I learn the butterfly pull-ups? A bar muscle-up?
Recently, MadLab School of Fitness put out what they think is ideal for clients:
Ring rows—Prerequisite: Perform 40 seconds static hang from rings at 45 degree angle, or greater, with the top of rings at armpit height
Static Bent Arm Holds—Prerequisite: Perform 3 sets of 10 ring rows at a 45 degree angle or greater with the top of the rings at armpit height
Strict Pull-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 3 sets of 40s of a chin over bar hold with a supinated grip
Kipping Pull-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 5 of strict pull-ups
Strict Chest to Bar Pull-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 3 sets of 40s of a chin over bar hold with a pronated grip
Kipping Chest to bar Pull-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 5 of strict chest to bar pull-ups
Strict Muscle-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 5 of strict ring dips and 1 set of 10/8 of strict chest to bar pull-ups
Kipping Muscle-Up—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 3 of strict muscle-ups
Kipping Bar Muscle-Up—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 10 of chest to bar pull-ups and 3 sets of 5 of kipping muscle ups
Butterfly Pull-Ups—Prerequisite: Perform 5 sets of 5 of skin the cat, 5 sets of 10 of kipping chest to bar pull-ups and a 2 min chin over bar hold with a pronated grip
It’s a pretty bold template. I know as someone who has competed at the Regional and CrossFit Games level, if I followed the above, I still wouldn’t be cleared to do a kipping muscle-up.
The point is, the above is a template. And a very good, safe one. If you trained on your own and followed the above advice, you would learn pulling skills safety and effective, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
However, like diet, I believe learning gymnastics is more personal—hence the need for a coach more than almost any other sport, in my opinion. Gymnastics isn’t just about strength: It’s about mobility and joint health and body awareness, and the person’s individual goals.
I had a conversation with high-level CrossFit gymnastics coach Louise Eberts the other day about prerequisites for learning movements. She agreed that, although we can agree upon the basics—such as, you have to be able to do a ring dip and a pull-up to be able to do a muscle-up—she doesn’t use a set-in-stone, rigid code when it comes to teaching movements.
No two athletes are the same, she explained. Instead, she takes into consideration the person’s age, strength, shoulder health, injury background, and personal goals in the sport when coming up with individual gymnastics programs.
For example, if you’re a 12-year-old and are striving for the 2024 CrossFit Games, Eberts would take a more patient approach to teaching gymnastics than she would with an athletic 28-year-old who has been training for five years, is healthy, and needs to find a way to string muscle-ups together if she wants to qualify for her gym’s team to compete at Regionals next year.
ALAS, I believe the best method for teaching gymnastics involves prerequisites—YES, ABSOLUTELY—but more fluid, as opposed to rigid, set-in-stone standards. AND most importantly, a COACH to help create the best program for your individual needs.
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Rope climb regrets...
Back in 2009, I ended up on antibiotics after a stubborn rope burn infection that wouldn't heal (that was in the days before I discovered RIPT Skin Systems). I had worn a long sock and taped up, and even threw on some post-workout polysporin, but it still wasn't enough.
So when long pants, thick socks, and layers of athletic tape just aren't enough to stop the rope from destroying your precious skin, here are 3 unique ways to bulletproof your shins:/p>
1. Gauze and Pro-wrap: Applying a few layers of gauze followed by Pro-Wrap under another layer or two of athletic tape can help provide an additional few layers of protection to your skin.
2. Leggings aren't just for fashion: Although bulky, if you're still feeling the burn, throw some thick leggings under your long socks. Throw on a layer of tape around your leggings to make sure they stay in place under your socks.
3. Mouse Pad: I know of a few regionals athletes who jammed a mouse pad into their socks before Tommy V back in 2015. Again, like the legging method, tape the mouse pad to your shin and throw long socks on top of it.
Don't get slowed down on the rope because you didn't prep your shins!
Let's be honest, we don't always come to the gym prepared with Pro-Wrap, winter leggings or a mouse pad. So if and when you do end up with rope rash, RIPT can help with a fast recovery. Lather some QUICK FIX onto the rope burn and throw on a long sock before bed.
I did this once after a Rope Burn Gone Bad incident. Two weeks had gone by, the wound was nowhere near healed and continued to itch like no other. I put some QUICK FIX on it and within two days, it went from being 50% healed to 90% healed.
]]>In other ways—namely the women prancing around in itty bitty underwear and high heels, and the numerous ground-to-ceiling poles—it’s a foreign-looking gym to me.
A glimpse of the ladies at Tantra...
But after spending half-an-hour observing the athletes, and eventually becoming immune to the thongs and poles, it becomes clear the similarities between Tantra Fitness and the gyms I know—including the ripped hands and bruises in weird places—are greater than their differences.
