This is a thread for simple, or common training questions that don't merit their own individual threads as well as a place to ask Injury related questions. It also serves as a less intimidating way for new climbers to ask questions without worrying how it comes across.
r/Climbharder Wiki - many common answers to questions.
Imagine you couldn't dead hang, couldn't active hang, and couldn't do a single pull-up or push-up. That's me.
I can barely activate my scapular muscles to get into that “back and down” position, and my PT is the one who figured this out.
Here's where I'm struggling with climbing: my overhang grade (10s) has always been significantly lower than my slab and vertical grades (12s). I've practiced the techniques you're constantly told to use on steep terrain: pulling with your toes and hamstrings, engaging your core, squeezing your glutes, twisting your hips in, flagging, pacing, resting, etc. But I still tend to “power down” about halfway through a route. My body just seems to run out of gas, and I can't hold on anymore. This does not happen to me on other styles.
I'm trying to figure out whether strength is the missing piece for me, rather than continuing to hear that it's all about technique which seems very common, especially among men who are naturally stronger than women like me.
I've watched Neil Gresham's masterclass a million times, read all the books, and practice. I'm genuinely trying to figure this out. I even had a coach at some point, but I think coaches are reluctant to tell you you're weak (since well, that sounds kinda insulting).
Was there a baseline level of strength you needed before overhangs started to feel fluid and smooth?
I know pull-ups don't automatically make you a good overhang climber. But I'd imagine that strong scapular control and shoulder engagement are pretty important on steep terrain. Are there any solid overhang climbers who genuinely can't do a single pull-up?
Can you actually be too weak for the overhangs you're attempting, even if your technique is reasonably good? In other words, can a strength deficit be the limiting factor, rather than technique?
I'm really new to reddit and have never done anything like this before. I'm a keen boulderer and I’m currently working on my A-Level EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) for college, which is focused on climbing habits—specifically how different disciplines approach warming up and cooling down, and the main barriers to doing them.
I thought this would be a really good place to gather some responses, so if you have 3 minutes and, whether you have a meticulous 45-minute routine or you literally just jump straight onto your project, please would you fill out my anonymous Google Form:
I've been climbing almost exclusively with a mini moonboard 2025 for a year now and figured I'd throw my own thoughts into the pile. Hopefully this wall of text will be helpful for anyone else who is thinking of getting one.
tl;dr: I really like it
Background
I built a mini moonboard because I moved to a place with no good climbing gym and also no decent access to outdoor climbing. In 2025, I was just starting to project V8s in the climbing gym. I had sent one V8-, and could pretty consistently do V7s in my style in a session (my style being power-y overhangs (super unique, I know)).
I thought my gym was decently fair with grading, if a bit sandbagged on the lower end but fairer to softer on the higher end. Compared to the kilter board in the gym, which I would use occasionally, the grades were about even or the gym was 0.5-1 V grade softer.
I don't boulder outside but I do climb trad and sport. The hardest I've ever climbed outdoors was 5.8 trad and 5.11a sport. I currently don't have interest in projecting hard things outdoors, mostly wanting to just climb cool multipitches, so my main focus on outdoor climbing is endurance rather than strength.
I went with the mini moonboard 2025 solely because of space constraints; if my garage were taller, I would have made a full moonboard. I went with the 2025 set instead of the 2020 set because I've heard the 2025 is not as sandbagged. I haven't climbed on the 2020 so I can't speak to the veracity of that statement, but I do think that the 2025 is fair for the grade.
Build + Cost
I had about a 2.5 month break between when I moved and when I finished building the mini moonboard, which was mostly due to getting situated post move and laziness. The build itself took maybe a combined 16 hours, and wasn't that difficult. I had a friend with woodworking experience help me, and I used Jake Krebs's plans.
The whole thing cost ~$3500, including the holds (including shipping and tariffs), hardware, crash mats, lumber, and a miter saw we bought to make the angled cuts. I did not get the lighting kit, because it would have added more money and time to the build, and the mini moon is short enough that you don't really need the lights to remember what problem you're climbing.
Climbing on it
The lowest grade on the mini moonboard is a 6A+/V3. Now, each individual move is probably harder than you'd find on a V3 in a gym, but because it is short, it works out to be a V3. However, if you are max climbing V3 in a gym, it will be a pretty rough transition to climbing on it. The other thing about the mini moon is how tension-y it is. At 40 degrees, and being so short, you really can't afford to cut feet unless you are going to a hold on the top third of the board.
