Back two fingers

Anyone else seriously training the pinky/ring finger combo. I've started doing it in an effort to strengthen all of my fingers.

I am wondering if I should just fully isolate them and take weight off though. The pinky/ring combo is just about the tweakiest thing I've ever felt, for such little gains.

Curious to if anyone has had any experience with this.

I do. I've replaced training 4-finger open hand grip with the three 2-finger pairs. R/P can certainly be tweaky at first; be conservative with the amount of weight you are using and progress slowly. Pretty soon you'll be amazed at how well you can hang off your two weakest fingers!

Check out the beastmaker site for a good workout on two fingers and down to monos. Take it easy, supposedly the ring finger has the weakest pulleys

I've trained the back-2 on the beastmaker, going from 30lb assist to bodyweight (5 reps) over the past year or so. Compared to other finger combos, it can be tweakier, and I'm more conservative about increasing the weight on back-2 compared with middle-2 and crimp.

I've seen a dramatic improvement on the rock, allowing me to take holds as back-3, and making my open-hand 4-finger grip feel way stronger. So in my experience, back-2 is tricky to train, and you need to stop and dial the weight back if it gets tweaky, but because they are so weak, it has a great training ROI.

body weight on the back 2 fingers is pretty good Rajiv! in the past i trained back 2 primarily for crack climbing. this cycle i have included back 2 as additional help for my 4 finger open crimp grip and i think it will be helpful.

one tough thing about training back 2 is that the finger lengths are very different. i use a deep slot and kind of hook them in there. i definitely have improved during this cycle and i think that this grip has a lot of potential improvement over the long haul.

slim wrote:one tough thing about training back 2 is that the finger lengths are very different.

That's the crux of training back 2 IMO. The beastmaker 2000 is nice because it's got a 2-finger slot with the ring-finger side drilled deeper so that both fingers fit comfortable without any contortions. Using this slot I've been able to go from -15 pounds to +15 pounds over the winter, so about same gains as Rajiv by training this grip.

my weights are pretty equivalent between half pad mono and the ring/pinky one-and-a-half pad combo. which basically means i am taking a lot of weight off....

I am using the metolius 3d simulator, large pocket for ring/pointer

first session i went up to 7 lbs

second session, 15 lbs and felt like I could go up to 25+ but I am worried given the strain I am feeling throughout my whole forearm

I feel like its one of those cases where the muscle is just far stronger than my current tendon (strength)

josh villeneuve wrote: I feel like its one of those cases where the muscle is just far stronger than my current tendon (strength)

if that's where your at Josh... slow down man... ur a strong dude and ur only going to get stronger... unless you fuck ur shit up. As a, been there done that, its not worth it.

josh villeneuve wrote: first session i went up to 7 lbs second session, 15 lbs and felt like I could go up to 25+ but I am worried given the strain I am feeling throughout my whole forearm I feel like its one of those cases where the muscle is just far stronger than my current tendon (strength)

That's exactly how I felt too when I first started the back 2 combo. I started with -15 and even though I felt like I could go up a lot faster I took it easy and increased the weight 2.5 or 5 pounds each workout. It's not worth ruining your season by jumping weight too quickly.

Why are u guys calling your pinky and ring finger combo your "back 2"? Wouldn't it be your side 2, technically?

I've never done back 2...but do train back 3 only on a sloper(all other grips are tweaky for me) and have seen some pretty good gains.

Morgan Patterson wrote:Why are u guys calling your pinky and ring finger combo your "back 2"? Wouldn't it be your side 2, technically?

it's just slang...

front 2 = pointer/middle
middle 2 = middle/ring
back 2 = ring/pinky

I've tried back two, but couldn't get used to hanging off such different finger lengths. I still wanted to work the pinky a bit, so I incorporated "devil hangs" recently, pinky and index finger. Feels more balanced at wrist.

My two cents are as follows. I am no training guru, but I found that split-training finger "teams" really helps me, especially if when I do a lot of crack climbing or pockets. What worked for me was 3-weeks by 3 week-night sessions micro-cycle; something along these lines
Tue
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on closed crimp (small edge);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on "team 3" (pinky+ring);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on thin pinch;
Wed
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on open hand (low-angle sloper);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on "team 1" (index+middle);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on wide pinch;
Thu
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on open crimp (medium edge);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on "team 2" (middle+ring);
- 5 repeats of 7-sec hangs on thumb-side pinch;

Few additional points:
-- I usually rest 7 sec between hangs and rest 2 min between each set.
-- For first set of the day, I try to use the smallest/worst holds possible and take off more weight. Once I go to "team training", I just use a regular 1-pad rounded edge
-- I try to take off enough weight that the first attempt is "easy" and record carefully the weight progression through the cycle and the year
-- Though I am sure there are better training regiments, this one I devised given my propensity to get injured.
-- The workouts are rather short and don't destroy you so you can do 3 days in a row and recover to climb two days on a weekend.

Marek Sapkovski wrote:My two cents are as follows...

I really like your workout. I have a hard time with longer hangboard workouts since I get bored and would rather climb. This seems really short which would work way better for me. Thanks!

I train that pair, and MR pair. My MR has shown a lot of improvement over the last few years.

Both those feel tweaky to me, but not really in the fingers (although the Ring A2 used to feel a bit threatened when I first started them). Where I feel it is in the forearm belly, about halfway down. A very peculiar feeling almost like if you took the horrendously pumped feeling of lactic acid burn/pain, but removed the tightness/hard/engorged aspect of it and isolated it over that little area in line with those two fingers.

Another thing I'm finding is the shallow pockets for any pair can give me pain and tweaky feeling in the top side ("top" being opposite of palm) of my DIP joints. I'm speculating this is from the shear force applied to them. Not really sure how to deal with that other than using deeper pockets with more weight.