Grippers And Climbing

[wressler125]

I know that grippers are best at developing gripper strength, but I was wondering what everyone thought of doing high rep gripper closes as a way to build grip endurance for climbing?

[Darco]

High Rep no set with a crimp grip would give you the best carry over to climbing IMHO.

[climber511]

Almost no carry over at all from grippers. Lots of other things will help you a lot more. Maybe the best "gym" exercise for climbing is finger curls. Hang boards are better yet but climbing is best of all by far. There is so much more to climbing than grip strength.

[Ray Hansford]

I climbed for 6 years, and the best training I found for climbing strength was a campus board.

Do a search on google if you dont know what they are.

It was invented by my climbing idol Wolfgang Gullich

[supermagnamon]

training grippers for open hand strength activity like rock climbing, does not mix well. litle to no carry over is applied. working with revolving handles and eagle loops should help more with u're grip strength with climbing.

[the swiss]

i agree that grippers don't really help.

using them with a crimp grip would be inviting injury IMO, so watch out!!

Rim lifts, pinching, campusing and hangboard training are best I think.

[Bult]

I've tried climbing a few times.(just for fun mind you).

4 years back with no grip training whatsover, and after a year or so of training with them I didn't do any better.

Indeed those eagle loops might work. I've seen some of these climbing guys doing finger pullups.

[speedy]

I took one climbing course, and I can tell you from doing that, while grippers can help, I do not see them being a needed thing. First the best way to increase your hand strength for climbing is to consistantly climb. Another thing you will notice is you do a lot more with your finger, especially the finger tips than the entire grip itself. Knowing that I would do more workouts consisting of pinching. That means put the grippers to the side and get blogs, or use Pony Clamps that you can get in any hardware store.

Another thing I excelled in the class because of my body condition: grip and everything else. To get where I am in whether it is for climbing or looking good I left weights and went all bodyweight workout. But the thing that helped me excel in the gripping part is doing pullups using rope. Now when climbing you should not be holding onto the rope as much as you would on the wall, stone, or whatever you are climbing. But to hold onto rope, while holding up your bodyweight is no easy task. I suggest doing rope pullups at least 5 days a week. It really only takes 5 minutes to do, and the results are tremendous. If you want details on my workout, just do a search on all threads using my name, and you will find my workout plan listed more than once.

Edited July 29, 2005 by Iman74

[climber511]

Here's an email I sent to a friend a while back to try and help him with his climbing knowledge.

Probably the biggest single training mistake climbers make is to just climb instead of practice climbing. It’s a lot like working out that way. It’s all about working your weak points, not your strengths. The biggest problem guys like us have is that we love the weight room and think we can climb better by just developing a wicked strong grip. While that doesn’t hurt anything, climbing is a whole body sport; sure it hammers your forearms and fingers but the secret – if there is one – is to use your body movements in such a way as to take as much stress as possible off of the fingers and forearms, then you have their full strength available when body movement alone won’t get you through. It’s also a strength to bodyweight ratio sport; good climbers are light weights and a few pounds can make the difference in going up – or coming down. At some point you have to decide what’s important to you – lifting bigger weights or climbing better. Movement skills are more important than any other single thing in climbing and these are normally developed by practicing specific movement patterns either on the rock, a climbing wall, or a system board (recommended at higher levels). Often flexibility issues must be addressed as well.

Now guessing that you’re interested at this time in developing the “gym” or “weight room” aspects of training for climbing; I’ll give you my thoughts in a general way. Fingers and forearms are for the most part used statically – that is not through a full range of motion. While it’s still a good (no great) idea to train full ranges of motion for overall strength and health; you must develop strength in those positions that are most commonly used. Open hand, crimp grip, tip grip, and various crack size cams and locks, also individual fingers in each position, trained isometricly. You must also develop “hard tips” or the toughening and hardening of the fingertips that is necessary for climbing. If you live far from any climbing area in the winter – the weight room may be your only place to work on all these things for a recreational climber. At the beginner level, the best way to train is to go climbing a lot. There’s a lot to learn rope and gear wise that you need before you worry about gymnastic and strength goals – you know - the stuff that keeps you from getting killed out there.

The first thing climbers notice is the unbelievable pump that you get in your forearms. While I don’t know of a way to eliminate this, there are things you can do to help in the training hall. At a certain level of strength recruitment, blood flow pretty much stops in a muscle. An example might be this – if you hold onto 100# and that is you limit strength, then you’re using 100% of your strength – but if you increase your limit strength to 200#, now you’re using 50% of you limit. Much of what I’ve read says that blood flow slows significantly at about 60% of limit. So increasing limit strength will certainly help with the pump. It also means you will be able to hold smaller and smaller holds the stronger you get as well. Increasing vascularity in the forearms can also be accomplished by high repetition work on those muscles. Care must be taken to work the antagonists to prevent injury also. Reverse wrist curls or the Formulator and opening the hands with rubber bands over the fingertips are a good start.

