As old-school as I am, there are just some things that get under my skin. One of those things is when someone comes into the gym and uses chalk but it ends up looking like a 2-year old got into the diaper back and emptied 4 containers of baby powder all over the bathroom floor.
I have been training a long time so when I started, no one put their dumbbells away, no one wiped down a bench and no one sat on a machine doing nothing (or worse, texting on their phone). The gyms weren't very clean and they weren't organized but this isn't 1984, anymore, Karen. No one wants my cootie-sweat and no one wants to see your cloud of chalk settle to the floor and cover everything in a 10 foot radius. To add insult to injury, have you noticed that it's never the biggest guy in the gym who makes these messes? It's the wannabe dipshit and his friends. I say "his" because women aren't sloppy pigs that have to leave their mark like men do.
I started using liquid chalk a couple of years ago for this reason. No matter how careful I was, there would still be some chalk on the bench or floor. Of course, I would wipe it up, but I'm lazy and don't want to wipe it up so when I saw liquid chalk I figured I would give it a try. It worked very well and there was ZERO mess. I used it for a little over 2 years. Then I didn't.
I get all of my training gear from EliteFTS because... well... they are the King Shit of training gear. Plus, I work for them so I am King Shit Coach and Columnist. So, it only stands to reason that I would never want to use anything other than EliteFTS for all of my training needs. The problem is the company that made the liquid chalk stopped making it. I believe there were actually 2 companies that made it and they both stopped making it roughly at the same time. I stocked up as it was on clearance but after I ran out, I had to figure something out. Being as bright as I am, I figured I would just make my own. Bitch is, I seem to fuck up the most simple of these sorts of things but found that the process of making it was incredibly simple.
How simple? Skip simple. Not even I could fuck this one up. Well, maybe once I fucked it up but I will get to that in a minute.
Liquid chalk contains two ingredients:
chalk (surprised, right?)
isopropyl alcohol
That's right; that's it. Now, let's see if I can fuck this up.
I used a shaker cup (EliteFTS, of course) and crushed a block of chalk and put it into the shaker cup.
I then added the rubbing alcohol (and I use 70% instead of using the higher alcohol content so that my hands don't get dry and cracked).
As I added the rubbing alcohol, I was stirring it with a fork and smashing any clumps that were left. When it got to the consistency that I wanted it to be, I put the top on the shaker cup and shook it violently.
I then poured it into my old liquid chalk bottle because that bottle has a flip-top. The leftover liquid chalk I keep in my closet so that when my flip-top bottle gets low, I just refill it.
Now, you might consider that story anti-climactic if you were waiting for my fuck up. It's coming.
I ran out of liquid chalk and went to make more. I followed the same complicated directions and put it in my gym bag. When I went to use it in the gym, I flipped the top and it kind of blew up -- not like a grenade but it blew up enough that the shit went all over. It went all over me, all over the fucking floor and basically made more of a mess than the skinny dickheads who use regular chalk. I wiped it up but because it is basically concentrated, when the floor dried from using a slightly wet cloth, it was the same mess as it was prior to wiping it up. I got a mop and that fixed the issue.
I couldn't figure out what happened and why this batch was different until I realized while in my closet the other day that I had used hydrogen peroxide instead of rubbing alcohol. This is precisely why I pay someone else to change my oil; I tend to fuck things up.
I'm not sure what gas is formed when you mix hydrogen peroxide and whatever the hell is in chalk but it is definitely a gas. Apparently, it isn't catabolic because my gains have been good. Thank God.
I threw the batch out (I said "batch" thank you) and made a new batch with rubbing alcohol. I'm good to go.
If you haven't tried it, try it. You will love it because it won't make a mess in the gym and it won't make a mess in your gym bag, either -- unless, of course, you use hydrogen peroxide. *sigh*
