Have you ever been held back because of your grip in a workout with high reps of toes-to-bar, pull-ups or hang cleans? Your shoulders or legs weren’t even lactic yet, and your lungs were breathing comfortably, but your damn small hands (or at least that’s what you told yourself) just couldn’t hang onto that bar any longer. 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! Seven Ways to Improve your Grip Strength quickly 7. Deadhang Holds Some high level gymnastics coaches don’t teach their young athletes any great swinging moves on bars until they can hang from a bar...

First some personal history. I have been a casual rock climber for a number of years. Being a self proclaimed student in the art of mastery, I know full well that dabbling in any sport is no way to progress. It was with pure serendipity that a number of events happened to allow me to not only put some old fashioned effort into training, but also gather some wisdom about taking care of your tools that I would like to share. As fate would have it, I had recently opened a CrossFit affiliate in a huge 5000sqft facility with 18ft ceilings (in 2009 when I opened, my gym would have been one of the largest in Canada). A few months...