Gym Climbing with Dry Ice Tools

Has anybody tried using or have experience with these? Just stumbled on these and thought it could be a new and interesting way to train during the off season...Thoughts?

http://www.dryicetools.com/

Not 100% sure, but I think there was a thread on these a couple of months ago. You may be able to dig up something with a quick search, good luck!

I have a pair and use them quite a bit. The trick to getting a good workout is to ignore jugs and horns and use them on sloppers, incuts and holds that have just enough to get the rubber to stick. You'll be surprised what they'll stick to. The grips are super comfy.

I used mine a ton last fall prepping for ice season and love them. I actually found the most useful workout was to use jugs and horns and to do a lot of laps, especially on overhanging routes, and drive the pump. But I was training for water ice; if you're training for dry tooling the slopers, sidepulls, etc. are more useful. They're also a lot more interesting...

Best part about them is they're way more comfortable to bite while switching hands than ice tools. :-)

I've seen a lot of videos and pics of people using what look like regular dry pics on regular gym walls.  I was thinking regular dry picks would dig into gym holds?  are there gym specific tools?

Jim Urbec wrote:

I've seen a lot of videos and pics of people using what look like regular dry pics on regular gym walls.  I was thinking regular dry picks would dig into gym holds?  are there gym specific tools?

Some gyms have dry tooling areas. Often the holds have small holes drilled in them for hooking tools. My guess is that this is not common in the US. I remember dry tooling areas in gyms in Scotland, specifically.

But (and it's a big but) many gyms still won't let you use Escape picks because of the liability of tools (even with tethers) flying into the climber on the red route to the right. 

Jim Urbec wrote:

I've seen a lot of videos and pics of people using what look like regular dry pics on regular gym walls.  I was thinking regular dry picks would dig into gym holds?  are there gym specific tools?

City Rock in Colorado Springs has dry-tool routes and a training area for real tools. There are a few holds manufactured specifically for dry tooling like for stein pulls, and some funky metal things too, but most of the holds are just regular old metolius plaster gym holds with some fabric behind them so the wall doesn't get too scratched up. The holds get pretty eaten up by the end of the season, but not as bad as you might think.

Our gym has them, as well as a set of holds that are easy to hook with these loops. It's a silly idea, but a lot of gym climbers love them. Something different to play with...

These things are OK.  They will teach you body tension and are good for enduro training.  They suck for finger fours, unless you are a big fan of crushed pinky feeling (BD tool users might be OK with that).  They roughly replicate movement on less than vertical terrain, and drilled out vertical crags, but suck for real world/non-drilled crag hold training and hard M-grades because they only stick to big horns in steep gym terrain (aka mega jugs).  Also... you can only pull down!

If you're pushing past non-drilled "real world" M7, or harder sport M-climbing, spend training dollars elsewhere.