Hangboard Workout for Healthy Fingers
The return to climbing at last!
7 months off of climbing is a long time!
I could have done finger workouts at home to stay fit but I chose to rest. As a full-time routesetter, it’s very rare for me to be able to truly rest my climbing muscles for more than a day or two so I took the lockdown as an opportunity to heal my body as much as possible. I did plenty of home workouts, but nothing for my grip-strength or fingers. When I first returned to climbing, I noticed that my muscles felt fine but my fingers were really weak. At the end of my first few sessions, I honestly felt like my fingers weren’t safe. It seemed like my body was prepared to do more climbing than my fingers could handle. All of the at-home workouts I had done combined with the lack of climbing or finger training meant that my muscles could easily outpace my tendons, so I decided to come up with a gentle hangboard workout to get my body conditioned for climbing again.
Right after the first session my fingers felt better. Since this workout falls in the easy-medium spectrum, I believe the increased blood flow helped me recover from the stress of returning to climbing. After just a few training sessions, I noticed that my fingers felt significantly healthier. Not stronger necessarily, just better prepared. My idea was that by focusing on doing longer hangs I could improve fitness and conditioning, increase the workout volume I could safely handle, and boost blood flow to my fingers for better recovery. I’m very pleased with the results and I hope that this will help many of you who have similar goals and needs. While I’m still not quite climbing as hard as I was pre-covid, I do feel now that I can safely attempt anything I want and my fingers always feel fine. The ability to climb without worry is immensely valuable to me.
The workout itself is very simple and each round takes 4 minutes. I was doing 5 rounds each time for a full 20-minute workout, but you can do whatever feels right for you. Just keep in mind that this was meant to be a longer, easier, gentler workout; you should not be nearing your limit on any of these hangs except maybe in that 5th set. But don’t make it entirely casual; you’ll need to develop a mild-medium pump for real results.
You’ll need to select 3 edges and a jug. They should be comfortably small, medium, and large. Nothing too challenging here as this workout contains a lot of hangs and minimal rest.
I was using the tension hangboard which is labelled in mm so I selected the 20mm, 25mm, 35mm, and jug.
After a couple of sessions I was able to use smaller edges but that’s only because I had reclaimed more of the strength I had previously gained. The timeline for getting back in shape is very different than getting stronger for the first time. Don’t be in a hurry to use smaller holds. See if you can hang with less tension in your body and with a more relaxed grip. The goal is to boost recovery and health. Just remember not to try too hard; this should feel like taking your fingers for a jog.
Here’s the workout:
Minute 1 - small edge
10 sec hang, 20 sec rest (x2)
Minute 2 - medium edge
10 sec hang, 20 sec rest (x2)
Minute 3 - large edge
15 sec hang, 15 sec rest (x2)
Minute 4 - jug
30 sec hang, 30 sec rest
That’s it! Just keep cycling through and switching grips every minute. When you get to the end of your final round, try to hang on the jug for the full minute. As you can see there is not a lot of rest so you really need to keep that in mind when selecting your edges. The first set should be EASY!! We are conditioning our fingers to handle a large volume of climbing here - this is not about increasing your crimp strength.
Next steps:
There are lots of ways to modify this workout and your choices will depend on your individual goals. Personally, I’ve set two goals for myself to advance in this workout. The first is to simply use smaller holds, making my way to 15mm, 20mm, and 25mm edges. The second option and, possibly the more intriguing of the two, would be to keep the same edges as before, but replace the jug with the 35mm edge. I really rely on that jug to help me recover from the constant hangs and if I could get sufficient recovery from a large edge instead, that would be amazing!
There’s also plenty of potential for adding a light weight, but I think it’s safe to say that no one should be doing weighted hangs for several months, at least!
I really hope this helps you on the road to regaining your title as a master of climbing! See you on the wall :)
***UPDATE 11/23/2020***
Gyms are closed again! Covid is spiking everywhere and it’s a much larger spike than before. Hopefully we are making a huge difference by swiftly closing things down again. I’d strongly encourage everyone to make the most of this closure and get those home workouts in! I’m not super psyched to hangboard at home, but I know I really don’t want to go through regaining all that strength again.
Also, if you see any mouth-breathers out there, please kindly remind them that their mask needs to cover their mouth AND nose. Let’s make this the final closure!
Cheers
