If you are stuck at a plateau in your rock climbing and you would really like to break through into the 5.12 grade consistently, we have something for you that will help you. So back in January, coach Alex Steiger did a series called the 5.12 Breakthrough Series, and it was a series of four presentations and one big q and a session on how to break into climbing 5.12 through 18 years of climbing and thousands of hours of coaching in the gym. Coach Alex has seen a lot of people who are capable of climbing 5.12 and they’re just not doing it. It’s almost never a strength issue. It’s so much more than that. It’s often about mindset when approaching the grade and the technique and skills required to climb that grade, like knowing how to stay focused and use good technique. When you get pumped.

(00:50)
In this series, Alex will tell you how to structure your climbing sessions. To break into the 5.12 grade or climb it consistently, she’ll go into strength training a bit and give you sample workouts for finger strength, core strength and shoulder strength. To support climbing 5.12, she’ll go over how to approach endurance training so you can hold onto worse holds for longer and make clips even when you’re pumped. She’ll provide drills to help you safely practice using worse handholds and footholds and how to make longer reaches and more technical and committing movements. If you’ve been struggling to get out of a plateau in the five 10 or five 11 range, you’ll be taught by an experienced climbing coach exactly what you need to do in the gym and outdoors to up your climbing game. Alex will help you shift your mindset so you believe that 5.12 is possible.

(01:41)
You’ll also find out the solutions to the six most common mistakes five 11 climbers are making, and she’ll provide concrete tactics for projecting to make the process more efficient. When you purchase the 5.12 Breakthrough Series, you get immediate access to four recordings of the 90 minute Zoom calls that you did back in January when she ran the first cohort of this. It’s $97 rather than the original 147 just because they’re recorded and not live. But you will get live support. She’ll have a Slack channel that is available until August 28th where you can ask questions, give her videos to critique, and to answer people’s questions yourself. She’ll also be doing a live q and a session on August 28th where you can ask her any questions that you have. You can find this all@trainingbeta.com slash 5 1 2 as in 5.12, but there’s no.in there. So training beta.com/ 5 1 2, you’ll get all of the information on it, all of the details of what you’ll get. In each of the calls, you’ll see a bunch of testimonials from people who loved the program when they went through it and you’ll be able to start right away when you purchase. You also have the opportunity to add on a one hour coaching call with Alex one-on-one if you feel like you need more help. This is only available to purchase until Friday, July 28th, 2023. So if you wanna get your hands on it and start learning right away, you can go to training beta.com/ 5 1 2.

(03:33)
This is the Training Beta podcast and I’m your host Neely Quinn. Thanks for joining me for another episode, all about training for climbing and all things climbing. So in this episode, I sat down with Coach Matt Pinkus and coach Alex Steiger, who are both our resident coaches here at Training Beta. You can work with them if you want to. You can go to training beta.com/coaching to learn all about what they offer. But a lot of times they come on the podcast and we talk about certain topics that they find to be like really relevant with their clients and just really popular with climbers in general. So today we’re talking about finger training and we’re doing a series on common sense training. And so we did Common Sense energy systems and today we’re gonna do common sense fingers. So if you are looking for a podcast that’s going to tell you exactly how to train your fingers, meaning like five seconds on, five seconds off for so many reps.

(04:40)
And how much rest in between the sets and how many sets and and how many times a week. There are plenty of those episodes on this podcast and I’ve talked to a lot of people about finger training over the years. If you just Google finger training training beta, I’m sure those things will come up. But I think that the reason that they wanted to do this episode is partly because there are so many episodes just like that. And so I’m guilty of, you know, sort of contributing to a bit of paralysis by analysis for people. And so what they’re trying to impart in this episode is just like some common sense. It’s not common sense but <laugh>. It’s just some information that you can use to ask yourself the right questions to figure out what you should be doing on the fingerboard and why, so that you can be more of a coach to yourself.

(05:36)
And as always, they came in really prepared with a lot of great information. It certainly eased my mind because sometimes I also suffer from paralysis by analysis, meaning like I have so many options having done this podcast so many hundreds of times and talked about all of the training that climbers can do that I get confused to. And so hopefully this episode will help you determine what you need to do on the hang board or or not in order to train your fingers and get them strong. So without further ado, here are Matt Pinkus and Alex Steiger and I’ll talk to you on the other side. Enjoy. All right, welcome back to the show Matt and Alex. How’s it going?

Hi Neely. It’s good to be here and things are going pretty well actually. I went into kind of a depressive hole and read like five romantic fantasy novels in a short period of time and then ended up with a neck tweak because of it. <laugh> like kind of ridiculous. And it’s because my shoulder is kind of tweaked and I was really upset about it. And so basically I was just like went into a little hole, which I’m glad I went into because I’m now out of it and I’m all psyched on stuff and doing the things and getting back into routines and my shoulder is rehabbing nicely. I actually tweaked it on the root on top rope, seeing if I could clip a clip that I think I have to skip. Like I reached way down and under when I was pretty fatigued and tired and then like felt a sharp like, oh no, I think I just tweaked something. Mm-hmm. So it’s been an interesting one ’cause it only hurts like with cross body stuff, but I can still climb really well if like my arms are out to the side. Mm-hmm. But the whole bottom of my project is cross body pockets. Yeah. It’s like so I’m like, dang it. But other than that, things have been good and I’m so happy July 4th is over because it’s my least favorite holiday. ’cause I hate fireworks.

You hate fireworks or your dog hates fireworks?

I despise fireworks and so does she. It’s who knows what came first, but we both hate them. <laugh>.

Well I am really sorry about your shoulder. I actually didn’t know that you tweaked it. What, did you tweak it this year on it?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. That’s, that’s okay.

That’s a bummer. It happens.

But as always, you came up with a productive way to get through your depressive hole and I’m glad that you’re a little bit out of it now.

I don’t, I don’t know if you can call reading binge reading, like cheesy steamy romance, romantic fantasies, productive, but thank you for saying that.

It might be more productive than sitting around crying and sleeping or something, you know?

oh yeah. My imagination is on point at the moment.

Yes, yes. Exactly. And Matt, how are you doing?

I’m doing pretty well. Funny. The 4th of July is your least favorite holiday. It’s my favorite holiday.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Not surprising

Matt Pincus (08:36):

Yeah. And I just spent the fourth in at home in Lander, which does the fourth pretty big. And you should probably stay clear if here ’cause it’s like the largest volume of fireworks you could imagine for like seven hours straight over the entirety of the town. But you know, good times. But no, I’ve been climbing, we’ve had, it’s like staying cooler than normal right now. So I’m still climbing a bunch and trying hard on my project and hoping to see it all through getting close and yeah, enjoying kind of being in the thick of it.

Yeah. How much in the thick of it are you?

I’d say about as in the thick of it as I’ve ever been, I feel pretty close. I’m probably only gonna get one more day based looking at the weather getting hot and it’s, I’m sort of in the phase of, could be any go, which I’ve been at before on the route. But I’ve kind of, I feel super close so fingers crossed and psyched to try hard.

You feel closer than you did last year?

Yeah, I do. I’m falling on the same move, which is like the, you stick it, you’ve got a good chance of sending move from the ground. But I’ve also, I’ve moved my low point down the route by, I mean close to half the route I’d say. So

That’s great

Of, of at least like the meaningful climbing on the route. So.

So compared to last year, what do you think you did well in your preparation for this route this year? To do a little, like, to feel a little bit better on it now?

