[ducastaing]

Hi,
I've posted this on UKC, but thought I might get more responses on here...who knows.
I'm going away with work for a few weeks and am not going to get a chance to climb.  I'll be staying in hotels and most seem to have a gym, so I was thinking of buying Rock Rings or equivalent so that I can at least do something to keep my finger strength up.   I'll also try and do some kind of climbing-oriented training in the gym and get out running as often as possible, but I would like to work fingers if possible.

In case this influences advice/opinion I currently use one of the wood grips boards and only work fingers on the smallest pockets, not using them to full depth.  I could probably do the same with Rock Rings if the smallest pockets are too big (some people have said this to me).  Whilst looking at the rings, I saw that Metolius make portable power grips, but I can't find much out about them.  Has anyone seen or used them?  They are much lighter than the rings, but obviously have fewer pockets to use, not that this is necessarily bad for what I need.  I'm travelling around the USA so will be taking quite a few internal flights (which limits how much I can carry) which is why a smaller, lighter alternative to the rock rings could be good.  Does anyone know of a non-Metolius alternative that could also work?

Thanks, apologies for all the questions.

[GCW]

There's a thread here somewhere showing people's portable set ups.  One was based on that pull up bar that fits door frames (that I've forgotten the name of).

[Paul B]

powerbar?

... JML now do an equivalent as well (you know those people that make all of the random sh*t)...

[magpie]

Powerbar or JML Iron Gym, can't see either being particularly portable though, especially on planes 

For finger strength, you get loads of different types of squeezy ball type things, I don't know if they are really much cop though.

This is not my most helpful post ever as I don't really know what I am talking about 

[GCW]

To be honest, you may be better just doing some work in the gym.  You can always do rows/ lat pulls etc open handed.

[ducastaing]

Thanks for the advice so far.
At the moment I am swung towards not bothering with shelling out £40 for Rock Rings and the open-handed lat pulldowns are a good idea...hadn't thought of actually altering my grip on those for some reason.  At least that would be better than doing nothing.
Maybe I'll just have a very core-focused few weeks...and also try and get more powerful with pull-ups...definite weaknesses of mine as I am...

[tobym]

Powerball?

[Gus]

wrist curls in the gym!!!

[i.munro]

My thoughts FWIW

I got hold of some rock rings a few years back & find them better than a fingerboard in some ways as you can
train each hand seperately ( for those of us to weak to dead hang one handed) & you can vary the weight more easily (it's easy to add 1kg ) & you can do this in any gym.

I simply use them (in the gym) as a handle to hold weight (just off the floor) then vary grip & duration like a fingerboard.

However on 1st seeing them my initial thought was that I could make better than that myself.
I didn't of course cos I'm lazy but I think that a piece of ply with some screw-ons or just a small campus board style rung would work just as well.

[webbo]

have you tried making a finger board  for the lat machine.
 get a plank of wood,glue/screw some wooden finger holds on it.put a couple of holes in it and thread a bit of rope through it so you can hang it on the machine.
used to a set to finish the gym session like this.start on 10k 10 reps and go up the stack as far as you can then back down.probably not to dissimilar to doing repeaters from the beastmaker site.maybe you could rig a beast maker up to the lat machine.