if you dont tape your hands... tape your mouth.

all the folks i climb with know i tape. i tape heavily... religiously... some agree with me, some could care less and others still freak out about it. i would say this third group is the most annoying. arguments get made about how taping cheapens the sport. if your one of these people just put the tape over your mouth so we dont have to hear it. climbing is barely a sport. and for those of you constantly making up rules and keeping score? really? stop and come back to simply enjoying climbing. next to that, do you climb barefoot? ...chalkless? ...ropeless? do you tape tendons? ...i cant think of one person who bitches about hand taping that doesnt tape up a tendon. and i've never heard of a redpoint invalidated because of taping an A2 pulley tendon. on a person note, dude i work in the medical field... AIDS, HEP. C, MRSA... they all love a good vector of transmission.

now because i love tape gloves, and im so great at it... people just always ask my preferred method... not really... i just never stopped listening to that positive self talk my mom helped me create!


step 1: i used a little "magic marker" to help you see in the pictures how i do things. so, three perpendicular pieces down the back of your hand. this creates a base layer. i like to slap the tape down onto the back of my hand to get it to settle.


step 2: half strips, depending on your hand size, about 10 inches long. go straight up between the bones of the third and fourth finger. then twist the right a the middle three time. this makes a nice "cord" to wrap the finger.


step 3: wrap around the finger and cross back across the hand to end on the opposite side of the wrist. then repeat the process for the index finger. i dont wrap the middle two fingers... its superfluous.

step 4: the finishing boxer wrap. start at the outer prospect of the hand wrap around the hand over the knuckles, just a little, and come around the palm of the hand. you want this tight but not overly so. spread the fingers as much as you can as you tightly wrap around. your get the hang of it after a few tries.

step 5: make only one complete wrap then come down to the wrist. make two complete revolutions around the wrist. i like to make this pretty tight also. then cross back up over the back of the hand and wrap the palm again making one full revolution and ending in the palm.

step 6: you can see in the picture where i end the tape. i added a black line to show it more clearly. its best to end here because you can now pinch and twist the tape into a cord across the palm as seen in the second picture. this will keep the tape from ever pealing up as you stuff it into never ending feet of beautiful cracks!

step 7: cut the tape off as you see. then if you lay the tape flat you can see that there are the tabs left over. cut those off and you can reuse your tape glove by applying a simple boxer wrap. i usually get about 4 or 5 days out of a good glove. if you try this methods and find it useful... please comment and share with the other readers!