Hand training tools

If I’m bouldering V4-5, are any of the various hand strengthening tools (like prohands gripmasters, metolius, black diamond forearm tool) worth getting for finger or forearm strengthening?

I find the edges of doorframes are ubiquitous and varied levels of crimps.  then you can practice chimney techniques at the same time ;)

Get some finger resistance bands.  Not the ones with individual finger holes.  Just bands.  Amazon has ones that are like tough rubber bands that come in a pack with various strengths.  Use them on your drives to and from work.  They’ve done me well in developing strength in my antagonist muscles of my forearms.  Climbing will develop grip strength at that level.  What you need to pay attention to is your muscles that open you hands.  A lot of injuries start from having an imbalance of muscle

Hadn’t even thought of those...thx...has that helped make progressions in climbing also?  Have a specific brand?  Do u do the extensions between two fingers or extend the whole hand?

This is pretty informative about the relationship between hand strength and forearm antagonist training. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOp3hxJVkw

I've started doing this recently, and it's made a noticeable difference. Granted I'm just pulling on plastic now that it's winter, but the weighted pinch at the end of the video is pretty awesome. Worked with a sling, atomik pinch block/carabiner, and kettlebell. But you could really rig up anything to do it. 

Thx this looks great to help increase crimping endurance based on his early comments with the dumbbell work

Training forearm antagonist muscles has no demonstrated usefulness to climbing. There's no way a serious climber is ever _not_ going to have a giant imbalance between finger/forearm extensor and finger/forearm flexor strength. Anyway what's the physiological / biomechanical / physics explanation of how that imbalance is supposed to cause injury?
. . . But if you've swallowed the antagonist-training religion, sure go ahead.

Gripmaster can be used in ways that are more specific for climbing grip. Like figure out clever ways to use it more with your fingertips pressing. And with a crimp grip.

Main shortcoming of the Gripmaster (and the others) is that the intensity is not measurable. So difficult to follow a program of progressive incremental training stress.

Useful training equipment which is somewhat portable is a dumbbell. For finger strength, can do "heavy finger rolls" with it. So then the intensity if somewhat measurable.

A dumbbell (or two) can also be used for lots of other climbing-specific exercises.

Ken

Training your pinch isn't a big deal until that one time when it is critical to success on a route.  If you take a clamp like shown here and attach a thin board perpindicular across each handle - you have a nice device to train your pinch strength.  One thing climbing doesn't do very well is strengthen your thumbs - something simple like this can do that for you.  Be careful what strength clamp you buy - some are very strong - too strong to move really.

http://images10.newegg.com/ProductImage/A1TB_1_20150407333182548.jpg

Get one of these from iron mind they are hard and will make your hand and fingers strong in a way that wont cause joint pain.

@Kenr- did you watch Horst's video? I think he makes a pretty good case for training wrist extensors. 

My experience has been that this is helpful, fwiw.

O the other hand, he argues that finger extension exercises, with rubber bands for example, are not helpful.

Jason Rohde wrote:

If I’m bouldering V4-5, are any of the various hand strengthening tools (like prohands gripmasters, metolius, black diamond forearm tool) worth getting for finger or forearm strengthening?

Hangboards have been shown to be very effective at improving strength for climbing. It’s going to be much harder to achieve the same intensity on most of the tools you mention and they aren’t very specific to climbing.

Take a full-size double sheet of newspaper. Put one corner of the page in your palm. Hold the paper in front of you with your arm straight and parallel to the floor. Begin scrunching up the paper. Do not turn your hand; keep the palm facing the floor. Scrunch until you make a ball. Scrunch to make the paper ball harder. Repeat. Great for strength and strength endurance. A retired boxer taught me this. Low-tech. Cheap. Wicked effective.

Got this from Mark Wright's Extreme Alpinism. Load a barbell and do finger curls with your arms fully extended. Load a weight that you can do 8 reps. Do 15 sets. Add weight each set. Target a weight that you can only do 1 or 2 reps on the last set. I would do 3-5 sets alternating with rows or leg presses. Back and forth until I hit 15 sets. Probably got the best gains in finger strength from any exercise ever. Max 1 rep was 325lbs.

Jason Rohde wrote:

Hadn’t even thought of those...thx...has that helped make progressions in climbing also?  Have a specific brand?  Do u do the extensions between two fingers or extend the whole hand?

The ones I found on amazon are called Expand-Your-Hands bands.  They don’t wear out quickly like the ones with individual finger holes.  