Well if I compare it to like last spring when I sort of showed up not feeling great and sort of struggled, I am healthy, which is a good thing. Like I, my fingers were all tweaky last year and I was sort of constantly having to battle that and that was pretty limiting. And it was also limiting in sort of lead up to the season of like getting my fitness and capacity up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I just kind of felt behind the curve on that the entire time. Whereas this year I was able to, I stayed healthy, I feel strong and I made because of the big winter, we were like unsure if when we were gonna be able to get to the cliff and how much of a season it’s already like pretty short season usually. And so the only thing I could really control within that was like making sure I was as fit as possible when I showed up. And so from like an endurance perspective, I feel like I’ve definitely sort of the fittest I’ve ever been and went into that season rather than sort of showing up like, oh I’ll build some specific fitness on the route. I was sort of like, oh no, I’m already like feeling quite fit so cool. Which was great. As somebody who’s like never historically been graded endurance climbing, it’s a nice feeling.

Yeah. And I wrote an email recently to our list about your checklist and how I’ve been using it on my own little pro projects. Have you been ticking things off of your checklist lately?

Well ironically on this route I, the only box going into the season that wasn’t checked on my or original checklist was RedPoint. However, in moving my low point further down the route I have added to, I sort of like did two low points and was like, well, might as well just take my own advice and add a new line to my checklist and check it. So yeah, I guess I’ve done two good low points and, and they’ve been in the, like last week, week and a half that I added a line to the list. And I think, I mean we’re talking about the checklist idea. Like it sounds funny, right, to be like adding sub goals to like convince yourself like after the fact to convince yourself that you’re like check checking something off. But they were obvious links. I just didn’t think I needed to do them necessarily. And as I’ve, you know, been stuck on this route and been close for a while, it became a, you know, you have to do something to help bridge the gap. And so they were, they became links that I felt like I needed to do once I wasn’t making it through. So.

Well, yeah, and I’ve, I mean what I’m noticing is like even if I’m make a retroactive check mark where I’m like, oh I just took the falls that were scary for me, that check like <laugh>. Yeah. And then I feel like I’ve accomplished something. So at least it’s it, I’m assuming it’s helping you stay motivated to keep trying.

Yeah, as much as I’m sort of like being sarcastic about it, like it definitely helps. Like I, the day I did the, I basically did like two lower low points that added quite a bit to, you know, what I was climbing to the top from. And the day I did the first one, I couldn’t make it through. It was just like the first day of really hot conditions and it was kind of like terrible. And I basically, I went from being about to thinking I was showing up to send to, I didn’t manage to clip a single bolt on lead from the ground. Wow. I couldn’t make it through the opening boulder. And so I just like flailed all day and then I literally just like pulled through and pulled on and went. And so I was like essentially I was really frustrated and then I did this link and it actually felt amazing and I like climbed really well and felt really strong doing it. And that was motivating. But yeah, by like sort of formalizing that on the checklist, it certainly took me from a place of feeling like maybe I should stop for the season to being psyched to keep

Trying. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Well I hope on your next day you have some success. I won’t jinx anything by saying like sending

Yeah, hope it goes well. Appreciate it. Fingers crossed.

So, and then Alex, before we get started with the topic for the day, I’m just curious, like you probably went into this season with hopes of obviously sending and doing well on your project. And so with this new injury, ’cause I think a lot of people can really relate with this unfortunately. Like what does it do for your expectations or hopes and dreams for this season on your project?

Yeah, great question. So to be very frank, I was very upset for me like it, not in like outward ways per se, but I definitely had a lot of excitement built up for the start of the season. And thankfully that already got sidetracked because rifle was closed for a while and really nice weather days were passing by. So when I started going post the closure, ’cause we went one time before it got closed and I felt amazing on the project actually. And that was nice because it, I was like, yeah, this can definitely happen. And then the first time back after it opened, that’s when I tweaked my shoulder. Mm. So it was already starting to get hot. It was already way hotter than it was the first time we had went. My expectations realistically had already dialed back to, it would be a long shot to send before it gets super hot.

(15:44)
Like realistically I’m training and I’m gearing up and I’m preparing myself to give it as much effort as I can in the fall. And so as bummed as I was about tweaking my shoulder, it just kind of enforced what my timeline was gonna be and helped me realign what I’m working on, which is something I tell all of my clients and myself regularly, which is showing up healthy is better than showing up like perfectly trained and not healthy any time. And I’ve been actually putting off stuff with this shoulder or trying to rehab it, but the puzzle piece just never fully fit kind of deal. It’s been a bother for a while. So it just reframed my thinking a little bit into the long-term. Like yes, I would love to climb this, climb this one climb, but I would love to be progressing my climbing over the next five years more than just sending this thing early in the season. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And so it seems like you’ve set your sights on some easier things for now, right?

Yeah. Well I don’t know about that. I think we’ll go next week, Friday, Saturday and I’ll just see how my shoulder feels, maybe pull through those bottom moves. But I definitely need to build fitness. I definitely need to honor where I’m at in my rehab. So I am curious, I’m just trying to be as curious as possible and not as like this is what I’m doing, I’m gonna force my body because I was definitely able to force my body up the climb to a pretty like high place, like over half of the route while injured and that was really detrimental to my mind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> doing that. It’s like, it’s good to know I can do that, but I was like, this isn’t how I wanna climb. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this isn’t why I climb.

Yeah, yeah. In pain it’s not why you climb.

Yeah. In pain like, like oh no. Yeah. And I’m learning every time I go to PT and I really dive into a particular thing, I feel like it’s the best thing I could do for professional development. I’m learning all these new little exercises and modalities and stress and all these things that I’m just really psyched on. So it’s good. Good-ish,

Right? <laugh>. Yeah. Cool. Well yeah, I hope that your shoulder heals soon and that we have it’s healing. We have fun on Monday when we go climbing together. So

We always have fun. I’m excited. Yeah.

So moving on. We are talking about fingers today. Who wants to introduce this topic?

I can start. So yeah, we wanted to kind of continue our sort of common sense training series here with talking about finger training because it seems like one of, I think any climbing coach out there, it is probably one of the things we get the most questions about. So it seems like a pretty good candidate to kind of just lay our philosophy out for it and hopefully people will, it’ll help cut through some of the noise.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, finger training seems to be one of those things that people, like I even have a paralysis by analysis about, like I had to tell ask my husband to, to tell me what to do on the fingerboard the other day. ’cause I was like, I don’t know, I have 14 articles and six podcast episodes just about finger training. And it just can be very overwhelming for people to like consider what is the best thing for them to do. So I really like the idea of this episode, especially coming from you too, because you are both very common sense coaches. So where do we wanna begin this? And actually before we do that, Alex, what are your beginning thoughts on this?

Yeah, so why we’re having this talk to me is because it’s very relevant to people and I think all climbers want this magic pill to getting their fingers stronger. And as a result of wanting that magic, they often end up tweaked with very finger injuries ranging from just inflamed knuckles to minor pulley tears, whatnot. And I find that it’s really interesting that even a minor pulley injury can like result in a 20 pound difference in pull strength between the hands. Mm-hmm. So I want to approach this talk holistically and as simply as possible with the ultimate intention of helping people avoid doing too much when it comes to finger training and then tweaking their fingers.

So do you both see that often where people have finger tweaks from training their fingers?

Well, I think it depends on how you define training your fingers. And I think that’ll become clear here in a minute. I don’t see people getting hurt often on the board if we’re talking, if that’s what you’re kind of getting at. But I certainly see people overdoing it in a sort of total training volume sense and where the basically the dosage of intense loading for the fingers is too much. And that’s when we sort of develop those kind of overuse injuries. So whether it’s like Alex said inflamed knuckles or you know, strain pullies, things like that.

So they’re just like climbing too much and training their fingers on a hang board at the same time and not doing it at the right dosage.

Yeah, I mean it’s like, okay, I’m, I’m bored climbing, I’m climbing outside on crimpy boulders or Pockety problem or Pockety roots or whatever. And then I’m also doing a ton of really hard, you know, really hard finger boarding at a super high intensity all the time. And so, yeah, I don’t think it’s like, it’s easy to look at the, something like the hang board is, it’s like the most isolating thing there, but I don’t actually think that’s the main cause of a lot of the tweaks.

