this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Climbing

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I started bouldering late last year and have plateaued at around a V4 level. I feel like my biggest weakness by far is my finger strength, so I’m thinking of starting hangboarding to work on that.

I’m not sure where to start though, I feel like I already tax my fingers when climbing so I don’t want to go overboard and injure myself.

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[–] scutiger 2 points 1 year ago

Honestly, V4 is a common plateau, but it's not one where finger strength is the main limiting factor. You're more likely to make progress by improving your movement and technique.

If this is in the gym, I wouldn't recommend hangboarding until you're reliably climbing V6 at least. It's just probably not going to help much, if at all. If you do decide to do it anyway, rule number 1 is never full crimp on a hangboard. And for a beginner, you're going to want to find a way to take the some weight off so you're only hanging at about 50% of your body weight for a couple months.