[laughs] How’s it going?

 

Neely Quinn: It’s going great! This is going to be a regular thing for us. We’re going to do these 15-minute talks about specific topics, right?

 

Kris Peters: Yep.

 

Neely Quinn: Today we’re talking about finger training, which is appropriate, because hopefully in a couple weeks/in a few weeks we’ll be launching our new finger training program, which you’re in the process of writing.

 

Kris Peters: Yes ma’am.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so let’s get started. Finger training: I think one of the biggest questions our audience has about it is, “Should I fingerboard?” Who do you think should be fingerboarding and who do you think should not be?

 

Kris Peters: Personally, I think anyone who’s just starting off in climbing, maybe between six months to a year – about that range, you’re still probably developing tendon strength and finger strength and your best bet is just going to be climbing. Unless you’re a phenomenon and you’re climbing V6/V7 very quickly but, even then, I think a lot of times people can get by on strength. I would say it’s most appropriate when people have a solid year under their belt of climbing, of consistent climbing, ensuring they can properly close their hands, that they know how hard they can push, and they kind of know their limits. Beginner climbers don’t really know what their limits are; they kind of push beyond that and you see a lot of injuries.

I would definitely say having a good foundation under you before you start trying to hangboard and hang your fingers is the most appropriate way to go about it. If you’re climbing for a couple hours and you can still close your hands and you can go back the next day and climb, I think you’re at a good place. If you’re climbing and you’re getting pumped pretty easily and you’re still kinda struggling on climbs and your fingers get tired quickly, I’d say probably you want to build more of a base until you start to hangboard.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so it’s not necessarily like, “I’m a V3 climber and I want to fingerboard,” or “I’m a V5 climber and I want to fingerboard,” it’s more what you just laid out.

 

Kris Peters: Sure. Again, I’ve seen climbers climb those grades and they can muscle it or they have great technique and then you put them on the fingerboard and it’s a different type of training. It’s just, all the weight’s on your hands. Can you engage your shoulders and your core and kind of keep good posture while you hang? Just because you can climb those grades doesn’t mean you can effectively and safely do a full finger program. I would just say as long as you can consistently climb V3 or harder without pain or without getting too tired too quickly within one session, I think then that’s an appropriate time to focus on trying to integrate a training program for your fingers.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, and you just touched on something that I think is really important. You mentioned the posture that you keep when you’re actually hanging. Can you talk more about that? I think it’s something that people don’t know anything about. Including myself, until recently, by the way.

 

Kris Peters: I require all my athletes to engage their shoulders so they kind of pull their shoulders up. They retract them slightly. They’re not hanging on their skeleton. A lot of people that have just gotten a hangboard just hang with their fingers wide open and all their weight’s on their skeletal system. I really want that pressure on your fingers, on your muscles, and that’s having good posture. Not tucking your head down, not arching it up, just kind of looking straight ahead in front of you. Fingers are engaged, wrists are aligned, and you can kind of see the muscles working. With my clients, I’ll come up behind them and I’ll make them pull their shoulders up and tighten up their core and engage their arms with a slight bend – very, very slightly, they’re not fully bent – in your elbow so that way you’re engaging more forearm and more bicep to go along with the stress on the fingers. For me, that’s what I feel is safe for my athletes and clients when I train them on a hangboard.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s something that I’ve had to learn, keeping my shoulder blades back, right?

 

Kris Peters: Yeah, exactly.

 

Neely Quinn: What do you think is the best way? Everybody has their own way, like the Anderson brothers are all about seven seconds on/three seconds off and other people are into shorter amounts of time, like five seconds on/five seconds off. What are your general philosophies on it? We’ll start there.

