Limited to climbing once a week - best alternate training option?

Schedule and family is going to limit me to climbing outside once a week (at Smith, yeah!). And realistically I won't be making it to the local gym for a number of reasons.

So... what is the best additional form of training I can do once or twice a week to at least maintain some level of climbing and finger fitness?

Hangboard? Woody? My garage has 9' ceilings, so a woody will be pretty limited.

Any thoughts?

If you make a steep enough woody, 9' ceilings shouldn't be too bad.

Other than that, I've had good results with rock rings. You can get a pretty good workout in a short period of time. It won't give you mutant crimp strength like a hangboard might, but you get a good mix of pulling, open hand crimping, locking off, offset pulls, and core strength. Cheap, efficient and portable.

Hangboard is probably cheaper and easier to install than a woody. Though not as fun, probably more effective as well.

For a specific routine, I recommend the hangboard routine described here:

The Making of A Rockprodigy

Scroll down to the "HYP" section.

As for your pulley question, the best thing to do is to mount your hangboard to a 2x8 or 2x10, then install two or more wood-screw-style eye-bolts into the bottom of the 2x. This can be done whether the 2x is attached flush to the wall or suspended between two walls.

Flush:

Another example of how to set up a hangboard.

Suspended:

My hangboard setup

You want at least two eyebolts (and two pulleys) so the weights can hang off to one side, rather than dragging/swinging into your shins/nuts/stomach/face/etc.

Using pulleys to remove weight is definitely the way to go. Adding lots of weight just means your holds are too big. You want to train with hold-sizes that are as similar as possible to those at your primary crag (or goal-route, if training for a specific route). For Smith, you want small edges and pockets. Take off as much weight as you need to achieve failure at the end of your third set. IME, its better to start out removing too much weight. In other words, take it easy while you're figuring things out.

Picking the right hangboard is tricky since there aren't any good options (at all). If you don't already have one, its worth doing some legwork. Whatever they have at REI is probably not the best option.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and good luck!

9' is plenty of room for a climbing wall. If you are serious about climbing well, the investment will be well worth it. Nothing else will equal the training you can do on even a very small wall. Looking at commercial fingerboards, the Moon board seems best. Or you could pick up some wood strips for next to nothing and shape it however you like

After we had a child and abundant free-time disappeared, I built a wall downstairs in our cellar and it has helped me continue to boulder double-digits even when my access to real rock is relatively limited.

Pull-ups. Alex Lowe did 400 a day.

Also, Monomaniac, that set up kicks ass.

jiu jitsu

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Actually, my garage is 8' high. Just checked.

But I could probably get a 14 foot wide wall, with half being flat (garage door tracks) and the other half being a 20-30 degree angle.

Good enough? Probably better than nothing!

willeslinger wrote:Pull-ups. Alex Lowe did 400 a day.

Wow!! Any idea what the set/rep scheme was? Was it ten sets of 40 or eighty sets of five or twenty sets of twenty or what?? How often did he do that? Surely not every day...

willeslinger wrote:Pull-ups. Alex Lowe did 400 a day. Also, Monomaniac, that set up kicks ass.

No!

Roger Clemens did steroids, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Alex just did pullups until he couldn't. Then he would rest for a few minutes and do some more until he couldn't and kept that up until he had done 400. Every day.

jack roberts wrote:Alex just did pullups until he couldn't. Then he would rest for a few minutes and do some more until he couldn't and kept that up until he had done 400. Every day.

My arms just jettisoned from their sockets upon reading that. I'm typing with my nose.

willeslinger wrote:Pull-ups. Alex Lowe did 400 a day. Also, Monomaniac, that set up kicks ass.

Alex was a cyborg

jack roberts wrote:Alex just did pullups until he couldn't. Then he would rest for a few minutes and do some more until he couldn't and kept that up until he had done 400. Every day.

Yeah, that would probably take me a month to complete.

Pullups=waste of time. Alex Lowe was a climbing genius, nuf said.

A wall about 12' across set at a steeply overhanging angle, will deliver plenty of training potential. 8' is high enough. The complicating factor might be padding the landing area.,

Peter Beal wrote: 8' is high enough. The complicating factor might be padding the landing area.,

...but fortunately you won't be falling very far.

I am still healing from slipping and landing on my tailbone on the bank of Boulder Creek about a month ago. It doesn't take much height to mess up badly.

I need to mount a hangboard to the flat ceiling in my garage. Any ideas for least amount of materials with proper support?