Beastmaker hangboard

[igga]

What do you guys think about Beastmaker hangboard (1000 or 2000). I started hangboarding training (Rock Prodigy) and I got bad sking because of the volume.

Do you think a wooden board like a Beastmaker is good for the skin or should I buy The Rock Prodigy training center?

Thanks.

[leoing]

Wood is good, but Beastmaker is not the best option - too narrow, illogical spread of holds (even narrower). I like 2 cut-in-half campus rungs - easy to fit to your grip width, simple to screw on somewhere, cheap, skin friendly. Or something like Dave MacLeoads / Lattice board.

I tried to emulate the Rock prodigy's pinch, but it's hard not to cheat by pressing. A simple pinch block works better for me.

[igga]

I have this one right now and some pinch blocks with weights

[jetjackson]

Might as well add my Beastmaker rant in here - I've been known to rant about it elsewhere.

Honestly, I think it's the most overrated hang-board on the market. It seems to be popular because it's easy to manufacture with a CNC, and perhaps because it is called 'Beastmaker'. I think it's also popular because there are many benchmarking apps and tests that use a beastmaker hold as a standard test to correlate with grade climbed (the limitations of benchmark testing, an entirely separate issue worthy of a rant )

- The BM pocket design forces specific shoulder widths, and often as mentioned above they are too narrow. This creates poor hangboard form in a lot of climbers. Many hangboards share this issue though - the RPTC doesn't.

- The 'edges', or really 'pockets' are too narrow. You can effectively 'cheat' by squeezing your index finger into the curvature of the pocket which turns it into a 'compression' hold and increases the contact surface area. So unless you are strict on the Beastmaker, you are, to a degree, training pockets, rather than edges.

I don't understand the obsession with training on wood holds because it's easier on the skin - I like training on wood climbing holds because it creates a different type of friction that requires a different approach and adds to the variety of textures across holds on a board that I train on. Still, I want my skin to be ready to climb outdoors, and it seems to me that climbing on rougher plastic is better at conditioning the skin for this.