Instead of chalk, pole dancers use a product called The Ultimate Gripping Solution. Hmmmm, maybe this would work for pull-ups, too!
Contrary to popular opinion, pole dancing didn’t begin as a naked, or even erotic, activity.
It began in the 1920s; traveling circuses and sideshows used pole dancing as a way to entertain. Their poles were in the middle of their tents—their primary function was to hold the tent up. Later in the century, pole dancing moved to bars, and eventually strip clubs, where it started to combine itself with burlesque dancing.
By the late 1960s and 1970s, pole dancing was becoming a prominent feature in strip clubs.
Kitty Suen is your Average Joe pole dancer. Three years ago, she hired a pole dancing instructor for her bachelorette party and found herself more intrigued than she thought she would be. So she joined Tantra Fitness in Vancouver and started pole dancing as both a recreational activity and a new form of fitness.
Suen said there are a couple strippers she has met at the club, but for the most part the facility is full of fitness and dance enthusiasts—of people who use pole dancing as a fun way to express an artistic side and to work on being sexy and graceful, and also as a serious form of fitness.
Suen at Tantra
Suen said pole dancing is most taxing on the arms—lots of pulling strength required—and the core. However, cardiovascular endurance and stamina also come into play, especially when you do your 3-minute choreographed routines, which are usually a mixture of pole work and floor work.
“It looks easy but there’s a lot of upper body and core strength involved,” Suen reiterated.
She aded that she felt her strength and endurance improve when she started three years ago. And with these welcomed fitness gains, she also had to get used to ripped hands an bruises between her legs and her boobs and arms.
“You sometimes look like you were abused,” she laughed.
Tantra fitness offers one-on-one coaching, group classes—beginner, intermediate and advanced—as well as open pole times when athletes come in to work on their strength and skills, and practice their routines.
A regular pole session for many pole dancers looks like this:
•Warm-up (often including some running and stretching)
•Strength work (involving things like climbing up and down the pole, as well as various types of pole pull-ups)
•Skill work (involving spin moves and pole tricks)
•Choreographed routine practice (routines are performed to music)
There are pole dancing competitions–both individual and team competitions. There’s even an International Pole Championships.
Here's a routine from the 2015 event:
Competing in pole dancing involves performing an intricate three-minute-and-thirty-second choreographed routine. Like gymnastics, diving and figure skating, pole skills all have different names and associated difficulty ratings, and athletes are judged on both execution and difficulty. Dancers are not allowed to perform nude, nor are they allowed to wear erotic lingerie.
The first skill Suen learned was the “tilt-a whirl”—a simple and elegant spin around the pole. Apparently this will be the first skill I learn when I begin my own pole classes next week! (Stay tuned to see if a clumsy girl can learn to be graceful).
]]>Of a life where your day begins at 5:30 a.m., and by the time you’re at work at 8 a.m., you’ve already had a workout and are feeling that endorphin high all morning? A life, where after work you’re able to pursue other interests because you're not devoting your evening to the gym?
I’m a morning coach, and have been for six years. Over the course of those years, many many people have attempted to convert to morning training sessions.
For some, it's never too early to deadlift...
Each January especially, a new influx of aspiring converts trickle into my 6 a.m. class. But by February, only one or two manage to successfully make the conversion. The rest give up and return to their evening routine.
(There's absolutely nothing wrong with training in the evening, of course—if that’s when you function best and you enjoy it. If that's you, keep doing what you’re doing).
HOWEVER, there's a whole group of people out there, who want to get it done before work. They set their alarms with the intention of getting up, but that moment the alarm sounds, their plan goes to shit.
“Screw it, I’ll just workout after work,” they negotiate with themselves before falling back into a slumber for another hour or two.
AND THEN there are those who have succeeded: They show up diligently 3 to 5 mornings a week, ready to go at 6 or 7 a.m.
This morning, I decided to ask both my morning classes if they ever say 'F-You’ to their alarms and choose sleep over the gym.
Fifty percent of them looked at me almost baffled by the question.
“Maybe once a year I keep sleeping if I’m sick or something,” said one of them.
“I’m excited to get up at 5 a.m. when my alarm goes off. I only need five hours of sleep,” said another.
“I have the opposite problem. Sometimes I plan to take a day off, but I end up getting up and going to the gym,” said a third.
These three are automatic!
“Even on my days off when I could go to the 8 a.m. class, I choose to go to the 6,” said a fourth.
All I could think of was, ‘Holy cow, I’m dealing with a disciplined group of people far beyond what I ever realized!’
But the other fifty percent of the morning folks admitted waking up at 5 a.m. to lift weights and condition wasn't in their natural makeup; it's something they have had to work hard at. For them, it's about prioritizing their lives, about committing to something and following through.