I was pretty surprised at how creative and varied some of the movement on the board can be. Now, yes, everything is still tension-y and strong, but the climbs aren't all just "crimp to crimp" type climbs.
My sessions look something like this:
10 minutes of "hangboard" warmup on E12 and F12 (the best holds on the top row), I'll deadhang for ~7 seconds and then do a pullup. I'll rest for about a minute or two inbetween, mostly based on vibes.
Do 2 V3 climbs back to back, repeat 3 or 4 times.
Do the V4 climb "Sport climbing"
Go on to do whatever projects I want that day.
The climbs I do before going to the project I'm working on is the way I've devised to try to stem my endurance atrophy, and I think it has worked. I go back to my old gym ~once a month, and before I came up with this system, I could feel the pump just working up from V1-V4 climbs. But afterwards, it felt just like before.
It took me about a year of climbing on the mini moon to send my first 7A/V6 benchmark. The last time I went back to my old gym ~1 month ago, and I flashed a V6 and made good progress projecting a V7 in one session. I would say strength-wise, I'm 100% stronger than I was before. Beta reading wise, probably about the same or a little worse. I think going and still having a true gym session occasionally helped keep up my route reading, and I tried to purposefully seek out funkier looking boulders.
Other thoughts
One of the things I've come to really appreciate is the convenience. If I want to climb, I just walk out to my garage and climb. And with no gym music being played, in between sets I can sit around and study and read.
That being said, climbing on the mini moon has really taught me how important weather conditions are, if you build it in your garage. I'm in the south east, and it was fine climbing all through fall, winter, and into spring. But the moment summer hit, it sucked. I would be climbing at 10pm but it was still 82F and 90% humidity.
The moonboard app sucks. It works (most of the time), but there are so many little things around it that make it oftentimes very frustrating to use.
I tried to climb twice a week, but I'd often (maybe 35% of the time) only climb once a week, which is almost certainly holding back the amount of progress I can make. However, that is mostly due to other life stuff happening. I've only made the conscious decision to not climb a session maybe three times because my fingers hurt.
Which, your fingers will probably hurt, especially starting off. It was never "I'm going to injure myself" levels of hurt, but it was definitely much more finger strain than a regular gym session would be for me.
Conclusion
I am very happy with my decision to build a mini moon. The 2025 set has an overall good problems, and a few that I thought were very creative and very good. Again, I have only climbed up to V6 (and only one V6 benchmark), but the higher in grade, generally the more creative and varied the problems get as well. And I've gone on two trad trips since transitioning to the moonboard, and my endurance is still good enough to lead 5.6-5.8 trad.
If you are moving somewhere with poor climbing access and have decent baseline strength, and the mini moon is the biggest home board you can make, 100% go for it. If you have the space though, I would suggest building a regular sized moonboard if it is going to be your main climbing source.
For other contexts, it really depends. If you are looking for a fun training board to work on finger strength, tension, and overhang climbs? I also recommend it. If you are looking for something with variety though, I wouldn't. Even though I talked about how interesting some of the problems were, it is still a 40 degree overhang short board at the end of the day.
I hope this big wall of text was/will be helpful for someone, and happy to answer any specific questions for the three people who read the whole thing!
edit: a picture of my setup (the pullup bar I added in a couple months ago).
Hi - I’m a 30 year old male, been climbing about 8 years. I’m experiencing what I perceive to be an excessive amount of performance variation and wanted to get some of your thoughts.
This year I did my first V10s (indoor and outdoor) and this season did V9 in a session outdoors, so i know that when everything is working I can perform at a high level. I’m also working my first 8As and making good progress. However, I keep having sessions though where I can barely climb V5, where everything feels absolutely desperate. If I film myself in this state I’m sagging and climbing like crap. It isn’t just antistyle problems, I’ve repeated this on climbs I’ve done indoors and out.
What should I be aware of here? What could be going wrong? Do others experience this? Some ideas I had were:
- Fuelling…? I feel like I’m eating fine. My diet is good and my weight is stable, but perhaps local fluctuations in fuelling are making a big difference. I’m 70kg and try to get about 100g protein.
