(Part 2) Best products from r/climbharder

We found 21 comments on r/climbharder discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 126 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.

Top comments mentioning products on r/climbharder:

u/KTanenr · 1 pointr/climbharder

As far as improving your headgame goes, leading easy but long runouts is super helpful, as well as falling onto (well-placed) gear. Alpine multipitch is an admirable goal, but it is a far cry from what most people think of as trad climbing. You should be confident on long runouts, with potential no-fall zones. There are a lot of skills that are important for alpine climbing that often are not learned in a typical trad climbing mentor relationship, such as self-rescue, alpine route finding, and depending on your goals, snow climbing skills. There are several ways to learn these skills such as books or hiring a guide. Ultimately, your safety is much more dependent on yourself when alpine climbing. I say this not to scare you away from alpine climbing, as it has been responsible for some of the most amazing memories I have, but it has also been responsible for some of the scariest.

Some books that you might find beneficial:

Climbing Self-Rescue - Just what it says in the title.

Vertical Mind - I found this book useful for improving my head space.

Training for the New Alpinism - Probably the best book to help a climber transition into the backcountry.

[Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills] (https://www.amazon.com/Mountaineering-Freedom-Hills-Mountaineers/dp/1680510045/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=freedom+of+the+hills&qid=1562736585&s=gateway&sr=8-1) - This book is excellent, but probably isn't extremely helpful until you are climbing more serious alpine routes.

As far as advice, just get as much mileage on lead outdoors as you can, with 1-2 indoor bouldering sessions per week. If it doesn't impact your bouldering, you could add a couple strength sessions as well. If you want to get into alpine climbing, or even just multipitch climbing, practice your systems at the top of single pitch routes. Belay your partner from the top, practice building an anchor at the top off of the bolts, set up simple pulley systems. Just spending 15 minutes per session will help you get muscle memory down for when it really matters.

Edit: As you get into more alpine climbing, you should increase the strength training and cardio. Climbing efficiently after four hours walking with a pack full of gear and food is harder than it sounds. Increasing your physical strength will reduce the mental load a lot, allowing you to think more clearly and be more confident.

u/HelpafterHighschool · 1 pointr/climbharder

Thanks for your reply!:)

Oh boy, I think you are in for a treat!

To begin, there is a book entitled better bouldering; although I haven't personally read the book, you can see a sample of the book here and decide if you would like to purchase it!

Better Bouldering

John Sherman has a series of books that I would recommend looking at if you want to improve all different types of climbing!

----Now if you want a book geared towards beginners I definitely recommend this book listed below---

Beginner Guide

So if you are new to climbing this book will help out a lot! However if you have looked up climbing techniques on YouTube, this book probably won't help you too much.

One thing I have noticed is technique is seldom thoroughly discussed especially on this sub, and people don't go in depth when they do discuss technique; another issue is technique is a lot more complicated than most people think. Technique covers a lot of areas and it would be quite a task for just one person write a book about it because technique can get so specific and well— technical.

I would like to contribute more about technique on this sub Reddit but to make a quality guide is quite a difficult task.

I could honestly talk about technique for weeks so if you have any questions I would love answer to best of my abilities!

I hoped I helped, have a great day my friend!



u/munginella · 2 pointsr/climbharder

Hey! I'm in a similar position as yours except I'm a boulderer. I'm in love with the dirtbag lifestyle but I'm also fairly ambitious. I want to be out there getting as good at climbing as I can possibly get.

I agree with the other poster that you should incorporate more bouldering and focus on endurance later in the year once you've built up some power.

For structuring your day while climbing outside, I found that the book "Better Bouldering" was surprisingly focused on improvement in an outdoor setting (rather than gym drills, campusing, etc...).

Here's my personal plan for getting better while climbing outside:

My primary weakness is finger strength. In my case, I believe that getting better, therefore, requires more than "just climbing". Ideally, I'd like to spend 70% of my time climbing outside and 30% hangboarding / doing climbing-related weight training. So I've been trying to devise a way to do the 30% while also living like a dirtbag.

