When do you start finger training?

First things first: Please note that finger training can be a source of injury. Injuries can occur both during the finger training itself or totally unexpectedly, for example during warm-up, because tendons and joints are stressed from previous training. Therefore, pay close attention to your fingers and feel them. It's better to skip a finger workout than to squeeze in a session. It is very important to warm up thoroughly before training your fingers.

Finger training is secondary to climbing. If your fingers are stressed from climbing, you don't need to train your fingers yet. Finger training is a supplement that can be added when you have hit a plateau in your climbing and you can clearly say that it's about finger strength and not technique, courage, style, core, arm strength or other things. If this is the case, you can start throwing finger training into the mix.

Where do you start?
Finger training is good to do on hangboards. We have hangboards in all our gyms in Boulders and you can buy them in the bars or in our webshop.
When you enter Boulders, warm up your body and fingers thoroughly.
Start mildly by climbing some very easy problems. Then you can start a short session that stops long before your fingers get tired. This is when the finger training starts, so get directions to the training area. Find a list on a hangboard where you can hang for 20 seconds. This is now your training list. After a few months, when you have progressed, find a worse list you can hang on for a maximum of 20 seconds.

Hang in open crimp position when exercising fingers.

Training protocol:
Take time for a lesson, e.g. on your phone.
- Hang in the list for 10 seconds
- class 50 second break
- Repeat up to 10 times. If you can't do 10 times, continue until you can't hang for 10 seconds.

Then your session is over. If you continue climbing during the day, you risk injury as your finger joints and tendons are tired after the workout. Now it's time to recover. Pat yourself on the back, have a cup of coffee and enjoy the community of Boulders.

Quality over quantity
Finger training is not about pushing your fingers to the limit, but about pushing them slowly and gradually under controlled conditions. Finger joints and tendons are very small and take a lot of pressure in climbing.
Finger training should be done 1-2 times a week with a few days break in between. If it is done more often, you risk an injury.

Have a good workout!