And they also admitted they still battle that voice in their head that tries to keep them in bed a bit longer. But they fight the voice because they know they will thank themselves later. It's a battle worth fighting for, they said.
Here are some of the tips the latter group offered to anyone struggling to make the conversion to early morning workout times:
Some find that simple things like getting gym clothes ready, packing a work bag, setting the coffee maker, and making lunch the night before is incredibly helpful in ensuring they follow through with their wake-up plan.
“Then everything is ready and all I have to do is peel myself out of bed,” said one 7 a.m. attendee.
Some admitted transitioning to the morning takes some serious self-talk.
“I remind myself of how much better my day will go if I go to the gym in the morning,” was a common answer.
“I almost didn’t get up this morning, but I gave myself a talking to,” said a committed 6 o’clock-er.
Another morning riser said he just reminds himself of how much longer the bus takes after work than before.
"That's usually enough to convince myself to hop out of bed," he said.
These same people said they try not to guilt trip themselves too much if and when they ever do choose sleep over sweat. Guilt trips are counterproductive, but reminding yourself of your purpose is not, said one of my clients.
Ask yourself WHY you do it. WHY going to the gym in the morning makes your life better. And HOW you feel when you don’t follow through on your commitment to yourself.
Sometimes they even self-talk between sets...
Some said knowing they’re paying $200 to $400 a month for personal training and classes keeps them accountable.
“Not showing up isn’t an option when I’ve committed myself not just to myself and my coach, but also financially,” said one of my clients.
A couple athletes admitted the only reason they’re able to do it is because they make plans to workout with a friend and then to go for coffee after class, while another one of my clients, who only does personal training, said having an appointment with me twice a week (and the fact that he’s paying $75 a session) is reason enough.
The power of friendship
I could relate to this one big-time. I have a personal coach who programs for me each week, and even the days I don’t feel like training, I make sure I drag myself there because of the guilt I would feel to let myself down, and the embarrassment I would feel to tell him, “I just didn’t feel like working out today."
For one morning client, he said what ensures he shows up is the fact that he uses a car-to-go service, which he books in advance at the start of the month for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“Knowing I've pre-paid for the car, too, ensures I show up,” he said.
I think the best tip I heard all morning was from one client who talked about the difference between motivation versus discipline.
People often talk about not being motivated, but in the end waiting for motivation just becomes a great tool to procrastinate and make excuses, he explained.
“If you wait for motivation, then you’ll always wait until you want to do something,” he said.
But if you focus on being disciplined, then you’ll do things that you might not want to do in the moment, but things that will benefit you greatly.
"Getting here in the morning is about discipline, not motivation."
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The angle of the Globe article was essentially to glorify Thompson because of her age—to emphasize that age is just a number—and to inspire people to realize age doesn’t need to slow you down.
56-year-old Thompson has had a stronghold on the coxswain position in Canada since 1980.
“I think it’s redefining to our society that we can keep going, as long as we’re active,” said Thompson in the article.
What a lovely message, right?
Maybe.
But maybe not.
When I read the story, I couldn’t help but grow a bit perturbed—angry, even. I couldn’t help but think:
(For the record, Thompson has held the one coxswain position since 1980. For 36 years!).
When I read the article, I couldn’t help but see it from the perspective of an aspiring coxswain coming through the ranks. Couldn’t help but imagine it from Kristen Kit’s perspective.
Kit is a 27-year-old coxswain, who got involved in the sport of rowing in Grade 9 in St. Catharines, Ontario—a world renowned rowing city. She has been dreaming about the Olympics since she quickly became a coxing force in high school, and later continued her pursuit at the University of British Columbia.
After university, she uprooted her life and moved to London, Ontario to train full-time with the women’s national team, all the while wondering, waiting, hoping for the day Thompson would retire—painfully aware that unless Thompson starts becoming senile in her old age and loses the ability to steer the boat, the powers that be at Rowing Canada will not remove someone with so much experience from the coxswain position.
In the meantime, Kit has had the honour of representing Canada with the Under-23 women’s national team multiple times, and in 2013 even thought the day might have come for her to step into the role with the senior team.
A seat she would do anything to sit in...at the Olympics
Thompson left the program (briefly), and Kit represented Canada with the women’s 8 at the 2013 World Championships.
After experiencing a taste of what the Olympics might feel like at senior Worlds, she was soon informed Thompson was making a triumphant return to train for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
“Weeks after winning a bronze medal (at the World Championships) I was told that Lesley (Thompson) has decided to come back and therefore the seat was being given to her for the 2014 season,” Kit said. “The (coxswain) seat, unlike a rower’s seat, is selected subjectively.”