 

Kris Peters: Everyone’s different and everyone has the ways that they like, that work best for them. As a trainer, I kind of have my ways that I go about it. I’m a big fan of 10 seconds on for establishing your max strength. You’ll hang for 10 seconds, rest for a couple of minutes, and do it again. I kind of view when I’m training my clients to get finger strength the same way I would train someone to increase their squats or their deadlifts. You find their max effort and you work off the percentages of that, so if you’re squatting 225 [lbs] for one rep, okay now for week one we’re going to work at 80 percent of that then go to 85 then go to 90. I’ll try to establish that with my clients for fingers and have the same approach as I would with a weight lifter or someone trying to gain strength for a different sport. I’m a big fan of the 10 seconds on. For repeaters and stuff I still range between the seven and 10 seconds and, based off someone’s abilities, the rest time between that will vary between three to 10 seconds. With sets, I’m a big advocate of six. For my advanced climbers it’s usually around 10 and, again, for your rest periods, between two to four, depending on what the focus is and how quickly they recover.

If I have a client and they can’t recover in two minutes, they’ll rest for three. If they can’t recover in three, they’ll rest for four. The longest I’ll go is five minutes of resting and after that I just think, “Okay, the session is done. Your fingers are way too tired.” It’s all about keeping good quality, whatever works best for you, but I’m a big fan of working with 10 seconds. That’s what I’ve used with all my clients and we’ve seen a lot of great results out of it, especially with the online people right now. A lot of them are on those 10-second plans and a lot of people are seeing really big gains. On top of that, with the fingers, they’re also working muscles that will help their fingers, like different parts of your body that you can activate when trying a harder move on smaller holds. When you can activate those muscles it will help you stick something harder or pull harder through it.

 

Neely Quinn: That was a great answer. I want to go back to one of the beginning things that you said, which was repeaters. That’s a common word in fingerboarding. Can you explain what a repeater is?

 

Kris Peters: A repeater is, basically/essentially, repeating something multiple times. You’ll be on the hangboard for 10 seconds, rest for five to 10 seconds, and then do 10 seconds again. Depending on someone’s level you’ll do two to four or maybe five reps of that. Essentially, you’ll be hangboarding for one set anywhere between 50 seconds to two minutes long. If I have my client, I’ll say, “Go,” and they’re on for 10 seconds, they come off for five, I’ll say “Go” again and they’re on for 10. You’re having them repeat what they just did with small rests in between. Just enough rest to get a slight recovery and then get back on and do it again, if that makes sense.

 

Neely Quinn: So they would do the 10 seconds on/five seconds on for about five times or maybe…?

 

Kris Peters: Yeah, between three to six times. When I work with someone I’ll get an idea of what they can handle and then I’ll base the number of reps for each repeater off of that.

 

Neely Quinn: And then they’ll rest for two to, max, five minutes? Four minutes?

 

Kris Peters: Yeah, and with repeaters you get a lot of people who get a little more pumped. It’s more taxing. You’re doing multiple reps for one set so you’ll need longer time to rest.

 

Neely Quinn: I’ve seen people in the weight room who are fingerboarding and they’re using a pulley system, which I would like to discuss with you for just a minute. They’re basically taking off half of their body weight with the pulley system.

 

Kris Peters: Sure.

 

Neely Quinn: What is the point at which they’re no longer really training their fingers?

 

Kris Peters: It’s a tough one, for sure. I typically, with my clients, I’m not going to put more than 40 or 50 pounds on a pulley system. I think –  at that point, I don’t think they’re ready to even hangboard. If you’re putting more than 50 pounds on a pulley system to let yourself hang on a pad or two pads I think you’re still behind to have an effective hangboard session. That’s just me, personally. Some people might want to put 100 pounds on a pulley system and hang off that. That’s totally fine. For me and efficiency, how I train people, I try to make sure that we’re being good with our time. If you need 50 pounds to just hang on two pads let’s take that off and just do three pads and maybe you’d need only 10 pounds or maybe you can actually do that without a pulley system. Let’s continue to develop that way instead of trying to rush the process. I think a lot of people who are adding all this weight, they should think about continuing to climb more. Continue to just let that be your foundation of building your fingers and give yourself a month or two and then re-evaluate. Typically, I won’t go more than 40 or 50 pounds. I just think that’s too much weight and there are just so many other things you can do that will benefit your fingers other than that.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems like, at that point, it’s the same as climbing. Like you’re…

 

Kris Peters: Yeah, you’ll be better off climbing hard grades at your redpoint level than sitting at the pulley system with 50 or more pounds, trying to hangboard. You’ll get more benefit from climbing than you will from that.

