Beastmaking: A fingers-first approach to becoming a better climber

Product Information

Boulder Trainer is a customizable hangboard app. Choose your hangboard of choice, select a pre-programmed workout or create your own, and train your fingers into oblivion. Beastmaker’s Ned Feehally has become a pillar of climbing’s international training community. Between both his 1000 and 2000 models, Feehally has co-produced the most popular brand of wooden fingerboards in the world. Although Beastmaker continues to build and rebuild training equipment, Feehally has more recently focused his efforts on a training book. This is Beastmaking. Ned Feehally on his wall Based on comments on the net, DaveMc seems to do this type of coaching (although not really Sheffield area:-) Seeing a pretty big gap, Feehally—who co-founded Beastmaker and makes his own wood holds and is basically the definition of a cerebral training fanatic—decided to write a training book for everyday climbers. In other words, he wrote a book about training that people like me, who are temperamentally allergic to books about training, might still read and learn from. One thing I missed was an in-depth discussion of periodization and strength training. Feehally does touch on some of those aspects, briefly, but not as much as some of the nerdier training enthusiasts (me) might want. To be fair, Feehally purposely left all the nerdier stuff out.

New set notifications launch as soon as the route setting teams finish up for the day. Preview the set and make the most of your next session. I want to just encourage people to learn little bits and put it together for themselves, because I think at the end of the day, that’s more satisfying for the climber,” said Feehally in an interview with Climbing . Using a campus rung or lattice rung will get you most of the benefits of a fingerboard. If you add a good hold to warm up on and a smaller edge, that is pretty much all you need. By the time you add those things though, you will probably have spent about the same as on a fingerboard anyway.

Pick Up Your Gear

The author regularly uses examples from his and his partners broad experience to demonstrate a range training ideas. Both the ideas behind the training methods, and example workouts are clearly presented. The author is not prescriptive, but provides a starting point and suggests ways to induce variation in the training, and to maximise "gains". The writing feels like talking to a knowledgeable friend, informative and informal in the perfece balance. It is jargon free, meaning both a relative beginner and experienced training hero could read this book and get useful information from it. Overall: Mountain Project is a must-have app. As far as free online climbing guides go, there’s nothing that even comes close. KAYA A note from the 27 Crags crew: "The .premium subscription of 27 Crags gives you access to the pool of hundreds of high-quality .premium topos from popular climbing destinations. In addition, it will give you the chance for offline use!" Grippy - Beastmaker workouts Cons: There are some minor technical issues with the app’s design, such as a muddled filter feature that sometimes makes it difficult to find problems, and slightly awkward navigation functions.

On a similar note, if you have the option, put the fingerboard somewhere easily accessible to make sure you actually use it. Ideally close to the TV, not in a cold garage and preferably not in the kitchen due to constant changes in humidity and temperature.Definitely go wooden. New resin fingerboards at home are awful on the skin. Without the traffic that holds get at a commercial wall, resin holds will stay very rough for a long time. A wooden board can be trained on when your skin is thin and won't make your skin any worse. Resin holds will make your skin worse and will be painful when your skin is thin. Don't add skin issues as a potential reason to not train.

Build your ascent pyramid, and review your past climbing sessions. KAYA is loaded with over 200 gyms and 100k outdoor climbs. Overall: If you're an expert, or just getting into hangboarding this app is for you! It’s extremely simple and easy to use, with a range of hangboard workouts. 27Climb Yet, as is so often the case with something simple, there was much confusion how to use this new equipment properly and to its full extent. Indeed there still is for many people and clearly, Ned Feehally has realised this issue by writing his new book Beastmaking: a fingers-first approach to becoming a better climber. If that is in itself good news then the better news is that he’s done it really well.Non-standard hold sizes, non-standard gaps between hold sizes, rougher on the skin than some other plastic offerings Overall: If you’re looking for an easy way to customize your hangboard routine, Boulder Trainer is for you.

Overall: If you’re a fan and a user of the Moon Board, this app is stellar. It’s interactive, immersive, and well-designed. Once you figure out the setup, icons, and search features during your first session, it becomes a breeze to use. The book provides a range of ideas and methods for training for climbing. It mostly focusses on training more at the power end of the spectrum, though does contain a section on endurance training.In terms of the terminology popular on UKB, you could consider repeaters as going into the direction of AnCap finger training (as the typical rep load is around 40’’), which is known to have good carry-overs to strength;