[Rocksteady]

Hi!

Long time reader, first time poster 

I need more finger strength!

I've been climbing reasonably regularly (mostly indoors) for about 2 years. Having just returned from Kalymnos sport climbing I realised how weak I am compared to nearly everyone else! I can onsight F6b and redpoint F6c+ but I want to get a whole lot better, and I reckon finger strength is one of the main factors that is holding me back - I just can't seem to stick the small holds.

Bouldering is always touted as the best way to improve finger strength (and I find it a good laugh), but I've been doing it at least once a week at the wall for at least 8 months and seem to have totally plateaued at about V3/V4 (although I climb at the Castle in London which has weird UK tech grades - I can sometimes do their 6a's and when I go elsewhere this seems to translate to V3/V4). Some of the problem is likely to be technique (my climbing partners are all worse than me so I don't tend to get 'shown' how to do any problems, nor do I get outside to climb anywhere near as much as I'd like) but I just can't seem to pull on the small holds necessary to get up harder bouldering problems or routes.

My arm/shoulder strength/power is pretty good (I can do 25 chin ups, campus 1-4-7 on the big holds and do 1 one-arm pull up on each arm) so I don't think that's a problem. It's the ability to hold small holds that seems to be letting me down.

Do I just need to stick at it and try problems where the holds are too small for me to use? I have to admit I find this a bit de-motivating. I have access to a fingerboard at the wall but don't know the best routine - I can stick the smallest holds on a Metiolus for about 8 seconds. The small crimps on the Moon board though seem ridiculous!

Any tips on a fingerboard routine I could use, or a focused approach to bouldering that will improve my finger strength? Do I need to get some better climbing partners and copy everything they do?!

Any comments (even facetious ones as long as they are amusing) welcomed.

Cheers!

[r-man]

Bouldering is always touted as the best way to improve finger strength (and I find it a good laugh), but I've been doing it at least once a week at the wall for at least 8 months and seem to have totally plateaued at about V3/V4

Any tips on a fingerboard routine I could use, or a focused approach to bouldering that will improve my finger strength?

Try bouldering 3 times a week. You'll soon improve.

[Kingy]

(I can do 25 chin ups, campus 1-4-7 on the big holds and do 1 one-arm pull up on each arm)

Forget big jugs on steep rock as you are already good at this. Try traversing on brick edges on a vertical wall often. This will soon improve your finger strength.

[i.munro]

Can I ask if these 6a's are on the steep mezzanine wall or the featured wall upstairs?

For those of you fortunate enough to have avoided the Castle, they used to ( I haven't been for a while now)  use Uk tech grades upstairs but a 6a upstairs would only get 5c on the meazzanine.

Either way it does sound like you're !!!!! strong for those grades. Have you considered it might be footwork? Sounds lik euou might benefit from a change of venue/style.

[Rocksteady]

Thanks for the advice so far.

I've cracked 6as at the Castle upstairs on the featured wall quite a few times but only once or twice on the mezzanine. I've done some downstairs also. I really dislike th grading there - the 5cs on the Boulder Ladder are also massively harder than normal 5cs, which I can often onsight.

I definitely do have pretty sketchy footwork, and think I need to improve this in conjunction with finger strength. Bouldering does seem the perfect solution, but even in months where I have trained 2-3 times a week I haven't seen much gains - I often just can't start the problems.

I'm definitely considering moving my climbing to the Westway. The new bouldering area there looks awesome (and mostly empty) and most of the strong climbers I met in Kalymnos who were from London trained there. From my one trip there, the Arch seemed pretty good for bouldering too.

[magpie]

I definitely do have pretty sketchy footwork, and think I need to improve this in conjunction with finger strength.

Biggest difference I've ever seen in my climbing was when I started to pay more attention to my feet, even now the quickest way for me to drop several grades is to forget to use them properly, so I definitely think it's worth working on.  I'm always amazed when I watch good climbers (routes and bouldering) how careful and precise they are with their feet and I'm sure it must make a difference to how you climb if you sort your feet out.

I have no tips on finger strength, mine are like brittle autumn twigs, on a good day. 

[i.munro]

I certainly wouldn't discourage you from trying t'Arch I think it's brill!
However I was thinking more of somewhere a bit more old Skool  & fingery like the Sobell or if you're in W London my pet crappy wall in Kensington.
I suspect you'll hate both but they tend to place a lot more emphasis on fingers & footwork.