Yeah. I can think of like two or three instances over my entire time climbing and coaching people where somebody actually had a moment on a hang board where they heard a finger mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I believe two of those were in C O V I D and they were due to people just like starting up these massive finger training routines and injuring their finger or hearing a pop or something of that sort like early in their hang boarding session when they weren’t warmed up. Mm. Okay. Like they just started loading. They’re like, oh I, but even that for all the people who are doing that, I think it’s a really, really low number. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> of times I’ve heard of like actually hurting yourself in that context. But I do and have seen lots of finger tweaks and things that I would queue up to just too much dosage, too much volume and like underestimating the load that a lot of hanging protocols put on your fingers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because it might not feel that hard, but if you think about it when you’re climbing, you’re often having 50 to 90 or 80% of the weight in your feet and then all of a sudden you go and you start this training where you’re at like 90 to 150% of the weight on your fingers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> that that could be a big, big jump in. People sometimes don’t realize that.

And so are you saying that you see the same thing that Matt sees where it’s just like a climbing outside and then I’m going to go on a board and then I’m gonna do some hang boarding and like then you see people have finger

Injuries. Yeah. And they often come up real slow and nagging like, yeah, this finger’s been kind of bothering me for a couple weeks. It wasn’t bothering me enough that I felt like I should even say anything. But now it’s like, it’s not really getting better now it’s kind of getting worse and then it’s just this lingering thing for a while. Like I see that a lot and I think that is very, very related to dosing. Okay.

Yeah, I think a, a really simple way of putting it is that we, you might notice a, like Alex said, a sort of slow arriving, nagging finger tweak. You might notice it first on the hang board, but it’s unlikely that it was just caused by the hang board and you just did

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

It’s more of like something you need to be looking at from an overall sense.

Okay. So how do you two approach finger training with your clients and with yourselves?

So can I start first by just uh, getting our definition of what we consider finger training? Yeah.

Perfect.

So mine is that we want to mindfully aim to improve our ability to hold certain grip positions under certain amounts of stress and doing specific things that are measurable and progressable with the intention of seeing progress. So just to summarize that a little bit, I don’t consider finger training to be going and projecting and just trying to send boulders in the gym. I think that’s great. That is climbing, that is projecting. But for something to be considered training, to me, I really want it to be measurable. I want it to be progressable and I want it to be mindful. And the first thing I tell clients when it comes to finger training is my goal for them is to end up with this vice grip where they can put their hand in a certain grip position on a certain kind of hold and not have it change or collapse or fail while they’re using it without it being an intention.

(25:34)
So like if you choose to like go from a full crimp to a three finger drag or a three finger drag to a full crimp or whatever, as long as you mindfully change it, that’s great. But if your grip is just failing all the time in positions, that’s my point for finger training. So when I’m looking at clients climbing, if I see that their grip position is failing or they’re unable to hold holds, I’m gonna say let’s add finger training into your program. Mm. But if I watch somebody and I don’t see that at all, the last thing I’m gonna say is let’s spend a lot of your time finger training. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>.

Okay. Like, and it just comes down to like do you have a vice grip on the holds your needing to be using for your level?

Matt, anything to add to that?

Yeah, kind of, I think I, I maybe even defined it a little more broadly. I just kind of lump finger training in as part of our strength training. So I think that, I mean it’s a belabored point at this point in the climbing training discourse that sort of off the wall strength training has value. Right. And I think we can see our, for the same reasons that just becoming a stronger, more durable athlete and you know, our pull strength or push strength or hinging or squatting, whatever. Right. I think the same reasons that that’s beneficial. It’s beneficial to have stronger fingers and a lot of those, a lot of that comes down to, I’d say it’s sort of two things. One is it obviously we can like produce more force and hold onto smaller holds, but it’s also, it’s like great it’s injury prevention for our fingers.

(27:08)
Like we’re gonna have more of a buffer then. So I don’t know about you guys, but if I go outside and there’s a route I want to do or a boulder I want to do and there’s a small crimp or a tweaky pocket or something like that’s not, my reaction to that isn’t, oh I should, I shouldn’t do this boulder problem or I shouldn’t do this route. I still want to do it. But by having stronger fingers, I’m gonna run a lower risk of injuring myself when I still go try hard and pull in that pocket in the performance setting.

Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean you always, you often preach like the purpose of strength training is to make a durable body, I mean one of the purposes Yeah. To not get injured and so the same applies here.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. It’s same whether we’re talking shoulders, elbows, whatever. Right. It fingers fall into the same category.

Yeah. Okay. So how would you tell a broad audience like this to go about training their fingers in a common sense way, Alex?

Yeah, so I would say like, just for a reference, here’s a question that I’ll just answer is like three main ways that we can integrate finger training into our own training or for clients. And I think one thing I’m really excited about with this call is that I know Matt and myself have a different approach here and I think they’re both good and I don’t think they’re wrong. And so I’m really glad that we each have our own perspective. My main way of integrating finger training in is off a hang board, like on wall climbing specific. Like I love being directive with clients to like, hey, we’ve noticed that you are half crimp while climbing and you’re active gripping. So I consider active gripping anything where we’re actually like squeezing the holds and we’re not trying to hang passively on our skin. And active gripping also typically means that we’re gonna have more bend in our finger joints.

(29:20)
So I’m not gonna get super into defining the grip positions in this call. We can find, we can put a, a reference or a description of that. You can find that in multiple places. But so active gripping, if I notice somebody is like collapsing out of active gripping positions or just not using them in places that I think they apply, I wanna give them sets and reps of working on that on the wall if possible. So I’ll be like, hey, go find an angle where you can half crimp for eight moves, rest three minutes, do that times four or five, do that two to three times a week and as part of your like second warmup. So you do your normal warmup, then you go do that, then go climb like you normally would. I like doing that in my own training too, where if I’m like, oh my three finger drag is really having issues, I’m gonna try and just be mindful about incorporating that grip position into my climbing.

(30:17)
More like getting on things mindfully, doing it in my, before I just lose myself to projecting whatever via some sets and reps on stuff. Or the other main way I always use finger training is in my warmup as part of my warmup. I always warm up with a hang board with some hangs there. There’s really very few exceptions to that where I go upstairs and I do like five seconds on, five seconds off times three or four in a three finger drag with progressive loading. And then I do that with a half crimp and then I do that with a full crimp and I just warm up my fingers that way. But even that organic amount every time I climb I think really adds to the overall picture and just getting more comfortable with grip positions. So the other thing is utilizing a green, yellow, red mentality.

(31:05)
So just to explain that, the reason I wanna use the color code scale is just so we could be really objective about understanding how our fingers are feeling. So if I do a hang board session or I do my reps on a board in a half crimp the next day I am gonna be like, how do my fingers feel? Are they green, totally fine, yellow kind of stiff? Or are they red kind of angry? And if they are yellow, I will probably do the exact same stimulus for as many sessions as it takes until they are green. I’m not going to increase the stimulus. If they’re red, I’m gonna back off the stimulus quite a bit. Or if any part of my body is red from it back off and if they’re green, that gives me the okay to maybe add in another set or add in a couple more moves or increase the angle, increase the stimulus in some way, shape or form. But when it comes to fingers, yellow and red to me are really to be avoided. Or you just be mindful of like you’re aware of it, you’re mindful of it, you’re like, I’m gonna keep this stimulus the same. Which kind of goes, ties back to how I define it, is it should be measurable and it should be progressable, but it also means it should be like the opposite of progressable retractable. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, regressive. Regressive. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, I think that’s a good word. Okay. Those are my three things.

Yeah. Great Matt?