What Thompson’s decision to apparently never retire has meant for Kit—and many other talented female coxswain’s, who have come and gone in the last 30 years—is the dream to become an Olympic coxswain is all for nothing.
“I (used to) believe if I worked hard enough to learn from the best rowers, coaches and coxswains then I would have a chance to earn a berth to represent Canada at an Olympics,” Kit said.
She knows now this isn’t the case.
The Canadian Women's 8 winning a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympic Games with Thompson in the driver's seat
“For many aspiring coxswains, there really isn’t any hope (to get to the Olympics). There are other coxswains who came before me…who were incredibly talented, smart and successful, who were able to see the situation for what it is,” she added.
Most of these other talented coxswains just accepted the situation and moved on. Quit. Retired. But not Kit. Her love for her sport is too strong to just abandon it.
Instead, Kit has accepted the coxswain role with Canada’s Paralympic rowing team, and will be competing in her second Paralympic Games in Rio this summer—a role she has embraced with all her heart.
“We have had some ups and downs…difficulties with budget compared to our able-bodied counterparts, however; the experience has helped me realize my abilities,” she said, adding it has been incredibly fulfilling to contribute to the growth of the adaptive rowing program in Canada. “And the (Paralympic) athletes are extraordinary. They train at a high-performance level, and are all individually inspiring people.”
Kit continues to enjoy coxing any chance she gets!
As great as the experience has been for Kit, and as excited as she is to travel to Rio with the adaptive rowing team, it’s still not the Olympic Games. Not her Olympic Games
To gain another perspective, I reached out to a former national team rowing friend of mine and asked her opinion.
In return, she challenged me with this: “If the veteran remains faster than you, don’t they deserve to get the spot?” She followed this with: “Hayley Wickenheiser has been on Team Canada (hockey) for years, and it’s her leadership that gets her on the team.”
To this I say:
Ordinarily, I would agree. When it comes to sports, I generally think the people who will most help the team should make the team. Simple as that.
HOWEVER, in every other sport, there’s a natural human sport life cycle thing that happens. As current stars age and peak and start to decline, new up-and-coming athletes come in and replace them—just like in life. Veterans are looked up to and respected, like Michael Phelps, while new stars like Canadian swimmer Penny Oleksiak take the world by storm and inspire a new generation.
A new star—16-year-old Oleksiak—is born!
People would be tired of Michael Jordan by now if he were still lumbering up and down the basketball court at 53. Luckily, that would never happen because of the natural order of things: Out with the old, in with the new. It’s what keeps sports exciting, and it’s what keeps people watching.
But Thompson’s age of 56 proves, unlike swimming or basketball or any other Olympic sport, coxswains don’t need to be anywhere near their physical prime to remain a force.
The Globe and Mail article suggests being a coxswain requires physical fitness, namely core strength, but the fact that Thompson is 56 proves only mediocre physical abilities are required. (I imagine she’s very fit for 56, but I guarantee her capacity was far greater back in 1984).
And as for my friend’s Wickenheiser comparison, it might be true that she is chosen purely for her leadership at this point; however, there are many positions on a hockey team. Many female hockey players get to experience the Olympics each cycle. But for a female coxswain, there is one spot for one athlete every four years.
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Most gym owners are cautious about what products they endorse, and what to sell to their members. We’re in the business of helping clients through health and fitness; we’re not in the snake oil business trying to sell products that don’t work just so we can make a buck.
So when it comes to deciding if and what you should sell at your gym, I believe the questions you should ask yourself are these:
If the answer is yes to all three of the above, there’s a good chance it’s something you should consider stocking.
Client: Someone rips almost everyday and the first thing they ask for is tape. It’s great for dealing with fresh rips, and great for preventing rips on high-volume bar, barbell days or muscle-up days. And it’s even useful for protecting joints, like the wrists on movements like cleans and overhead squats.
Coach: When someone rips and there’s no tape in sight, I always feel guilty not being able to help my client tape up their rip so they can continue the workout. I admit, there has even been a time or two, where the whole class was interrupted because I went on a search for a roll of tape I thought I had in my locker upstairs. Selling tape on site solves the problem.
Owner: It’s relatively inexpensive for you to stock (as compared to ROCK TAPE), and it will have no problem selling. You might even be able to make a buck or two per roll.
Clients: Some people still like writing with a pen and paper. No matter how much you encourage them to track their scores on whatever online platform you promote, they don’t do it. These people usually appreciate a log book. Whether it’s just a simple notebook, or you get books printed with your gym’s logo, this will encourage your pen and paper members to keep track of their numbers and their progress.
Coach: When everyone knows his numbers and his progressions, life is much much easier for the coach!
