Minimum Wingspan Required for 1-5-9 on the Campus Board?

My wingspan is 65". I'm building a campus board at home that's 72" x 48". It will be elevated 48" off the ground. I'm using moon spacing, which is 8.66" (22 cm to be exact).

These are my first attempts on the campus board at the Texas Rock Gym:
youtube.com/watch?v=NxtSR-E…

I'm pretty proficient at one arm pull ups:
youtube.com/watch?v=11-TtMo…

I'm wondering if 1-5-9 is a realistic goal with my wingspan. When I placed my board on the floor and placed my hands on rungs 1 and 5, my bottom hand was already below my chest while some people I've seen on YouTube have their bottom hand below their chin.

youtube.com/watch?v=_gxYwvx…

I think if I came back to the gym I could pull off 1-4-5 or 1-4-6.

TRG is kind of far from my house, so I'll be spending most of my time training at home. Since my room isn't tall enough, I'll be limited to only practicing 3-7 or 5-9. I'll only have 9 rungs per row. Plus I'll have a harness and pulley system set up, so I can reduce weight for doing dynos and plyometrics.

Thoughts?

Just for the record, even though I'm a beginner, I'm only interested in building strength, power, and power endurance, not much technique/footwork. I was considering building a woody, but it's too expensive, so I bought a hangboard instead.

I'm not gonna ask why, but of course you have enough wingspan for 1-5-9. Try to see if you can do the equivalent 1-5-9 spacing on the biggest jugs you can find (or space a ring 88cm below a pull up bar for your lower hand, pull & see how high you can reach above the bar). If not, you need to get stronger (more explosive), develop the pushing technique with your lower hand. I mean, there are guys (not me) who can do 1 arm muscle ups, so surely that'll be enough vertical distance.

The biggest problem is you don't have the finger strength/power for your arms to pull hard. That may take much longer to develop than your big muscles.

reboot wrote:I'm not gonna ask why, but of course you have enough wingspan for 1-5-9. Try to see if you can do the equivalent 1-5-9 spacing on the biggest jugs you can find (or space a ring 88cm below a pull up bar for your lower hand, pull & see how high you can reach above the bar). If not, you need to get stronger (more explosive), develop the pushing technique with your lower hand. I mean, there are guys (not me) who can do 1 arm muscle ups, so surely that'll be enough vertical distance. The biggest problem is you don't have the finger strength/power for your arms to pull hard. That may take much longer to develop than your big muscles.

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't have a high enough set up to try it though. I put a pull up bar on a doorframe that's 84" and then set some straps to 36". That leaves me with only 48", which is too short. I have to tuck my legs in, so I don't have enough space to generate an explosive kip.

I don't practice muscle ups or explosive pull ups either. I only work on OAP. I can still do them, but I lean over the bar/rings more than what's "acceptable". There's also a mental/psychological factor too - measurement from shoulder to middle finger is about 24", so I have to generate more force from the bottom hand to get that extra 12" haha.

youtube.com/watch?v=UJbob2c…

110cm would be physically possible, but probably not practically possible.

Sure, your arms might be shorter, but you're lighter, the rungs are relatively bigger, and your muscles are more efficient (strength to weight).

Being short has its positives and negatives. So does being tall. It almost always evens out except at the far ends of the spectrum.

Trycycle wrote:110cm would be physically possible, but probably not practically possible. Sure, your arms might be shorter, but you're lighter, the rungs are relatively bigger, and your muscles are more efficient (strength to weight). Being short has its positives and negatives. So does being tall. It almost always evens out except at the far ends of the spectrum.

After watching Jan Hojer's video, I wonder how long his wingspan is. Since he did 1-9, assuming it's moon spacing, he traveled 69.2913" (176 cm). Maybe I'll be capable of doing 1-8, 60.6299" (154 cm)?

7:19

vimeo.com/66473915

Very inspirational!

Do you think that board is at 15 degree or 20 degree angle? I heard it's "easier" at 20 degrees.

Watching your two videos really blew my mind. Judging by how strong you are in the second video I was really surprised that you seem to struggle a bit in the first video with what is fairly easy campusing.

I don't say that to be negative, but just as a general observation I was surprised by the discrepancy.

I'm guessing you're more into Ninja Warrior type stuff, but I think if you focused on climbing for a bit you'd get insanely strong very quickly.

Climbing strength is just... different.

Rob Gordon wrote:Watching your two videos really blew my mind. Judging by how strong you are in the second video I was really surprised that you seem to struggle a bit in the first video with what is fairly easy campusing. I don't say that to be negative, but just as a general observation I was surprised by the discrepancy. I'm guessing you're more into Ninja Warrior type stuff, but I think if you focused on climbing for a bit you'd get insanely strong very quickly. Climbing strength is just... different.

I always look forward to honest feedback. I appreciate it! I'm not used to training fingertip strength. On the pull up bar, instead of wrapping my whole hand and thumb around the bar, I'm only using two or three fingers at a time. I'm doing that until I've set my hangboard (RPTC) up. I'd love to climb more often, but I can't go to TRG more than once a week :/

Any advice for improving on the campus board quickly, but safely? I need it for the ultimate cliffhanger in a couple of months.

PlanchePRO wrote: After watching Jan Hojer's video, I wonder how long his wingspan is. Since he did 1-9, assuming it's moon spacing, he traveled 69.2913" (176 cm). Maybe I'll be capable of doing 1-8, 60.6299" (154 cm)? Very inspirational! Do you think that board is at 15 degree or 20 degree angle? I heard it's "easier" at 20 degrees.

Jan Hoier is an absolute beast & IMO easily the strongest boulderer in the world. He claims to be 188cm in the video (about 6'2") & in person he doesn't look as tall, but probably b/c he's just muscular. I'm sure he has quite some ape index. Still, while I don't know the rung spacing, watching the video, you can see he locks the lower hand around the waist when he latches the 9th rung. Since he claims to be 188cm tall, I doubt he spanned 176cm for the move (he looks to be ~11 rung spacing tall, which would make 1-9 ~130-145cm). If I tried to span my arms like that (tilting the shoulder), I get ~113cm finger tip to my naval, but I'm only 5'6".

20 degree board would reduce the vertical distance by < 3% vs 15 degree (cos(20) vs cos(15)), noticeable but won't be the difference of even a half rung in 1-9.

Judging from your video, you can definitely work on the explosiveness of your muscle-up. See if you can do them with less kip & no pause thru the pull-to-push transition. Watch how effortlessly Jan does them. I've certainly improved my campusing by improving my pulling explosiveness, even if my 1 arm hasn't gotten much better (still 2-3 reps each arm).

I don't really train to get strong anymore, I'm too old and lazy. But I think maybe hangboard routines would help more than campusing at this point. I think you might struggle on forearm pump failure after multiple events.

If you do have a chance to get back to the rock gym, I would mix things up, too. Try climbing overhung boulder problems just by campusing. You will learn different campus movements. Also try climbing campus boulder problems by locking off on each move.

Your explosiveness does seem lacking. Maybe try doing dynamic campus board routines. Double hand campus dynos. Up and down then trying to skip a ring. This could lead to injury though so don't so it too much and stay on the big rungs.

Like I said, I don't train to climb. I just climb. So I don't have great advice. The quickest I've ever seen someone get truly STRONG as a climber is a year. And that person got injured.

I actually recommend to new climbers not to campus train for a year or two to prevent injury.

Make sure you do reverse wrist curls and hammer forearm twists to combat injury.

Good luck.