A couple weeks ago I was at home for winter vacation and took my Serbian friends up and trained with them at Gold’s Gym. Of course, they had those thick chrome bars with the cheesegrater knurling and I tore up my shin a little bit.
Now, every time I deadlift I tear the scab open and I think it’s starting to change my form, since I think I’m trying to change my pull so I don’t hit the bloody scab.
I’ve got a meet coming up soon and I can’t afford to have any alterations in my deadlift form.
What should I do? Just tape down the scab so the bar won’t tear it? Will baby powder help? Should I skip a week of full range pulling?
[quote]conorh wrote:
A couple weeks ago I was at home for winter vacation and took my Serbian friends up and trained with them at Gold’s Gym. Of course, they had those thick chrome bars with the cheesegrater knurling and I tore up my shin a little bit.
Now, every time I deadlift I tear the scab open and I think it’s starting to change my form, since I think I’m trying to change my pull so I don’t hit the bloody scab.
I’ve got a meet coming up soon and I can’t afford to have any alterations in my deadlift form.
What should I do? Just tape down the scab so the bar won’t tear it? Will baby powder help? Should I skip a week of full range pulling?
Any help is appreciated,
Conor[/quote]
I have a training partner who has this problem sometimes and he either wears really tall socks or tapes the fronts of his shins.
We have a few guys on our team that have cut the side out of a thin-walled protein container and put it on the shin-side of their socks. They like how the plastic is already shaped to the leg and it can be trimmed to cover only the area that gets contact.
I do olympic lifting and I can sympathize with jacked up shins. Adidas makes a weightlifting sock which have extra padding in the front to prevent tearing you shins apart.
Other options are getting some really cheap knee sleeves (McDavid makes some cheap ones which work well) and put them on over you shins. This also works and are cheaper than shin guards and less bulky. http://www.mcdavidusa.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=83&DEPARTMENT_ID=74
I feel ya. If I get a scab, I try to avoid contacting it with the bar which alters my form. Doing this over time affects the deadlift.
I would take a week off from pulling from the floor. Do rack pulls. Let it heal. I have found that once you let it heal completely, it wont re-occur if you wear socks. But if it’s not healed, then even if you wear socks you’ll still tear it open.
I would heal it up first. Use neosporen and band-aids to get the job done. Then get back to pulling and don’t forget to wear socks.
I think I’m going to try the protein powder jug plastic thing.
To those who suggested socks: I’ve already tried it. The fed I lift in requires tall socks for the deadlift so I had a pair in my gym bag. I threw them on for my deads and I still got ripped up. My scab is just bordering the top of the soccer sock, so it got clipped on one of the reps.
To the suggestion I take a week off pulling: I’ve got a meet in four weeks!
The idea of a jury-rigged plastic shin guard made of plastic & tape sounds like a good suggestion for your dilemma (even duct tape over thick gauze over the scab) - you want that scab to heal otherwise you’re headed to perpetual scar tissue in that area with the constant rubbing of the knurling on the bar…
What’s your lifting DL style? I stand in a bit where the bar has no knurling (might be too narrow a stance for you of course)
Just tape it up. You can get some good, almost padded tape, and it’ll do the biz. My shins open up every session and bleed without much bother. However sometimes they start to get painfull and a tad swollen and then I’ll tape.
A good kickboxer would laugh at us and our wimpy shins! lol
