MY SKIN ROUTINE – how I deal with splits | October 19th | COMPCLIMB training series

Today is our workout/endurance day, and while we rep out our sets of 4 by 4’s I talk about my skin routine and how I combat chronic splits!
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Link to our current program (last updated October 14th): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EWa5gCfZfYr5bWuQcRZtsiHI_abnMMfY/view?usp=drivesdk
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Timestamps:
0:00 – Session 1: Workout (Boulderhaus)
5:03 – Session 2: Endurance (Studio Bloc – Darmstadt)
9:14 – My skin history/routine
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Title sponsors:
Climber’s Rock – https://www.climbersrock.com/
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IG – https://instagram.com/richardsonsclimbing?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw==
Website – https://www.richardsonsclimbing.com/

Hey everyone my name is Zach I’m a 22-year-old competitive bould from Canada currently living near Frankfurt Germany welcome back to the C climb training series or record all of my training provide in-depth analysis of every session and just chat about climbing with an emphasis on competition today we have our workout and endurance

On the agenda for training and we’re starting with our workout in the morning here at Boulder house and uh if you’re interested in sort of just like the title of the video and and sort of just want to hear about um my skin history and like sort of my advice for uh like

From my personal experience of like like uh just managing my skin and sort of my skin routine uh you can check out the time stamps in the video and fast forward to the second half of the video and I’m going to talk about it while we’re doing our endurance but for now

We’re doing our workout and like I’ve mentioned you know in the past few episodes that we’ve done our workout I’m going to start including some clips of old bers to talk about just because we’ve been doing the workout this is the same workout for this whole training

Cycle and once you’ve seen the exercises and after you’ve sort of seen uh these exercises introduced and you’ve heard my philosophy behind it it can be tedious to watch uh and so if you’re like interested if you’re like a new viewer and you want to sort of have these

Exercises that I do in all my workouts being introduced you can check out like you know just a check out like a couple episodes ago like from our workouts and I’ll talk about them more but for now we’re going to talk about some climbs

That I have lined up for today and so I got one in particular that’s going to be a good tip of the day and that’s the one that you’re seeing on the screen here uh so like I said we won’t really be getting a tip of the day from our day of

Training so I have to come up with one from the archives uh from so that I can talk about it uh cuz you know I’m not going to get tip of the day from just an endurance and a workout so I have to I what I do is I like go through my

Archives and I like look for something like uh interesting that I can talk about and it’s cool too because I can really um find like rare instances of tips of the days that uh won’t necessarily come up all the time and like for example today’s tip of the day

Is like kind of like one that I don’t do a whole lot and so it’s actually it’s good that I can go find uh like a rare example of it that I’ve already done in the past so anyway let’s talk about it I do this actually two times on this

Boulder with my my right hand and it’s a pinching technique so I do it once on this red hold uh that I’m matching first of all this Boulder is like super epic this is a boulder from my home gym climbers Rock uh it’s also the title sponsor of the comp climb series it’s

Miz home gym in near Toronto and it’s the best climbing facility in Toronto area and we have their Link in the description for more information without their support this series would not be possible so yeah this is like I don’t know from a couple years ago at CR of

Older that our headset or Jamie set and it’s super cool and it features this grip position that I do twice on the Boulder so I do it on the red hold and then do it on the flat hold Zone and what I do is I pinch the hold and I sort

Of tilt my thumb like this rather than doing a normal pinch like this and the logic behind this is that there are some sort of funky pinches that are like shaping really weirdly to the point where uh you can’t like it’s more potent on this sort of

Flat hold like the Zone hold where I could get like obviously all four of my fingers on the sloper quite comfortably but if I was to stick my thumb there the thumb isn’t very deep and so it would create this sort of a weird thing where

If I wanted to get my thumb I would have to bring my four fingers back and then it’s a worse hold so by sort of bringing my thumb closer to my palm also I’ll pause and say that I’m including a couple other clips of Bowlers from climers Rock um just sort of since

That’s sort of like the theme and these next two Bowers that you can see on the screen are my own Bowlers that I set um like my parents actually own this gym I’ve mentioned previously uh I think I’ve only mentioned it once actually so I was able to climb during this uh like

During lockdown most of the time but what ended up happening is like I was the only one of the gym so I had to sell myself some Boulders so here are like a couple highlights from my um solo lockdown sessions when I had to set myself some Boulders these are like some

Of my highlights and so if there’s any uh Setters uh watching the video right now here’s some proof that I can set and uh maybe like I’ll start seeing if I can guess I’ve been talking to Eric a little bit and we can probably he said I could

Probably set a boulder sometime at Studio block so here’s the proof that I’m not too bad at setting um but yeah this uh this grip position uh it’s good for a couple reasons um uh one it it allows you to sort of like get more surface area with your forefingers on a