Well in terms of how I integrated finger training into my, my own training, I load my fingers on a hang board every day. People listening to this, if you’re, they follow climate training world, like they’ll be familiar with the Emile a abrahamson. Basically it’s, they calls it like a no hang protocol and it’s sort of hanging with your feet on the ground. You know, he’s saying like 80% kind of body weight but not actually lifting your feet up in a variety of grip positions. And he does it, you know, two to three times a day kind of thing and at six hour intervals. And it’s based on this Keith bar study. And I don’t know, I do that because it makes my fingers feel healthy and it fits into my daily life. Uh, you know, I’m sitting in my living room recording this right now. It takes me approximately four seconds to walk downstairs where my hang board is and exactly 10 minutes to do that. So in 10 minutes and four seconds I can, you know, do some daily loading on my fingers and just promote, you know, blood flow and general tendon health. So that’s one way I do it because as I said, it’s like injury prevention is like the main reason I’m training my fingers so that I can do the climbing I want to do without getting tweaky or getting hurt.

Right. Yeah. So you do it literally every day or every climbing day or, or…

No, literally every day.

And what is the protocol exactly?

It’s 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off for 10 total, like hang. So it’s, you know, it takes 10 minutes and it, I go through a series, it’s like of different grip positions there and it, and essentially it’s like you’re, you’re pulling onto, you’re weighting your fingers on the board till you feel some kind of strain, but it’s, you know, I’m not picking my feet up off the ground. It’s not full body weight, it’s, you know, it’s basically low intensity, high frequency loading.

And you’re doing different grips, different finger positions.

Yeah, so I do kind of like four finger half crimp for four of those, of the 10 rounds. I do a three finger drag. I do different pocket teams, like middle team, front team. I do some like isolating. So I do those times one each. And then I do like a two middle, two half cramp, a front two half cramp and a mono.

Okay. So you do five grips,

Five grips. Yeah. 10 total hangs and five grips. Okay. But there’s no, like I, I don’t want people to think that that’s like anything super thought out. It’s mostly just habit and I mostly just took it from meal and it, I, it’s also, yeah, I climb in it, I climb a lot on limestone in lander that’s super pockety. So I kind of, I work on the pockets and I also, the only one of those grips I do more than once is the forefinger half crimp. And I am, if I compare my strength across scripts, like in the passive versus active kind of category that Alex was talking about, I’m stronger, much, much stronger in sort of passive grips in open hand positions than I am in cram per half current positions. So I kind of prioritize that more in my training.

So you’re doing this always, or while you’re projecting, you’re doing this to maintain or are you ever doing any other kind of protocol besides this at this point? Because I know you have in the past, you know, you’ve gone through all kinds of iterations.

Yeah, so I mean this is something I just do in the background. I, I do it before I leave the house and I’m not even super religious about like the six hour window or anything like that that you like. Like I think in an ideal world you would like do this six hours before going climbing or six hours before you do it again. That’s sort of what the study it’s based on says. But I do it before, right before I leave the house to go climbing outside and if nothing else, hey I’m getting a good, I’m starting the process of warming up my fingers and that’s fine. So I, I don’t really don’t overthink it, I just kind of do it every day. Okay. Yep. But I definitely do do other sort of training on top of that and that just depends on where I’m at in my year and I change those protocols periodically and evolve that over time.

Okay. Alex, any thoughts on Matt’s thoughts?

Yeah, so it scares me a little bit that people might hear that and just go about it on their own and not realize something that I think is really important. ’cause I do prescribe that to people and at times of the year I do that also, I call it a minimal hangs from, I like Carrie Cooper’s definition. I make sure it is max 35% of body weight at all times with any of my clients. And I actually have them calibrate that by putting a scale under their feet and actually being honest with themselves because it’s so easy to be doing that and to creep up to 50, to 60 to 75% body weight just ’cause it feels good. And I think like a climber like Matt is really intuitive and his body and he knows what he’s going for. He has a lot of training age. But when I have clients start that protocol, I make sure they’re being really honest about max 35% of their body weight.

Why Is that? So it’s like really low intensity hanging. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you’re doing high frequency,

When you’re doing high frequency, like every day you have them do everything. Yeah. Like the minimal hanging protocol every day or it’s, I find that to be important. Like to me that’s when I prescribe that to clients or direct people to do that or how I do it myself. I try and be really honest about making sure it is truly low intensity.

Yeah. What I want to add there is like, I agree and I, when I prescribe it as well, I typically have people, same as Alex said, it’s like put a scale under the hang board so you’re attaching an objective number to the percentage of body weight that you’re hanging. But I don’t think there’s any, personally, I don’t think there’s anything like wrong with going above 35% of your body weight. It, it’s really a question of what is actually low intensity and, and keeping your ego out of it. So like I don’t think it has to be a certain percentage, but you know, for somebody who has, you know, I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years climbing and for a lot of that training my fingers towards systematically for me something like 80% is gonna be much lower of body weight is gonna be much lower intensity than somebody who’s brand new to, you know, been climbing for three years or something or a year or whatever and are going to like their low, low intensity is relative to your max strength basically. Right?

Yeah.

But I think the idea of using a scale to quantify that is, is yeah. Is a really good way to do it and that’s what I prescribe as well.

And the other thing I would just add is that I think it’s so cool that we have very different approaches to how we think about training our fingers. And I think they both work fantastic. Like I, I think that’s part of the common sense to finger training is you just have to think about in terms of getting out of this rigid idea that the hang board is the only way. But here you have Matt who uses a hang board a lot in a lot of different ways. You have me who uses it very little and there’s multiple ways of going about training your fingers. So it’s finding what feels really good to you that you’re gonna do regularly and consistently.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So it seems like both of you guys are kind of into this minimal HS protocol. And so is that sort of what you would across the board recommend to people as part of their finger training? Or is there anything else on the hang board that you wanna mention?

I basically do minimals every time I warm up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like that’s, I’m doing that about every climbing day. And I typically have clients do start with a minimal program, especially for pockets if they don’t normally climb on pockets and they’re gonna go to somewhere pockety. I also, before having somebody dive into an actual, like pretty specific higher intensity hang board protocol, I want to introduce them to the concept of minimals just so they can feel what varying load intensities feel like on a hang board.

So yeah, what I was gonna say that is like, yeah, obviously I think they’re, they’re great. I like ’em in my own training. I recommend them to a lot of my clients and I completely agree that they’re a great way to introduce new grip positions or to sort of work up to grip positions where you’re particularly deficient. But I don’t have like a universal recommendations for any of this really when it comes to the protocol level. Like, you know, I gave the example of like, hey, I’m in my living room and it takes me four seconds to walk downstairs and 10 minutes to do this if you don’t have a hang board at home. Like this is a, are we going to now say that somebody should be driving to the climbing gym every morning to go do, spend 10 minutes doing this and then do it again six hours later if they’re doing the two times a day thing.

(41:27)
It’s like that’s, that’s ridiculous, right? And you’re, even if you’re the most motivated person in world, you might do that, but is it a good use of your motivation or are there better things you could be doing? And so yeah, it’s, it’s really, I think if we zoom out before you kind of get really sucked in here to the nuts and bolts. ’cause I think of like hang boarding and tweak it protocols and sets, reps, whatever, that’s where people get overwhelmed. I think we need to zoom out a little bit and be like, hey, we want to think of this as a really long term kind of commitment. All of us have been climbing for a long time. I, Alex mentioned, you know, like, hey, she’s willing to sacrifice short term like maybe doing her project this season because she wants to be climbing better in five years and in 10 years, like I don’t have any plans on stopping climbing anytime soon.

