Training on mango trees in central Africa?

[willclimb4pants]

I’ve been following your Rock Prodigy method for a season and a half and I love how much stronger I am and how much I have been improving (went from projecting 12a to onsighting 12a and projecting 13a in one ‘season’! Thanks!). I also have your hangboand and love it--training pinches in particular has helped my climbing immensely.

But I’ll be moving to central Africa for 9 months this fall. I won’t have access to indoor or outdoor climbing other than a possible short trip to South Africa. I can probably fit either a hangboard (although setup might be difficult given the cement walls; I'm not even sure a pulley setup would be possible) or rock rings in my bag—but not both. It seems the hangboard is better for tendon finger strength but rock rings might help me more with keeping up arm and core muscles despite losing out on any finger strength, pinch strength, and crimping abilities? I’ll have access to mango trees to play around on but no gym with weights.

I really don’t want to lose any of my newfound strength and want to climb hard when I can (South Africa) and once I get back. How can I keep up my muscle and tendon strength while I’m away? What can I do with body weight, a simple hangboard or rock rings, and creativity? I'm interested in keeping up overall climbing fitness, not only finger strength.

Another RPM question: I excel at vertical and slightly overhanging routes that are technical and crimpy, although bouldering has helped me quite a bit with dynamic movement. I tried to use the Rock Prodigy Method to improve at very overhung steep climbing but despite being able to ARC on 5.11c-5.12a vertical walls for 30 min I can't seem to ARC on severe overhangs at all. In my gym and outside it's either verticle/slightly overhanging or a 45+ degree overhang, no in between. Strength training on hangboards and even the bouldering phase on overhung walls hasn't seemed to help. I feel the Rock Prodigy Method is good at getting you even better at a style you're already good at, but it's not so good at helping me become more stylistically versatile and get in these hard overhang sends before I leave. Any suggestions?

[jonfrisby]

Not sure about the rest but you should definitely take the hang board rather than the rock rings. You can still use it to work pull and core a little and I'm sure you can fashion something that will supplement. Finger strength maintenance is going to be by far the most important thing to hold onto

[Lundy]

Pants -- in a past life I was both traveling extensively for 2-3 week trips, primarily in Africa, and then moved there for about 3 years. What I found was that for shorter trips, I just brought the rock rings and did some work on them and was generally fine when I got back. However, when I moved to Africa and had limited to no access to training facilities, I built a free-standing hangboard setup and worked out on it about 2-3 days a week for my first year there. I was able to maintain a decent amount of finger strength this way for climbing trips that were happening every 2-3 months. Eventually I gave up on it as it was just too boring, but you should be able to maintain for 9 months. All that to say, definitely bring a hangboard and build a stand-alone structure to hang it on.

And enjoy Africa -- it's a wonderful place to live for a while.