"Train your wrists" is an unhelpful answer to "I keep falling off gastons". The wrist moves in six directions and your problem move only asks for two of them. Here's a way in that starts from the position that shut you down, not from a shelf of tools.
ReadOne camp says train one quality at a time and stop diluting the stimulus. The other says keep everything ticking or you'll lose what you're not working on. Both are right about something. Here's what each structure ho...
If you climb outside, the year already has two modes: off-season you build, in season you maintain. Running January's week through your sending months is how you turn up to perfect conditions carrying a training block...
You have been lifting two-handed for months, you finally test one hand at a time, and the number lands well under half. The instinct is that something is wrong with your setup or your body. Neither. The two lifts meas...
You climbed through V2 and V3 in months and V4 has taken a year. Effort and technique are the usual reads. Here's a third: some grades might be wider than others, in everything they ask. We visualized grades by finger...
Twelve weeks of logging each hand separately and there it is: one side lifts more. Now what? Here's how to measure the gap properly, why most of the small ones are measurement noise, and why the useful question is whi...
Week 5 from our free bouldering planner, for a V5 climbing Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. What each day is for, the limit session set by set, why the hangboard waits, and what the planner does with the other eleven w...
Climbers pull constantly and push almost never. Measure pushing the same way you already measure fingers: two or three fixed tests, quality-gated, logged under the same conditions, then watch the trend against the pul...
After a long layoff, neural and muscular capacity returns in weeks. Connective tissue returns in months. Load that felt available in week two is what produces tenderness, stiffness, or swelling in week four. Pace the ...
You're in the best conditions of your year and you're still running your winter program, then wondering why Saturday feels flat. In season the job changes: keep what you built, spend nothing that costs you a performan...
You lift more than the climber who just latched the move you keep missing. That's not a contradiction, and your test isn't broken. Max strength is how much force you can produce given time. A deadpoint doesn't give yo...
Max strength answers how hard you can pull once. Critical force answers how much you can keep producing, which is closer to why you actually fall off. Here's the published test, the gear it genuinely requires, how noi...
Drop your index finger off an edge and the hold gets harder in a way that has nothing to do with losing 25% of your fingers. Here's what a back-three grip is actually asking of your hand, why it exposes a side most cl...
Watch a tired climber and you will see the half crimp quietly collapse into a drag. Most people treat that as a fault to correct. It's also a position in its own right, with its own strength curve, that turns up on ev...
You trained half crimp for a year and the number went up. Then a sloper, a pinch, or a pocket shut you down anyway and you started wondering whether the number was lying. It isn't lying. It's narrow. Here's the map of...
Watch any gym for ten minutes and you will see full crimping on every hard move. Read any training plan and the position has vanished. That gap is the problem: the grip that sees your hardest efforts is the one with t...
Fingers test strong, slopers still feel like a coin flip. The gap is often the wrist: slopers demand force through an extended wrist, and extension is the direction almost nobody trains on purpose. Here's how to tell ...
A flat edge fixes the axis, and your strongest two fingers quietly take the extra. A variable axis edge lets the contact point move so the load spreads. Here is what that changes for max lifts, yielding work, and comi...
Edges build crimp strength. They do not fully build the open-hand support you need on slopers and big rounds. A thick rolling handle fills that gap when you program it like strength, not like a gimmick.
Most homewalls fail as shopping carts, not as carpentry. Here's how to stock holds for your angle and level using a small, coherent kit instead of fifty random crimps.
Overcoming isometrics need something that will not move, not always a gym full of plates. Here's how to run max-intent finger pulls with a portable isometric platform and a lifting edge.
Wrist rollers are simple, which is why people use them badly. Here's a climber-focused protocol for flexion and extension: short, progressive, and actually recoverable.
Flexion and extension get all the wrist content. Pronation and supination quietly decide whether compression and awkward grips feel stable. Here's how to train rotation on purpose.
Finger protocols are everywhere. Wrist training is usually one lonely tool used twice and forgotten. Here's how to build a full wrist stack (and actually run it) with the tools that cover real climbing demands.
Not all pinch blocks train the same thumb job. Hub, Brick, and Inch look related and behave differently under load. Here's the matrix so you buy and train the right one.
Most climbers train fingers for years and never once program the thumb. All Thumbs is a multi-grip block built to fix that without a full pinch collection. Here's how to use it.