(42:21)
So I’m really looking forward to like, I wanna have strong fingers and healthy fingers next year, five years, 10 years. You know, I’m, I’m really trying to think in that sort of timeframe. And so when you, when it comes to choosing a protocol or getting started here, I think it’s, it’s really important to be evaluating, to be thinking about making gains in that longer term timeframe. But also just again, taking a common sense approach and doing what fits. ’cause the, if there is like a magic bullet to this finger training, it’s to do something consistently. And so I think when you’re choosing what to do, that’s the perfect time to really evaluate whether or not it is something that fits into your life.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, can you gimme an example, both of you maybe of like a, a couple different scenarios with clients, even if you just make this up where it’s something that’s really sustainable and it works for them and Yeah,

Sure. So I met with a client this morning who’s been climbing for a long time. She does have arthritis in her fingers, but definitely feels a positive relationship with hanging. And that’s one of the first things I always ask my clients is what training have you done in the past that you feel has really helped you? And if they’re like hang boarding finger training, I’m like, great, let’s make sure to keep that in there. Let’s, you’ve already developed a habit with it, let’s keep it going but what are you specifically doing? And last year we had her, or I had her doing one day a week of minimal edge hanging and one day a week of large edge hanging with a higher stimulus and then for the arthritis and the stiffness and un so she was unable to use certain grip positions like a full crimp because of the arthritis.

(44:23)
But through doing the minimal hang protocol regularly, she is now actually able to full crimp, like just by increasing the finger, working on some mobility stuff there, it’s not of course gonna work for everybody, but that fit really well with our schedule last year. This year we’re like, hey, let’s save some of that hanging you’re doing with the shoulders. We’ve switched her over to doing attention block hanging protocol like no hangs where the weight is down at her sides and that’s once or twice a week and she’s still doing the minimals and that really fits well. Like she’s really liking that. So last year we did something different but we did the same thing for six to eight months. Basically <laugh> like in the same frequency, the same thing unless she was performing we, we cut it lower and then this year we switched it up to something different but the same. And we’re gonna do that for most of the year. So it, it’s just, that’s that example of consistency. And she’s one of my clients who we’ve used the most hanging stuff because she really likes it. I have probably half to three quarters of my clients that I don’t have any hang board work apart from their warmup programmed in. So,

And with this client of yours, is this something where she goes into the gym to do this or does she do it at home?

I just tell her to do her minimals anytime she wants. Just keep it really low intensity. And she likes to do that almost every day, probably like four or five days a week. And the tension board, the tension block hang, she has set up in her house and so she’ll do that before or after work on one to two days a week. And that we measure her numbers. Okay. And we have like two different grip positions that she does because

I think that honestly the crux for a lot of people with this is figuring out when to do it in relation to when they go rock climbing.

Matt and I, we talk, we had a great, we had like a two hour collaboration call where we just talked about finger training and I was mixed on this and now I’m a hundred percent thanks to Matt and thanks for just like really putting it forward in my own training and with clients. And that’s to try like the minimals can go wherever, right? Like we just talked about like that kind of like just connective tissue health protocols, but actual like systematic training loading I think should be done as early in your session as possible. And I personally don’t do any, like I, I don’t wanna do a hang board workout on a day and then go project the next day. But if you have a really solid foundation with it, like Matt might feel differently.

I’ll jump in here ’cause I think I’m gonna give an example of one of my clients that I think I’ll speak to that pretty well because I agree one of the cruxes is where to fit it in. And I think it’s, it’s one of those situations where it’s an, it depends. And what I’ve experimented in my own training recently, like, and, and by recently I mean the last like year and a half and I’ve sort of shifted in clients, it’s like not being super dogmatic about it. Like I used to feel like it was like, I definitely don’t want to hang board the day before going projecting or I definitely don’t want to hang board before having a bouldering hard bouldering session. And I definitely don’t want to hang board when um, fingers are fatigued at all. And you’re like, okay cool. If you, if you stick to all those then yeah, it doesn’t fit so you’re not gonna do it.

(48:00)
And so what I’ve been doing is I think if you can adjust the dosage kind of along at Alex’s like yellow, red, green kind of spectrum here, you can still be doing some pretty good and deliberate and mindful finger training. And it can be the morning before going climbing outside if you’re maybe not trying to send your hardest route ever. You’re just, you know, you’re going climbing, working on some easier routes. It can be the morning before a limit bouldering session. It can be right before a limit bouldering session. It can be the morning after a big performance day outside. I think I just am less dogmatic about it. And so the client that came to mind here is he’s a pretty high level boulder and he, you know, he probably sport climbs in the 12 plus category boulder’s in the v p nine range.

(48:51)
And he, his numbers are pretty high. Like he’s hanging 20 mil edge with 80 90 pounds of additional weight and a half crimp. And so clearly has strong fingers, really likes training on the hang board and really likes the sort of measurability of it. And what we’ve really, I’ve sort of worked on with him is that it doesn’t have to be like, hang boarding isn’t a performance. So he, he was sort of falling into this trap of, hey, I, I’m doing this. I went bouldering outside and you said, hey, hang board the next day ’cause I’m gonna have two days off before I can go climbing again or something. And he was like, oh, well is it even worth me doing it because my max is 90 added pounds and I today I could only do 75 ’cause my skin was a little beat up or I felt a little fatigued.

(49:43)
So like what, what’s even the point? And what I reminded him there was that it’s, it’s more about the stimulus and it’s okay to auto-regulate these things and it’s not about like, oh, I have to max out every time, even if you’re following a quote max hang protocol or doing high intensity loading. And so easy way to put that is like, let’s, let’s take an example of another strength exercise, right? If we’ve sort of established that this is mostly what we’re doing is in our finger training is strength training, then if we, we will use the example of a deadlift, like any coach who programmed a deadlifting session by just being like, okay, every time twice a week you’re gonna go in and you’re going to do your one rep max for singles six times and we’re gonna do that for a month. Like no coach who knows anything would ever program something like that because you’d just be like, yeah, like just maxing out all the time isn’t a way to productively gain strength and you’re gonna be running a huge sort of injury risk.

(50:50)
And I think when we put that in the hang context, like I almost don’t even like the name Max hangs because it promotes this idea that you have to be hitting your, your max number all the time for it to even be worth it. And it’s like, no, we’re just trying to change strength. We can build strength effectively, you know, 65% and higher of our like one rep max here. So like, hey, if you’re, if you need to adjust the load for a given day to fit it in and you just kind of punch the clock and get the session in, that’s gonna be better than just waiting for those days where you’re giving up climbing time. You could be doing other effective training things just so that you can kind of always hit your new max or push into a new pr.

Okay. So it’s like taking this, it’s kind of taking a lot of pressure off of these sessions for people. They have to like be progressing all the time. It can’t ever go up and down that Yeah, it has to be perfect every time.

That’s like one of the biggest traps I see people fall into. It’s something I really push against in my own training where I, like, I keep training logs, but my training log for a hang board, I don’t even track like, oh, I, I only held this much, you know, I’m not like writing down the, the weight I hung for every single hang that I do. I have a whiteboard that’s next to my hang board. I track when I do the sessions and how many of them and I track my maxes. So as long, and the reason for that is what I’m really looking for is the overall trend of improvement. So if I’m like, oh, I was hanging, you know, I’m gonna pick random numbers, but I was hanging 30 pounds and now I’ve, I’ve done 10 sessions and now I’m hanging 40 pounds. I’m like, great, awesome. Heading in the right direction again, keeping that long-term focus. And I’m not gonna stress about the fact that maybe that first session was 30 pounds. The third session I was a little tired and I could only hang 20, then I was at 25, then I went up to 35, I had to go back down to 25. Like I don’t who caress, it’s like too much information. It, it almost becomes meaningless ’cause you, and, and you can get caught up in those details. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. Yeah. Something that’s really on my mind here that I think is huge for me is that I am always trying to keep people from going to that 90 to a hundred percent failure. And when it comes to hanging, and that’s one of the main reasons I’ve now fully converted to all of my quote finger training. Whether it’s just doing sets and reps on a board, climbing in a certain grip position, whatever I try and do prior to projecting or trying hard is one of my indicators that my intensity is correct for me is that I never wanna do anything for my finger training that doesn’t make me feel like I can climb better. Like if I feel really tired and fatigued and like, oh, I can’t hold onto anything now for my finger training, to me that’s a sign I did too much. I wanna dial it back. Like I wanna do my finger training session and then go be able to put in a really good effort on my bouldering project in the gym and just feel like I was really warmed up in recruiting really well because that keeps me dialed into the long-term focus instead of like, I’m gonna go to failure now so that my fingers are stronger next week. Which I think really contributes to those really common finger injuries.