Owner: Clients who truly get on board with logging their progress will develop a much better understanding of what they’re doing everyday at your gym. They get more excited about their numbers and fitness improvements, making them more likely to stick around for the long haul than the guy who still can’t remember what a clean is after a year of coming to the gym.
Client: Learning how to skip can be frustrating. Especially learning how to double-under. And especially if you use a different rope each day! A consistent rope, of a consistent length, is only going to help you learn faster.
Coach: Skipping ropes do break sometimes, and other times they mysteriously go missing. It’s so much easier to coach a class when people aren’t fighting over ropes. And so much easier to coach when people are skipping well.
Owner: Ropes are relatively inexpensive in terms of gym equipment, but when they go missing all the time, and break, it adds up. Spend your equipment budget elsewhere and encourage your athletes to buy their own rope. If they can buy it directly from you, chances are much higher they’ll be on board with the purchase.
Client: When clients keep their skin healthy—their calluses thin and pliable with the GRINDSTONE and their skin healthy with DAILYDOSE—they’ll be able to show up more often (it’s frustrating to have to miss a workout because of a rip).
Coach: Clients always ask me what they should to do prevent and heal rips. I can tell them to go online and buy RIPT Skin Systems, but chances are they’ll go home and forgot; their rip will heal, and then the same thing will happen all over again the following week! There’s nothing better than being able to provide a solution to your client in the moment.
Owner: If not missing days because of rips or blisters isn’t benefit enough to the business, here's a second reason: Our wholesale program, meaning your gym can benefit financially from selling RIPT Skin System's product. Read about our wholesale program here.
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When it comes to gymnastics, Louise has helped many athletes go from good to great. One simple cue she gave to CrossFit Games veteran Emily Abbott ("Look up on your bar muscle-ups") made all the difference in the world for Abbott, whose bar muscle-ups now appear effortless.
One thing I particularly respect about Louise is her ability to create patient athletes. Whenever you see videos of her athletes getting their first muscle-up, it's always a very pretty first muscle-up. This is because she doesn't let people get ahead of themselves. Everyone she works with builds the necessary strength first, so when they do get through the rings they're more than ready!
I'm not naturally a patient person, but whenever I work with her I feel patience seep into my body.
Truth is, muscle-ups have always been a weakness for me, and they might always be to a certain degree, but the times they have felt the best have been whenever I work with Louise. After spending 6 months marathon running and losing pulling strength, I am determined to improve my muscle-ups again, so I turned to Louise. Her technical advice is unmatched (and her high-energy, yet nurturing voice helps build my confidence).
Without further ado, here are some of my favorite muscle-up drills Louise has added to my gymnastics program this month:
Ring Rows with rings facing forward, no false grip, and pulling with elbows out to the side (as you can see, I'm not very good at these, but I can feel myself getting stronger when I do them):
Having a spotter allows you to do bigger sets, keeps your body position in check and helps build confidence. Louise is a big fan of spotting on both kipping and strict muscle-ups, even for athletes who can do them already.
These guys really helped me HAVE to use my lats. They're also good for realizing how much you can use your hips on a muscle-up, too.
I have a massive lat activation issue, so these are helpful for me to do at the start of the day to ensure my lats are firing. AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE is the key. And again, keep the elbows out to the side.
If you're looking to activate your lats too, you can check out these simple lat activation drills to add to your warm-up.
]]>There's nothing more frustrating for a coach than watching an athlete skip warm-up and head straight to the bars and start busting out butterfly chest-to-bars or muscle-ups.
Remember, even the best of the best take the time to properly prep their body before big swinging moves like ring muscle ups. I watched Lucas Parker, a six-time CrossFit Games competitor, train a couple times, and he spends more time warming up than working out.
]]>Remember, even the best of the best take the time to properly prep their body before big swinging moves like ring muscle ups. I watched Lucas Parker, a six-time CrossFit Games competitor, train a couple times, and he spends more time warming up than working out.
Why? Because it's as, or more important, than the "workout" itself!
Why? Because it helps your muscles and joints move more effectively, and keeps you safer and less injury-prone.
One of the most important muscles to prep before hitting the bars or the gymnastics rings for pulling action are the lats! Here are 6 simple drills you can do to warm-up.
If you don't feel your lats burning after 10, then you're probably doing these too fast. Focus on a slow, even tempo, squeezing your lats and shoulder blades together, and keeping your arms as straight as possible.
Again, if you don't feel burning in your delts and your lats, then you're moving too fast. Or your hands are too far apart on the band; put them closer together to increase the tension and difficulty.
Version 1 are old-school lat pulldowns—pulling straight down on the band, keeping your arms straight. Version 2 should be done AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE, driving your elbows out to the sides (avoiding the temptation to bring them in front of your body).
