Finger strength is considered by many to be the foundation of bouldering success. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced climber, strong, resilient fingers can allow for better skill practice and exposure to more complex moves. At our Sunshine Coast bouldering facility, we’ve seen firsthand how improving finger strength can dramatically enhance climbing performance. Here we’ll explore simple but effective exercises that improve finger strength by targeting recruitment, muscle and tendon size, tendon stiffness, and muscle power.
- Understanding Finger Strength Development
Before diving into exercises, it’s important to understand how finger strength improves:
- Recruitment: This refers to how strongly your muscles activate when gripping a hold. Training recruitment helps you fully engage the finger flexor muscles.
- Muscle and Tendon Size: Over time, resistance training increases the size and strength of muscles and tendons, making them more resilient to strain, and having more muscle fibers available to contract.
- Tendon Stiffness and Muscle Power: Stiffer tendons store and release energy more efficiently, allowing you to apply force to holds quickly and transmit force more efficiently. Muscle power refers to how quickly a muscle can apply a force.
Now, let’s dive into the exercises.
- Hangboard Training for Recruitment and Tendon Stiffness
One of the simplest and most effective ways to develop finger strength is through hangboard training.
- Tendon and Muscle Size Focus: Using a hang with a longer duration, around 30-40 seconds, is effective for developing tendon resilience. Pushing the exercise to muscular failure also stimulated forearm hypertrophy, increasing muscle size we can later use to develop strength and power.
- Recruitment Focus: To improve recruitment, perform heavy, short duration hangs shy of failure. Hang from a challenging hold with as much weight as you can handle with good form (bodyweight or added weight). Hold for 3-5 seconds and repeat for 3-6 sets. This exercise helps you fully activate your muscle fibers.
- Power Focus: To improve power, attempt to pull as quickly as you can for a short duration with long rest times. This can be performed on a hang board, a dynameter such as the Tindeq progressor or by most board climbing.
Developing strong fingers doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require consistency. By incorporating exercises in the correct order, you’ll see improvements in strength, injury resilience and power. For climbers of all levels, this often provides the opportunity for better performance.
If you’re searching for coaching on incorporating these concepts into your own training Bould Move is the best gym in the Sunshine Coast to take your climbing to the next level.