So I’m imagining people listening to this thinking about like, you know, the, what’s it called? Rock hard podcast, rock Hard. You know what I’m talking about

Matt? The rock hard podcast? Yeah. So

<laugh> like the one where they did with Alex Megos where they were making fun of like, and I’m gonna do five sets of this with six reps and six seconds on and seven seconds off. And he’s like going on and on about what he does. And I think that there are some, you know, pro climbers out there who are really strong and they’re, they’re doing these really hard, you know, finger training protocols on a hang board several times a week or whatever at specific times. They’re very fatiguing and these people are who all climbers want to be like, right? And so when they hear you both talking about it not being fatiguing and all of that, I have a feeling that people are like, but that’s not good enough. That’s not enough. It’s not going to be enough of a stimulus to make me stronger.

Yeah. So Alex Megos has had a lot of finger injuries, <laugh>, so I feel like he’s playing like the high risk, high reward game at this point. ’cause he’s at the apex of what his body is capable of doing. Right. And I, there’s so many reasons why people aren’t climbing harder and we all wanna blame our fingers. And almost every single time, maybe that’s a percentage of the reason but that’s not the big picture. And Alex Magos also has some of the best hand physios, climbing physios at his disposal for every tweak injury to help him through that. And I, yeah, I just, I think that should be mentioned. We like to ignore the fact that these climbers also get tweaks and injuries and pull tendon, pull pulleys and all these things. And they definitely do. So

I mean, I think the other way to look at that is that whenever you look at what the elites are doing, the numbers, whether that’s added weight, frequency of training, how hard the pitches they’re climbing, whatever it is, it, it kind of, it clouds what’s actually going on because we’re just sort of wowed by the, the stats so to speak. But like, it’s probably not that fatiguing for him. Like what a session that we, that he does several times a week and trains his fingers and then also goes board climbing and whatever after, and you know, goes and climbs outside super hard. Like he, those sessions, even though they look superhuman to us, because I don’t have Alex MA’s fingers, they’re probably not that tiring for him. And he probably is training at an intensity where, like Alex said, he feels super warmed up, super recruited, and he can go try really hard after, it just happens to be that, you know, he is hanging a 10 mil edge, one arm with like a bunch of added weight. And that to me is like, oh my God, I can’t even come close to doing that. So that would be so exhausting. Like it’s so intense. But to him it’s probably not that fatiguing or intense. So.

Yeah. Well, and then the other person who comes to mind is obviously Alison Vest, who is wonderful and she’s, you know, constantly on Instagram or being highlighted by like Tyler Nelson for her incredible finger strength. And like she’s constantly trying to up that and do these like really intense workouts. So what would you say about that? Because people see that and they’re like, yes, I wanna do that. You know, like

Stop looking at the outliers to determine what you should be doing if you’re really confused about it. Have a consult session with the coach who can actually help you get into consistent routines because you see that snippet. I consider it kind of like the movie, you know, where you just see the highlights of what’s happening and you don’t see the behind the scenes that she’s been showing up to a climbing gym three to five days a week for many, many, many years training systematically to get to the point where she can handle that kind of load. And also at the end of the day is that’s, is that what’s going to help her progress? In my opinion, honestly, probably not. Her grip strength is plenty strong to continue her climbing progression and her progressions are gonna come in other areas, but it’s a strength. It gets a lot of views. It’s really interesting and people get psyched on it, so why not?

And I think she really likes doing it. That’s great. Like I think she really enjoys doing, it’s great. Yeah.

Yeah. The only thing I’d, I’d add to that is like, and she’s even said this, is that like a lot of the things she films and puts on Instagram are, she’s like, like you said, enjoying doing it. But she sees that as a performance. It’s not something she’s doing all the time as like, oh, this is how I progressively train my fingers. This is how I, I do it all the time. It’s like, oh yeah, no, I was seeing if I could do this. It was a fun challenge and I, I worked up to it, but that’s in the performance setting and it clouds the fact that she’s been, and I think this is what she’s, I remember reading this from her somewhere that she’s been like hang boarding two times a week for like five plus years. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. And so you’re like, okay, like look at, you know, to anyone listening like look at your training logs and like that’s gonna be a, like there are people who have hit that, but I think the majority of people, myself included, think that we are training at a higher frequency effectively. But like that consistency really isn’t there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it’s actually one of my personal like major goals for the next year is like I looked back on this last year and I did the math and I averaged one finger like hang board session a week and I’d like to get that to 1.5 for my year average next year.

You mean not including your minimal hangs?

Yeah, no, like a like actual more like progressive like strength training, not just like connective tissue health

Loading. Okay. So now that you say that I’m positive that people are like, well what’s that all about? Should I be doing that?

Well, okay. Can I give a perspective here? Yeah. Last year I probably had four actual hang boarding sessions where I like put weight on and I did a thing and I was climbing my absolute best I’ve ever climbed for like in the entire year. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I probably had four sessions where I got psyched and I was like, I’m gonna do this a couple times. And I was like, uh, yeah. So I think there’s a lot there that’s just based on what works for you.

Alex, how would you say, uh, I mean you, you mentioned the on the wall, like sort of crimp drill. Are there other on the wall drills that you’ll do with people or for yourself or not necessarily even drills?

I am a huge, huge fan of grip specific focus. So if you feel that you are really weak in a certain grip or you want a certain grip to be stronger or you do some assessments and it’s just like there’s numbers that support that, then I wanna take that awareness and put it to practice on the wall with some intention. Like I notice that my passive gripping is very weak, which is so funny. Matt and I are like completely different climbers in a lot of ways I feel like, which is awesome. I learned so much. So my passive gripping is really weak. My active gripping is really strong. Like there’s zero point in me getting my active gripping stronger, but my passive, I’m more prone to injury in those positions. I also, at the detriment of doing a move more efficiently will do it with a more active grip and maybe use a little more energy than I should just because that’s my strength.

(01:02:06)
And when I injured my index finger and I could not half crimp or full crimp and I was at like dragging everything like back three, it was so cool to see how much more versatile I felt in my grip positions post that injury and just being able to do that that I was like, oh well I really wanna focus on that. So I intentionally focus on passive gripping in my warmup and I intentionally seek out some pocket stuff at least like once or twice a week where I’ll get on something that’s not at my limit and be like, instead of doing the thing that I’ve always done because I’m tiny of shoving three fingers in this pocket, I’m actually just going to put in two. And this is good because it’s at a lower level for me and it feels good and I’m just kind of getting used to that sensation and I just mindfully approach it.

So you’re just kind of watching yourself as an observer when you’re climbing and seeing what needs work and what to focus on.

