Pulling hard on bad holds on a steep wall

Title says it all.  I have a hangboard and built a woody that is mostly 45 deg and there are some holds that I can’t use unless paired with a better hold.  What, in your opinion, would be the best way of getting better at holding them?

Max strength hangboarding is the obvious way to go, but I’m wondering if it’s not just a matter of finger strength but also body tension/core strength.  Overhangs are generally my weakness and I can handle pretty bad holds for my grade on vert/slab or jug hauls on the steeps, but when it’s bad holds on a steep wall I have issues.  
Bouldering with these holds is also an option, but I often either A) pair bad holds with a suitably good hold that ends up taking most of the weight, making it questionable how much training the other hand is getting or B) set problems too hard such that I can’t even hold on.
For those of you with woodies especially, how do you train to get better at using bad holds?  Thinking especially about you psychos with tiny wood pinches and crimps, lol.

Use better feet

Buy more jugs

Ted Pinson wrote: Title says it all.  I have a hangboard and built a woody that is mostly 45 deg and there are some holds that I can’t use unless paired with a better hold.  What, in your opinion, would be the best way of getting better at holding them?

Max strength hangboarding is the obvious way to go, but I’m wondering if it’s not just a matter of finger strength but also body tension/core strength.  Overhangs are generally my weakness and I can handle pretty bad holds for my grade on vert/slab or jug hauls on the steeps, but when it’s bad holds on a steep wall I have issues.  
Bouldering with these holds is also an option, but I often either A) pair bad holds with a suitably good hold that ends up taking most of the weight, making it questionable how much training the other hand is getting or B) set problems too hard such that I can’t even hold on.
For those of you with woodies especially, how do you train to get better at using bad holds?  Thinking especially about you psychos with tiny wood pinches and crimps, lol.

Continue to (strategically) to hang board and use the bad holds with a better hold. Progressively use the bad hold with a smaller/worse "better hold until you can use the hold that is troubling you. 

Additionally, you can use larger feet/volumes. Generally speaking if you wan to make things more difficult you (obviously) pair awful feet with good hands OR awful hands with good feet. 

Get your hips closer to the wall, especially if they're sloping bad holds

Pull harder.

wait for it

yer gonna die!

Julian H wrote: change the wall to 20 degrees. When you climb 5.13 change it back to 45

I would if I could, but I was somewhat forced into the angle given the constraints of how I built by going straight into the existing rafters.  That said I’m able to get plenty of climbing in on jugs and more positive holds, I’m just hoping to progress towards those 5.13 holds. ;)

Joe: I’m sure I will, but not from this.

J T wrote:

Continue to (strategically) to hang board and use the bad holds with a better hold. Progressively use the bad hold with a smaller/worse "better hold until you can use the hold that is troubling you. 

Additionally, you can use larger feet/volumes. Generally speaking if you wan to make things more difficult you (obviously) pair awful feet with good hands OR awful hands with good feet. 

Cool, good to know I wasn’t completely wasting my time with those problems.  Also good idea about feet...I think that’s one thing I haven’t been doing a good job of doing intentionally as most of the screw-in feet I have at the bottom of the board are pretty bad.

Hey ted i have a couple pointers all are ment in good faith

Video yourself from the side and from behind. Look at your technique. Look at your hips. Loom at wherenyou are attempting.to generate moves from.

It is very likely that you have weak core muscles, moat people do. This is somthing that can be worked on but think of it more as and energy leak. You core transmits the power or "tension" from your  feet. So the ability to
keep your feet on will make holding those holds better.

You abilty to keep your feet on will come from.your muscles of course. However, your technique is far more  important. You need to twist from your feet into your hips between holds. Helps  alot

Happy training

Ted Pinson wrote: B) set problems too hard such that I can’t even hold on.

This is one of the best parts of having a home wall. You can leave problems on for years and come back to and check in on how they feel. The little tweaks you make with your body position/tension can teach you a ton and as you check back in on them as you get stronger it’s gets exciting to even make a little progress towards a super hard for you route.
There are some people who can progress very quickly but for the vast majority it’s gonna be a long term battle with small progressions. You may not be able to do a move now or even in 6 months, but if you consistently chip away and progress your training you will likely be able to do it someday. When that day comes it feels pretty good.

jessie briggs wrote: Buy more jugs

More redbull

Ted I’ve been seeing your home wall setup on Instagram and I have to say I’m a little envious. I also struggled with steep stuff for a long time. I think it’s from spending too much time at the Lake, haha! But if you do deadhangs on the small crimps on your hang board with your legs in an L-sit position you’ll be able to work on keeping body tension while pulling down on shitty holds. 

