You’ve probably seen videos of Kyra Condie campusing somewhere on social media, right? Well, we did an interview with her on the podcast, and in this transcript excerpt she describes exactly what she does during her campus board workouts.
It’s pretty amazing honestly. Please be aware that she’s spent years getting to this point, and your campus routine shouldn’t necessarily look like this. Use your best judgement and you can always email us for direction with your own training program.
Transcript Highlight: Kyra Condie Describes Her Campus Routine
Neely Quinn: Going back to the campusing and the hangboard, do you mind going through a campus session for you?
Kyra Condie: Yeah, so I’ve tried to explain campusing by talking before and it was kind of difficult, but basically for anybody who doesn’t know, you have the numbers on the campus rungs and they are standard spacing apart. It’s 22 centimeters, I think. I like the board to be 15-20° overhanging but I’m a total nerd. [laughs] Just that way your body doesn’t drag against it.
Anyway, I start usually by doing a couple warm-up pulls where I do a less maximal pull. My max is 1, 5. Both hands starting 1 and then going one hand up to 5 and then pulling through from there. I do a less than maximal warm-up so I do 1, 4 and I usually do 1, 4, 6, so it’s easier for me and I focus on really the pull and not pushing with the bottom hand, if that makes sense. I do two sets of those with two minutes of rest in between and a set is on each arm, so I’ll go matched on the first one, right hand up, left hand up, and then I do matched on the first one, left hand up, right hand up. That’s one. I do that twice, usually.
Then after that I go into the big-move boulder – that’s what I call it – that’s the maximal pulling through as far as you can. For me, that’s 1, 5, 8 is the best that I’ve done. Kind of the famous one is 1, 5, 9 and that would be a life goal but that’s a ways away.
Neely Quinn: You’re not really that far away.
Kyra Condie: It’s surprisingly far. I always laugh at people who comment on my videos, ‘When’s 1, 5, 9 happening?’ I’m like, ‘Not soon!’
Neely Quinn: Is this something where you work on 1, 5, 8.5? Do you have an 8.5?
Kyra Condie: 8.5 really helps. I’ve never done 1, 5, 8.5. I’m still working on getting consistent on 1, 5, 8.
Neely Quinn: I’m assuming that’s how you got to 1, 5, 8 though?
Kyra Condie: Yeah. A year ago I couldn’t do probably 1, 5, 7 I think. Part of it is getting better at the technique to campusing and then part of it is getting stronger.
I usually do, as I was saying, a set is doing a pull on each arm so right hand up first then left hand up first and I rest maybe 10 seconds in between each one there. I do three sets so three sets of 1, 5, 8, basically. It’s essentially six times but it’s three times on each arm.
Neely Quinn: Right. Okay.
Kyra Condie: In between I set a timer and I rest for three minutes in between each one. Then I do a set of ‘smaller move pull-through’, is what I call it, so that’s doing 1, 4 to max. I think that does a good job of generating power when your hands are closer together, which you’re not always full span on moves while you’re climbing. For me, I do 1, 4, 7 is what that one is. I do the same thing three times, three minutes rest in between.
Then the rest of it – those are the two that I always do and then the rest of it kind of varies. Sometimes I do doubles so both hands at the same time when I do that on a smaller rung. There’s usually multiple rung sizes and I always do my big pull-throughs on the biggest size rung.
Neely Quinn: Oh really?
Kyra Condie: Yeah, of the small, medium, large of that sizing. I don’t do less than a large rung.
Neely Quinn: Why is that?
Kyra Condie: The reason why is that I don’t want campusing to be limited by finger strength. Campusing, for me, is focused on the power and the strength part and not the finger strength part. That comes with the hangboarding. When I’m campusing I don’t want to be limited by my fingers giving out so if I’m doing it on the smallest rungs I definitely can’t do it on 1, 5, 8. Then it wouldn’t be as beneficial in some ways.
Neely Quinn: That’s really smart, actually, and I’ve never talked about that with anybody. That’s really smart.
Kyra Condie: Yeah, and I think it makes campusing have – it’s less injury prone that way, too, and you have a better longevity in it. You can do it once in every three day cycle if you do it on the big rungs, in my opinion.
Neely Quinn: Right. So many people have finger injuries while they’re campusing.
Kyra Condie: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of people be like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to campus because I don’t want to get injured.’ It’s like, ‘If you do it right you might not get injured.’
One of my favorite campus exercises that’s really hard and I don’t think people really realize how hard it is, is I call them ‘the snatches.’ This one I do on the smallest rung that I can do it on. Basically, I jump one-handed from the ground to a rung and then I try to pull through without putting my other hand on. I jump up with one hand and try to pull through with my other hand and grab a rung.
Neely Quinn: So it’s almost like one-arm training.
Kyra Condie: It’s like a one-arm hanging/training, yeah. It works a bunch of things. It’s really good for contact strength, especially. They’re really hard but they’re really good.
Neely Quinn: What do you usually do? Like, you grab the first one and what can you pull through to?
Kyra Condie: It kind of depends. It kind of varies. Sometimes if you don’t grab it as well, if your fingers are a little stacked or something, you can only match the hold, you know?
Full Episode/Transcript: TBP 100 :: Kyra Condie’s Hangboard and Campus Board Training Program
(photo courtesy of
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Nice interview 🙂
Thank for this post, it’s really interesting.
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