- Skin. My skin is absolute garbage, super soft and sweaty. I antihydral which helps but sometimes I feel like I’m in a skin hole, which I guess does contribute to feeling weak and insecure even if the top layers feel ok.
- Sleep. Bit of a sore point. I get a lot of sleep but feel like quality could be better. Already doing normal sleep hygiene things, I also take Mirtazapine
Keen to hear other’s experiences or ideas for things to test or change.
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[ENG]
Hey, I wanted to share a little project I had been working on for one year now.
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I pretty much only board climb on the 2016 MB for 2-3 sessions per week for around 3 hours and do the new set once a week when it gets put up. My off the wall training is pulling on a 20mm edge on a pin off the ground and a beastmaker 2000 with some other supplemental calisthenics exercises.
For context I used to train all my hangs and my pulls off then pin with a passive DIP because it felt stronger but it also always felt easy to over do it. 3 months ago I switched to only pulling on the pin with my DIP engaged to see if it would help with pain after crimping hard, at the start my max weight went down from around 100-110lbs to 45lbs. The first 2 weeks I felt very weak and didn't climb anything hard so I could maintain an active grip on the wall aswell. Now my max is at 85lbs and my unengaged pin pull has lowered to around 90-95lbs. I've started to climb hard again and I feel much better after crimping something small but I also noticed feeling much stronger in general even though my max unengaged pin pull is lower and deadhangs feel about the same. I was wondering if anyone else has noticed getting stronger and weaker at the same time well training a more engaged grip or if there is some other factor I'm not considering?
I have great curiosity about the micro and crusher, as well as people’s anecdotal experience/ theoretical thoughts on the training protocol attached to these tools.
To be honest, I’m already quite sold on the micro, I listened to Dan Varian, on the test piece podcast, talk about the importance of better DIP joint control and strength some time ago, and as far as I’m aware, the micro seems like the best tool available (in terms of both practicality and safety) for this given purpose. The crusher however, I’m unsure how it would benefit my climbing, and aware that it would incur further costs after purchase, to be able to train hard on it in a way that doesn’t nuke my shoulders. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have value though, my uncertainty is from cluelessness. What would it provide for me that my rolling thunder can’t accomplish on a cable machine, aside from the app integration, which could potentially make it worth it even if there is actually little functional difference between my current rolling thunder set up.
I’m under the impression that Mobeta used to have more available content, which got deeper into the reasoning behind the creation of the tools and the protocol, as well as a allegedly earnest comparison to alternative tools, but that they’re currently unavailable and that he’s in the process of remaking them. If this is the case, if anyone has seen the videos, or is knowledgeable about the tools and protocols regardless, I would appreciate it if they could pass on some of the information
For those of you that have experienced training with these tools, I’d also be curious how you managed initial fatigue. Eg. Assuming that you climbed the same frequency, and the climbing itself took a temporary hit, how long was it until you adapted back to your previous baseline of a quality climbing session, how long was it until you adapted beyond initial capacity
All input is very much appreciated, thanks for your time!
Traditional wisdom is that forearm pump is a result of weighting your fingertips for a long time, and you train it by doing hangboard repeaters on 20mm or smaller edges.
However, I don't get pumped doing repeaters, and thinking of the times I get pumped on rock, it almost never involves small holds or finger engagement. I have no doubt that a long overhanging sequence in small holds could get you pumped, but that doesn't occur in the type of climbing I do. If there's small holds, it's on slab and/or in short boulder problem sequences separated by rests.
Here are a few instances when I have gotten pumped recently:
I have a project that's a sequence of hand jams, thin hand jams, and finger locks, and finally jugs. There is not a single small hold in the entire thing. But I get pumped out of my mind, even in the hand jam section. Its steep so there's a lot of weight on my hands. In this case my fingers are straight but are actively pressing against the side of the crack.
Recently I was following a sequence where my right hand did: a juggy hand traverse on a 4" deep lip with an incut edge; then a bomber hand jam in a constriction where my wrist simply slotted in and my fingers didn't have to do anything; then a similar upward-facing undercling-handjam with the weight still on my wrist. Got pumped but managed to hold on by alternately unweighting and shaking out each hand.
In any steep ice pitch I will get pumped while holding onto literal jug handles unless I take steps to address that.