[Rocksteady]

Thanks again for the additional tips. Sounds like fingers are not my only weakness.

Any drills for training footwork - I try to do silent foot-placements and watch my feet onto the holds, but any other ways of improving this (as well as specific finger training tips) would be appreciated.

I actually work in Kensington - where's your pet crappy wall?

[i.munro]

It hides in the bowels of Imperial college.
Pm me if you want details (fight club rules)

[account_inactive]

What can you campus on small rungs (standard)?
What is the smallest hold you can hang one handed?

I'd guess that you will be pretty poor on both of these comparable to your arm/shoulder girdle strength from what you have said above.

Fingerboarding is the way forward to get these specific improvements. Start with looking at the maximum length of time you can hang on each type of hold:

full crimp
half crimp
3 finger drag
2 finger (front 2, middle 2, back 2)
monos

If you are hanging each hold for over 30 seconds (ish) then look at reducing the size of the hold until you are on first finger joints...........then report back

and if this is too boring get climbing featured problems upstairs at the Castle instead of pulling on those bolt on jugs

[St Hubbins]

I need more finger strength!

Try bouldering with a weight belt/vest on, and if you train on a 'bendcrete' type featured wall then use smallest features you can handle. Do that once a week and you'll start noticing gains

[Doylo]

Christ you can do a one armer but are only bouldering V3/4! You need to get a nice piece of wood stick it above your doorframe and get deadhanging. It should be small enough so you can only hold it for ten seconds, no more. You can make it the desired size by using cardboard or another smaller piece of wood and taping it above it. I used to do ten sets of ten seconds every day, am too bloody lazy now mind.

[magpie]

Any drills for training footwork

It depends what sort of wall your climbing on, but I mainly try and use only features for feet and never holds unless it's unavoidable, that's harder to do on boulder problems than routes usually, and obviously on whether your climbing on a properly featured wall or not.

[r-man]

Any drills for training footwork

You could build a slab board. There's a thread soemwhere on here.

[Rocksteady]

Nice one, thanks for the tips all, I will be getting on the featured rock and deadhanging regularly. 3-4 times a week OK for deadhangs?

Dylan you are spot-on - I can barely hang the small campus rungs and my one-hand hold ability is rubbish. Thanks for the advice.

[rothers]

Just wanted to say this is not the sort of thing that is going to happen over night. Be careful when using finger boards as finger injuries will occur if you do too much too quickly.

[Duma]

Christ you can do a one armer but are only bouldering V3/4! You need to get a nice piece of wood stick it above your doorframe and get deadhanging.

What he said. I'm really shocked by how strong you've got without being able to hold small edges (now admittedly I like dirty crimps but being only occasionally able to manage 1-4-7 on the big rungs, and never having managed a one armer, I've still got up 7C on several occasions). I would say as well as deadhanging, look at the angle you climb on, a lot of my early climbing was on old school verticalish walls - try reducing the angle until you can pull on the small stuff, then gradually move back to the steeper problems.

[Rocksteady]

More good tips, thanks.

Unfortunately I seem to have let myself 'av it. I started to get stronger fingers, my redpointing went up to F7a, but working an F7a+ after a slight lay-off over Christmas seems to have given me A5 pulley injuries in the middle and ring fingers of my left hand. They don't seem too bad - taping them up I can pull on holds with no pain (as long as I don't crimp), but obviously this doesn't help my plan to become a beast of finger strength. I'll be training endurance for the next month or so, I reckon, until these fingers heal up. Annoyingly I do seem to get finger injuries every time I start to push it and climb on smaller holds. Starting to wonder whether I just have rubbish fingers. Though my brother and my dad (both climbers) seem to have good strength in this department.

I'll report back later in the year to let you all know whether my fingers are catching up to my shoulders/arms.

Cheers.

[tommytwotone]

Hi all - and hope your fingers are better Rocksteady!

Anyway, after a search I found this thread - further to the above alongside the article on Dave McLeod's blog the other day I've been asking myself a few uncomfortable questions about my climbing and what I should be doing in 2011.

Think finger strength is one of those things I always mean to get serious about, mean to do a campus / Beastmaker session at the wall but then - wait - there's a new circuit, I'll do that, it'll be much more interesting.