By the end of this warm-up, you should feel your lats screaming! Now you'll be in great shape to attack the bars or rings for your workout.
If you ever rip your hands while doing your bar or ring workouts, you can check out our CrossFit hand care line here to get those fixed fast.
“Be better.”
“Believe.”
Three words that are tattooed on 4-time CrossFit Games masters athlete Terry Peters’ skin.
“I found myself writing “keep going” on the floor during the Open workouts all the time. It’s just a reminder to push myself a little harder,” Peters said about the tattoo on the inside of his forearm.
“And this one was next. ‘Be better.’ I just felt like, ‘Ok, I can keep going, but that isn’t enough anymore.’ I wanted to be better. Not just in CrossFit, but in everything,” he added, pointing to the tattoo.
Sitting in his beautiful North Vancouver home, surrounded by paintings he painted himself, Peters admitted it’s hard for some people in his life—people has has known for years—to understand what drives him at the age of 62 to continuously push his body as hard as he does each day—to keep going, to be better—day in, day out.
He can’t really explain it, except to say it’s just who he is.
“I like all-consuming things. It allows me to get right into that moment. I like that focus. I think most of the things I really like tend to be all-consuming,” he said.
This is also why he likes painting so much: It allows him to forget about everything else that’s going on in his life and just focus in on one single task, he explained.
A talented athlete, and painter
“I’m totally in the moment when I paint,” he said.
And it doesn’t matter how young he once was or how old he is now, he explained: That’s just who he is.
Something else that doesn’t matter how old or young you are is the excitement you feel when you qualify to the CrossFit Games.
This year, Peters qualified to his fourth Games—13th in the world. It’s a feeling that never gets old, he said. And it never becomes less consuming.
“When I got through the masters qualifier this year, the first thing I said to my wife was, ‘I would like to apologize in advance because I know what I’m going to be like in the next five months,’” Peters joked.
The next five months for Peters has included spending countless hours in the gym each week training, on top of daily mobility sessions and weekly massages, physiotherapy sessions and IMS to prepare his body to the best of his abilities for his fourth CrossFit Games.
Peters said one of the best parts about having competed so many times in Carson has been watching the evolution of the masters competition.
“In 2011, it was so brand new and the masters competition didn’t receive much attention. We were a bit of a side show. There wasn’t even a warm-up area. We competed in the parking lot,” he laughed.
He certainly didn't bring home a CrossFit Games beer mug in 2011
The following year the masters athletes were moved to the track stadium, and last year—his third Games appearance—he got to compete at the soccer stadium.
“The soccer stadium was a totally different feel. You felt like you were competing with the individuals. We used the same big rig. Ran the same types of courses,” he explained. But the best part of the weekend for him last year was getting the chance to compete in the premiere tennis stadium for the final event, an event he ended up winning.
“It’s going to be pretty hard to top last year’s final event this year. That was the highlight of my CrossFit competition (career),” he said.
Peters in the final event in 2015
So he’s going into this year’s event trying to keep his expectations low and just enjoy the ride.
“I feel so lucky that I get to feel like a competitive athlete at 62,” he said. “Not a lot of people can say that.”
Although he still gets nervous, Peters does think his age gives him more wisdom to be able to appreciate competition.
“It’s easier for me now to know it’ s not a life or death situation. These are just competitions. Sometimes they go well and sometimes they don’t. You can’t define yourself by your results,” he said.
Instead, he chooses to define himself by the other 51 weeks of the year—the days he shows up to the gym and willingly puts himself through gruelling physical challenges. And to define himself by what he’s able to do at his age, and what he’s able to give to others.
Not only is he still improving physically (he pulled a personal best 460 lb. deadlift in this year’s masters qualifier event and got his first bar muscle-up earlier in the year), he is most proud of how his fitness inspires those around him to keep going. To be better. To believe.
“I like that I can inspire people to aspire to be fit at any age."
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When a client gets a large blood blister that turns into a deep rip in the palm of his hand, I usually recommend avoiding handwork for a day or two. Versus, when someone whimpers about some superficial skin loss on his thumb from hook gripping during high-rep hang cleans, I tell him to tape it up and suck it up!
Generally speaking, regardless of the rip, tape can be useful. It’s great for preventing rips, and it’s also great for reducing pain when you do rip. Further, it helps prevent further damage to the skin when you hit the bar.
These guys, which often result from using a hook grip on the barbell, or even from high-rep pull-ups, bar muscle-up or toes-to-bar, aren’t usually all that deep (unless you’ve forgotten to tend to your calluses with your GRINDSTONE).
And when they do happen, they’re easy to deal with. All you need is 3 or 4 inches of cloth athletic tape.