A Non wrote:

More redbull

Low carb monster and Gatorade bars to be exact! Diet of champions! 

On a realistic note:

If you are training for RRG climbing, fill your wall up and set goals on how many moves you can do in a row. Mix hard and easy moves, and get a shake after 15-20 moves. That should simulate RRG climbing fairly well. You aren’t really grabbing crimps there. Reachy moves that are core intensive(think crosses) and don’t cut feet! That should help you develop the core. Even just pulling on the wall into odd body positions can be really helpful, find a way to feel light on the small holds. Happy training! 

Forgive me if this comes off as condescending, but 45 degrees seems pretty darn steep for your current strength level  (assuming your ticklist is relatively up-to-date). The Moonboard is only 40 degrees, and it's not that usable until you're already climbing in the V4-5, 5.12- range (which are basically Moonboard V3's). The issue for you is that the small holds and corresponding hand positions (full, half-crimp) that you can and should be training on in the 0 to -25 degree range become pretty much impossible at 45 degrees. You're probably only able to really use jugs and finger-buckets, and while you'll definitely be able to develop body tension and cranking strength, it's a pretty inefficient way to build the finger strength you need. An additional impediment is the lack of progressive hold sizes from manufacturers- the best you can hope for is "S, M, L crimps/edges", but it gets pretty untenable financially to own multiple hold sizes for multiple positions on the board.

What you first need to decide is: Is your board going to be a serious training tool that you'll use regularly on into the future, or is it just a COVID stopgap? It's fun to build a woody and order some holds and have something to do while the gyms are closed... but it's hard to want to grind it out alone on a 45 degree wall when your gym is open and and your buddies are all climbing the new set. I envision a large percentage of COVID woodies will be collecting dust a year from now, so just try to be realistic. Again, not to be condescending, but solely based on your trad-to-boulder tick ratio, you don't seem like the obsessive, basement training-rat type (few are... I'm certainly not). Because if you -do- want your woody to be a regular training tool post-COVID,  you're gonna need a -lot- of holds to get from where you are now to yarding on 10mm crimps on a 45. You'll want to be able to progressively replace individual holds with slightly worse holds on a regular basis, and have enough problems going simultaneously to stave off boredom, which means, again, a lot of holds and a big investment. If you -prefer- training alone, or have a few geographically-proximate partners who want to get in on the board, it might be worth it. But it may also -definitely- not be worth it. There are few ways to get stronger faster than a steep system/spray wall, but there are also few training methods that are -less- fun (IMO). Either route you choose;

 -Definitely stick with the hangboarding (I'm of the Bechtel philosophy which believes one should basically hangboard their entire climbing career).

-Go bad hands/good feet before good hands/bad feet. It will help you develop better tension and technique faster than cutting feet all the time, and will get you onto the small holds more quickly.

It looks like I climb at a roughly similar level to you. Im primary into trad and not so much bouldering.

If there is one area that I have seriously neglected it’s the style of climbing you encounter on a board. Really weighting feet. Using power to latch holds quickly that aren’t great at that angle. Feet cutting and then resetting feet. Turning to side or opening hips to set up next moves in the most efficient way. Etc

Spent a little time on the easier moonboard set this last year. 2017 i think. The one with the red holds. After a few abysmal sessions where the start moves felt impossible, I started getting a few of the easier problems. Even crazier I actually started enjoying the style of climbing.

Trying to pinpoint what allowed me to do some of the super mega easiest problems on the board.

I think it’s a combo of factors. Base conditioning training I was doing. Lots of core. Trx or rings body tension stuff, Some Hangboarding etc.

separate from training I think it was primarily trying harder and harder to throw for holds and then not let go. I dont think I was mentally used to that kind of try hard, or even had the proper power coordination to do it.

maybe even more than that was watching videos of people climb the problems, and eventually getting the technical side of it down. Repeating some of the problems, was able to eventually get them to feel less desperate.  

Not sure what holds you have and how bad they are, but good luck man! Stay at it. Start getting stoked on making one move, or a session where you try a hard move and fail, and then rest for a few minutes. maybe you don’t even get that move until 2 or 3 sessions later. Also more trx body tension stuff for sure! I Y T for example.

