Finger Isolation

[tim]

First time to the forum and it's great to see so many people as psyched on the Rock Prodigy Method as I am!  

I was curious to hear opinions on isolating fingers during hangboard workouts.  Similar to most exercises in which you might isolate a particular muscle and push it to failure, would it be beneficial to isolate individual fingers (pointer for set one, middle for set two, etc.) so strength is not concentrated in one or two fingers and lacking in the others?    Injuries and lack of similarity to real holds, unless you climb in Ten Sleep, are the downfalls that I would see.  The similarity to real holds could be increased by using one pad or less and removing a fair bit of weight and injuries could be curtailed by using only open grip positions.

Let me know what you think!  Thanks!

[slimshaky]

this is a good question, and i think it gets debated a bit. one of my partners who does a lot of hangboard workouts does mono sets with index, middle, and ring. he has gotten his ring mono up to about the same strength as his middle mono. i often wonder, when i am doing my IM and MR pairs, is my middle finger doing the vast majority of the work? hard to say.

i have kind of thought about separate finger mono training a bit, but for me, i have to remove so much weight already for my middle finger mono sets that it would be kind of a logistical battle. i think when the rubber meets the road it is best to train the grips that you will use. for me, i don't really see myself ever grabbing a mono with any finger other than my middle.

[jdgilberg]

The beastmaker guys talk about and use the 3-2-1 method go get to isolation. Start with 3 finger pairs, then 2 finger pairs, then full isolation with monos.

Check it out:

www.beastmaker.co.uk/pages/training

[danielr]

I have actually found that sometimes a long slow hold can help my fingers feel better. Before I got my hangboard mounted this last time I actually used it for monos on each finger but hung the hangboard off a single smallest hold on the board finger.

Since it was just the weight of the hangboard I could do a 60 second hold for most of my fingers and I found it really helped the day after hard climbing to stretch out and get alot of blood pumping in each finger.