Being a Cirque du Soleil performer means Laura-Ann Chong's schedule includes 10 performances, and two or three training sessions, each week. A day rarely goes by where she doesn’t spend hours a day swinging, releasing, pirouetting around the bars. Her hands take a constant beating.

While acute rips are inevitable, Chong took the time to share her secrets to avoid too many unwanted rips, cracks, and hand pain.

For three months, I walked around looking like a clown.

I had an unfortunately aggressive case of apparent chronic chapped lips. If you’ve ever experienced it, dry lips that  persist for weeks, months, are annoying and painful. I asked around at the pharmacy, I googled, yet nothing seems to work.

The dreaded ring rash. A bane to athletes from CrossFitters to Gymnasts. If you have ever done a muscle-up or ring dip for even low reps, you have probably met with ring rash at some point. 

Ring rash, otherwise known as a friction burn can be a painful experience and if left untreated can even leave a pretty nasty scar across both forearms. 

So you just ripped the shit out of your hands doing a million (that's right, a million) toes-to-bar and you would rather be poked in the eye with a red-hot iron rod than wash your hair. What do you do now? Not to worry, RIPT has you covered...literally. POST-RIP REPAIR Protect open hand rips from the elements. Fresh rips burn mostly because of the oxygen exposure to deeper layers of your skin. After washing with soap (which can suck) dry the open wound and apply our QUICK FIX balm directly to the tear. QUICK FIX has a beeswax and coconut oil base, two ingredients known for their anti-bacterial/anti-viral qualities, as well as providing a thick layer of protection from the...

Why is  RIPT Skin Systems' 3 phase hand care kit the best cream/hand balm on the market for CrossFit hand problems? Because there are 3 stages in which every CrossFitters hands exist at any given moment. 1)Pre-rip maintenance2) Post-rip repair3) Post-rip recovery You trim your nails and cut your hair don't you... Why aren't you taking care of your calluses? PRE-RIP Hand calluses are free gloves from nature. If you take just a little time out of your day to properly take care of them, they will protect you from rips, rather than be the cause of them. Shape and contour calluses to prevent rips. The number 1 biggest hand care mistake that newbs to CrossFit make is shaving, grinding,...

Take Care of Your Thumbs!

That's the advice Rachel Siemens had to offer when we asked her how a CrossFit athlete turned Olympic weightlifter (who recently competed at her first international weightlifting competition in Russia) should take care of their hands. 

Although pull-ups and toes-to-bars are harder on her hands than Olympic weightlifting is, lifting barbells still causes her some problems from time to time.

“My hands are pretty much one giant callous. The boys love that, right?” she joked.

Sometimes her hands get specifically bad when she mixes it up and trains with the men’s bar. “I guess my callous build up specifically for the women’s bar and when I use the men’s bar, I expose a weak section of my thumb to the bar,” she explained.

Siemens admitted she doesn’t take care of her hands enough in terms of sanding them down with a pumice stone or a callous shaver; it’s her thumbs that cause her the biggest issues.

“When volume is high, I wrap athletic tape around my thumbs, and it helps for gripping the bar as well as protecting my skin.”

Ben Poss still remembers the horrors of his hands when he completed his Russian KB certification RKC (Russian Kettebell Challenge). It was a three-day course, meaning his hands didn’t get a break for three entire days.

One of the things he had to do on the first day was 100 KB snatches with a 24 kg KB in less than five minutes without putting the KB down.

“Those three days of high volume KB training was the most punishment my hand have ever suffered,” said Poss.

He added: “Both hands had torn calluses by the third day, and my hands were absolutely raw by the end of the graduation workout – The Deep Six.”

Here is a link to the workout if you would like to try it yourself: http://kbforum.dragondoor.com/kettlebells-strength-conditioning-forum/138876-rkc-deep-six.html

After years of experience, and tearing up his hands numerous times, Poss can be considered an expert in the field of hand care for kettlebell athletes. 

Donny Shankle is bigger than you, stronger than you, and knows more about hand care for weightlifters than you.  When your profession is lifting heavy objects over your head, taking care of your money makers is a must. If you can't hold the bar anymore, your training suffers.  In the following video, Shankle will walk you through how to properly take care of weightlifting hands, and which products he uses (can someone please get this man a RIPT kit?). Specifically a waxy hand balm (a la Quick Fix) rather than a hand cream, and a pumice stone to smooth down dead and dry calluses.  While Donny nails hand care on the head, the only point we would add is that...

Meet Kate Richardson:

Kate learned about hand rips at a young age. The two-time Canadian Olympic gymnast was already going through multiple rolls of athletic tape per week at the age of eight.

Although gymnasts wear grips when they perform on the bars, rips sometimes still happen, making bar routines painful, not to mention psychologically daunting....