I found that I could partially solve my problem by getting a gym membership wherever I was dirtbagging (yay showers!). However, this is more difficult in more remote areas (e.g. joe's valley).

For times when I can't access a gym, I'm gonna bring this, gymnastic rings, some weights, and a portable hangboard.

u/DavidNordentoft · 17 pointsr/climbharder

I think it is pretty individual how much you need to train mobility for climbing and which type of mobility it is, though I reckon the main problem for climbers are hips/groin and shoulders. I think you can stretch lightly every day, but I find that really pushing yourself in flexibility can take away from climbing sessions if overdone. I've been trying to think about how I could structure it myself, and I think the best thing for me at the moment is to do a fair amount of mobility work during my warm-up. I Just made a program that I will try to use every time I am going to train either strength or power during climbing (I don't think it needs to be this much for endurance at all). I have also made a post-workout stretching program which I will use every time I have the energy for it (for me, this should be most times, as I aim to not get too tired to do it). It should end up taking 20-30 minutes.I only did it once so far, and then I added some stuff. I still need to figure out, but I feel like the stretches compliment each other well...



Climbing warm-up:

For all strength and power sessions

- not for endurance

Basic

warm-up from stiff to cold

Neck: Yes, no, circles.

Feet/toes: Up/down, rotate, toe curls.

Hip: Standing hip rotations, lateral/circular hip raises

Spine: Cat/cow, scorpion

General warm-up

Glute bridges

Seated hip IR

Squat hip IR

30 sec Tib ant squat (Third world squat bounces)

30 sec 4 point cossack squat
Rolling pistol squat

Jump from 45-90 degree squat to soft surface

Leg swings - front and side

One legged romanian deadlift

Shoulder mobility routine

25R Vertical arm swings full ROM

15-20R Shoulder dislocates

15-20R Floor slides

15-20R Supine arm raised slides

10-15R Scapular shrugs

10R Band pull aparts

Wrist, spine, shoulders

Scapula pull ups on hangboard or bar

Wrist preparation exercises

Spinal stick rotations




​

Climbing stretching routine post workout

Standing forward bend A

Standing forward bend B (Gorilla)

Sideways stretch A-B-C-D (Prasarita padottanasana from Ashtanga)

Side forward bend (Parsvottanasana from Ashtanga)

Lord of the dance

Eagle

Garland / Tug of war squat

Frog

Crescent lunge on the knee / kneeling hip flexor

Sleeping swan / one legged pigeon

One leg folded back forward fold

Revolved head to knee

Butterfly / bound angle

Supine bound angle

Supine hand to toe

Extended supine hand to toe

Extended supine hero

Supine spinal twist

Marichi 1

Marichi 3

Bow

Cow face

Sleeping angle / Supta konasana

Camel

Wrist stretches

Queen’s stand/supported shoulder stand

Plow

Deaf Man’s

u/sprayAtMeBro · 11 pointsr/climbharder

I'm heading into the deload (fourth) week, wrapping up four weeks focused primarily on finger and bouldering strength. The training was simple, but effective. At the outset, I couldn't reliably half-crimp the Tension 10mm; by last Sunday, after four hours of bouldering, I could do pull-ups on that edge. I ticked two new V9s and more than a dozen V8s, had one session with 16 repeats of V8-9 boulders, came close to a third-go V9 send, and am very close on two other V9s and one V10.

To recap, the basic schedule was:

  • Day 1:
    • (AM) Hangboard: 8x10s @80–90% 10SM (half-crimp); 2–4 sets open/drag grips with my choice of progression (usually min-edge and edge pull-ups).
    • (PM) Bouldering: 4–6 hard (V8–9) boulders repeated 3x each with 3m rest.
    • (PM) AeroCap: 10–20m campus paddling w/emphasis on weak movements and locks.
  • Day 2:
    • (PM) Rehearsals: Practice hard (V8–10) sequences which gave me trouble. The goal is to dial them so that I can quickly send next time I'm fresh.
    • (PM) AnCap: 3x4x40s flash-level boulder (V7–8) w/2m rest. The goal is to completely power out at the end of the last set.
  • Day 3: Rest
  • … Repeat!

