How to Tape Your Hands for Lifting✊
Weightlifting: The struggle is real. Your hands have a big job to do, and managing the barbell rep after rep does a real number on your grip. While that skin will get thicker and tougher over time, you still need to protect yourself from rips, tears, and blisters. In this blog, we’ll show you exactly how to tape your hands for lifting, with step-by-step instructions and images to guide you.
Let’s go!
How to Tape Your Hands for Lifting: A 4-Step Breakdown
Taping your hands for weightlifting the right way will ensure that it stays put longer. Be sure to pick a tape with a solid adhesive that can withstand both sweat and chalk. It helps if it has a little stretch and give to it. Here’s what you want to do.
Step 1: Wash and Dry Your Hands
The tape needs to be able to grip your skin and stay there. If you start with dirty hands, it’s not going to work as well. So, Step 1 is to wash your hands with warm soap and water and completely dry them.
Step 2: Set the Anchor on Your Thumb
You need someplace to start! We recommend attaching the loose end of your finger tape at the base of your thumb. Hold it there for a moment with your free fingers. This will help slightly melt the adhesive of the tape, allowing it to really mold to your thumb.
Step 3: Stretch and Wrap the Weightlifting Tape
Your finger tape should be tight but not cut off the circulation. If you’re using something stretchy like LYFT-RX, gently pull on the tape and begin to wrap it around your thumb. For added protection, do two layers.Step 4: Mold it to Your Finger
As we mentioned earlier, your own body heat can help to melt and mold the adhesive to your fingers. Once you’ve finished taping your hands for lifting, hold your thumb in your opposite hand and give the tape one final squeeze.
You should still have freedom of movement!
While we used our thumbs for this tutorial, the same steps will apply to all of your fingers.
What About Taping Other Parts of Your Hands?
It’s not just your fingers that experience wear and tear. For instance, ring muscle-ups can cause rips at the base of the hand. Barbell and pull-up bar movements can tear the skin on your palms. And many athletes struggle with pain and injury to the skin just below their fingers.
Around the Wrist
This one is especially helpful for ring muscle-ups. All you’re going to do is wrap your lifting tape around your wrist, like a bracelet. Do it two or three times, making sure to go a little higher up your hand — basically, right where your hand and wrist meet. This is going to give you the necessary coverage.
Can I Tape Over a Rip, Tear, or Blister?
What if you’re mid-workout and a rip strikes? Ideally, you stop what you’re doing to clean it off and avoid spreading any germs. This is for your safety and that of the people you’re training with. Then, you’d want to gently trim off the dead skin. You can do this with sanitized nail scissors or clippers. It helps to keep these in your gym bag.
However, we also understand that sometimes, you need to keep powering through. Whatever you do, do not keep training with loose skin hanging! It’ll just keep ripping more. If you can pause to first wash the injury, that’s helpful.
After that, yes, you can tape over a rip, tear, or blister. However, never stick the adhesive side straight to it. If you have a bandage, first apply that. If not, take a piece of lifting tape and lay it on top of the rip with the sticky side facing up. Then, continue to tape your hand/finger following the steps we outlined above.
We want to offer a gentle reminder that while it’s admirable to train through discomfort, pain is another story entirely. The worse a rip gets, the longer you’ll be out of the gym. It’s perfectly okay to hit the pause button and move to some lower-body exercises that don’t require your grip.
Now that you know how to tape your hands for lifting, you’re prepared to keep your grip in one piece. Remember that you want this skin to get a little thicker and tougher. If you notice calluses starting to form, don’t panic! Uber-soft baby skin is actually a nightmare for athletes because this is the exact type of skin that tears. Tough hands make tough athletes. Once you’ve built up this layer, you can manage it with a callus shaver or pumice stone. This prevents it from getting too thick, which can backfire and cause rips.
Ready to stock up on tape for weightlifting, functional fitness, bodybuilding, and powerlifting? LYFT-RX has your back (and your hands). Shop now and load up your gym bag. You can never have too much finger tape!
Fittest Regards,
LYFT-RX Team