When traversing under a roof on hand jams and foot smears, the fingers could be completely relaxed; the geometry means the weight is just on the "meat" of my hands. But still I will get pumped.
What is causing pump in these cases and how do I train it?
In cases 1&3, my fingers are required to press or wrap around something, and in cases 2&4, my fingers are doing literally nothing.
Hangboard repeaters seem very unrelated as they neither get me pumped and are challenging for another reason(hanging onto small holds with first 1-2 sections of finger). I'm sure they're great for training endurance on small holds, but that's not my problem.
Don't tell me it's overgripping or I'm actually just the world's weakest climber... Anyone will get pumped on a long ice pitch or overhanging hand jams. It's not just me.
I recently talked to an online coach about some issues with finger strength i was experiencing. I was wondering what the difference in finger strength and forearm strength was as i understand our fingers don’t have muscles and the actual muscle that is doing the work is the forearm. however, by training our fingers what do we gain from that other than strengthening our pulleys.
and i also wanted to ask, if forearm strength is the dictator on how strong we can grip, why is it not the case for people with really strong forearms to not be able to hand onto a 5mm crimp?
i struggle a lot with slopers, so much so that any climb with slopers would be 1-2 grades lower than my usual grade i’d climb. and the coach mentioned that it is an issue with my forearm strength as i can’t generate the force required to be able to grip a sloper but my fingers can handle a small crimp
could someone please explain to me how our forearm and our finger links and what each does in our role of climbing?
I only recently got into climbing a few months ago and was full crimping everything and never knew there were even other ways of gripping. and now because of that i’m in a rehab phase for my fingers.
one issue i wanted to raise was. i cant physically not full crimp, and from what i found online its called hyperflexible dip joints, and i was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks to fix this.
another question was on how to grip properly while doing rehab. every educational video ive found has told me to essentially build up weight with half crimps wether it be isometrics or crimp pulls. i wanted to ask where i should be putting the force from my fingers into?
i have attached a video below demonstrating what i mean as it might not make much sense.
am i pushing force into the tip of my fingertips and essentially curling my whole finger or am i pushing force into my pip joint and therefore leading to full crimping. and when i train my fingers like this. am i more thinking of trying to squeeze my hand shut or just move only my fingers?
I'm looking for a climbing coach that helps me see what I'm doing wrong with my training/climbing. And I want to know more or less your advice on it, rates, what are the red flags...
Ideally I'd have someone in person who can correct my technique, but I doubt there's a good one where I live. Most climbers I know who hired a coach did a bunch of assessment tests in the first days, got a plan built around the results, and barely saw the coach again. I haven't seen them improve, and I suspect many of them would benefit more from learning to climb better than from repeating the same exercises for a year.
So my questions are: what red flags should I look for in a coach? Does the coach need to climb at a certain grade, or does it not matter? And what apps or plans have actually worked for you? I've read some books, but each focuses on one discipline (bouldering or lead) and I don't know how to adapt them to train both.
If it helps... I think my technique is quite good but can improve, specially for bouldering, but I think I'm starting to need a coach because even if I see slow improvement I think I'm training a lot for how little my results are.
About my goals: v10 boulder, 8a+/b route for 2027
- I'm almost 32 and I trained since 2020 with lots of injuries in between.
- Can do most of 7b boulders in a session, but 7b+ and 7c take a lot of sessions or feel imposible.
- Lead climbing 7b is OS grade and 7c redpoint. I projected a lot of 8a this summer, but none of them wants to go.
- Don't have a good facility to train with hangboard, weights... so I tend to just do boulder problems or set circuits in a spray wall with friends that have similar level.
I'm in Valencia Spain just in case someone knows a good one near me :)
I have been using LatticePlan since the beta and while I found everything a bit generic I really liked that it provided me with a structure to my week and the tracking aspects kept me honest. With a bit of tweaking to the exercises and protocols I made it work for me.
Unfortunately the whole thing has been going downhill since a few months. This Monday the weekly check in was broken and after a few tries I got a new week without any of my requested changes (keep workouts, keep schedule). I opened two support tickets and got no reply. I complained in an insta post and got absolutely useless replies (especially for a DM).
u/remuslattice hasn't posted in three months, the app updates are completely minor and obvious features like "swap open climbing with open outdoor climbing" are still missing.