-all spray from someone who has climbed moonboard v3

For what it's worth, I was practicing deadpoint on a symmetrical system board at my local gym last year/early this year. I had a similar problem. Granted deadpoint are probably somewhat closer to technical, in the technical - physical spectrum of moves. I basically was trying to mimic a move I encountered on a hard route (for me) at the Red. I stuck the move at Red only once out of dozens of attempts. Went similarly on the system board. My success rate was like once every few sessions, if I were perfectly warmed up (but not tired) and had perfect execution.

So I started off with holds that were better than my initial problem. I also varied the holds, started/end positions somewhat. I realized a few things:

• It is better to repeat the same position/move/exercise a few times in a row, with just like a 1 minute recovery. The goal is to be able to repeat multiple attempts and have the ability to compare how each went. I started to pick off little details that I wasn't doing well and they help me improve. The flip side to that is that they need to be not too hard (otherwise you'd need more recovery).
• It helps to performs attempts that are hard enough to be challenging (you need to warmup and focus). But you should be able to perform them almost 100% of the time if warmed up & applying yourself. You should be able to do repeated attempts without too much recovery. Think at the limit between onsight/redpoint, if that makes sense.
• I benefited from attempting deadpoints that were not really the same as my initial target (e.g. starting from slopes instead of sidepull, or crimps, or attempting longer moves from jugs, etc.). Those different movements help me pinpoint things I were doing well, or poorly. Because each tended to over-emphasis aspects that may have been hindering my initial goal, but were still flying under the radar.
• Focus on perfect excution. Better to perfectly execute a move 3 times, than to barely stick a harder one 1 our 3 attempts imo. The body remembers. If you make your body repeatedly botch attempts that are too hard, it'll remember to execute botched movement. 

After a number of weeks, I was then able to perform my initial deadpoint fairly regularly, maybe a bit better than coin flip odds. Then I never got to try it on the actual route at the Red because the world as we knew it ended before I got to that.... (Overly dramatized narration here).

===============================================================

For your purposes, what I think is similar:

• Steepness is a weakness of yours you say. This may be a number of things, but technical skills in the steep are somewhat different from elsewhere (more core needed, as you mentioned). So I think an approach that emphasis perfect execution would probably bring benefits.
• Similarly, I think you should not over-emphasis on the moves/holds you can't hold at the moment, but instead reduce the difficulty of the problem in order to focus on that execution, core, balance and slight body positioning details. I would also attempt different holds types, even if those aren't your initial bad holds.
• I think you may want to include short movements (like 1-2 moves, just going from a hold to another in a position similar to what you're initially trying to achieve). I say that because if core tension or other positioning details are part of your problem, they may become more apparent during transitions.

What I think is different:

• Maybe practicing regular hanging/pullups on bad edges/holds would be good. If you have a transgression broad/finger board or similar edges. That has nothing to do with technic, but perhaps you crimping/contact strength could benefit. That or just getting a better feel for what hanging on bad holds feels like, and also getting a better feel for what a limit hold looks like.
• You may want to work on the physical aspect in isolation. For exemple:
  • Negative pull-ups (e.g. start with the holds are your chin, and just lower in a controlled fashion). You're likely to be able to do that on harders holds that those you can pull on.
  • Lock-offs (full lock-offs, @ 90 degrees, @ 120 degrees) may help
  • Might want to include some core routine work, if you think it's a relative weakness of yours.

Julian H wrote: change the wall to 20 degrees. When you climb 5.13 change it back to 45

That's an interesting thought, but I am not sure I agree with that.

My personal philosophy about improving as a climber is that diversity always pays off, in the long run.

For Ted's setup, I think that training at 45 degrees at least some, even if it's just on huge jugs, is better than ignoring completely those steeper angles.

Then for training on worst holds, yeah sure, use lower angles.

The result being that instead of being used to only lower angles (say 20 degrees and less), you can be a climber that has at least some experience on all angles, from vertical to roofs AND all holds (good and bad). Instead of knowing only the full gamuts on holds, but only at lower angles....

Yeah, no...I get that obviously lol.  Since you’ve already looked at my Instagram, how would you recommend I go about “figuring out” the core/footwork problems?  Rob’s idea for videotaping is great - I could already see my core was sagging quite a bit.  But since this is a technique problem it’s harder to “figure out” when we’re all trapped in isolation (at least up here).  I do have plenty of jugs and tons of steep space to play around on (just finished adding a roof), so would you say I should focus more on different movement/angles on positive holds rather than trying to pull down on worse holds?

I appreciate the feedback btw.

Are you doing any body tension training with trx or gymnastics rings?