Going from 20mm to 10mm overnight is not a plan. Progression edges exist so you can shrink depth in controlled steps while your numbers stay honest. Here's the system.
Rolling edges remove the friction cheat that flat holds allow. The claw grip puts load where many max hangs never go. Here's a protocol you can actually run, not just a product story.
Recruitment is not "another hang protocol." It is short, maximal intent on a grip that lets you fire hard without skin and joint drama. Here's the clean definition, the session structure, and why some edges are built ...
You don't need a mounted hangboard or a 12-protocol spreadsheet. One portable edge, a loading pin, and eight weeks of honest two-day training will move your numbers. Here's the full plan.
There are two ways to make a hang harder: use a smaller edge or add more weight. Coaches argue about which is better. The research says both work, with different tradeoffs. Here's the honest referee's call on when to ...
You logged every session for twelve weeks. Now you're staring at a column of numbers wondering what they mean. A training log isn't just a record, it's a diagnostic. Here's how to read the trend past the noise, spot a...
Climbing pulls. Almost never pushes. Over years that imbalance shows up as cranky shoulders and stubborn elbows. Parallettes are a cheap, portable way to train the pushing side. Here's the honest case for antagonist w...
Should you hangboard before you climb, after, or on a separate day? The honest answer depends on what that session is for. Max strength wants fresh fingers. Endurance work tolerates, even benefits from, pre-fatigue. H...
Two weeks off and you come home weaker than you left. It doesn't have to go that way. Maintaining finger strength while traveling takes surprisingly little work, if you bring the right small piece of gear and know wha...
You've been grinding max hangs for eight weeks and the numbers stopped moving. The instinct is to train harder. Often the fix is the opposite: a planned week of reduced load that lets accumulated fatigue clear so the ...
The old advice says don't touch a hangboard until you climb V4 or so. Some coaches now push back. The grade was never the real point. Tissue readiness and training age are, and those don't map cleanly to a number on t...
Fingers get stronger in two stages. The nervous system adapts fast, in weeks. The tendons, pulleys, and bone adapt slow, over months and years. Understanding which is which tells you why early gains feel great and lat...
Everyone wants a number. Two sessions a week? Three? The honest answer is that frequency isn't the real variable. Total recoverable finger load is. Here's how to count what your fingers actually take in a week and set...
Fat grip training means gripping something too thick to wrap your fingers all the way around. Powerlifters use it for forearm size and support strength. For climbers, it's a back-door route to open-hand and sloper str...
Old-time strongmen levered sledgehammers and lever bars to build wrists that could take a beating. Climbers hammer their wrists on mantles, underclings, and slopers and rarely train them directly. The wrist lever is a...
Grip training and finger training get used as synonyms. They shouldn't be. One is a broad category that includes crushing, pinching, and support strength. The other is a specific slice of it that climbers care about m...
Look at your hand. Your middle finger is longer than your index and ring, which are longer than your pinky. Now put all four on a flat edge. See the problem? A flat edge can't load fingers of different lengths equally...
Overcoming and yielding isometrics get thrown around in climbing podcasts like everyone already knows what they mean. Most people don't. Here's the plain version: one is pushing against something that won't move, one ...
Digital force gauges promise finger-strength data to the gram. Weight plates give you a number too, just a rougher one. Do you need the gauge? Here's the honest answer, which depends more on how you train than on the ...
Serious finger training doesn't require a serious budget. For under $100 you can cover crimp, pinch, open hand, and wrist. Here's the full kit, why each piece earns its spot, and how to run it as a system.
You want to train fingers but you rent, or you're not sure a mounted board is worth the hassle. Portable or mounted? Here's the honest decision, based on your space, your goals, and whether you can put holes in the wall.
Portable hangboards range from a $15 block to elaborate multi-grip units. Most of the price difference buys features you won't use. Here's what actually matters when you buy one, and what's just marketing.
No-hang. Block lift. Block pull. Edge lift. Off-the-ground lift. Pick-up. Lifting edge. Portable hangboard. These terms get used interchangeably, and mostly they refer to the same idea with slightly different flavors....
Everyone wants to know how strong their fingers are. Almost nobody tests it properly. Here's the one-arm 20mm lift done right, the mistakes that inflate your number, and what the result actually tells you about your c...
