Slopers and hangboarding

My understanding of an open crimp is that the index and pinky fingers flexion occurs in the dip joints (the one closest to you fingernail) and the flexion occurs in pip joint for the middle and ring. A half crimp being the "full crimp" position for all fingers, but without the thumb wrap.

I train the open and half crimp positions and have not seen any loss in outdoor performance of the full crimp position. My open crimp hangboard weights are about 15-20 lbs heavier than the half crimp.

Just to add to the confusion, but maybe clear things up, this is how I use the terms (images from Moon Climbing's website):

Open hand:

Half Crimp = Open Crimp


Full Crimp = Closed Crimp

(for context, I've been hangboarding for 2 years, climbing~ 5.13c, V9)

JCM wrote: Tangential question: Which of these do you think is preferable to train on (slippery wood vs. grippy plastic)?.

Beastmaker 2K!

Grippy plastic lessens the load on your muscles and tendons, and introduces the "roll" factor, where skin at the lip of the pocket rolls uncomfortably. The DRCC plastic board has variable texture, reducing this problem, but even so - gripless wood is preferable. (I haven't felt the RPTC board, but if it's slick than that's probably great as well)

For grips, I do half-crimp on the small crimps, back-2 in the dual-depth pockets, and middle 2 on the lowest 2 finger pockets.

I used to do front-2, but it was always tweaky, so I abandoned it. I've seen dramatic improvement on rock from training the back-2, though training this pair requires careful and conservative ramp-up to avoid tweaking. Slopers seem too friction-dependent and finicky for limited gains - I don't use them, and I'm still getting stronger on slopers outside (probably from the back-2 and middle-2 open-hand training).

My theory (also based on hearsay from two fellow Beastmaker users who have both climbed 5.14) is that the half-crimp grip is the most efficient in terms of benefiting open-hand and full-crimp. This is loosely based on the principle that isometric training is more effective at intermediate joint angles (which seems a shaky conclusion given what literature I can find). Here's one supporting study: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/831…

I think there are probably a lot of other factors at play relating to the biomechanical differences between full-crimp, half-crimp, and open-hand - in particular the angle of the distal phalanges and how that relates to optimum friction.

Another factor at play is that I've historically been stronger on slopers than crimps (due to years of pulley injuries), so maybe it's not a generalizable phenomenon that training half-crimps has produced improvement for me across a range of grips.

That said, if you are weak on slopers, then you're either weak open-hand (in which case middle-2 and back-2 will do wonders for you), or you don't know how to hold and move off slopers - more of a technique issue than a strength issue. You would be better served learning to understand friction during sloper movement on real rock, rather than static hangs on plastic or wood. Find the plumb-line, initiate from the lower body, and all that jazz. Any way you slice it, hangboard training on slopers seems like a waste of time.

my grip naming is basically same as alvaro's. pretty cool to see other folk's experiences with the various grips.

Alvaro's description is what I always thought the different crimps meant.

I feel like training open handed crimps may be as effective for _muscular_ development as the other crimp positions, but that only by training half and full crimps do you stimulate pulley and ligament development in the fingers. I've had a couple ruptured pulleys that I attribute wholly to insufficient full crimp training- basically my muscles being stronger than my connective tissue. One thing I like about the RPTC is that the tiny crimp allows me to train the half and full crimp positions, which I've never felt comfortable doing on other boards.

Mark Paulson wrote:I feel like training open handed crimps may be as effective for _muscular_ development as the other crimp positions, but that only by training half and full crimps do you stimulate pulley and ligament development in the fingers. I've had a couple ruptured pulleys that I attribute wholly to insufficient full crimp training- basically my muscles being stronger than my connective tissue. One thing I like about the RPTC is that the tiny crimp allows me to train the half and full crimp positions, which I've never felt comfortable doing on other boards.

I'd be interested to know why you find the RPTC crimps more comfortable for this than other boards.

if you do it right though, the rough plastic is better training for your finger skin than wood. for the main place that i climb it is pretty key to have tough finger skin.

Will Anglin wrote:If you want to get better/stronger at something, you have to train specifically for it. If you are weak at full-crimp, train full-crimp. If you are weak at pinches, train pinches. There are safe and effective ways to train all grip types. Sure, training things like full-crimp has a higher risk of injury, but if you never train full-crimp, then go on a climbing trip and start working on crispy problems, you are bound to hurt yourself. The body (connective tissue especially) needs time and progressive stimulation to become strong. I hear a lot of people who say they never climb monos or they never full crimp because they don't want to get hurt. If they progressively trained those facets, they would actually help protect themselves against injury.

This is exactly correct in my opinion and in my experience. That said, there are smart climbers out there who disagree with it. But I think they're wrong :)

I think wood has its place in training, but there is truth in what Lamont says--you need to train your skin just like anything else. You can get a lot more variey in texture using plastic. For example, go check out the texture on the Progression board, then check out the texture on the RPTC. Big difference. But the best reason for using plastic is that you can create much more exotic shapes with plastic. Furthermore, its much cheaper to mass-produce those complex shapes, keeping costs relatively low.

Monomaniac wrote: That said, there are smart climbers out there who disagree with it. But I think they're wrong :)

Mono, would you mind referencing any of these articles for my review?

last night, while repeatedly greasing off the black teflon holds at the gym i realized that the nobel prize in gym climbing would definitely go to whoever comes up with a material that keeps it's friction properties regardless of use. think of that - if the holds kept that nice grippy texture forever... maybe the material would be some sort of self-shedding granularity that constantly erodes, revealing a new grippy layer. i think some of that sandstone back east is like that. mmmmmm, dare to dream.....

i like the wood texture of the campus rungs for the most part. it seems to have pretty good balance between grip and not tearing your skin off. like mark says though, it would be hard to make complex shapes. a lot of this is due to the anisotropic nature of wood, it would be tough to make any sort of thin/small/positive shapes without the wood splitting. another major problem is defects in the wood - a LOT of the wood hangboards i have seen had major defects that would be nasty on the skin.

big wood slopers might be kind of nice though. probably $$$ though.

TheBirdman wrote: Mono, would you mind referencing any of these articles for my review?

I try to avoid calling people out these days :). I'm sure others won't hesitate, or you can PM me.

Has anyonone tried to modify the friction of the plastic boards to feel more like wooden boards? I don't plan on putting vaseline on my plastic board but I feel like there could be a sensible way of doing this and I don't know it.

Brandon S wrote:Has anyonone tried to modify the friction of the plastic boards to feel more like wooden boards? I don't plan on putting vaseline on my plastic board but I feel like there could be a sensible way of doing this and I don't know it.

You can sand the plastic down, the only reason plastic boards are so coarse is due to the material originally used to create the mold of the board/hold, typically holds are originally created by shaping foam, which naturally has texture, if you sand it down enough you'll get it as smooth as you want because Urethane is very dense materiel (unless a hollow filler is used).

DoesNotCare wrote: You can sand the plastic down, the only reason plastic boards are so coarse is due to the material originally used to create the mold of the board/hold, typically holds are originally created by shaping foam, which naturally has texture, if you sand it down enough you'll get it as smooth as you want because Urethane is very dense materiel (unless a hollow filler is used).

Doh...Makes sense. Thanks DNC!

a little bit of sanding goes a long ways! i recommend just doing a couple quick passes, try it out, if it's still rough a couple more passes....