One of the primary tools used to develop climbing specific strength is the hang board – a collection of various sized and shaped holds that you can hang from, using either positive (weights) or negative tension (bands) as needed for your goals and ability level. An advanced method is the campus board – highly effective but NOT for beginners – it’s very stressful and can result in injuries if you’re not ready for it. High rep wrist curls have value for increasing vascularity but don’t get hung up on thinking this is the secret to anything related to climbing just because the pump feels the same. Behind the back wrist curls seem to apply more specifically to the way climbing hits the forearms. Levering can help, especially in crack climbing and injury prevention. Maybe the best single weight exercise I’ve found for climbing is finger curls – arms straight with a curl grip – roll a barbell down as far as you can towards your fingertips, then roll them back up to a tightly closed hand, wrists and arms stay straight. World class climber Todd Skinner told me about these. Do it in the power rack and push the weight – bodyweight should be easy enough – and more is certainly possible. Keep the reps low – maybe triples. It’s probably a good idea to do some all around work for the lower arms in the off season as well but it’s only going to keep you healthy, not increase climbing specific strengths much.

I made more improvement by starting Ashtanga Yoga than getting stronger - analyse "your" weak points; fix each one and your climbing will improve greatly.

[supersqueeze]

Funny, I made big gains through Yoga and Pilates, too. My most ignored weaknesses were flexibility and body tension. Now, if I could only get a little stronger ...

[wressler125]

thanks to everyone that replied.

I DO know that the best workout for climbing is to climb. However, it is not feasible to climb 4 days a week with my current schedule. I do mostly a lot of pinch work and thick bar work when working my grip, along with some leveraging (important in wrestling). I am not looking to build strength with the grippers, just develop some more endurance on the walls and rocks. Mostly, looking for a way to build up my endurance to help avoid that pump that you feel towards the end of a long course. I noticed that doing high rep work with a lighter gripper also got me that pump, so I was wondering if that might help. I think it has more to do with conditioning the body to be able to deliver blood to the hands than with overall hand strength.

anyone else?? anything else??

[Blarg]

I had never been aware of people wanting to get vascularity or a pump to actually make muscles harder or more efficient workers, only for looks, which I figured was to make someone look more cut and developed.

But I guess you guys are talking about enhancing vascularity as something actually practical. Interesting.

I used to have fairly vascular inner forearms from doing wrist curls. I never thought of it as practical for much before.

[speedy]

Well if that is the cae, then I reitterate what I said earlier. Under the deck, on some beams, basically where ever, setup some rope to do rope pullups. You strengthen your grip, and many parts in your upperbody.

This link gives details on what muscles normal pullups work. Enjoy the pics.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/exercises.php?Name=Pullups

But using rope, you strengthen the grip that much more.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/likness29.htm

http://www.ironmind.com/ironcms/opencms/Ir...xtremepage.html

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler57.htm

There was an article about a guy which this is about all he does, and he is big, but can't find it.

thanks to everyone that replied.

I DO know that the best workout for climbing is to climb.  However, it is not feasible to climb 4 days a week with my current schedule.  I do mostly a lot of pinch work and thick bar work when working my grip, along with some leveraging (important in wrestling).  I am not looking to build strength with the grippers, just develop some more endurance on the walls and rocks.  Mostly, looking for a way to build up my endurance to help avoid that pump that you feel towards the end of a long course.  I noticed that doing high rep work with a lighter gripper also got me that pump, so I was wondering if that might help.  I think it has more to do with conditioning the body to be able to deliver blood to the hands than with overall hand strength. 

anyone else?? anything else??

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[wressler125]

im trying to build up my pinch grip to be able to do rafters pull ups so that i can train almost anywhere. Its not easy.

[Number Ten Ox]

Hey guys, I am a pretty serious boulderer who has not had a ton of time (like no time at all) to climb in the last 2 months. I did have time to work grippers pretty hard while driving to and from work or before bed.

I also worked on my ab wheels with tons of tension excersises every night.

I then had the opportunity to build a home climbing wall and start in on the climbing training again. When I invited my friends over last night to climb on my wall guess what I found.

"uh oh, Joe got strong again..."

I was certainly stronger than before my "break". You can see it in my arms, they are just bigger and more defined all over. Also it was easier to stick holds due to my increased body tension.

So I say grippers DO help climbing, if you are stuck @ a high level and need to improve give them a try. It may not help much for beginer or intermediate climbers but at the high end, with the teeny tiny little crimpers having strong hands helps...

Also just handing my #2 to over a hundred climbers, the two that could close it the furthest were the two strongest. A v15 climber from France and a v14 climber from Canada.

Strong hands=strong climbers=hard grippers.

[speedy]

#10,

How can a gripper help the more experience, when from my understand that climbing is more in the finger tips than anything else? The gripper works the grip, but not the tips.

[Number Ten Ox]

For some reason it seemed like after training grippers very small crimps were easier to hang onto. I did alot of work with shaved grippers. Making a very tight fist and then just forcing the tips of your fingers up is basically how I crimp, perhaps it is just how i hold onto small holds and how i was holding the gripper.

It seems like with easier climping there are larger more open handed holds, gripper work probably does not translate as well to this. I know I am still not very strong on slopers...