    There are pros and cons to this sort of schedule. A major pro is that back-to-back hard days work wonders for technique, and in fact I sent or progressed furthest on harder problems (V9–10) on my second day on. That's slightly misleading because I wasn't trying to send at my limit on day 1, but it shows how efficiency can compensate for strength on hard but not limit boulders.

    A con is that it's very hard on the body. My sleep and diet were both necessarily excellent throughout the cycle: had either dipped one day, I doubt I could've trained. I slept with compression gloves to ward off joint stiffness (they work!) and started stretching my forearms each day (and intend to practice handstands primarily for this purpose). Surprisingly, focusing on hard training also made work less stressful, as I stopped trying to "be the hero", zeroed in on getting things done or keeping them on track, and consistently left at a reasonable hour.

    Regarding diet, I introduced a vitamin C pill and green smoothie on hangboard days which seemed to make me feel lighter and fresher than a solid breakfast:

  • 1 cup berries
  • 2 frozen bananas
  • Spinach to taste ("two handfuls")
  • 24g collagen protein
  • 5g creatine powder
  • Maca powder / chia seeds
  • Apple juice

    (I'm curious what the diet experts around here would make of this. It’s for two servings.)

    In light of my experience with Lattice's 3+1 training cycles this year, I thought the recent thread on tapering was interesting, and dovetails nicely with our many discussions about structured versus free-form training. First off, I think everyone would benefit from having some structure. Even if your individual workouts allow for some leeway (as mine do) it's important to have an overarching plan to ensure overreach by a predictable future date (the third week, in my case). Without planning, I think almost everyone tends to settle into a useless middle ground in which you're never quite recovered for peak effort, but also never so exhausted that you deserve a deload.

    Second, periodic deloading is a necessary component of hard, overloading training. I like 3+1 because it's long enough to see measurable gains in strength, power, or endurance, but short enough that you can commit mentally to thrashing yourself until the deload. (The deload being "the light at the end of the tunnel".) Practicing the deload throughout the year will also teach you what your body and mind need to feel recovered from a period of hard training, which will answer a lot of questions about how to taper for a trip or competition.

    That said, I don't think that what I know about deloading significantly informs me about maintaining fitness over an extended performance period (say, a month of climbing). I'm of two minds about this. One, if you just trained your ass off for six months, I'd consider completely switching over to climbing once the season hits. In a sense, you earned it; you might lose fitness, but so what — so did Ben Moon and Jerry Moffat when they took that strategy. Two, maybe consider maintaining strength via some max hangs or campus boarding during the week. This is actually a lot more taxing than it sounds, though, and I'm more skeptical than I used to be about its value.

    Anyways, to wrap up a long update — training's going great. My goal of flashing five V8+ in one session by November feels within reach. I'm absolutely dying to climb outside, but the weather sucks so I'm mostly going to stick to my plans for the next few weeks. I'll retest my maximum strength and lactate curve at the end of this week. The next cycle is focused more on power, which for me means more multi-session projects (hard V9, V10), less capacity climbing (V7–8), and a shift toward high-intensity one-arm hangs.
u/Lankyspiderlegs · 17 pointsr/climbharder

Oh boy, have I! We call them the Driven Sleeve (named after one of the hardest local routes). It's the Mcdavid 401 knee sleeve with rubber glued on it: Mcdavid 401 knee sleeve. I think this is also what they use in Rifle. Size it larger than you think you need. I'm an XS in the Send wizard sleeve, and the medium Mcdavid sleeve is almost too tight for me.

And then we use 'Aquaseal + FD' (found here) to glue on some climbing rubber. Buy three tubes for two pads.

Some tips:

Since we've had kneebar pads in the past which were worn out or shitty, we just recycled that rubber, but if you don't have any I'd go to a local resoler and ask for some.

Position the rubber as close to the bottom of the pad as possible. This way you can get the rubber in on some really marginal knee bars.

Glue the rubber on the sleeve on a flat surface with wax paper inside the sleeve. This way when the glue soaks through the neoprene in places (which is a good thing) it won't stick to itself and cause the pad to stick shut.