** Make sure the tape is cloth hockey tape and NOT plastic first-aid tape. Plastic just won't stay on well. Also, don’t waste your expensive, super sticky ROCK tape on these rips.
** If the rip is deep, place a band-aid underneath the tape for more protection.
TAPE JOB
Step 1: Cut (or if you’re talented you can just rip it pretty easily) a piece of tape 3 to 4 inches long (enough to wrap around your finger or thumb 2 times).
Step 2: Cut this 4-inch piece of tape in two—lengthwise. (If you wrap the thicker piece of tape around your finger, it will likely get in the way of the knuckle, which is uncomfortable and restricts finger range of motion).
Step 3: Wrap the tape around (2 to 3 times around) your finger or thumb to cover the rip.
Step 4: Get back on the bar!
These guys are trickier, especially if they’re not in the centre of the hand (it’s a bit more awkward to get the tape to stick nicely when the rip is close to your pinky finger or your pointer finger).
For taping, ROCK tape works best for these rips, but cloth athletic tape is ok, too.
Some athletes—like in this video—choose to create gymnastics-like grips with athletic tape that they can re-use over and over. Tape grips work, but I also find it works just as well to stick the tape directly to your hands, especially if you have super sticky ROCK tape. And it's way less time consuming!
TAPE JOB
Step 1: Cut 2 to 4 pieces of ROCK tape about 6 to 8 inches long. ROCK tape is stretchy, so you don't need as much as if you're using athletic tape, where you'll need 10 to 12 inches, depending on how big your hand is. Essentially, you will need enough length for the tape to start at the base of your wrist, wrap around your finger, and then extend back to the base of your wrist.
Step 2: Place one end of the tape on the inside of the wrist. Stick it to your palm, cover the rip, wrap it around the closest finger, and pull the tape back to the base of the wrist on the inside of your hand. Pat it down with your other hand to make sure it is stuck nicely to your skin.
Step 3: Repeat Step 2 one, two or even three more times, depending on how much padding you think your rip needs.
Step 4: Cut another piece of tape—this time athletic tape—about 6 to 8 inches long. Wrap it around the wrist to cover up the two ends of the ROCK tape. If you don’t do this step, the tape will start peeling off your wrist as you’re working out. Again, athletic tape is fine for the wrists. Don’t waste your expensive ROCK tape!
These often come from false gripping on muscle-ups. I ALWAYS rip my wrists if I log more than 12 muscle-ups, so I usually use this tape job as a preventative measure first and foremost.
TAPE JOB
Step 1: Cut a piece of tape—either ROCK tape or athletic tape both work for this—long enough to wrap around your wrist 3 or 4 times.
Step 2: Wrap your wrist three or four times around, making sure you’re wrapping low enough to cover the entire area of your wrist that rubs against the rings when you’re doing muscle-ups.
Step 3: THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY HERE is if you’re using white tape you’ll need to leave a little slack in the tape. For you perfectionists out there, it will feel a little sloppy, but if you pull the tape too tight, there’s a good chance the tape will bust open when you’re on the rings, exposing your skin and defeating the purpose of the tape. The slack also allows the tape to almost stick to the rings, which can give you more confidence in your grip!
Check out this blog for another muscle-up tape job idea I’ve also used. It works wonders.
]]>What a shame! You have worked so hard to improve your pulling strength and barbell cycling only to have your grip fail…
Don’t blame your small hands. Work on your grip strength instead!
Some high level gymnastics coaches don’t teach their young athletes any great swinging moves on bars until they can hang from a bar for a certain number of time (I have heard anywhere between 3 and 5 minutes from different coaches).
In gymnastics, it comes down to safety: If grip strength isn’t up to snuff, the chances of the athlete ‘pinging’ off the bar (where the grip gives out and the athlete flies off the bar), is much higher.
Something like this:
For 6 weeks, include the following in your warm-up:
• 3 sub-maximal deadhang holds. (By sub-maximal, I mean if you think you can hold on for 1 minute before your forearms seize up and you feel like you have a claw, then try 3 sets of 30-40 second holds. Increase the time as your grip strength improves).
• Make sure you keep active shoulders as you hang!
• Try a reverse grip deadhang hold, as well.
What’s the worst part about grocery shopping?
Carrying those bags to your car, and then from your car to the house, of course.
Farmer carries suck. But they’re great for building grip strength.
Twice a week for six weeks, add the following to your cooldown:
• 2 x 200 meter Farmer Carry with KBs. Pick a weight that allows you to go the entire 200 meters WITH GOOD POSTURE without putting them down.
• Rest as needed between sets
Pick your poison. One in each hand. Walk 200 m
Like farmer carries, but on steroids!