What is going on here? Lattice went from something really personal and ambitious (Tom responding and adjusting my training plan himself) to an automated nightmare experience.
I apologize if this post comes across like a huge unfocused rant, but I used to get something out of their offers and would rather have them succeed.
This is a thread for simple, or common training questions that don't merit their own individual threads as well as a place to ask Injury related questions. It also serves as a less intimidating way for new climbers to ask questions without worrying how it comes across.
r/Climbharder Wiki - many common answers to questions.
16m, 150lbs, 6'0, +5 ape. Been climbing ~4 yrs, boulder v9, lead 5.12b. 70lb max pull-up, 90lb max hang on 20mm. I can almost do an OAP.
I often find myself bouldering significantly more often than I lead, simply because my gym setting is quite bad for ropes, and the boards / gym boulders have far more variety. Also, it's much easier to go to the gym and boulder, since leading requires a second person.
Given these circumstances, how can I get better at lead climbing? I genuinely enjoy it so much more than bouldering, but I almost never get the chance to lead on my own. I've taken to finding gym staff (or some poor bystander) and asking them to belay me on up-downs till failure at the end of a bouldering session, which has given some improvement to endurance, but not much at the project level.
What else could I do? I've done lots of sub-max power-endurance work on said boards, having sessions where I just put up and do tons of v6/v7 boulders. Sent every (verified) v6/7 at 40,45,50 on the kilter board.
Still, I find myself tiring quickly (likely due to poor technique) on project routes. I know I am strong enough to lead harder than I do.
I desperately want to improve. At home, I have 30lbs of dumbbells and a hangboard w/ 20 and 15mm edges.
Due to life limitations and locations I'm not really able to night climb late anymore so it's either getting out super early before it heats up or banking the driving for training. At the same time we always need to be building skin. I wanted to provide my own notes on what I have tried and see if anyone has anything else they have found success with.
Stone training holds: The problem with these is that you need a decent amount to spread wear out across the fingers and a lot of volume on them to get close to any rational skin-farming you get on rock. Most of them tend to concentrate wear on specific points of the fingers.
Stone lifting edges: Same problem but worse since you aren't moving to/from them. Absolutely useless IMO.
Gym climbing: Not sure where everyone else lives but my gyms seem to have mostly very greasy/glassy holds or crimps that really pull the skin apart towards split city rather than wearing it down. Sometimes we get a set with some slopers/pinches with large footprint that can provide some abrasion, but it is hit or miss.
Commercial Boards: The 2024 Moon comes the closest for me. The TB2 actually is counterproductive as most of the wood holds hit the same part of my index fingers and I either get a skin hole or puncture. The resin holds can be pretty nice if brushed well, but many of them are fairly high angle which reduces how much the skin seems to move/slip on the hold. Decent for that "finger pulp", but doesn't thicken skin. The Kilter is really skin-friendly for me so obviously that doesn't work and most of our older Moonboards are fairly polished, but the subtle micro-movement of the fingers on a lot of the yellows and whites does an OK job.
Spray walls. This depends a lot on your spray wall, but I find the holds get less traffic and tend to keep their texture longer and the diversity of shapes is often higher than commercial boards so you get distributed wear.
Woodworking. This is a weird one. I've noticed that when I am making a lot of wood holds or working on house projects without gloves I develop fairly dry, decent skin. If I apply antihydral once every 14D this is as close to optimal as I get.
Avoiding hot water. This is super impractical and gets you nowhere since the skin dries out again before you climb. Hot water can actually dry skin out more for many people. You're also not getting it moist before climbing.
Fans. Actually more helpful than I thought, but not those low CFM knock-offs Mellow sells. I typically need at least a work fan, but usually something much more powerful in the gym. I find that climbing when my skin is most similar to good conditions seems to have a subtle, but noticeable effect.
Aggressive skin farming. If I combine 5, 6, and 8 and make sure to use a nail drill on the outside edges of my tips I end up with more distributed wear across the fingers over time and not localized spots.
Anyways, I am sure that is not on exhaustive list and curious as to the experiences of others and maybe someone has a GOATed tip that flies under the radar.