Use more glue than you think you need, the neoprene really likes to soak it up.

Once it's all glued down, spread glue around the edges of the rubber (be liberal with it) and then press it down with a flat surface and a lot of weight. Let it cure for at least 8 hours.

These pads still require duct tape, but with duct tape they're some of the best knee pads out there.

One way to make it even better is to glue bicycle inner tube around the circumference of the top of the pad. Don't do this until you've figured out how yours fits though, as the inner tube can make them much tighter. If it's too tight I would just put inner tube on the anterior and posterior sides of the pad. The rubber is good because 1) duct tape sticks better to rubber than to neoprene and 2) your sweat won't soak through the rubber and compromise the duct tape.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

​

Edit: I just saw that you only need this for single use. This is probably overkill for single use. But regardless, I got excited and now you know how to make a pad that is actually good ;)

u/WingAttackPlan-R · 22 pointsr/climbharder

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, McCarthy. Climbing is an ultraviolent winner-take-all pursuit and this book will put you in the proper frame of mind.

Really, though: The Rock Climber's Training Manual, by the Anderson brothers (I think you can get it as a PDF too). I'm sure there are other books that are better but this is certainly a good start. It's geared towards roped climbing so I'm not sure if it's quite what you're looking for but it is really good. I read it a few times then followed an 18-week beginner training program.

Just incredible results. I've been climbing for over twenty years and had never done a specific training program, just the usual "Look, I'm training!" stuff in the gym. Prior to the training I expected to onsight most 5.9-10a trad, redpoint up to 10d-11b trad, onsight 10c-11a sport and redpoint 11d sport; all outside ratings since gyms don't really count. After the program all of this got bumped up 1-2 letter grades. More important than that, though, was that I was uninjured (nagging lifelong elbows/fingers), and much, much more fit. Also, I broke through what I'd considered a plateau and realized that (dependent on age/etc., I'm in my forties so expect to face age-related limits within 5-10 years) plateaus are, up to a point, not real; they're just the boundaries of our current training.

The training could be really boring and hard but I think that's what training is - you're not "fun climbing" but training for it. It changed my mindset and I'm about to start another training cycle since it's winter. As much as I love "just climbing" the truth for me is that I enjoy climbing much more when I'm doing harder routes. More fun all around and usually safer, too.

Hope this helps.

u/meadtastic · 3 pointsr/climbharder

Rock Climbing Technique: The Practical Guide to Movement Mastery https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C68HLRK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Cd97Cb0H5H0VG

Get a copy of that and start working on your technique. Your fingers will develop naturally while you do technique drills.

Technique is the biggest thing to improve but the most vaguely talked about. This book at least gives you specifics to work on. I found it pretty easy to understand. Changed my climbing pretty quickly.

It's sort of like this: if you train finger strength, say, then you can hold on to smaller holds with a large % of body weight on your hands. Technique is designed to take weight off of your hands. So by getting stronger or by getting better, you get a similar result in terms of going up the grades.

However, if you have less weight on your fingers in the first place, you're going to be less prone to injury, which is a huge plus. Injury shuts down progress longer and more absolutely than anything.

If you were to climb outside a lot, especially if you went out with experienced people, you'd get the technique from them.

In your case, having a high base level of fitness from lifting means that you won't see the gains weaklings like me did after a few weeks of core training. But your biggest quick fixes and long term gains will come from skill based practice.

u/Inertiatic · 7 pointsr/climbharder

Protein Puffs - I find that these are a pretty satisfying volume for the calories. The bit of spice in this flavour also seems to help with not wanting to just binge a ton of them.


Less protein focused, but I also like:


Takis Fuego - These are quite spicy for a mass market snack. The heat helps me with not wanting to eat too many.


Mega Sours - Similar idea, these are so sour that they take a very long time to eat and you're not going to have more than a few before your mouth is starting to go raw.