Twice a week for six weeks, add the following to your cooldown:
• 3 x 30 second plate pinch carries (Hold a plate, or several together, with just your grip)
•Make sure your posture is on point
•How heavy/thick can you go?
Have you ever met a certified Russian KB Instructor? If you have, he/she likely has insane grip strength! There’s no secret to it: They spend a ton of time under grip tension.
Try this sequence:
•3 rounds unbroken of: 5 single-arm Russian KB swings + 5 single-arm KB snatches + 5 single-arm KB cleans + 5 push press
•Do the entire three rounds in one hand, and then switch hands and repeat
•How heavy can you go for these 60 unbroken reps?
Make sure you take the time to ensure you're learning the proper technique:
Barbell cycling is a great way to increase your grip strength, and perfect your hook grip and barbell efficiency in the process.
Try this:
•20 unbroken hang cleans and/or 20 unbroken hang snatches
•How heavy can you go for 20 unbroken reps?
High-rep deadlifts are great because you can go quite heavy with the weight—very taxing on the grip.
Build into your strength program:
•3 x 10 (and later 15, and even 20 reps) as heavy as possible (without compromising form)
•One test my coach had me do once was 60 unbroken deadlifts (the weight was light, but my grip was worked hard!)
Or train for American Ninja Warrior!
]]>Hallwood’s prescription when a young gymnast gets a blood blister or ‘water’ blister, meaning a rip is inevitable, is as follows:
]]>Long-time gymnastics coach and former competitive gymnast Kira Hallwood deals with children—sometimes as young as 6 years old—suffering from bar-induced blisters and rips on their palms and fingers.
Although most gymnasts wear grips, the younger ones don’t, and event grips don’t always prevent painful skin carnage.
Hallwood’s prescription for gymnastics hand care when a young gymnast gets a blood blister or ‘water’ blister - meaning a rip is inevitable - is as follows:
Poke the blister with a clean needle and let the fluid drain out.
Once it turns into a rip, cut the loose skin off at the base of the hand, especially if it’s flapping around (if it doesn’t get cut off at the base and a profusion of skin remains on the hand, the chance for it to keep ripping larger, deeper and more painfully, increases).
Cover the ripped area with a cloth band-aid (plastic band-aids will never stay on, especially if it’s on the palm of the hand) and tape if necessary.
Keep moisturizing it to prevent the skin from cracking. You can try RIPT QUICK FIX which will help speed healing, and our DAILY DOSE which will keep the skin from drying out and cracking. This always leads to deeper rips.
Other tips for young gymnasts, coaches and parents to repair rips:
Image: A sight every gymnast has seen...
Image: GRINDSTONE - Sandpaper for the hands
“We try to act like the rip is impressive and a good thing so they don’t cry.” - Coach Hallwood
After all, there will be many more hands rips to come in the life of a gymnast. Hopefully, these tips will help to reduce the likelihood and speed up the recovery time.
]]>Calgary native Emily Abbott recently became a three-time CrossFit Games qualifier when she exercised her way to the podium at the West Regional Competition in Portland.
Not only has she proven her body is a well-oiled machine, even her hands are among the fittest in the world. How’s this for an impressive statement:
"I have not ripped all year." - Emily Abbott
]]>Not only has her commitment to training, her solid nutrition, and Blonyx HMB + Creatine helped her body become a well-oiled machine, even her hands are among the most fit in the world! How’s this for an impressive statement:
“I have not ripped all year.” - Emily Abbott
How can someone who spends her days gripping barbells and swinging on pull-up bars and rings avoid rips? While Abbott isn't a Ript-sponsored athlete, she loves our products and explained that RIPT’s GRINDSTONE is part of her no-rip secret as it keeps her callouses thin and pliable.
“I use the buffer bar (GRINDSTONE) every time I am in the shower. I give my hands a good 10-second scrub and then lotion up,” she said.
And because rips don’t happen often for Abbott, she doesn’t have to use QUICK FIX all that much.
“I use the QUICK FIX infrequently as I don’t rip my hands. I did, however, get some nasty rips right before Regionals on my wrists because of false grip strict muscle-ups,” she said, adding, “QUICK FIX healed the little guys right up.”
The DAILY DOSE, however, she makes use of. “When I am out of lotion when I am traveling, the DAILY DOSE is perfect for moisturizing. That way, I don’t have to bring a big tub of lotion,” she said. “So convenient.”
Abbott’s tip of the day for how she preps her hands for competition:
“It’s always good to not overdo anything that could rip your hands. I compact my hand-hurting gymnastics into one day so that the next day I can rest my tender mitts. I focus on barbell work the following day, and then get back at the gymnastics again the day after that. And honestly, if I bring my buffer bar with me on the road and if I use it everyday, I am golden,” she said.
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