 

Neely Quinn: One more question, and then we will end our short little podcast episode.

 

Kris Peters: Sure

 

Neely Quinn: I’ve actually had somebody ask me what a pad is. Really quickly, explain what a pad is and tell me, with a beginner or intermediate climber, how many pads should they be focusing on?

 

Kris Peters: A pad, if you look at your fingers and bend your fingers you’ll see creases/lines on the bottoms of your fingers – each pad is once the crease starts. That’s a pad. If you look at the point of your pointer and you run down and see the first crease, that’s one pad. Then, in the middle, you have your second pad that’s surrounded by two creases. At the very end of your finger is the third pad.

I would say for beginner and intermediate, usually beginners for me, is usually two pads. I’ll say, “We can do some work on two pads.” That’s about beginner. For intermediate, a pad and a half to a pad. That’s kind of what I typically see with my intermediate climbers. I know we didn’t touch on this but for advanced, we’re on half a pad or on a quarter pad. That’s where you start to see all the weight being added to their waist, because at that advanced level you can. For intermediate, for sure, a pad and a half, maybe a pad. For beginners, two pads. Anything more than two pads and I would probably say, “Let’s try a pulley system to try to take five to 20 pounds off so we can hang on two pads,” or again, you might need to continue to climb more to establish that good base.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s a good answer. For our training program that you’re putting together right now, the finger training plan, can you give me an overview of what it’s going to look like?

 

Kris Peters: Sure. We’re going to have finger training programs for beginner, intermediate, and advanced climbers. I think for all the online people I have through TrainingBeta I have a mixture of beginner to almost elite. It’s going to be five-week increments. You’re going to have five weeks of finger training. Beginners will be at two days a week, intermediate two to three, and advanced same thing, two to three. It’s all going to be based around just gaining strength in your fingers.

The first couple cycles will be strength and power specific. You’ll go through two cycles and then you’ll have a month off, cross training. We’ll focus on your wrists and your forearms and different parts of your body that will help you establish more control and more stabilization as your fingers get stronger. We don’t want super strong fingers and weak forearms or weak forearms and vice versa.

It’s just going to really focus on the hands and forearms, making sure that those areas of your body are effectively being trained in a safe manner but also getting good results. With all of my online clients they go through a lot of finger training. There won’t be any climbing on there, there won’t be a ton of cross training, it’s just going to be focused on your fingers and establishing/making sure you continue to see gains in that.

That’s kind of the overview. I’m really excited about it. I’ve been working really hard on it. I think it’s gonna be a good thing for people to have, to have guidance and something that’s going to flow for five weeks, give you a week off, do another five weeks and then have a cycle of just cross training with no fingers to kind of give your fingers a break.

 

Neely Quinn: It sounds awesome. It sounds like what a lot of people want so I’m glad we’re doing this and I’m sure, in the future, we’ll do more Q and A’s like this about finger training so don’t worry. If you have any questions just email me at neely@trainingbeta.com . Thanks, Kris, very much.

 

Kris Peters: Thanks, Neely, and everyone have a great day and hopefully see you guys on those programs!

 

Neely Quinn: All right, thanks.

 

Kris Peters: Bye.

 

Neely Quinn: Thanks for listening to this first installment of my 15-minute episodes with Kris Peters. If you want to train with him or if you have any questions for him, you can email him at kris@trainingbeta.com . If you want any help with your training, definitely go to www.trainingbeta.com and check out our programs and our blog and our videos and all of the other things that we have. Thanks for listening and I will talk to you next week.