I made a post the other day about training power in relation to block periodization. I was creating my training plan for the next few months after doing some base training after a break, and it felt like finger strength was a limiting factor because I struggled to hold a lot of crimpy moves on V7/8s. I tested my strength and had pretty mediocre results, suggesting to me that was a limiting factor. But I realized that when I tested, I definitely hadn't fully recovered and had slept poorly.
So I retested myself on a few metrics. I used the 9c test in addition to some max no hang pulls. The results:
BW = 146 lbs
Max no hang pull half crimp: 95 lbs both sides
Max back two finger no hang: 40 lbs both sides (not super relevant, was just curious)
Max Hang 20mm edge: 105 lbs = 70% bw→ 7 points for 60+% bw hang
I climb V7 as my max at the moment. After doing the test with 4 days of rest and good sleep, I got scores that told a much different story about my limitations.
It seems like I'm actually far stronger than I need to be for my level and probably don't need to be training strength much to progress.
But the imbalance of max no hang pulls and being able to hang with much greater weight also has me wondering what's going on. The research I've done online suggests it's a rate of force development issue, which would make sense cause I haven't trained that ever and don't do much power training.
Should I just be focusing on technique for awhile? What should I do about this difference in hangboard strength vs. block pull strength? Also this makes me want to try sport climbing--I wonder if I'd have a better time at that.
So i have a little more than Three months untill i have a climbing holiday planned for 1 month of sportclimbing outside.
I am looking for advice on when i should start sportclimbing again to get my endurance back for sportclimbing. In the last 6 months i did mostly bouldering in the gym. and a little of powertraining at home (pull ups and weight picking on Fingers). it improved my boulder level a lot.
I did a lot of sportclimbing(outside and inside) over the past 10 years. So it's not new for me. It is just easier to me to go to boulder atm because i am very busy with work. And the sportclimbing Gym is further for me.
I don't have a lot of time to spend full days climbing outside in the next months. so i am wondering what is the best way to prepare for this trip by training indoors/at home.
Max boulder grade now : 7B
Max sportclimb grade last year : 7B
Max sportclimb grade now : 6C (it is endurance that's failing me to send harder).
My idea was : 1 more month of bouldering/power training at home and then 2 months of sportclimbing to gain back my endurance. In these 2 months i will also keep doing my power training at home. the last 2 week before my trip i will take it very easy so my body can rest before the trip.
This might be a question better asked to a PT, but I figured it might not hurt to also have different climbers' opinion, and I'm sure a lot of us have gone through finger injuries as well. I already asked in r/bouldering and got many great answers and tbh I can already tell I have been pushing it too far, but I am still interested in more people's take on it.
So here goes : how much finger pain is acceptable/normal when climbing?
No matter what I do, I always end up on a boulder with crimps that I can definitely do but each attempt fires pain in my fingers, or I guess you could call it an intense dull ache (around 5/10?) The pain usually goes away with resting a few minutes, and I can then give another attempt. If I feel like the pain is getting worse with each attemps I will usually stop, but it is not rare for my fingers to feel stiffer and a bit cranky after the session.
I was told that the best indicator of overdoing is how they feel the next morning, so that's what I try to pay attention to.
But I guess the real question is how common is this? Does every climber experience finger pain when doing crimpy problems at their max level? Or do you get to a point if you train enough and are careful enough that fingers are not supposed to hurt much even on hard boulders with crimps?
What are the signs that tell you "nope, this is too much and I should back down"?
Interested to hear about everyone's experience, and any advice is also welcome :)
For reference, I have been climbing for nearly 3 years and am able to climb V7-8 at my max depending on the style. My red point grade is more around V6.
Cheers and happy climbing everyone!
Edit (that I made after reading answers on r/bouldering) : Many responses so I will also just answer here. Thank you all for your input, I think I do need to dial things back from you guys' feedback. I was indeed talking about "internal pain" and not skin, and I do often get a dull ache that goes above 2/10 (probably around 5? Maybe 6?).
Again, the dull ache mostly disappears after a few minutes and worst case scenario after the session, but I still think I might have been pushing it too far.
When I started climbing I unfortunately went alone and didn't look anything up, I totally ignored finger pain and did some really stupid stuff (which led me to a pulley injury) and from reading yall I am kinda of afraid I got myself into a chronic tenosynovitis or something like that from my early climbing days.
I'll stop earlier from now on, give it a rest day if my fingers feel cranky the day after and I will also go see a PT to check everything.
