What's your crack trainer workout?

This isn't a post about how to build one or a debate over adding grip or not. I want to hear what your routine is. Whether your exercises are training  for a specific climb, just another thing to stay crack fit or you're a masochist - let's see em!

My setup is horizontal - sizes ranging from tight.75 to baggy #4. Warmup with hangs in various sizes then I move on to 4x4 laps and then end on sizes that aren't friendly for my size of hands.

I hang a 4' long wooden tips crack from my door and just try to get my butt off the floor. It's for a specific climb. Sessions are short. 

I typically warm up with the lockdown drill shown in this video by Tom Randall. After that my main focus is typically a set distance divided by the length of my trainer (16ft) = laps for that session. The goal is to hit that lap count in the least amount of attempts possible. As for sizing, i set my trainer to be tight of a certain size on one end and tipped out on the other. I also keep it at a certain size for ~10 sessions or so depending on how much i struggle or what needs work. 

Jon Nelson wrote:

I hang a 4' long wooden tips crack from my door and just try to get my butt off the floor. It's for a specific climb. Sessions are short. 

Jon do you have a photo of your setup? I have a 4' section of tips/fingers on the woody but don't love it. Maybe the door would be better.. 

My wooden crack connects to some hooks I made for my homemade TRX-type system.

Jon Nelson wrote:

My wooden crack connects to some hooks I made for my homemade TRX-type system.

Jon, I can't tell the size of your setup. Is that .5-.75ish? Smaller at the bottom? Do you hang on it with just hands or are you squeezing your feet in? 

Jenna, it is 1/2" wide at the bottom and 5/8" at the top.  I keep my feet on the floor, or on the wedge-ramps in the picture. Overall, rather pathetic--nobody else would even call it "training".

Cool thread.  Here's my crude set-up:

The black holds in the middle are finger/thin hands and the adjustable vertical on the left is usually set to off-width. 

Adjustable Horizontal is usually set to hand size.  

I run 3-5 laps on each with 2-3 min rest between laps.  Once the size gets "easy" I mock lead it which adds a.good degree of realism.  I normally only do this 1x per week assuming the weekend is spent outdoors.  

I have a route in mind that starts with fingers and leads to a #2-3 roof crack.  It's above my pay grade now but hopefully I can gain enough confidence to try it soon.  I train the offwidth because I want to be well rounded, plus my wife loves the Voo.

Jenna Frickinfrack wrote:

This isn't a post about how to build one or a debate over adding grip or not. I want to hear what your routine is. Whether your exercises are training  for a specific climb, just another thing to stay crack fit or you're a masochist - let's see em!

My setup is horizontal - sizes ranging from tight.75 to baggy #4. Warmup with hangs in various sizes then I move on to 4x4 laps and then end on sizes that aren't friendly for my size of hands.

Just live in a cellar full of cracks and you will become the worlds best!

My crack adjusts from .5" to 6" in 14" segments.  Its 8ft long, but goes up to 10'4" in height because it starts a few feet off the ground.  You can create a range of sizes at each carriage bolt, forcing you to use different styles of jams, fingers/locks, and fists as you go.

For workouts: I usually do a 4x4 up and down, or mix in laps with whatever boulder workout I'm doing on the homewall next to it.  I will sometimes build an anchor with a sling below the crack and do lead-solo laps on it while placing gear.  I can fit nuts in the back constriction by the washers, ball nuts in a tiny seam on the side, and all ranges of cams in the main crack.  Definitely gives a more realistic tempo to place gear and clip the rope as you go.  Also, lowering from the rafters at the end of a lap is kind of fun.

I had a crack trainer but took it down since it was only 12 foot high got extemely boring. I might build an adjustable roof trainer soon.

 Instead I train crack at a local gym in Michigan. I will do 4 routes in a row: corner crack, finger crack, thin hands, perfect hands. They are about 40 feet tall. Thats 160 feet of crack per set. I do 3-4 sets. 

Luckily I live in a climbing town so I just go outside. But honestly and I'm not kidding, jujitsu is some of the best offwidth training.

I'm seriously contemplating making my own now. The two at my gym vary so much, the easier set is a good intro, but it's harder set route sounds similar to yours, only made out of a Synthetic rock, I can get my 1st knuckle in with good squeeze, but it's just a little sketch for me right now.

