Hi friends. This post will be all about me: you have been warned. Its purpose is to lay a clear plan for my year and maybe inspire you to do the same – or at least to give you some ideas.
Every year, I set myself an overarching focus. This is basically a goal – but it’s often subjective, which can be hard to measure and achieve. So I often set smaller goals, in line with my focus, that’ll help me measure progress. The idea’s that all of my decisions are in favor of the focus – and that’s why I only have one per year. If you have more than one focus, they will (by definition) compete.
My 2023 focus is to turn my fingers from a weakness into a strength.
Yes, my fingers are a big weakness. The full story of how that happened is at the end of this post if you’re interested. But it’s pretty long, so let’s just skip to my baseline tests.
My numbers
I chose four metrics to work with – ones that Power Company Climbing has publicly available data on. I wanted tests to measure my finger strength and pulling power because 1) they are directly transferable to climbing, and 2) I suspected that my finger strength would be dismal and my pulling power would be above average (relative to the grades I climb).
Those four metrics were: max hang (20 mm edge, 10 seconds), max weighted pull up, repeaters until failure (7 seconds on, 3 seconds off, measured in seconds including rests), and max number of pull ups.
I measured my fingers in a four-finger open-hand position and in a half crimp. Read my life story below for the full picture, but I am definitely stronger in an open-hand position and I wanted to find out by how much.
Jan 2: Baseline test
- Max hang
Half crimp @ 25 lbs = 120% bw
Open hand @ 40 lbs = 132% bw
- Weighted pull up
42.5 lbs = 134% bw
Previous personal best = 140% bw
- Repeaters
Half crimp = 90 seconds
Open hand = 130 seconds
- Max pull up
Number = 11
Previous personal best = 13
How I stack up compared to Power Company’s data
First, let’s talk grades. My hardest outdoor boulder is V6, and my hardest sport route is 5.12b, But I sent my first V6 recently (I had hardly bouldered outside till about six months ago), and I sent my first 5.12b in November 2021 – ages ago – and I did one third try in October 2022. I’m fairly confident that I can climb at least 5.12c, I just haven’t put time into projecting sport routes over the last year. So I’m going to call my max boulder V6 and my max sport route 5.12c for a more up-to-date picture of where I’m at. All charts are Power Company’s – I just added my metrics for comparison.
Here are my numbers vs boulder grades:
And here are my numbers vs sport grades:
Let’s discuss
My tests came out largely as I expected, but with a few surprises. I thought the difference between my pulling power and finger strength would be much bigger than it is: my finger strength is better than I thought it would be, and my pulling power has actually decreased since I last tested it (about a year ago). Plus, the difference between my half crimp and open hand was less than I expected. But this does make sense: I’ve been slowly but surely working on half crimping, but I haven’t been working on open hand or pull ups at all.
It’s quite clear that my weighted pull up is quite good for the grade I climb – it’s even decent (just below average) for the next chunk of grades. This is true for my max number of pull ups too. I haven’t trained pull ups in years because I used to train them a lot and I’ve been quite strong at pulling for some time. But now that my pulling power has decreased, I’m going to sprinkle in some pull training to get it slowly progressing – without focusing on it too much.
My open hand repeaters are very good: great for the grade I climb and above average for the next chunk of grades. But my half crimp repeaters are just below average at the grade I climb. I expected to be below average, but even more than I am – so this is good news. Half crimp is a clear area to focus on while continuing to work open hand at the same time.
Lastly, let’s talk about the obvious worst test: max hangs. My open hand max hang is okay: it looks decent in sport climbing but quite bad in bouldering – especially in the V7-9 range, where I want to be. My half crimp max hang is very bad. It’s below average for the boulder and sport grades I climb. This is clearly my low-hanging fruit, and it should get the most dedicated training going forward. If I can improve on this while maintaining or slightly improving my other metrics, that should set me up well for pushing my grade.
The plan
I currently climb three days on, one day off – with extra rest days sprinkled in when I feel I need them. But my fingers rarely feel properly tired. To work them more, I’ll Moonboard twice a week (starting off with small, short sessions and building up). I’ll climb more crimpy things too, so that my non-Moonboard sessions also work my fingers. And to add to my finger load, I’ll hangboard or campus board at the end of sessions that don’t really work my fingers – like outdoor sport climbing, indoor boulder sessions not focused on crimps, etc.
On the Moonboard, I figure that I can work finger strength, contact strength, and movement skills (the Moonboard is my extreme antistyle). When hangboarding, I plan to do max hangs to start with and incorporate repeaters when I start to plateau. My aim is to make my fingers tired but not push them into injury territory. I think, after this long climbing, that I know when to stop. So I’m going to trust my body and do what it tells me to. Part of turning my fingers from a weakness into a strength is not getting injured – so don’t worry, that’s high on my list.
