Today, while our world has become more and more connected and interdependent since the 1970s, the world of sports has oddly become more and more fragmented and isolationist. Each sport does its own thing now; each sport has its own World Cup circuit and World Championships, not to mention new sports host their own world events, like the CrossFit Games and the X-Games. So while track and field and gymnastics fans might still follow their athletes at the Pan Am Games, generally speaking the rest of the world barely knows they’re going on in Toronto right now. 

When a person experiences his inaugural rip, he or she comes running to me legitimately confused what to do next. 

“Should I pop the blood blister?”

“Should I cut the skin off?”

“Should I cover up the rip, or let it dry out?”

Although the answers to these questions are like diet advice—all over the map—as someone who has been doing hand sports my whole life, here’s my best advice:

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.

“I’m eager to work hard, and I want to build a future for myself, but I’m starting to lose hope that I’ll ever be employed. If Canada’s doing so well, then why are so many young people out of work?” 

I believe many “young” people I know are out of work because after they spend four or five years in school—or maybe even seven or eight and come out with a master’s degree—they seem to believe a stable 9-to-5 government job with a beautiful pension, no less, will be laid out before them the moment they throw their graduation cap in the air with pride.

I used to believe that as a coach I should give clients exactly what they want. But now I realize that giving them exactly what they want might mean letting them do their 7-minute ab routine after class—a routine their body has completely adapted to and is no longer improving from. Giving them exactly what they want might mean programming a 45-minute Grinder 6 days a week. Although they might be happy in the moment, neither the latter or the former is actually helping them.

Imagine you learned how to properly squat and deadlift when you were 13 years old. Make sure your teens do!

Teach your kids early!

I think someone famous once said something to the effect of learning more in defeat than in success. I'm still trying to figure out all that I learned this past weekend at the West Regional, but here are two things I know I learned for sure.

Someone once said, “You can’t control your thoughts, but you can control what you do with them.”

In this case, my thoughts these days—most of them—are about Regionals. I can either choose to see this as pathetic and unbalanced and guilt trip myself about it and try to pull myself away from thinking about it. Or I can embrace this.

While it might work for some people—possibly the more naturally technical folks out there—for many, nothing can replace a real life coach.