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Training guide · Finger strength

How to improve finger strength for climbing

When to add a hangboard, a beginner routine with sets, reps and rest, a sample week and the mistakes that set fingers back

By Mateusz Kuba, sport climbing instructor, C4PC Level 1 — Strength Training for Youths

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Build your training yourself or with a coach.

ClimbingDad mid-session: set 3 of 5 of max hangs on a 20 mm edge for 10 seconds, with the rest timer at 2:13.
Pain means stop. Sharp pain in one spot, a pop or swelling ends the session. See a doctor or physiotherapist, ideally one who works with climbers. What a pulley injury looks like is in A2 pulley injury.

In short

Finger strength decides how long you can hold a small edge while your feet and body do the rest of the move. This guide covers how to improve finger strength if you have not trained your fingers on purpose yet: what to do first, and when a hangboard starts to make sense. The four structured workouts climbers use once they have a base, max hangs, repeaters, density hangs and light daily holds, are covered in hangboard training.

Step 1: build finger strength by climbing

In your first year or so, the wall does most of the work. Every crimp and pocket loads the finger flexors and the pulleys around them. The aim is volume on varied holds, with enough rest that your fingers recover.

Worth knowing: pooling the controlled trials that could be compared, a review found that finger flexor training added to climbing improved finger strength, the rate of force development and forearm endurance more than climbing alone. Only five trials could be pooled, and all of them recruited climbers who were already active.

When to add a hangboard

No study sets the exact point. A common threshold is around a year of regular climbing. Use these checks as well:

This guide is written for adults. Young climbers who are still growing should work out finger training with a coach.

Step 2: a beginner hangboard routine

The aim of a first block is to load the fingers at a level you can control and to learn one grip on one edge. Hangboard for beginners should feel like controlled practice, with every hang finishing clean.

If hanging your body is too much for your shoulders, lift a weight off the floor from an edge instead. It loads the same tissue, and the timings above carry across. No study has compared the two directly.

How to progress. When every hang in both sets feels controlled with that margin intact, take a little less weight off next session. Keep the edge. Keep the grip.

Worth knowing: in an eight-week randomised trial with intermediate to advanced climbers, the group that added a little weight each week improved grip strength more than climbers who kept to normal climbing. The group that trained on smaller and smaller edges did not differ significantly from the climbers who only climbed.

In the app: the hangs, timed and logged. ClimbingDad times each hang and rest, logs the edge and load you used, and suggests the next load from your recent sessions of that exercise. The home screen shows the day’s session. Plans the app builds never put finger days back to back. App-built sessions end with shoulder, elbow and wrist work. Your hangs and climbs also feed readiness on the home screen, which builds up over your first two weeks of logged sessions.

Set three of six during edge hangs on a 20 mm edge at plus 8 kg for 10 seconds, with 47 seconds of rest left on the timer.
The app mid-set on a 20 mm edge: the edge, the added load and the hang time stay on screen while the rest timer runs down.

Step 3: measure, then build

A test turns finger strength training into something you can steer. Do it at the start and at the end of a block, after the same warm-up, on the same edge and in the same grip:

Worth knowing: a commercial force sensor gave close to the same readings when climbers repeated a one-arm edge pull on a different day, and matched a lab force plate. Standardise the test and a change in the number means more than a change in how a hang feels.

A sample week

An adult climbing three times a week, in a first hangboard block:

The hangboard comes once a week, on Monday. Finger days never sit back to back here: Monday, Thursday and Saturday each have a day off before the next one. Before you add a hangboard, keep the same three days and climb. When a trip or a hard outdoor weekend comes up, drop the hangboard that week, since the rock already loads your fingers. How a fuller week fits together is in the climbing training plan.

Worth knowing: in a ten-week randomised trial, intermediate and advanced climbers who added two hangboard sessions a week to their usual climbing raised peak finger force on a 23 mm rung by 17%. The control group, who kept climbing as usual, did not change.

Common mistakes

Questions climbers ask

How long does it take to improve finger strength?

In controlled trials, intermediate and advanced climbers who added two hangboard sessions a week to normal climbing raised finger strength measurably within eight to ten weeks. Those were study conditions; the beginner routine here starts with one session a week. True beginners were not studied. Give one routine a full block before you judge it, and test the same way at the start and at the end.

Can I build finger strength without a hangboard?

Yes. Climbing itself is finger training, especially bouldering on smaller holds with varied grips. Lifting a weight off the floor from an edge loads the same tissue without hanging your body. A hangboard adds a load, an edge and a time you control, which matters once climbing alone stops moving your fingers on.

How often should a beginner train fingers?

Climbing two or three times a week already loads your fingers. If you add a hangboard, start with one short session a week, and keep hard finger days apart from each other.

Is a hangboard safe for beginners?

It can be, with a light start. Take weight off with your feet or a pulley, stop every hang a few seconds short of failure, keep one edge and one grip, and stop the session at sharp pain, a pop or swelling.

Train and log with a coach

ClimbingDad is a free climbing training app for training on your own or with a coach. A coach can plan your week on real dates, move a session by dragging it to another day, and leave a note on a session, which shows on that day’s card. Coaches see their athletes in a roster with one row per athlete. The coach reads your log, but the coach panel cannot change it; if you train with one, you subscribe to that coach. More on training with a coach.

This page describes finger strength training in general terms. It is not medical advice and does not replace an examination by a doctor or physiotherapist.

What research says

The measured facts on this page come from these four papers. All of them studied climbers who were already intermediate or experienced, so none of them tells you what happens in your first year:

Plan your finger training

ClimbingDad lays out the week, times the hangs, logs the edge and load, and keeps finger days apart.

See what the app does