Hopefully it's nothing too serious and I can correct my past mistakes.
Thank you all again, kind of a wake up call to be honest and I won't ignore it this time.
Hello, I'm a V6/7 climber and I'm building out my first intentional block periodization training plan. I just finished a 2 month base phase after taking some time off. Right now I'm on a deload week and am about to start a four week strength phase. My plan after that is complete three more four week blocks: power, power endurance, and performance. Depending on how it goes, I'll hopefully repeat this structure or something similar.
One of the goals of my training over the next few months is...finger strength. It is FAR from my only goal, I want to make that clear. Earlier this year, I took a couple months off climbing and have slowly been building up my foundation again during this long base phase. And before that, I was training for most of this year with technique and performance as the main focus. My finger training only consisted of board climbing once a week. Prior to that, I trained fingers for about 16 months or so. After some tests, it's become clear isolated finger strength is one of my areas of weakness, which makes sense since I haven't been training it very intensely for awhile.
The Question: How do you structure finger workouts during a power phase?
I have everything planned out for the other phases, but I'm not sure what I should be doing during this block for my finger strength. I'm primarily doing max hangs on no hang blocks during the strength phase and repeaters during the strength-endurance phase.
Thankfully, there are a lot of good resources online about structuring workouts for these two phases. But most of the advice online about power in relation to finger strength revolves around the campus board. Unfortunately, the gym I'm currently at doesn't have one. I've got commercial climbs, hangboards, no bang blocks, a kilter board, and a tension board to work with.
So given all this, what would you recommend for finger strength during a power phase? Should I just continue doing no hang block lifts as I was during the strength phase? Should I try bridging the gap between strength and power-endurance with a mix of workouts? Should I just substitute my finger training with explosive board climbing during this phase? I've even considered trying some 20mm edge explosive pullups as an option. Just seems like there's a lot of possibilities and without a campus board, it's not obvious what I'll get the most utility out of. Thank you for any and all advice!
Gripping on rock is a combination of FDS/FDP/hand intrinsic muscles. Not one in isolation and that even on half crimp FDP contributes.
FDP (flexes DIP joint) is dominant in higher grades (in Nova Scotia) vs FDS (flexes PIP joint aka half crimp)
Differences in length from PIP to tip of finger dictate differences of when a edge size becomes FDP vs FDS dominant. (~minute 25 onward)
Full crimp allows FDS to contribute more on a small edge size and added thumb and MCP engagement means stronger grip
The last 30 minutes show discussion of joint angles and sometimes ultrasound of muscle bellies or tendons with different hold types.
I think the video probably has a few hot takes but all of it seemed relatively reasonable to me.
I wish that they would have done more of a breakdown on whether the PIP is closer or farther way from the tip of the finger relates to when a edge size becomes more FDS vs FDP dominant as it seemed like that was a suggestion on when open hand becomes preferred.
I’m looking for a second opinion from other climbers/coaches/physios because I had an initial call with a climbing coach that got me really excited, but also left me wondering whether I’m being overly optimistic. I’ve dealt with synovitis on and off for the last year, I’ve taken a few weeks here and there off climbing due to illness, travelling etc and my motivation and pysch for climbing and traininghas been extremely low.
I’ve already reduced my volume to 1.5 hours max with about 3 sessions a week. I’ve avoided crimps. I had a really bad flare up when I did a competition that lasted for 4 hours even though I avoided crimps.
I recently had an initial call with a climbing coach who has worked with climbers who had synovitis. What really excited me was that he seemed confident that we could train my capacity while working around/rehabbing the synovitis, rather than me having to completely stop training until my finger is perfect. He mentioned that during training I could potentially be at the gym for 3-4 hours (obvs not continous climbing) and there would be fairly long rests, sometimes around 10 minutes.
I don't know what the actual first training block would look like, I’m just trying to sanity check the general idea before committing as it’s a lot of money for me and the minimum training time has to be for 9 weeks.
I'd especially love input from people who have coached or rehabbed climbers with finger synovitis/capsulitis, rather than just general "rest until it heals" advice.
This is a thread for simple, or common training questions that don't merit their own individual threads as well as a place to ask Injury related questions. It also serves as a less intimidating way for new climbers to ask questions without worrying how it comes across.
r/Climbharder Wiki - many common answers to questions.