Well I actually have an observation period of time and then I’m no longer watching it. I’m just doing the things that I thought I should do. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

(01:03:18)
Like I know like the only finger tweak I’ve had has been in an open grip position. Mm. Okay. And so I’m like, so through rehabbing that, ’cause I think that’s another big chapter is that hang boarding and finger training and specific protocols are probably the best thing and way of approaching any sort of finger tweak an injury like just as a rehab tool. So if you’ve never used a hang board and then you get a finger injury and then you’re at like your PT is like, here’s your protocol, it’s gotta feel really alien to you. Where if, if you’re used to using it in some capacity and that happens, you’re, you’re already more prepared to rehab. And my rehab for that particular injury looked very similar to how I warm up my fingers now.

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So it’s kind of the same thing. You’re just maintaining to avoid injury fu in the future.

Yeah. And just getting like more and more comfortable with passive grips, but there’s so much in our bodies that goes into holding grips. That’s why if possible I like to do that training on the wall ’cause it’s like using open hips, using closed hips where I put my weight to use a passive grip versus an active grip is different. Mm. And I’m just as bad at that stuff as I am at like physically holding onto the hold in that certain way. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Matt, any thoughts?

Yeah, you know, I think what struck me while Alex was talking is I think we basically, we both are coming at it from the same starting point. Our, our sort of preferred methods are maybe just a little different and ’cause I feel the same way and I’ll just speak for my own climbing here, not as like a, not from a coaching perspective, but like yeah I’m, I have noticed that over years, over the years I’ve gotten more reliant on passive grip positions and have become weaker in crimp positions or more active positions. So I spend a lot of time like that. That was like my observation period. I’ve observed that and so I’ve try been trying to target that. So I emphasize it in my daily sort of minimal hangs, like I do more active positions. I really emphasize it in my sort of finger training and the protocols I’ve been doing.

(01:05:39)
I basically in the last year of doing different sort of duration max hangs throughout the year, I’ve only, I’ve trained two active grips. So like a four finger half crimp been a three finger crump and I’ve done some but not much. Three finger drag training. ’cause it, I don’t, it’s just not an area where I feel like I am super limited. So I think what we’re both saying is we’ve, we, we start by evaluating our own climbing and where we’re deficient and, and some of like what my goals are and where I like what positions I need to feel stronger at and start there and use that to inform my training. And Alex is saying she prefers to do that sort of through wow on the wall and being deliberate with the hold sets she chooses to climb on. And I, I don’t not do that. I definitely like am choosing when I’m like board climbing or whatever, I’m trying to pick boulders that force me to crimp and where I, I’m not just sort of jumping and compressing between holds that I can hold more passively. But I also have been trying to target it more maybe than Alex does on a hang board.

Okay. Well that was gonna be my next question is how do you both see board climbing as finger training and in what way do you use boards for that, if at all?

So something that struck me is that we have very different approaches and some people might be like, well that’s even more confusing and this podcast is supposed to like clarify things. I think it’s worth noting that we both climb and train for the areas we prioritize in our year. I do not need to do very hard crimping, very hard pocket moves in rifle on the climbs I’ve been climbing on. I just don’t, I need a lot of pinches. I need a lot of like open hand stuff and I do love bouldering but I don’t prioritize it in my year. So my two big places a year is Rifle and Red River Gorge. Matt, where are your primary places in the year? And I think the landscape we climb at and where people climb should determine greatly how they’re training their fingers throughout the year.

Yeah, a hundred percent agree. I can answer your question though Neely if you want in terms of board climbing mm-hmm <affirmative>, I don’t look at board climbing as a systematic way of training our fingers. There’s too many variables like which climb what? I’m not saying you can’t use the board as a tool to do that by doing things like Alex said, you know, like crimp ladders or things like that. It’s just not a modality that I go to. But I, while you are certainly stressing your fingers by having just a hard bouldering session on a kilter board or a moon board, whatever, board spray wall, whatever, you aren’t controlling the variables in a systematic way. And so I actually see that as more of a power training tool. More of, you know, climbing performance for some people. And a lot of the loading that I’m doing or that I advocate people doing off of the wall is a corrective to that to ’cause it removes the velocity component of like jumping and latching holds and it removes the sort of rotational force that it puts that like climbing movement puts on your fingers and so you’re able to train your fingers to handle that kind of intensity so that you’re running a lower risk when you get on the board.

Okay. So like when Tyler Nelson was talking on the podcast a while back about using a board or a spray wall as training for your fingers by doing small moves on crimps very slowly, what do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean that’s another way of doing exactly what I’m saying, right? He’s by moving slow, he, he advocates like using holds that are appropriate for your training ability. So small for you but big feet moving slowly and statically between them. You are removing that velocity component from it. But that looks really, and that’s what Alex is sort of describing in her, the crimp platters. And I think, yeah I think that’s great. There’s a million great protocols out there. I personally there don’t do that but it, some of that is just by virtue of convenience of that. I don’t have a climbing wall in my house but I do have a hang board.

A hang board. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Yeah. So I think yeah you can do it but uh, what I hope people don’t take from that is that it’s not just like, oh I’m climbing on a board so that means I’m systematically training my fingers because there’s a big difference between slowly and statically laddering up and down on holds that are appropriate for you and climbing, trying to climb a bunch of moon board benchmarks.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Yeah. Like they’re completely different things.

Yeah. Alex?

Yeah, I think one of my biggest areas of reevaluation is that I got really psyched on thinking of like every board session is a finger training session and I did that and it was great and then I started just to realize that there, like Matt said, there are just so many variables in projecting on the board that it really does take away from that systematic and it’s so easy to end up with a finger tweak and to overdo it when you’re climbing on a board in general. So I have definitely changed my opinion on that in the past like few months I give clients a lot of exactly what you said. So every time I’ve mentioned like crimp ladders on a board, I call it tic-tac climbing that is from Tyler Nelson’s article that is my reiteration of it. And it’s just slow and controlled movement, no big moves.

(01:11:39)
I wanna see as little technique as possible. So I want ’em to stay square to the wall and I don’t want them to do concentric loading or eccentric loading there. I don’t want ’em to climb down. So I want ’em to climb up eight to 10 moves, drop off, rest three minutes, do that again in a certain grip position. I love that. I do that a lot for myself and I find it’s very conducive to autoregulation for me because if I’m like, yeah, I’m feeling really good, I wanna really grip some hold and challenge my grip position, I’ll do it on the moon board. If I’m like, Ooh, I am having a rough day but I still wanna get that done, I’ll like lower the angle of the kilter board and I’ll do it on a 30 degree kilter board instead. Right. It’s just like even just choosing the holds.

(01:12:25)
But it’s super slow and controlled board sessions I think are a hundred percent amazing at getting us strong. But they could also be risky in terms of they’re hard, those moves are hard. They require a lot of coordination, a lot of body tension and they’re often all very similar kinds of moves. So if you do a set boulder and you’re grabbing a jug and a sloper and a crimp and a pinch all in the same boulder, if you’re on the kilter board, you’re basically grabbing the same hold every single time. Mm-hmm <affirmative> you climb. So if you have the a session that’s as long and as much volume as you typically have on set boulders on a board, all of a sudden you are doing so much more intensity on a particular like way of climbing. And I, that’s why I think boards are easy to get tweaked on in general <laugh> for, for people who are maybe not prepared to handle that kind of stimulus. So when I have people add in board training, I want ’em to start with a really low volume and I want ’em to back off something else in their training. I don’t wanna be like, climb as much as you would on boulders, just do it on a board instead. I think that’s the worst idea. I’m like, Nope, I want you to do four boulders max next week. You could maybe do six. I want you to keep the level low and let’s build up your capacity a little bit and then go from there.

Gotcha. Common sense, common sense advice there. I don’t want this to go forever so I wanna start wrapping up if possible. So any final thoughts on common sense finger training Matt?

Yeah, I got maybe a good way to wrap up and Alex and my prep, we, we both wrote out like three key tips. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, could we give those? And I think that’ll kind of, hopefully that’ll be some like actionable advice for people. Yeah. That will help be simplifying. Alex, you wanna go first?

