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How To Tape Finger For Climbing

6 min read

You shouldn’t use it if there are any obvious deformities from the injury, such as a bone at an odd angle. Seek medical attention if you have any open wounds that could require stitches, bones visibly out of place, or severe pain. The bottom line is that if you injure your pulley, just get something on there to offload the healing tissue. By offloading the tissue you can help reduce stress to the healing pulley, and at the very least it will help you avoid tendinopathies from developing. From this point forward, you now know why H-tape is the method of choice thanks to the diligent research from Dr. Schöffl and her team, and all of the collaborators that helped shed light on the topic. You can use a little piece of tape upside down against the skin as a barrier from the sticky tape to the flapper.

If it gets in the way, you can just move it to the side, then come around the top of the finger. Then use the other leg only to do half a pass and finish that pulley off. So, while this process hurts, it will give your climbing more efficiency and precision in the long run. It’s super gross for other people to grab bloody holds. Finish by pinching the slack out of the fingernail side of the wraps from step #2.

Buddy Taping Fingers

The wrap will pass on either side of the knuckle on the back of your finger and cross on the inside of the joint. Zinc oxide tape is a strong strapping tape that is made of a thin woven cloth and coated with a zinc oxide-based adhesive. Due to its antiseptic properties and effective qualities, it is widely used by athletes, physiotherapists, and within the medical field. Point your foot straight at the crack, so your big toe lines up with the middle of the fissure.

When you do crack climbing, you can also wear tape like a glove so wrap your wrist and hand multiple times. This way jamming your hand inside the crack for a stable resting and hold position is not becoming too painful, and your wrist and finger knuckles are protected. With that said, you absolutely do not want your first return to climbing to be without any protection. I really like Dave Macleod’s idea for early rehab to splint tape your finger at the PIP joint to limit your finger to only using open-hand gripping. This avoids using a crimp grip altogether, and eliminates the risk of accidentally crimping and further injuring your pulley.

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I have gotten sore hands that forced me to take a few days off before from excessive sanding. I am not an expert in taping, and any tape I apply always gets crumpled up and quickly tears away. Not ideal conditions for climbing on, especially if you’re coming towards the end of a trip and need every climbing day you can get. From my experience, the best thing to do with a flapper is to cut it off with nail clippers or scissors…or teeth if you’re a proper dirtbag like me.

Make sure the tape isn’t too tight or you’ll cut off circulation in your hands or feet Find out my toe taping technique for preventing blisters. Then pull the tape with a little bit of tension while you start wrapping around the finger like a wedding ring. Slowly move the tape up the finger, so you have overlapping strips, while you keep the finger slightly bend. Just don’t pull the tape too tightly, as you don’t want to suppress blood flow or bandage the finger. Tension should be just enough to fasten the tape in place, one good indicator is if you can feel the tape supporting your finger a little bit when you crimp or flex the finger.

Step

Of course, you likely won’t get as much out of your climbing session if you aren’t using these types of holds or grip positions but being aware of the risks should help you mitigate issues. You might not realize it, but your fingers are actually an intricate web of bones, muscles, tendons, joints, and pulleys all working together in a specific way to give you proper hand function. Climbing can stress and injure some or all of the pieces. The best way to keep climbing t ape on your fingers by taping your fingers with good technique.

Instead of relying on tape to reduce the pain, challenge yourself to control your hand movement and placement as much as you can when going from one hold to the next. It’ll help you get more focus, precision, and longevity in your climbing. Your skin will hurt more in the beginning, but it’s worth it for the long haul!

Use too many layers of tape and your gloves, though comfortable, probably won’t fit into your thin hands green Camalot project. Bear down too many times on the same razor crimp and there’s a chance you’ll find it’s cut a perfect horizontal trace across your finger – the climber’s equivalent to a paper cut. Chances are that if you’re climbing while injured and you pull too hard on your injured finger, you’re going to make your injury worse. H-taping increased the crimping strength of injured fingers by an average of 13%. For prevention, before climbing, check the skin on your hands for rough edges and small flaps of dead skin that are likely to rip off. You can use nail clippers to remove the flaps; cuticle cutters are better as it is easier to avoid cutting off healthy skin.

When wrapping your finger, remember do not wrap the tape too tight though, as they can cut off circulation to your fingers. When looking for your tape, remember to avoid non climbing tape at it will rip or lose its stickiness due to sweat and not be very effective. These tapes also come in smaller widths, as you will not want an extremely thick tape to wrap your hands and fingers with. If they dry out it can cause them to crack and split the healing skin every time you stretch out your hand or fingers.

When sealing your boxes closed, you should always use the proper method. For the most protection, you simply apply tape across all of the boxes open seams. That will make an H-shape across the top and bottom of your box – hence the name “H-tape method”. Buddy taping can be used for minor finger and toe injuries such as sprains or strains.

We found the tape to be durable enough to re-use those finely crafted crack gloves several times over. Obviously, some of the stick is lost as the gloves are reused, but the 3-day old gloves still performed well. Finger taping is popular in grappling sports, climbing and martial arts. It is used to increase your grip strength and prevent injured figures from moving laterally.

Even though all three taping types do offer a reduction in tendon-bone distance, H-taping was the only significant variation and should be used over other options. Is there a way you could achieve similar support for the wrist without entirely covering the palm? For me, if I take a break from climbing and then go back to it at the same rigorous schedule I’ve trained at before, I always notice my skin peeling like a snake losing its skin.

Proper footwork and avoiding intense dynamic movements may decrease the risk of pulley injuries by reducing overgripping or shockloading of the fingers. As a rule, avoid dynamic movements, especially to crimps, and focus on slow, precise footwork and core engagement. Warming up well begins with an aerobic warm-up—hiking, jogging, cycling, or elevating the heart rate for 20–30 minutes. Then engage in dynamic stretching—stretching a muscle through continuous motion, briefly bringing it to its end range. Finally, begin a sport-specific warm-up of easy climbing for either 100–120 moves, 8–12 boulder problems, or 3–4 routes. Even when used in multi-pitch crack climbing as a glove it will hold.

One of the main reasons that climbers tape their fingers is because they are trying to prevent finger tendon injuries such as ruptured pulleys. Tape, however, has been found to be more of a psychological tool than actually preventing a pulley injury. With that being the case, the following climbing tape methods should be considered as a slight crutch and not an ideal solution. However, further research led them to develop the H-taping method. A ruptured pulley—caused by too much force on the tendons—results in “bowstringing” of the tendon.

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