My goal numbers
- Max hang
Half crimp @ 62 lbs = 150% bw – up from 120%
Open hand @ 75 lbs = 160% bw – up from 132%
- Weighted pull up
75 lbs = 160% bw – up from 134%
Previous personal best = 140% bw
- Repeaters
Half crimp = 130 seconds – up from 90 seconds
Open hand = 160 seconds – up from 130 seconds
- Max pull up
Number = 14 – up from 11
Previous personal best = 13
These are some ambitious finger goals, especially in a half crimp, but I have a full 12 months to achieve them. I’m hoping that with dedicated focus, they will be possible. You can see that my pull goals are smaller – this is already a strength, and I’d like to gently keep it that way while focusing on my fingers. I’ll retest all metrics at the 6-month mark as well as in a year’s time – and I may add a quarterly test in too.
Now, if this wasn’t enough mumbo jumbo about me, please enjoy my climbing life story below.
Why my fingers are weak (and my pulling is strong)
I’ve always had weak fingers. Why? Because I never used them. I’m sure that makes zero sense, seeing as climbing is so finger heavy. Let me explain. I started out climbing jugs, as per usual. No need for fingers there. Growing up, I did dance pretty seriously (like, I wanted to be a professional). And that left me with flexibility, balance, a strong core, and the ability to do a lot of push ups. I had also run and worked out in the years since, so I was reasonably fit and strong.
Then, when I got into climbing, I was really inspired by bouldering in the cave. And cave climbing in the easier grades (we’re talking V2-3 at that time) is all jugs. No need for fingers there either. The only thing standing in my way was that I couldn’t do a single pull up.
So I got really psyched on pull ups. I added pull up training into my gym routine, and ten weeks or so later, I did my first pull up. In the next 18 months, I moved to California (from NYC), switched from bouldering to sport climbing – you don’t need fingers to climb 5.10 either – and had two serious ankle injuries that set me back about a year. You might think I got strong fingers while being unable to walk… I did not. I swam, and cycled, and trained pull ups and core. I tried hangboarding – I even built Geek Climber’s portable hangboard. But near the beginning of my hanging foray, I slipped off the board, fell on my ankle (still in a moonboot), and tweaked my finger. So that was the end of that.
That brings us to Covid. I was just getting back to where I was pre-injuries when lockdown happened. So that sucked. But just like everybody else, I decided to train – pull ups again (along with core and legs). I did do some hangboarding, but it was mostly to maintain whatever finger strength I did have. I never added any weight, or tried very hard. My lockdown goal was 10 pull ups, and I hit that around the middle of 2020. Then gyms started opening up again.
I met new partners who climbed hard. I started trying harder things, and I started sending harder things. But there would be these moves I couldn’t do: basically, anything that revolved around finger strength. Crimpy lines, throws to crimps, throws from crimps. My partners would be like “I don’t understand why you can’t do that, you’re strong enough”. And I was – in everything but the fingers.
So I decided to hangboard. I went to go and see what I could do, so I could make a plan… and I couldn’t hang bodyweight on a 30 mm edge. Everybody thought I was insane. I could climb ~ 5.11a and V4 in the gym, but I couldn’t hang on anything. Turns out, I just used my shoulders, core, and balance to get myself up stuff. That was the first time I realized I had seriously neglected my fingers.
I addressed this by climbing more crimpy things, hangboarding, and just “squeezing harder” (who knew?!). My fingers got stronger. I could do bodyweight repeaters on a 15 mm edge. I sent my first 5.12. Then, around May 2021, I moved into a van for a year and made a conscious decision to just climb. I had a lot of movement and technique gains to be made, and climbing is great training for climbing. So, no more hangboarding – except occasionally on rest days.
In April 2022, I was on a route in Front Corridor at Red Rock: Helltown, 11d. I had sent a bunch of 5.12as at this point, and my first 5.12b. But there was one clip on this climb that I just couldn’t do. Inexplicably, everybody else at the crag thought the clipping hold was a jug – it was an incut crimp, probably bigger than the 15 mm edge I could do repeaters on. It just didn’t make any sense.
This was not my first time getting shut down by incut crimp lines at grades below my limit. I was determined to figure out why, so I could work on it. After some trial and error on the van hangboard, I figured it out with another piece of the puzzle: I could never hang on a 10 mm edge. I couldn’t even try to hang on it, nor did I understand how anybody could. The answer: in a half crimp. Turns out, I was four-finger open-handing everything and I couldn’t half crimp to save my life. I found myself, once again, unable to hang bodyweight on a 30 mm edge – in a half crimp. That was the second time I realized I had seriously neglected my fingers.
Fast forward to now, January 2023, and I can hang bodyweight in a half crimp on a 10 mm edge for literally one second (i.e. barely). I achieved this just by incorporating half crimps into the hangboard warmup that I do every session. It’s not really for training – it’s more to get my fingers warm – but it helped. My fingers still feel relatively weak compared to the grades I climb and to my friends. I often can’t try moves because I can’t hold a hold that is a non-issue for other people.
So, this year, I’ve decided to put focused effort into strengthening my fingers – so much so that they stop being a weakness and start being a strength. I’m tall, light, and flexible, after all, with small hands. I’m built to be good at crimping. It’s time to find out what I can do with some more finger strength.
Featured image credit: Ryman Wiemann