Unless you’ve got very calloused hands, climbing around and hanging from rough rocks by your fingers all day is going to be tough on your skin. Rock climbing can also put significant strain on your individual digits, especially those holds that leave you with only enough space to hang from one or two fingers. Some of them even require you to wedge a single finger into a crack and twist it in order to lock it in–all of the weight hanging from that arm is being placed on that finger!

While the weight won’t change if you do, wearing tape or gloves can help protect your hands from rough rock surfaces, and tape in particular can reenforce the tiny muscles in your fingers, reducing your risk of injuring them due to strain. Taping is the most common method of protecting the hands in rock climbing. Most rock climbing stores that sell gear for the sport also sell climber’s tape, but pressure-sensitive medical tape is more commonly used. Medical tape, which is adhesive, is preferred for a variety of reasons: it is strong enough to reenforce muscles, is designed to let skin breathe through it, leaves little to no residue when removed, and has a rough exterior texture that makes it ideal for giving athletes more grip when they tape their hands. Medical tape is used by athletes of numerous types, rock climbing being just one of them.

Typically, the fingers and joints such as the wrists are taped most often. One technique is to create a glove out of tape by taping the entire hand, but the most popular method of taping is to create “figure-eight” of sorts around each joint. Taping your fingers when training during recovery from an injury reduces the strain on the muscles; however, do not use this as a crutch. If you don’t reduce the intensity of your routine to allow your muscles to heal, all you’ll be doing is progressively injuring yourself further, so use common sense and don’t think of tape as an instant cure for injuries that might slow down your routine.