I can’t say I’ve seen an increase in my progression because of using them.  But I do notice that my forearms don’t get tired as easily.  Maybe that’s partly due to climbing more and for longer.  But exercising antagonistic muscles is thought to help prevent injury when your hand springs open suddenly when you slip off a hold.  

I use them over all of my fingers and extend my whole hand.  They are a little too wide to do it with individual fingers.  

I think a rice bucket works better for finger extension and feels pretty good too. 

I’m with Ken though, not convinced either decreases injury or improves climbing strength. 

But as always, ymmv. 

Mark E Dixon wrote:

I think the Horst video makes a pretty good case for training wrist extensors. 

New kind of argument from Horst. His books have long advocated a range of antagonist exercises, but now he's come up with a new argument for two of them. Haven't had a chance to digest and reflect on it yet.

Quick reaction:

- By his own demonstration (2:32), simply doing dead hangs using a crimp grip (which I do) already ought to be excellent training of these muscles.

- If he really thinks that serious strengthening of wrist extensors is important, than how come it's sufficient to do them with non-heavy resistance weight?

- As often with Horst's writing (notably his book on Mental aspects), he's long on solemn sensible-sounding claims, but short on scientific evidence. Where's the evidence that lots of climbers have long-term injuries from lack of extension strength? How does he know that some of the climbers who got that kind of injury (which is what?) were not doing extensor-training exercises, and anyway still got the injury?

- And then where's the scientific evidence that training with non-heavy resistance is sufficent to avoid those supposed injuries?

- Especially when he especially favors isometric holding (4:20) of the full wrist extension position of reverse wrist curl, how could that possibly be better training of the climbing-specific aspect of wrist extensors than doing a static dead hang on crimp grip with added weight?

- As for the importance of extensors for pinch grips (2:52) - (not relevant for the terrain I climb, which does not include 5.12+ tufas), so he gives the obvious exercise for pinching -- well yeah . . . if you do climbs with pinch-grip cruxes, makes sense to train those specifically. But why not even better to use a system board which includes launches and latches with pinch holds of different sizes and shapes? Where's the _evidence_ that his non-climbing exercises are the right way?

- He says what's key in his second exercise is have extended fingers while pinching. Points out that this is rather different from the position while crimping (or reverse wrist curls), therefore it must be important to add this to your list of injury-prevention exercises.
Where's the _evidence_ that this has general injury-prevention benefit? (also for those of us who don't do routes with pinch cruxes?).

. . . Here Horst does not "make" any sort of case, just asserts that it must be so.

Ken

P.S. Horst is no worse in this regard than most other authorities on training for climbing. Climbing performance is really complicated, and so are climber's training patterns, so it's pretty hard to get statistically valid evidence about what works better.

kenr wrote:

- By his own demonstration (2:32), simply doing dead hangs using a crimp grip (which I do) already ought to be excellent training of these muscles.

IME, crimp grip on vertical hangs w/ straight arms (like on a hangboard) is not nearly sufficient. My weak (relatively) left arm wrist extensor got pretty aggravated from locking off small crimp on overhanging terrain a few years back. To this date, when I pinch on the RCTM board, I can make it  "dance" under enough stress.

Whatever other pseudo science there may be in his books, this is pretty solid advice.

Regardless, in the absence of solid science to the contrary, experience pretty much trumps everything when it comes to athletic training (science is usually the validator rather than the driving force of training methods).

There’s discussion of this antagonist issue by a doc in Chalk Talk podcast #23 at 34:30. She cites some research that seems to back up Horst.

reboot wrote:

Regardless, in the absence of solid science to the contrary, experience pretty much trumps everything when it comes to athletic training (science is usually the validator rather than the driving force of training methods).

Actually, I think science's main role in training has been to disprove incorrect theories and harmful practices. And occasionally validate useful ones.

And in defense of Horst, I read his mental training book, Maximum Climbing, then subsequently read Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance.

His positions were clearly supported by this current textbook. Not that that makes either correct, but still...

One final point, I personally like a wrist roller. I had weak wrist extensors, which definitely interfered with my ability to stabilize my wrist on certain holds. 

This is much better now after many months of training.

Mark, do you think the wrist roller is worth the money?  I can’t get myself to drop that much on a single exercise tool.  The flexbar I got a few months ago is working great, and seems to do a similar job as the wrist roller from what I’ve heard from others

I’ve never used a flex bar, not even sure how to!

But couldn’t  you just make a wrist roller?

All you need is some cord, a pvc pipe or wooden dowel the right size (like 2” maybe?) and a weight.