It helps that I actually really prefer spicy things and sour things to sweet things, but I don't really try to make my snacks "healthy" - I just try to make sure they're something I can be satisfied with a reasonably sized portion of.

u/sashamitty · 2 pointsr/climbharder

I used to have pain on the outside of my forearm right at or just below the elbow. I thought I had tendinitis but it turns out I had a small tear in my brachioradialis. One of my climbing friends recommended AIRROSTI and since they claim they can resolve your pain after 3 sessions I gave it a try. It helped a lot! The sessions were painful but sure enough I was pain free after 3 sessions. One of the things my doctor recommended is rolling my forearms after climbing because my tendons were really tight. I bought this massage roller and I massage my arms after a climbing/workout session. It feels fantastic after a long session! She also gave me some good strength exercises to do before my workouts and so far so good. I haven’t had pain in my forearm since. Good luck!

u/KarlWalters · 2 pointsr/climbharder

Here ya go: https://www.amazon.com/MusclePharm-Certified-Artificial-Ingredients-Chocolate/dp/B072MZHRSV

Honestly tho, I prefer the greek yogurt option these days. It ends up cheaper per serving and I feel super solid for whatever session I end up doing. I think just finding the macro numbers you need and experimenting with different combos will help.

Ya for Skratch I mix a scoop with a liter of water. Seems to work well with my guts, which honestly is the number 1 sign to me if my strategy is working.

u/justinsimoni · 3 pointsr/climbharder

I would sincerely suggest reading one of the Steve House books, either the OG Alpinism one, or the one that just came out. I'd be curious to know if r/Ih8usernam3s is a sports scientist, a coach, or currently an athlete (care to enlighten us?). There's no shortcuts to gaining the fitness you need for alpine missions.

If you want to get fast, you want to get efficient: lots of workouts below your aerobic threshold. My resting HR can be in the low 40's - it certainly didn't get there by doing, "Interval Training", whatever that's supposed to be (seems a nebular term).

u/muenchener · 2 pointsr/climbharder

Actual studies have in fact been done, for example Seifert, Orth, Button & Davis “How expert climbers use perception and action during successful climbing performance” in The Science of Climbing and Mountaineering. Among many other interesting things they said as a measure of efficiency that the movement of expert versus less expert climbers is characterized by a shorter and smoother path of the climber’s centre of gravity through space.

The book is very interesting in general, well worth the 28 Euros I paid for it (43 Euros now though)

u/thelazyclimber · 6 pointsr/climbharder

The Power Company has a process journal that could work well for what you are looking for.

I use a black moleskin journal to keep track of my progress, this is the one I bought off amazon.

I write my focus for the day, the drills or workouts that I do, how the session is going, particular things that I noticed while climbing, strength training exercises (sets and reps), my start and end times for my climbing and workouts (It is nice to track how much time you spend at the gym each week, and what portion is time spent climbing vs. strength training).

I don't write the individual climbs/grades that I do. I don't see much of a point to this, as gym grades are not very consistent and they aren't up for that long. When I am outdoors, I write every route that I climb.

I also tried keeping notes in a spreadsheet on my phone, but I like writing better, and it keeps me off of my phone while training.

u/digitalsmear · 1 pointr/climbharder

If you're getting elbow soreness, then your muscles that work in opposition to climbing are imbalanced.

The book Climb Injury Free can help you address your elbow issues, as well as ward off common finger and shoulder issues.

Even pros don't usually climb 5 days on - and if they do, they recognize that intensity is diminishing. 2 days on, 1 day off is reasonable. 3 days on, 2 days off can also feel really great. Make sure you include time to do exercises that help those parts of your body you're not exercising while climbing, too. It will make your elbow feel better.

u/a_very_good_username · 1 pointr/climbharder

In my opinion, gymnastic rings are more versatile than TRX straps, and can make you wicked strong all on their own. I bought two of these brackets brackets and drilled into the ceiling joists in my apartment to hang them up. They've been great so far, and I really have only scratched the surface of their usefulness.

I just saw this Power Company video about making it easy to exchange hangboards. Not sure what your plan is but it could be useful.

This setup (right down to the tension board) is something I've been dreaming up almost to the letter for months now - I want to see pictures when it's done! Sounds awesome