Getting Consistent with hangboarding

Published on: 2022-12-03

Written by Nathan Pulver


I started hangboarding because I thought my finger strength was quite poor, and I wanted to level up my climbing. I watched some videos on YouTube, and I kept trying new ways to hangboad instead of keeping it consistent. The problem here is that I would spend so much time thinking about what I have to do, I wouldn’t be focusing on my training. I have since decided to keep it simple and consistent. My routine will be repeaters 7 seconds on, 3 seconds off for 4 sets with 2 minutes of rest in between on a 15mm edge. Now, I am unable to add any weight at all or even lift myself fully of the ground. I am aiming for 40% load. The reason I am choosing a 15mm edge is

  1. The hangboard I have has the options for 25mm, 40mm and 15mm. I would use 20mm if I had it but between 25 and 15 I would rather train the smaller edge with less weight.
  2. I am very weak on small edges, and I think I would benefit more from training a small edge.

I also chose to do repeaters over max hangs because I have extremely poor endurance. For reference, I climbed my first 5.11A in a gym yesterday. The last half of the climb I would basically do one or two moves then have to rest because I get so pumped out. I may increase the sets to 5 to increase fatigue or reduce my rest, but I think for at least the next two months I will do this on Mondays and Wednesdays and reevaluate.

Additionally, since I have the hangboard right in my office, I tend to do some light hangs on large edges throughout the day. I may stop doing this if I find I am starting to develop an injury, but I think daily light hanging is probably find. We shall see.