[Dave Flanagan]

Build a small board a few months ago. Still experimenting with the hold setup. I have been making the holds out of wood, initally I put on a load of horrible old jugs but they are nearly all gone now. The majority of the holds are edges of some form, few pinches and a few undercuts as well.

What range of size holds should I have, is small, medium, large enough? Do I need incut, flat and sloper versions of each. How transferrable are the gains from one permatation to another? What about orientation, most of my holds are horizontal.

[Nibile]

I bought my holds, so the variety was included. Anyway I tried to put them in awkward positions, leaving only a few horizontal. I have a fair amount of underclings. They could be an obsession of mine (Hubble) but I think that they're very helpful for hard sitters and core tension.
I think I have pretty decent holds, nothing small, but teamed with poor feet and board angle (53°) they feel hard to me. A few bigger ones are for warm ups, repeated problems, and my 30 moves test circuit.
I made a few wooden ones also. Crimps and pinches.

Briefly: set the holds so that they're hard and you can train and improve properly, but leave also some simple ones for when you just want to climb and have fun (if such thing is possible...).

[Dave Flanagan]

Thanks. Does anyone know how much transfer there is between say a 1cm deep edge and a 2cm deep one? I think I read somewhere that finger strength is very specific to the angle of each of the finger joints? Any science out there?

[Nibile]

Just by my common sense (given that I have some) I'd say that from 1 cm to 2 cm there is a high transfer: if I'm able to hang on 1 cm I'm probably able to hang on 2 cm.
The big difference in transfer is between crimp and open hand. I train both.

On the Eva Lopez topic I think there is a lot of discussion about how gains on bigger edges transfer on smaller ones.
In the last months I started using mainly the 3 fingers slot for training front3 open handed; and the middle incut rung for back3 (focusing on keeping a half crimp and not dragging); also, I use the middle incut rung with all four fingers half crimped and some added weight.

I don't think that I've gone backwards on small holds. In fact, I have recently climbed some problems, on my board, involving small crimps. But of course I've been doing lots of other training besides BM deadhangs, in particular system training on pinches, other kinds of deadhangs and bouldering.
So I fear that basically this post is absolutely useless for you. I hope it isn't though.
 

[iwasmexican]

what he said basically, the more variety the better. also second that bad feet are vital. i think having big holds to do big burly moves off is just as important as small ones (unless you only want to improve on small holds...). id recommend getting some jenga blocks as well, if you keep them sanded flat on a 45 they feel impossible to start with (for me at least) but you can build up to them fairly quickly as intermediates etc...

[SA Chris]

jenga blocks as well, if you keep them sanded flat on a 45 they feel impossible to start with (for me at least) but you can build up

Brilliant!