Finger Boarding
From SCWiki
Contents |
Principals
There are many commercially available types of finger-board designed to fit above a doorframe. You don't need to go to this expense. A 20mm-thick length of sanded wood with a slightly rounded edge is all you need. Remember you can also use holds on the bouldering wall or the crag. Make sure you use chalk as sweaty fingers can slip under big loads and cause tendon injuries. You must also hang with your elbows slightly bent, as if starting to do a pull-up. Repeatedly hanging from straight arms causes elbow injuries.
Grip Positions
- 4 finger open-handed
- 3 finger open-handed
- 4 finger crimp
- 4 finger half crimp
- 2 finger pocket (middle fingers)
- 2 finger pocket (index + middle finger)
- Mono pocket (middle finger)
Exercises
You are aiming to perform each hang for 5-8 seconds at the limit of your ability - it should feel very hard to hang on. There are many ways to adjust the difficulty level to create the right intensity. You can use one or both hands. If you need to reduce your body weight you can stand in a suspended length of bungee, cord or on a chair at the optimum distance in front of the board. You can work on different combinations of fingers, for example, 4 fingers with one hand and two with the other (swapping hands for each set). Wearing a weight belt or doing pull-ups while hanging on also increases the difficulty.
Do several easy hangs and pull ups to get thoroughly warmed up. A bar is useful to start off with to increase blood-flow and loosen the muscles, progressing to easy hangs and then pull-ups on the finger-board itself. The warm-up should take between 10 and 30 minutes.
At first only a few hangs will be enough to improve. You will over time develop an awareness of how much volume you can handle. You will need to increase this volume in steps very carefully, sometimes staying at the same level for months. I have been training hard for ten years and I do 5 sets of each grip, on average 4 times a week for around 8 months of the year. You can vary the focus of your workouts to suit your ambitions and weaknesses at the time. For instance if you are going on a trip to an area with lots of pockets, you can do more open-handed and 2 finger pocket work.
Work through as many different grip positions as you can (this will depend very much on your current ability) as listed above.
Playing a CD or watching telly is a good way to prevent boredom while you do it. Because the sessions are short, you can build up to doing it quite often (several times a week). But it's best to take breaks from it every so often as it is a very repetitive type of training. Finger strength is very slow to develop after the first few weeks so you need to stick at it for months and years to really reap the rewards. The plus side of this is that you will notice a slow, steady increase in the difficulty of moves you can do and this type of training (if you are doing the other things right too) could be your passport to some impressive grades.
Periodisation
Where To Get One
You can buy a finger board from one of the following manufacturers, alternatively you can build your own fingerboard.
More Finger Boading Links
Moon howto and here