Hold like that where the thumb isn’t will usually push you your hand out naturally so by bringing it closer it allows you to get more surface area with these forefingers and this can also help on like let’s say you have a thumb catch on like a volume or something that’s

Sort of a long hold or sort of like a long thumb catch right instead of just getting like a bit of surface area with your thumb uh when you were go to pinch this old like just with with just the tip of your thumb by switching your

Finger to be sort of sideways you can get actually so much more surface area now this doesn’t always work I find it actually can often feel like a weaker grip position but because you get more surface area with your thumb it actually can feel it doesn’t feel stronger but it

Feels like you can hold the hold better um just because you’re just getting more surface area and I don’t you know what I don’t really have a name for this technique uh I haven’t actually heard any other people talk about it or seen any other people do it this is obviously

I try didn’t invent this and there are other people doing this but uh this is sort of one of the few skills and techniques that I do that I haven’t actually seen anybody else do or talked about it with anybody else really and sort of had anybody else be

Like oh yeah I do that too or like often times when I share this technique with other people they’re like oh that’s interesting I’ve never really thought about that so it’s sort of nameless and uh maybe you can throw a name for it in the comment basically um yeah it’s just

Like here’s a better idea of it it’s like a sort of straight on grip position and you know you just sort of you twist your some thumb sideways and it allows you to either get more surface area with your for fingers and sort of just like squeeze your thumb underneath of it

Instead of like pinching it normally or it can also help you get more surface area on sort of a long thumb catch and then that can actually give you more purchase on a pinch and this can like be really helpful sometimes and on that Boulder that the example that I was

Using um you know I wouldn’t be able to normally like pinch that flat hold because it’s just like not the shape is so bizarre and it’s not designed for your thumb so by turning my thumb like this it gives me it just creates a better more ergonomic uh pinch grip

Actually and then I was also doing it on the red pinch earlier in the boulder as well um that one it wasn’t as like sort of vital for the sequence but it helped a bit yeah anyway that was uh that was sort of like a sort of a rare tip of the

Day that I is probably it doesn’t come AC it doesn’t like come up all the time where you see the sort of grip position I use it like very rarely maybe like I don’t know once every couple months I find a boulder where I really really use

This but it can be gamechanging and so uh I stumbled upon that as I was going through my archives and it was um I was like oh yes this is a good one to talk about uh because like I said I often I haven’t heard of many other people doing

This um or at least like knowing about it because it’s so bizarre actually anyway that wrapped up our workout at Boulder house I didn’t skip any exercises actually no I had to stop doing log jump because my hip was kind of tweaked I tweaked it at Boulder house

Yesterday uh just like a little bit and I didn’t want to just do a super aggressive exercise and hurt it so I skipped long jump but other than that we did a nice full workout I didn’t like uh skip out on any exercises which is good because I’ve been skipping workouts a

Bit lately but it was nice to do a full one and so now here is our second session we rested like about like 3 hours in between the sessions and I made the way my way over to Studio block for endurance and um yeah I do five boulders

In the session I picked some optimistic Boulders for sure like this one here is definitely going to be the hardest of our endurance Boulders this is a seven I I think it is the first seven at Studio block we’re doing Endurance on yeah and I’ve I did it once before it took me

Like a couple tries and this is also the first sort of Boulder that um can fall under the cat or like the second Boulder that we’re doing that uh since we’ve done endurance that can fall under the category of like a weird endurance Boulder like obviously this isn’t like

Steep it’s almost like more technical it has like a pretty powerful sequence with this undercling and that it gets super pumpy by the end to do the move like this undercling move a bunch but it’s almost sort of like Technical and weird but like I said I like to throw like

Sort of weird Bowlers in my endurance sessions often uh because that’s what you encounter in uh competitions and that’s what I’m trying to train my endurance for as for compounds and then you’ll notice on my first try I had like my Beta that’s actually how I sent the

Bower initially is to match theat and go to finish hold um but I had to use a jug and then all of a sudden I was like oh crap like I’m not going to be able to do this like four times like with this uh Rat match so I actually had to improv

Improvise some beta here um which is uh is a lot better it’s actually probably intendent sequence and this can actually be something I do with my endurance as well is pick uh Bowlers that you haven’t actually attempted before or don’t have a lot of experience climbing on because

The element of like figuring out a boulder can add to the pump factor and that can actually be really applicable because that’s sort of like what happens in the competition is like you have to figure out a boulder and sometimes it takes you a long time to do so and you

Get like pumped as you’re like trying to find a body position so it’s actually a great factor to sort of um intentionally include that element into your endurance sessions is do Bowers that you have never even tried before uh sometimes I’ll do that and I do that the next

