Brushes and skin care for climbers

The two things that end sessions early

Most sessions do not end because you run out of strength. They end because the holds turn greasy and you cannot feel them, or because the skin on your fingertips gives up. Both are manageable with a few cheap habits, and both reward you with grip you would otherwise have to earn the hard way.

A brush sorts out the holds. Skin care sorts out you. Carry a little of each and you climb later into the session and feel better the next morning.

Brushing holds the right way

Chalk, sweat and rubber build up on popular holds and on the texture of any hold you keep falling off. That film fills the tiny crystals you are gripping and turns a positive crimp into a slick one. A quick brush clears it and restores the friction.

A few sensible habits:

• Use a brush with natural boar's hair or firm nylon. Wire brushes tear up the rock and are best left alone, especially on softer stone like sandstone and grit.
• Brush in the direction you would pull, working chalk out of the texture rather than packing it in.
• On boulders, a brush taped to a longer stick or pole lets you clean high holds from the ground before you set off.
• Brush your tick marks off when you leave. They help you find a hold in the moment, but a crag left covered in chalk arrows is a poor look and annoys everyone after you.

Indoors the etiquette is the same minus the conservation worry. Brush the polished bits, knock the loose chalk off, and move on.

Looking after your skin

Your fingertips are the contact patch for the whole sport, and they are slower to recover than your muscles. Push them too hard and you split, flapper or wear the skin paper-thin, and then you are off for days.

During a session, watch for the warning signs. Skin that has gone shiny and hot is thinning and about to tear. A small flap of loose skin will catch and rip on the next hold, so trim it flush with nail scissors rather than pulling at it. If a tip is genuinely sore, climbing on it harder rarely improves things.

Between sessions, the aim is supple skin that is neither too soft nor cracked dry.

• Keep your nails short. Long nails catch on small holds and lever skin off.
• Use a file or fine sandpaper to take down thick callus before it becomes a high spot that peels away in one chunk.
• A simple climbing salve or plain moisturiser overnight stops winter skin cracking, which is its own painful, slow-healing problem.
• If you are prone to sweaty hands, a light antihydral or chalk-up routine helps, but go easy, because overdrying leads to splits.

None of this is glamorous. It is nail scissors, a brush and a tub of cream living in your kit bag. But the climbers who get the most out of a session are usually not the strongest in the room, they are the ones whose skin and chosen holds are both still in good shape at the end of it. Keeping a rough note of how your skin felt after hard sessions, the same way you log climbs, makes it easier to spot when you are pushing it too often.