In my gym (movement boulder) we have two cracks, a 50ft .75 to 1s crack (probably 12- with feet in, comparable to Koyne crack), and another crack that goes from 4s, to 3s, to 2,s (5.10 probably).. Once a week I do 15 minutes of arcing on the wider crack. Climbing up and down climbing on top rope without stopping. My belayer usually loves me for this. Then I usually give the smaller crack a lead burn. Doing this once a week with a day of hard bouldering and weight lifting has yielded some really good results for me and my training.

I have a question for some of the experienced members in this thread.. im training for moonlight in March and have been contemplating building a  .4/.5 crack trainer to hang off a door frame and just lieback on and practice placing gear blindly for extended periods of time. Is that just silly? Or would it be worth while to add this into my training?

Ryan Enright wrote:

 Is that just silly? Or would it be worth while to add this into my training?

I haven’t climbed moonlight, but I can say the thing that helped my laybacking the most was open handed hangboarding. I have a smooth wooden metolius hangboard and doing 10/5 repeaters on the jugs really boosted my ability to hold on to smooth sandstone corners. I’m not a training expert, so someone else could chime in here with better experience. Aside from that, placing gear blindly is really all about knowing your finger size in relation to the crack, I’m not sure if practicing a simulation would be that helpful, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

good luck on the send, I’ve heard running it out is the way!

Cory N wrote:

I haven’t climbed moonlight, but I can say the thing that helped my laybacking the most was open handed hangboarding. I have a smooth wooden metolius hangboard and doing 10/5 repeaters on the jugs really boosted my ability to hold on to smooth sandstone corners. I’m not a training expert, so someone else could chime in here with better experience. Aside from that, placing gear blindly is really all about knowing your finger size in relation to the crack, I’m not sure if practicing a simulation would be that helpful, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

good luck on the send, I’ve heard running it out is the way!

Great advice. I have a nice flat edge hold on my hangboard. I've been bouldering, weight lifting, and hangboarding regularly for training. I'll make sure to focus on that flat edge a bit!

We have a 40ft crack in the university gym that goes from hands to tips to wide #4. I try to go up and down without touching the ground, my PR is up down up down

Ryan Enright wrote:

In my gym (movement boulder) we have two cracks, a 50ft .75 to 1s crack (probably 12- with feet in, comparable to Koyne crack), and another crack that goes from 4s, to 3s, to 2,s (5.10 probably).. Once a week I do 15 minutes of arcing on the wider crack. Climbing up and down climbing on top rope without stopping. My belayer usually loves me for this. Then I usually give the smaller crack a lead burn. Doing this once a week with a day of hard bouldering and weight lifting has yielded some really good results for me and my training.

I have a question for some of the experienced members in this thread.. im training for moonlight in March and have been contemplating building a  .4/.5 crack trainer to hang off a door frame and just lieback on and practice placing gear blindly for extended periods of time. Is that just silly? Or would it be worth while to add this into my training?

Hard liebacking often puts you in a pretty strange, rounded back position especially with high feet. I would imagine training repeatedly in that position would likely lead to injury over time. I would think Cory's finger training suggestions with some upper back engagement exercises (face pulls, rear delt crossovers, etc.) and some legs (front barbell squats, calf raises,etc.) would give you the strength and endurance capabilities without the risk of injury. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in as well but thats what I think

left to right, right to left, large to small, small to large, inch by inch, big reaches, eyes closed... what else?

I run laps up and down on 4.3m / 6cm crack. Laddering or one hand leading thump up or down. 

I try to gain a pain tolerance to my feets.  After hour or so session my feets are numb and hands swollen. Fun, eh?

Ryan Enright wrote:

In my gym (movement boulder) we have two cracks, a 50ft .75 to 1s crack (probably 12- with feet in, comparable to Koyne crack), and another crack that goes from 4s, to 3s, to 2,s (5.10 probably).. Once a week I do 15 minutes of arcing on the wider crack. Climbing up and down climbing on top rope without stopping. My belayer usually loves me for this. Then I usually give the smaller crack a lead burn. Doing this once a week with a day of hard bouldering and weight lifting has yielded some really good results for me and my training.

I have a question for some of the experienced members in this thread.. im training for moonlight in March and have been contemplating building a  .4/.5 crack trainer to hang off a door frame and just lieback on and practice placing gear blindly for extended periods of time. Is that just silly? Or would it be worth while to add this into my training?

I just layback that wide crack in Boulder and run laps on it. Sometimes I jam the feet. Smearing them on the other side of the crack is much harder. With all the open hand laybacking in the gym I've noticed some gains (and mostly confidence) outside. Note that the Boulder gym cracks have like zero friction. I struggled on the 5.12 gym crack only to, relatively, cruise up similar climbs in the creek.