SummitPost.org

Hi everyone,
Just give me your thoughts on how to train forearms, wrists, grip strength at home? I'm about to move to another country, so will not be able to train at the center. So I have to know how to deal with this. How do you maintain your muscles? Should I buy a hangboard or something?

So, no one told nothing, nice.. I found these https://www.outdoorsly.org/best-hangboard, so if anyone has one of those hangboards from the list let me know if I should buy it

I have the Metolius Simulator 3D and have been happy with it. It is very rough on my skin though and I have to tape two of my fingers when I use it. I suspect it doesn't really matter which particular hangboard you buy, it matters that you use it consistently.

This is an old school ice climber's exercise, but is cheap and easy to construct and very effective.

-Buy a 2" wooden dowel or PVC pipe cut to about 30" long.

-Drill a hole through the middle and attach a 6' piece of strong cord (550 parachute cord is perfect) through the hole.

-Attach a light weight, 3,5,8 lbs depending on your current strength. Does not have to be a weight plate, could be a water filled half or full gallon milk jug.

-Hold the pipe over your head with your arms extended and the weight hanging the full length of the cord.

-Roll the weight all the way up and roll it all the way down. Do not let the pipe spin in your hands.

-Repeat for 3-5 times. Do 3 sets of this. When you become strong enough to easily do more than 5 repetitions on your third set, increase the weight.

Also, the old school spring loaded grip trainers are cheap and pretty effective.

You can also use a racquet ball. one finger then two fingers then one finger. thumb, thumb and pointer, pointer, pointer and bird. So on. Squeeze one finger then two fingers then one finger. Work all the way to single pinkie finger, then work back the other way starting with the pinkie finger. one way is when the finger you start with is the same finger you end with. Then you squeeze the ball with the four fingers with out the thumb the same amount of times you go around with. they are cheap and come in two packs.

Farmer's Carry. I have been doing them - even add some half-lunges to add more lower body workout.

Disclaimer: I have no grip strength or wrist strength, only aspirations.

I made the ExcitableBoy roll-up thingy after two guys on youtube who said they were physical therapists recommended it. They looked pretty legit. To be specific, I believe this is for wrist strength. I haven't used it enough to see any difference.

Steve House, gnarly alpinist, posted something somewhere which linked to his training site. There it says that the only way for ice climbers to build grip strength is to hang with progressive more weight on your back. Seemed legit to me. (There is lots of good training stuff on this site.)

I believe the outdoor gear labs review, the way I read it, said metolius 3D simulator hangboard was pretty good. (Haven't put mine up yet) Hangboards can do a lot of things I suppose, but my impression is that they specialize in finger strength.

you could probably get forearm strength doing lots of curls of water bottles (or anything else). I hope this is useful. Good luck!

-TPC

Here is my update:

From the beginning of 2021 to mid-feb, like barely 6 weeks of actually working out 3x/week, I saw substantial improvement in grip strength - I could really really tell on my two ice climbing trips in Feb and Mar.

I did the easy easy hangboard 10 min workout on metolius 3D simulator.
I put a rope and light rack in a backpack, then did one pullup, then 3 10 second hangs from both ice tools on the hang board, then both hands on one tool right hand above, then same left hand above.

* I had way better grip strength. Definitely worked.
* I think - don't laugh! I think I have some biceps now (didn't used to, none to speak of)
* The inside of my left elbow hurt.

Ice climbing season ended, I stopped all training, and in two weeks the elbow pain went away. Not sure which caused the pain - obvious guess is maybe a little too much weight. I'll start up again soon (I swear) and we'll see.

Bottom line, hangboards make a difference (for me in only a month), and there's a lot you can do on them. It does take real dedication though. Get a training partner to zoom/skype your routine with if possible. Try to do a similar grip to what you're looking to do in the real world. The tactile feedback is valuable and you feel the progress (so for ice climbing I used ice tools; for rock use a similar grip).

-TPC

ExcitableBoy wrote:This is an old school ice climber's exercise, but is cheap and easy to construct and very effective.

-Buy a 2" wooden dowel or PVC pipe cut to about 30" long.

-Drill a hole through the middle and attach a 6' piece of strong cord (550 parachute cord is perfect) through the hole.

-Attach a light weight, 3,5,8 lbs depending on your current strength. Does not have to be a weight plate, could be a water filled half or full gallon milk jug.

-Hold the pipe over your head with your arms extended and the weight hanging the full length of the cord.

-Roll the weight all the way up and roll it all the way down. Do not let the pipe spin in your hands.

-Repeat for 3-5 times. Do 3 sets of this. When you become strong enough to easily do more than 5 repetitions on your third set, increase the weight.

Also, the old school spring loaded grip trainers are cheap and pretty effective.

This ^ is the easiest, most convenient way to accomplish what you're wanting to do, and is quite effective.

Next thing would be to do wrist curls with 5-15lbs. Lay your arm on your leg while sitting and just lift the weight at the wrist. Do sets on one arm until you can't do another, then switch to the other arm. Repeat. Start with maybe twice/week, then when your arms don't get sore the next day or so, do it every other day.

Wrist and finger curls with a bar. Palms out and palms in.

The most obvious advise is to order several grip exercise tools, but watch reviews first. I also advise you to practice hanging on a bar, especially on the rolling one — this execise is know to be the most effective one. And the last one is to do weightlifting. Of course, the latter recommendation won't suit everyone, but I ask you to try it.

I bought one of those individual finger spring loaded things for grip strength, did not find it useful or valuable. One purchase I would recommend, is one of those portable massage guns. Really helps recovery, blast that on sore forearms for a couple mins after a climb and it helps expel the lactate. I got the erkrin bantam and its working well.