Lessons from 7 years of fingerboard training

Its been a while since I have posted on this blog. I haven’t decided if I am going to start doing regular updates or just write about how my training has changed in the last few years, which should last for at least a few posts.

The early years:

For the first three and a half years I trained my fingers I did so only with maximal singles hangs. After a short warm-up, I would perform 5 single hangs with as much resistance as possible and as much rest as I wanted between hangs. If I succeeded in hanging for 7 seconds I would add more weight to the very next rep. I focused on 4 grips:

1. front 3 open hand

2. middle 2 open hand

3. 4 finger half crimp

4. 4 finger full crimp

This seems like a short workout but if my memory is correct, it took forever. This was probably due to the fact that I was always over resting so I could get new personal bests during every session. There were several negatives about only relying on this type of training and a few positive.

Negatives:

1. Time commitment: This took too long, especially considering that my life is much different now. I have a job and toddler, whereas back then I was a beginning grad student taking classes with material I was already familiar with.

2. Frustration: Always working within a few percent of your max is a recipe for major frustration. When I increased weight I would do so by 2.5 lbs, which is within the daily variation of my bodyweight. I was attempting to make finer variations in intensity than was even possible.

3. Injury: I injured tendon pulleys a few times while training full crimped.

Positives:

1. Strength: I did greatly increase my finger strength. I sent some of the hardest fingery one move wonders of my entire climbing career during this time. Putting focus of climbing sessions on power endurance will also help smooth out inconsistencies.

2. Experience: Training this way for a few years provided a base of finger strength that was easy to build on.

The recent era:

In the fall of 2009 the Beastmaker 2000 was becoming a popular fingerboard and with it, came a band of “multi-rep” fingerboard training. I have written about the basic repeater protocol on this site before so I won’t repeat that discussion here. As history goes, I continued with this two set repeated protocol until the Spring of 2012. This still seems like a solid system, but I would like to describe a variation that I used during August-December of 2012.

Pick four grips -  I use back 2, front 2, middle 2, and half crimp, but lets call them A,B,C and D. A `rep’ is defined as hanging for 7 seconds and resting for 3 seconds. A set is any number of reps strung together one after another.

1. Start with grip A.

      a. Perform an 8 rep set

      b. rest 90 seconds

      c. Perform a 7 rep set

      d. rest 90 seconds

      e. Perform a 6 rep set

      f. rest 3 minutes

2. Repeat this with grips B, C, and D.

During this time, I would perform similar workouts with a 5-4-3 rep-scheme and a 2-1-1 rep-scheme.

The weekly fingerboarding schedule was as follows:

Monday: Repeaters 8-7-6

Wednesday: Repeaters 5-4-3

Thursday: Repeaters 2-1-1

Negatives: All of the negatives have to do with the 8-7-6 workout.

1. Time: The 8-7-6 workout took over an hour.

2. Too many hangs: I suffered collateral-ligament soreness from hanging on pockets too much. I also noticed that by the time I got to half crimp (my last grip) I was too tired to hang a quality weight. The half-crimp is by far the most important grip, so this was a major issue.

Positives:

1. Lots of hangs: My fingers got really used to being loaded. This was by far the pumpiest hangboard workout I have ever performed.

2. Variety: Varying the rep schemes from day to day is something that I always try to do. I am loosely following the “daily undulating periodization” protocol.

Summary:

Probably the most important realization i have had over the years is not to rely on the fingerboard for more than strength development. This seems very obvious now that I write it down, but I spent years using training protocols that ventured into the realm of power endurance. There is too much going on with the rest of the body during climbing for this to be apppropriate and I will discuss more late on my current power endurance training.

That’s it for now. I am doing yet another fingerboard scheme at the moment that has many advantages over those I have done in the past. The next post will outline this in detail.