bäm Board Review

More and more climbers are beginning to understand and really believe in the idea that finger strength is the most important strength a climber can have and can never have too much of.

With that in mind, it makes sense to put some emphasis on training finger strength. Hangboards are the single best tool for this type of specific training.

Those who design hangboards have started to grasp the concept of designing the board for actual training versus how stylish the board looks.

One such board is the brainchild of Ben Spannuth, the bäm board.

The bäm board is most certainly an excellent training tool for those serious about making gains in finger strength.

It’s not flashy or fancy- it’s adjustable, minimal and effective.

“The goal with this board was to be able to set and slowly modify the difficulty of holds for the two most specific reasons, beyond technique, climbing gets more challenging: the holds get smaller and slopier.” -Ben Spannuth

Critical to the goal of getting stronger is being able to make the workout systematically more difficult.

If you want to bench press more, you add more weight to the barbell, simple as that. As climbers, if we want to make our fingers stronger, we can either decrease the size of the holds we grab or increase the load of weight we add on a given hold. Instead of selling you weights to accompany your hangboard, Ben has designed a fully adjustable board so that you can do the former, decrease the size of the holds you’re hanging.

Other hangboard designers have built boards that have progressively smaller holds (such as Eva Lopez’s Transgression Board) but Ben’s approach is slightly different.

The bäm board is designed with a focus on only a few grips: a 4-finger edge, 3-finger edge, and a mono, but all of the grips are fully adjustable; a first of it’s kind as far as we know.

Adjustable means you have the ability to increase or decrease the depth of the grips and/or the angle of the whole board itself.

Instead of the board being static and you being dynamic, moving from hold size to hold size, this  board itself is dynamic.

To Change the Depth of the Grips:

(it’s really simple)

-Loosen the tightening knobs at the base of the board (no tools required)

-Move the insert forward or backward to the desired hold depth

-Retighten the knobs.

The specific ranges of continuous depth change are 3.5 to 0.5 cm edges/pockets with conveniently placed hashmarks every 2mm.

This means you can accurately set the depth of the holds and easily measure your progress.

Additionally, you can adjust the angle of the hangboard itself to increase the difficulty further or differently.  This will make the grips less positive, i.e., slopier. As if the slopers on top of the board aren’t slopey enough…

To Adjust the Board Angle:

(it’s really simple)

-Remove the pins on either side of the board (again no tools necessary)

-Tilt the board forward or backward

-Replace the pins.

The adjustable angle creates 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50 deg slopers with the outer 15 degree and middle 20 degree slopers at their initial setting.

The board rotates in 10 degree increments between 0-30 degrees.

Mounting the bäm Board:

Mounting the board was a little more involved than your average hangboard. This is due to the adjustable nature of the board. The bäm board has a backboard that you first mount to your wall or doorway with screws, as you would any board. You then take the bäm board itself and line it up with the conveniently pre-drilled holes in the backboard. Then drill in slightly more heavy duty hardware (carriage bolts).

This is to accommodate for the torque in the board when you’re hanging on it at an angle. All of the hardware is included with the board.

Once the board is mounted it should feel very secure and the rest of the adjustments to the board won’t require the use of any tools, as mentioned above.

*We learned they are now shipping the board attached to the backer so you only have to screw the backer into studs.

Training on the bäm Board:

Training on the bäm board is awesome.

Ben’s adjustable design truly lets you dial in the difficulty that is right for you.

One of the first things we noticed was how nice the wood feels to train on; the grips have nice rounded lips. It is the type of surface your skin could handle training on after a climbing day or gym session.

The wooden board also looks nice enough to have hanging in your living room.

bäm Board Looking Nice

The adjustable depth feature is easy to use. Sure, it’s not as easy as simply moving your hands from one grip to the next because you have to adjust knobs and move parts. But as a training tool, we think it’s systematically superior for exactly that reason.

You can customize your board literally by a matter of millimeters at a time.  This also makes keeping track of your progression really easy to do. And who doesn’t like to note progess?

As far as individual holds: even if the bäm board just had the 4 finger edge, we would still buy this board.

It allows you to train everything from a good hold to a tiny edge. The three finger pocket is also well designed (though for larger fingers the fit may be a little bit snug).

There is no two finger pocket, which personally we would like to see. That being said, there is an indentation on the backing of the three finger pocket to make using this pocket with only two fingers more convenient. The mono is also comfortable and well designed and starts as a reasonable hold as far as monos go. It can certainly be made a way worse hold than either of us would care to hang off of, ha.

In addition to the three main holds, which we found to be the main focus of the board, there are two slopers on top. From outside to in there is a center convex and two sets of slopers: one difficult sloper (20 degrees) and one more moderate sloper (15 degrees).

There is no jug on this board.

For a more advanced hangboarder, with the adjustable holds at their largest, warming up on the board is doable. For a more novice hangboarder, warming up may be more of a challenge.
People have been saying the board is a little pricey at $149.  We say it’s worth it. The value you get out of training on the bäm board justifies the cost.

The Specs:

Board Dimensions:

• Width: 58 cm
• Height: 9 cm
• Depth: 5 cm
• Weight: roughly 7 lbs

Price: $149

Distributor: bamclimbing.com

So where does the name bäm come from?

“bäm! is from this awesome guy Johannes from Germany.  It’s the German word for encouragement like come on, venga, or allez but has more of a power connotation; think of Jan Hojer yelling at you in German while you’re at your crux.  It’s when you’ve rehearsed a crux countless times and just need that extra punch, pounce, snatch, little energy, whatever you want to call it (bäm!) that gets you through that hard section and cruising toward the top.  I met Johannes climbing in Yangshuo, China and he belayed me on one of my hardest routes, probably the hardest I’ve tried and certainly the most I’ve yelled, and I don’t think I would have done without him.” -Ben Spannuth

Final thoughts from Dan:

“Overall I think the bäm board is the best training focused hangboard I’ve ever used. I really like the ability to incrementally change the depth of the holds so i can systematically make my workout more difficult. I was surprised how much I also liked changing the angle of the whole board. Increased difficulty from changing the angle provides a different challenge that felt to me as equally effective as changing the depth of the hold. It really added another dimension to my training session on the board.”

Final thoughts from Katy:

“I’m newer to hangboarding than Dan and I also think the båm board is an awesome training tool. I admit, I find the board challenging but that’s the point. Sure, I’d love to see a proper jug on the board for warming up, but for effective training this board has it all. As someone who sometimes has to hangboard super early in the morning before work, I’m thankful for the comfortable wooden grips instead of rough plastic. I fully recommend the bäm board.”

*** To purchase a bäm board, go to bamclimbing.com***