Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Climbing Videos

Post links and comments about your favourite climbing flicks

Topic Date User

Crimping vs Open hand 20-Sep-2013 At 9:42:48 AM 2G

Message

I bought a hangboard this year and started investigating the obsessive world of hangboard training online. There seems to be three camps:

1. Those like the rockprodigy and Ryan Palo who believe that training the crimp actually leads to less injury as long as it's done patiently and systematically - their argument is that training should be grip specific and by training and strengthening that grip safely you are less likely injure when actually climbing ;

2. Dave Macleod has a blog post on to crimp or not, there are a number of top UK climbers who've completed really crimpy routes but only train open hand and half crimp.

3. People like Dr. Julian Saunders who say full crimp should be avoided altogether - think he argues open hand will get just as strong over time

Personally I decided I was not disciplined enough to train like those in camp 1, I also had a naturally strong crimp and really weak open hand, so I tried training and always using open hand only for about 6 months. I found my crimp strength stayed the same but my ability to hold slopers increased heaps