Bilder I do I had never tried before um and so I was finding that it was like extra difficult so anyway the title of this video is has to do with the skin routine and I’ve gotten a couple comments about this and I keep saying

That I’m um like meaning to do a video about it but often times you know with especially now that we’re doing daily videos I find that I am just not it’s not that I don’t have the time to sort of make more sort of like uh you know

Oneoff videos but it’s just the energy and the um and just like the willpower it’s like doing like you know uh the daily training and uh making these videos all the time makes me just not want to go and do like a standalone video about a specific topic and so the

Direction I think I’m going to be going with these sort of like um like these questions that I get or these one-off videos I want to do like you know skin routine or you know know sort of like uh Mobility slw warm-up routines or like my

Old workouts I think what I’m just going to start doing is like using you know maybe a less interesting training day like our workout day and our endurance day or something and sort of just incorporate uh like answering these questions and tackling these topics over

Top of like you know sort of like boring and monotonous training that we’re just doing regularly because I find that I just don’t have the energy to go you know make a comp climb episode and then you know on my rest day the next day go

And do like a whole nicely filmed video about like my Mobility routine or something it’s just uh it can be too much and so I think that I’ll just sort of tackle all these elements in the comp climb series and that’s you know that’s sort of what it’s about as well is like

The comp climb series can be anything it’s just like anything to do with me and my climbing and uh you know my skin has to do with it and my old Mobility exercises have to do with it you know all this stuff so I’ll probably just

Tackle these uh ideas and Topics in the comp clim series uh so today we’re going to talk talk about a bit about my skin uh routine so I’ve mentioned a bit a little bit about this over the episodes but uh the sort of like long story short

About my skin uh like like my pads basically in the past I’ve had really really really bad splits and I got like chronic splits and it it was like a super dark phase in my climbing uh is like the first instance where I wanted to quit climbing was just because of how

Bad my splits were getting and I felt like I was sort of like alone in this like they were so bad to the point where it wasn’t like normal and nobody had really had any advice for me um and I felt like I was just really like I wish

Somebody could have just given me the magical answer and I sort of had to come up with a bunch like I tried a bunch of stuff and then um I was able to figure out something that worked for me but if somebody just told me this like back

Then when it was really bad uh it would have been super helpful and so you know the off chance you know that someone is experiencing a similar thing and I can uh give like some helpful advice I knew just how lifesaving it was uh like it

Would have been for me back then so now that being said it’s very my skin problem was like quite specific so basically when I was getting splits it wasn’t on my fingertip so it wasn’t on sort of like the part of my fingertip that you get like pink skin on when you

Climb on like fiberglass for a lot I would get splits just below the fingertip but also just above sort of the first seam in your finger so just above this first joint but below the fingertip on that sort of like nicely calloused uh sort of patch of skin I

Would get splits there all the time and what I learned over the years like the hard way just from my own personal experience was that it’s because my skin was super thick like I just and that’s sort of what I was just assuming it’s not like a

Doctor told me that or something I just assumed that I had very thick skin and what would happen is that if I would climb too much on crimps and just like sort of you know edges that sort of you know sort of Target that area of your

Finger like a lot it would just like slowly crack and crack and crack and it would get bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where it would be just big enough that if I grab on a crimp like really hard it would sort of split all

The way open and now I would have this like fat like massive cut in my finger and it was getting to the point where it was on all my fingers like almost all my fingers like my pointer fingers were usually the only ones that were safe but

These back three would just like the pinky it would actually sort of be in a different spot it would be like right on the joint um like sort of you know just like right on the joint on the crease of your finger but then this finger you

Know it would be like in this like the spot I just described below the fingertip and above the joint and then same with the middle finger and it would get so bad to the point where I had to tape the crap out of them and even with

The tape it would still feel like a finger injury when I would crimp and my fingers be bending back and it would be like opening the split and it would hurt so so bad and I had to do all these things like I I ended up having like

Super glue tape on my fingers like on all my fingers because I just had to like stop like uh protect the splits and I obviously the you everybody’s like heard about oh you got to sand your skin um and that’s sort of supposed to help

With this and so I was doing it but what I was doing is I was not just I was just I didn’t know how to sand my skin so I just like kind of sanded it like half ass like oh this is supposed to work right um but it wasn’t really working

And the splits kept coming and were getting worse and basically uh I also uh was using just sort of like the uh you know sort of like climbing brand skin files like you know I don’t know like like the rhino skin or the clim on just these

Sort of like um you know like climbing balm companies would usually make like skin files and I would use those and I found that those were actually really ineffective and this is just my opinion like maybe these can work for somebody but what I really found helped for me

Was this so this is just like some sandpaper it’s this is like like super glued to like a foot file um this is actually like a little craft my little sister made for me uh like two years ago this is like 2 years old or something