Sure. So my first one is that fingers feel so, finger feels how your finger feels, like I said before is the tip of the iceberg. So do not ignore sensations in your fingers. I have a lot of clients who don’t even tell me that a finger is like feeling funny because they, it just wasn’t that relevant to them. But anytime I have finger feels or I notice something in my fingers, I’m going to pay attention to it and give it some respect. It doesn’t mean I stop climbing, I just am like, oh, why does it feel like that? What do I need to do? What’s actually wrong with it? And one of the first things I do for clients who have a finger feel is I direct them to training beta to Jared’s rehab protocols that are there. Because for under $35 you can get this great self-diagnostic like run through.

(01:15:21)
It talks about the severity. I think diagnosing what’s going on is key. I had a client recently who worked with the pt, thought it was a pulley thing, it wasn’t getting better, it turned out to be capsulitis and his rehab protocol was pissing it off because it was labeled more as an A two pulley. So it’s just like, don’t ignore your feels in your fingers. It’s like if you feel it, what’s actually going on is more underneath the surface. So try and figure that out. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, my second thing is don’t think of a hang board and hanging, like hanging body weight with your arms above your head is the only way to train your fingers. It’s just not. So my shoulder right now is rehabbed, rehabbing. The worst thing I could do is go get on a hang board and hang with my hands over my head with any amount of stimulus.

(01:16:13)
But I can definitely do no hangs with a weight pin and a tension block and that feels amazing on my fingers. It feels totally fine on my shoulders. And I think people just get really stuck into thinking that the hang board is the only place that’s gonna make their fingers stronger and it’s just not right. Like a board can do a set boulder, a set route, certain hold types, I’ll even go bouldering with people who are way stronger than me. And when we’re at a boulder that there’s no way I can ever potentially think of doing this boulder. I just go around and I try and hang on the holds <laugh> and I’ll do sets and I’ll just be like, I’m gonna build up to being able to hang on this hold for like seven or eight seconds or these two holds and it’s so fun and I learned so much about how to grab holds just by doing that.

(01:16:59)
I do that outside when I’m not climbing. Right. It’s like pretty fun. Yeah. And my third thing is use a hang board in warmup or in a low intensity way more often than you think. So I use it in my warmup every single time I’m climbing and I think that’s really helpful to me. It’s like if you are doing I intense finger training at any particular time, that’s more reason that you should be doing some low intensity stuff with it as well. I used to think like low intensity stuff is for like the off season, but I think it’s actually way more important when you’re actually using your fingers a lot to do something that’s actually healthy for them.

Got it. Awesome. Those are great. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you

Matt.

All right. I think my first one is to think in terms of principles rather than protocols. So if we circle way back to why we even wanted to have this conversation, every climbing coach is pretty regularly ask what the best finger training protocol is. And I think that that’s a, it’s sort of a, it’s just a bad question. It doesn’t, there is no best protocol. What you really should be looking for is a, is following the principles of sports science and like find a protocol that you can do consistently, that you can progressively overload as you adapt and that you can recover from effectively so that it sort of fits in your life. You can do it consistently over time and you can kind of keep inching the ball forward so to speak.

Got it.

My second one is to keep it really simple. So a lot of what I’m about to say I took from Ned v Holly’s book Beast making, which I think is like a great resource that kind of cuts through a lot of the noise as long as you actually read what he is saying instead of just looking for, you know, what let him looking for like tidbits that you can apply. But I think that if you keep it simple, like track what you’re doing, look for overall trends of improvement rather than session to session variation. And two things that I took from him directly are like if you pick a protocol, do 10 sessions of it at a minimum. If after 10 sessions you’re still seeing progress, keep doing it until you sort of stop seeing progress. If you’ve stalled out and again stalled out, not like, oh I had one bad session but stalled out like hmm, I was seeing good progress but now I’m no longer able to, you know, increase my numbers at all.

(01:19:40)
Then vary the session, vary the stimulus, move on to a or to a different protocol. And I will add to that this idea of really own a weight before progressing it. So I don’t think there’s, well autoregulation is important. We don’t need to be like micro adjusting the load every session. So it’s not, hey I gotta add a pound a week or I’m not getting anywhere. Like I’d rather start by, you know, I’ll use my 30 pound example again like, and it feel really hard and I’m gonna stay at 30 pounds until it feels quite a bit easier and then I’ll try at 35 or 40 or whatever. And so he in his sort of session template for like a max hang and I, this is how I prescribe max hang. So my clients now gives a five to 12 second loading window that’s like a huge amount of difference between, and so on a good day, maybe you can hang it for 10 seconds on a bad day, maybe you make it to five.

(01:20:38)
Okay. If you can’t make it to five, reduce the weight if you make it over 12 add weight. And so it, it’s really kind of cuts into that like no, it has to be this exact amount of time that we’re hanging and it has to be this exact load and we’re gonna try to micro adjust that week to week. So I’d say getting outta that mindset is, is really helpful. And then my last one, and we kind of have hit this, is just thinking long term. I think it’s really easy thing to say it’s a harder thing to actually do and I think all of us really overestimate our ability to progress in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. And so that’s where, you know, my own personal, you know, mission to increase the number of sessions per week average over the course of my whole year, the next year comes from like I’m, I’m really just looking to continue sort of a, what I view as like a career long journey towards having stronger fingers and to do that in a sort of sustainable way where I’m gradually building up and just always kind of reevaluating and trying to push the ball forward.

Nice. Those were great. Yeah. Thank you for doing those both of you. Anything else that you wanna share? Either of you?

I think we did not, maybe didn’t make this complicated subject simpler, but I hope people walk away feeling more empowered just to be really practical about how they choose to train their fingers. Yeah. And to like step away from the specifics. I think we really stuck with that this whole conversation, which is just that don’t get lost in the specifics. The general keep it general, keep it practical and don’t overdo it.

Yep.

Yeah, I’ll, I’ll second that. I think if you’re getting to the, the end of this episode feeling frustrated that we didn’t give you like a clear sets and reps timing kind of protocol here that you should follow, I think that’s sort of on purpose and it’s paying attention to these larger sort of ideas and just like applying some common sense and yeah, just keeping it really simple and practical is going to be more important than getting caught up in any of those details.

That’s great. Thank you for addressing that. Okay, both of you, thank you so much. I’ll let you get back to your day. I really appreciate it and talk to you both soon. Bye. Sounds good, thanks Neely. Alright, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Matt Pinkus and Alex Steiger again, if you liked what they were talking about and sort of their philosophies, you can train with them, you can be coached by them from anywhere in the world. You can go to training beta.com/matt to learn more about math’s services and training beta.com/alex to learn more about Alex’s services. They’re both really great coaches, honestly, I’ve worked with both of them as my own coach and they’re just really smart and thoughtful coaches and very serious about their own climbing, as you can tell. And so it really shows through in their own coaching. Remember that Alex has her five 12 breakthrough series available right now until just two days from now on July 28th, 2023.

(01:24:01)
And if you want to break out of a plateau, whether you’re in five 10 or five 11 or even 5.12, honestly the breakthrough series will help you learn some mindset shifts, some training tactics and some skills and drills on the wall and tactics for projecting so that you can break into five 12 or five 13 or five 11 consistently. So you can find that@trainingbeta.com slash 5 1 2. And again, it’s only available until July 28th. It’s on sale from 1 47 at $97 now. And there will be a live component to this breakthrough series. She will be answering questions on a Slack channel and she’ll do a live q and a, but otherwise it’s four 90 minute recorded Zoom sessions that she did back in January of this year, all about how to break into 5.12. So again, training beta.com/ 5 1 2. And I think that’s all I’ve got for you today. So thanks so much for tuning in. Once again, I really appreciate you and I’ll talk to you soon.