kickboard for campusing wall?

The campusing wall in my home gym starts from the floor with a vertical bottom wall section like 4-5 feet high, and above that there's a larger section of wall that overhangs - with all the campus rungs on it. So I have the option of touching my foot to the wall to stabilize my body while making a move up or down the rungs with my hands + arms.

Then in the past few weeks I visited some other gyms, and they did not have any bottom "kick" wall. So I guess it would take better "technique" to do moves of the same distance on the same size holds -- but it's tricky to compare, because each gym has different spacing and sometimes different shapes or sizes of rungs/holds.

Seemed like it actually takes up more of the gym's floor space to avoid having a bottom vertical wall. So I'm guessing that approach is not just to save money on wood -- somebody believes that it's significantly beneficial to force people to not have the option of touching a foot to stabilize a move.

Now (ikely because I do not climb hard enough) I've never made a "pure" campusing move outdoors with neither foot touching the rock. So I'm not yet yet getting the point of practicing this "technique". My reason for doing a campusing workout is to build dynamic finger strength generally, not to get some specific move "wired".

Or maybe the instability offers a special kind of training stress on my finger muscles and tendons?

Or is just because Wolfgang Gullich did it that way?

Ken

So your feet are on to generate the force for the concentric portion of the movement (the initial lunge) and footless (or sometimes tapping the wall?) for the eccentric portion (catching the hold)?

I think people generally do not use the campus board with their feet on simply because it reduces the amount of upper body power needed to generate the movement. The general prescription is that if you can't do the basic ladder move then you're really not ready for campusing.

Not sure if its a bi-conditional though (ie if you can do the move then you need it in your training).

Monomaniac will probably step in and say it has something to do with the type of route you are attempting to redpoint (thats probably true I think!?).

+1 on probably not needing it yet. I'm not a super strong climber, and I can also make some of the moves on the wall at our local gym, but its more of a "party trick" I use when I go with friends. If you must use it as a training tool, try bending your knees behind you. Hard to use a toe kick that way. Or just keep using it until you're strong enough not to. Just beware, elbow injuries suck.
-Mackley

5.samadhi wrote:So your feet are on to generate the force for the concentric portion of the movement (the initial lunge) and footless (or sometimes tapping the wall?) for the eccentric portion (catching the hold)?

Without video it's hard to know for sure what my feet are doing at all times, but I sort of think my toe is touching/tapping the wall in both the initial launch and in the catching of the next hold -- (and maybe in between too?). Not sure which foot I use.

Although my home gym does have a couple of foot-jib holds on the bottom vertical section, I normally don't use those -- just have some toes of one foot touching the blank section of the wall. At my home gym I do campusing workout in bare feet, so tapping a plastic jib is mildly painful.

So I don't think having my toes touching adds much upward force to the Launch phase. It does make it easier to start from a different body position. It likely changes the inward/outward force through my fingers in the Launch phase.

I'm pretty sure it makes the Catch phase significantly easier, because the forces/torques through the fingers are more stable directionally.
So for my training purposes this stability means I am able to attempt bigger moves (skipping rungs) or on smaller thinner rungs.

Ken

P.S. Eccentric / Concentric ? My understanding of the physics/biomechanics is that the Launch phase is a concentric contraction for the arm muscles, but for the finger/forearm muscles the Launch phase is eccentric.

yeah, get rid of the kickboard. it kind of enables you to cheat a bit by bracing/stabilizing.