And uh quick uh little fun fact my little sister Linda uh is our is this channel is 1,000th subscriber and she was trolling me super hard she said she wouldn’t subscribe to the channel unless it like caught her attention so she was making me work hard for her subscription

And then uh when uh we were getting close to th000 she’s like you know what I want to be the th000 subscriber and I want to be the most important subscriber forever so she like refreshed the thing until it’s a 99.99 and she’s the a thth subscriber so

Shout out to my sister Linda she also made this little craft which is um it’s basically just like you know a little sheet of sandpaper and I just uh she super glued it to this paddle so it’s easy for me to use and I wish I knew

What the grit the Sandpaper was this was like two years ago so I don’t remember actually might have been three years ago at this point but it’s like it’s like medium I guess I don’t know it’s not like super crazy uh sharp but it’s also like not like just a little bit sharp

It’s like pretty medium and so what I found is this is just like the ultimate tool like this paddle just really was effective for sanding and so what I do with my skin sanding so you know if you have thick skin like the sort of thing

That I just described like you know sort of just below the fingertip in this sort of region above the joint below the fingertip if you got super thick skin you’re getting splits there you take your paddle you take your sandpaper and you just sand it and what you want to do

Is like I do this after every session after every climbing session I sand my skin and it can be quite tedious sometimes actually um but anytime like you finish finish a session and you see those sort of like tiny little micro cuts and micro splits and like dry skin

Um like just after you finish your session your skin naturally becomes like this I take my sandpaper and I just sand them away and what you want to do is you don’t want to sand your fingertip to like a or your finger pad to like Oblivion and make it like super pink and

Like hurt you just want to sand it enough to the point where basically those cuts start to smooth out a bit and you can tell that they’re sort of like becoming more flush with your normal skin and the more you sand this smoother your skin gets and then the less like

The split like the split is basically you can think of like the split as like a layer of skin at the surface of your finger and if you sand that away now you’re going to get to like the nice connected skin so this is like really

It’s it’s kind of a difficult thing to just describe through a video like this is like something that I had to like practice and sort of like have my you know trial and error learning process for like you know like a good solid year so I don’t think I’m going to like fully

Be able to tell you how to do this like you know in the best way possible just through this like I don’t know 20-minute video but maybe I can help um but like it’s just going to take some trial and error it took me like At first I was

Sanding my skin way too much and it would get actually really thin like below my fingertip and it would almost become like uh it would almost become like puffy like there was like an air bubble and it would be like thin and it was like really bizarre and it would

Hurt and because it was like super thin and red because I sanded it too much but it wouldn’t split at all like when I sanded it that much it was like almost imp pervious to splits because it was so thin um but obviously that creates like

Different problems of itself so I had to sand a little bit less and so then there was like a little bit of a split uh visible but like it wouldn’t like go crazy into like a crazy big cut because uh you know I sanded it just enough so

It’s like a very fluid process you just got to learn uh but basically at the end of the day the moral of story is I would say get yourself some sandpaper I find it’s more effective than the sort of uh you know climbing uh I don’t know brand

Skin files out there maybe I’ve just not found a good one but the ones I tried a bunch and I didn’t like any of them I like the Sandpaper and then I just really like you know you got to like just practice and like if sanding

Doesn’t work for you at at the first it’s probably because you need to optimize it like that’s what happened to me is I was trying to sand my skin and it wasn’t working and my splits kept coming but it was because I wasn’t sanding enough I would like barely sand

I would like kind of rub over my finger a little bit and be like okay that’s probably good right no you you have to feel the difference being made you got to sand your skin and notice that the the cut is and the split is becoming more flush with the skin it’s becoming

Smooth but at the same time you don’t want to do it too much so it’s really hard to get the hang of um I dealt with this issue for like a long time and uh talk to more people that have dealt with it um but yeah like and this is also

Like most people get splits on their fingertips right especially when you’re climbing outside this was just something that I was getting even from climbing inside and like I said it’s below the fingertip just because I really thick skin so if you have thick skin you got

To sand it and you got to S it properly and you got to learn how to do it properly and um and yeah just take some like trial and error honestly but anyway hopefully that helps because I uh like that was such a dark time in my climbing

Career and I know how hard it can be and so maybe this you know can help you out if you’re experiencing something similar but anyway if you have any questions about that you can ask me in the comments and maybe I can um add on to

What I said I think I covered most of my own experience but I’m sure I’ve have more to say anyway that wrapped up today’s day of training I had a pretty good workout and endurance session um and then so what do we got coming up

Next tomorrow’s a rest day for me and uh and then the day after that is we’re going to do this the competition at Studio block Manheim the the fun cup and uh you can expect a video of that in a couple days so look forward to that insert catchy video outro here