So, I'm going to bite the bullet and start some proper, regimented finger strength training.

In terms of where I am now, I have a Beastmaker, but can only manage 2 sets of repeaters (7 secs on, 3 off ) on the biggest slots, 4 finger open handed. Anything else - even removing the pinkie) and I can barely manage a set.

As well as Doyle's 10 x 10 secs mentioned above, anything else worth adding in as part of "finger strength 101"?

Cheers all.

[tomtom]

That's how I started TTZ on the Beastmaker.. Just keep on at it and you'll work your way Dow. The smaller holds. Also try varying between repeats.. Eg large edge small edge slope large small Sloper etc in a sequuence (seems to help stopping hurting hands..)
I do all things open handed and rarely do things with less than three fingers (just hurts too much and I dint seem to do much pocket climbing..).
I started to see improvements after 2-3 weeks..
Now I can do multiple one armers with two fingers on the 45's (I am lying through my teeth now..)

Hope that helps.. (tt's punter beastmaker 101 hints)

[tommytwotone]

Cheers Tom, good tips.

Kicked off this eve with the following, seemed to do the trick:

3 x 1 min repeater session (7 secs on, 3 secs off), on big slots on "top shelf", 4 finger straight armed
3 x 10 second hang on same holds, 3 fingers straight armed (not too bad)
3 x 10 second as above but 3 fingers half lock (had me going a bit)
3 x 10 second as above but 3 fingers full lock (flippin' heck!)
3 x 10 second hang, middle 2 straight armed

Will be tinkering with this as the weeks go on - progress TBC in Fit Club. Thought any potential Beastmaker newbies might be interested in a starter for 10...

[nai]

Have you seen the Moon stuff as well?  Nothing new really but worth a quick look, it's what I follow mostly alternating with repeaters or actual bouldering.

http://www.moonclimbing.com/fingerboard-training-plan-c-334_353.html

Like tomtom says, probably not worth bothering with crimps unless it's a definite weak point.

[Rocksteady]

Forgot about this thread!

Funny that now I still have exactly the same problem, having essentially stagnated with my climbing for a year (though I've had a lot of fun stagnating, which is the main thing).

On the downside I was plagued with finger injuries last year, and probs only had about a month of climbing injury free.

Having been told by a few people now that my technique is generally pretty good and that I really do just need to get stronger, I am focusing on bearing down. Luckily my legend of a housemate has a Beastmaker set up in our flat. 

With two arms, I can do Encores on the deep pockets and the big flat edge. Can't Encore anything else.
Am getting better at hanging the little edges but can't do a proper set of repeaters on them, or anything else. Am very leery of hanging on less than 4 fingers, but am practising hanging some of the edges on 3 fingers.
I am enjoying some good progress on the 35 slopers; for some reason I find hanging these very satisfying. Weird that at the beginning of a session I get like 3 seconds on them but later on I can hang them for 10 secs.

Can't even one-arm hang the big jug pocket! Which shocked me a bit. Especially as my brother can do 5 one-armers on it!?!?!

I'm hoping that a bit of Beastmaking along with some core work and a couple of bouldering sessions a week will give me a bit of a boost into the Font7s. I can still do one-armers on a bar so don't think I have to worry about that!

Any other tips for safe but sure progress on finger strength would be appreciated.

How many fingerboard sessions do people go for in a week?

Cheers,

R

[tommytwotone]

Have you seen the Moon stuff as well?  Nothing new really but worth a quick look, it's what I follow mostly alternating with repeaters or actual bouldering.

http://www.moonclimbing.com/fingerboard-training-plan-c-334_353.html

Like tomtom says, probably not worth bothering with crimps unless it's a definite weak point.

Cheers Nai, good link that.

@Rocksteady - glad to hear you're still going / coping with the injuries!

In terms of frequency of sessions, I read this and am sticking to their "48 hours to recover" point - am super, super paraniod about codding myself though so may well be erring on the side of caution.

So I'm doing climbing both days at the weekend, finger session Tues, Weds off, Depot session Thurs, something Fri (run / Depot / pub, to be determined on the day!).

Anyway, link here - usual caveats surrounding me not knowing what I'm on about etc:

http://www.rockclimbing.com/Articles/Training_and_Technique/Finger_Back_Arm_Strength_18.html