Half Crimp Cue

I am that guy, the one who’s been climbing and training for 20 years but never bothered to learn to half crimp (and by extension have a terribly weak full crimp). I dedicated myself to getting stronger in this grip type and for the past year, have been committed to it. I noticed that my hands really do not like being in a normal half crimp position. I could wrestle it into position, but even on my best days, it was always pretty wonky. It never felt, strong, my joints never looked perpendicular, my wrist would be cocked at a strange angle. For the life of me, I could not figure what I was doing wrong and assumed it had to be a morphological issue. I am a bigger guy with large hands and I’ve also broken both wrists. I figured that combination was preventing me from achieving a clean and symmetrical half crimp position.

What I realized is that, in an attempt to get the maximum amount of surface area between my fingers and a hold, I would twist my fingertips to point toward each other. That allowed all four of my fingers to have the maximum amount of surface area against the hold. Imagine trying contort your hand angle so that all four of your fingertips hit the back of the hold. That was my default gripping position. 

For the longest time, this seemed natural to me as more surface area for more fingers should mean more force generated overall. What I’ve come to learn is that by doing this, you ultimately overemphasize your pinky and put your pointer finger in a much weaker position. The training cue I’ve had to rewire my brain with is when hangboarding (or grabbing any edge of the ground) I initially take it as a three finger drag. I then switch to a half crimp but only with three fingers (middle, index, and ring). I then include my pinky but I do so without moving my first three fingers.

The end result is that my pinky is in an open drag position and isn’t maximizing surface area (it sort of sits on the outside edge of the hold) and the rest of my fingers maintain a strict half crimp position. The effect of this is a much larger percentage of the force is now applied to my pointer instead of the pinky. In terms of relative strength, your pointer finger is far more useful than your pinky and the gains have been significant.

To those who have always naturally been able to half crimp, this minor tweak probably sounds nonsensical. For anyone struggling with a half crimp (and full crimp) for that matter, hopefully this small cue can help. It was almost instantaneous in terms of gains because even after all these years of my pointer finger being essentially unused, it’s far stronger even untrained than a highly trained pinky finger.

Hopefully this can help someone and wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.