Training slopers

Hey all,

I'm happy with my crimp strength/training methods....however, I would like some advice on how to work on sloper strength. What do you do that has shown you some good gains. Thanks

I've never noticed gains from actually working slopers on a hangboard. Focusing on core, biceps, and a lot of openhanded hangboard repeaters on not-small hold has always worked for me.

youtube.com/watch?v=78Mlrib…

I may be totally wrong about this, so YMMV, but I've noticed that slopers and pinches seem to use a totally different set of muscle groups from edges, crimps, etc, which is why many people identify slopers as their weakness. Also, the approach you have to take is very different...while jugs, edges and crimps are all about relaxing and using the minimal amount of grip necessary to avoid getting pumped, slopers and pinches are all about maximum body tension and pulling really f&$kig hard. It's a very different mental approach, and I often feel like I could do sloper problems if I could only ";try harder."; So mentally training how to really maintain core tension and to pull as hard as you can is likely as important as developing the often neglected pinching muscles involved. When hangboarding, I notice that if I alternate slopers with edges, I often feel "refreshed," confirming that a different set of muscles are involved.

My open hand strength is not a personal issue thus far..more more more!!!

as per the Anderson brothers: "sloper training on a hang board often depends more on skin friction than strength, so many athletes find this grip position is not worth training on a hangboard."

Training pinches is probably as close as you can get on a hangboard. I think "bomb" type holds work pretty well... especially the wooden ones.

bombs

Or take a winter trip to Horsepens 40.

Maple Canyon

Brandon.Phillips wrote:Or take a winter trip to Horsepens 40.

+1 for this. If you want to get better at climbing slopers, go out and climb lots of slopers.

Alternately, one gym I climbed at in Portland had a campus board set up with big, smooth PVC pipes. Without any friction coating on them, these felt much more like a pure sloper workout than a skin friction workout, like most hangboard slopers seem to be. I only climbed there over the summer, but I imagine doing regular laps on such a campus board with progressively increasing weight would be a good training tactic.

If you want to build one, use whole pipes instead of cutting them in half, like I've seen at some other gyms. Having the full pipe forces you to use them as slopers instead of crimping the back edge. The setup I saw in Portland had a frame with two steel beams along the edges, but no back, like crimp-based campus boards have. Structurally, the best approach is probably to put another beam inside each of the pipes, and bolt this on the edges to the frame.