OpenTube

The Climbing Training Tool You've Never Heard Of

Nate Mitka Climbing

8,460 views

I squeezed a grip trainer for 3 hours every week and managed to actually see benefits to my climbing. In this video, I tested a cheap forearm grip trainer for 30 days, using it every single week for hours on end. I completed a set of benchmarks at the beginning and the end of the month to see how much I improved at climbing.

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Thanks for watching!
-Nate

Grip Trainer I used (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/4gi6RQK

Lattice video reference: The NEW Way to Train for Rock Climbing

00:00 The Past 30 Days
00:57 The inspiration for this challenge
01:30 Benchmarks Day 1
03:21 Why Should you do this?
05:05 PROS DO THIS!
06:17 My Experiment
08:47 Benchmarks Revisited
11:46 Caution if you attempt this!

20 Comments

@Natemitka Creator 2 years ago Pinned

Hey everyone! My goal with this video was to see what impact grip trainers or CARCing might have on an average climber for a month.

My test at the beginning and end certainly isn't perfect, as I could have been more or less rested at the beginning or end, but I wanted to explore what the impact would be of actually training both arms with these for a month.

The reason for this is because if someone watched the Lattice video, they likely will not train with grip trainers with one arm only, but instead both arms. I hoped to provide a real-world look into its effects. I hope you enjoyed the video! Let me know what I could have done differently with my test!

@LatticeTraining 2 years ago

Great job Nate! Really cool to see this work for you and great point about this method of training being useful for when we can't get to the climbing gym.

@maxthegamer 1 year ago (edited)

I used to cut and bend thick wire at a cement pouring factory with wire cutters every day, grip training does indeed do wonders

@STEMolDay 2 years ago

Great job! Always interesting to see how different exercises affect different people. Especially seeing lots of pros doing this it is nice to see someone who is more in my realm of strength try this and log their results.

Keep it up!

@XLessThanZ 2 years ago

Great work on your test and explaining it. I use a couple of woodworking 6" pinch clamps similarly. I use them more for a shorter exercise regimen as opposed to becoming stronger all at once.

@newgunguy4176 1 year ago

Ironmind's Captains of Crush are the best. My opinion, of course.

@nathandevan3114 2 years ago

Hello Nate! I'm excited to see you're going to 24hhh! Look out for my name there! What's your team name?

I've also been arcing indoors and carcing in the meantime both in preparation.
I concur that grippers are useful for maintaining fitness when you're off of climbing for too many days. I also found they’re an easy way to promote healing bloodflow to yours hands and give light stimulus in a rehab manner. My friend and I both felt less injurious/tweaky in the fingers after using the grippers for roughly 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening daily.

@V10Jon 2 years ago

Hey Nate, for someone focused on reps instead of time, do you have a recommendation of reps per session? 100x each hand? 200? 500?

thanks!

@zaidsyed-ali3985 2 years ago

I think this experiment would have been more conclusive if you perfected cloning technology first. Then your clone could have been the control group, and you could compare your CARCing strategy against your clone’s pathetic existence. Just a thought before the next experiment.

Also, I’m curious how effective CARCing is using different forearm workout modalities. I’ve used the grip curl ones like yours, but also the individual finger ones. The latter felt more comparable to the gripping motion.

@ДимитърГраховски 2 years ago

What if you go for the pump? To pump like you are at a route? This might help I think

@oliviabaklaton4552 1 year ago

@Nate At the 20mm edge you had an improvement of 27%.

@oliviabaklaton4552 1 year ago

@Nate At the 45 mm edge you improved 16,5%.

@carpediemglobal 1 year ago (edited)

Did you ever try a longer period like 90 days? 30 days sounds like a short period to see any significant change... also in gym you need a much longer period to see significant results even if you are consistent and rest well...

@markgreco1962 2 years ago

Nice test!

@RyanDB 1 year ago

This isn't really useful unless you compare it to lower-rep, higher intensity alternatives. If I can see the same benefit from 20 minutes of training near failure vs hours and hours of super low intensity (something which is likely, though not guaranteed without additional research), I'm going to opt for the former, for exactly the reasons you give in the video

@asKiFTW 11 months ago

Are u still using it?

@lhitman2222 1 year ago

Just buy a captain crush

@TheMegaMrMe 2 years ago

getting Stefano's name wrong though 💀

@wongpeiyi 2 years ago

Lattice did one arm so that there is a control. By doing two arms, you basically made your experiment useless – you can't tell if your hangboard gains are from the grip trainer or from taking two extended rests. Repeating a route a second time typically has better performance better than the first attempt, so it's also hard to attribute anything to the grip trainer this way. Not sure you really shown anything here

@vladyslav737 2 years ago (edited)

I'm pretty sure better idea would be to increase the resistance so that you could use them in sets of 4-6, 10-20 reps each close to failure, take the last set to the failure. Just do that every other day and you'll probably better results, don't just copy from him. "I didn't want to feel ever pumped", they won't be pumped forever. As with every muscle the pupm will last for an hour or so. If you want your muscles to grow efficiently, you should experince some sort of a pump after your workout. Also doing this for hours will probably result in a pump, it's just easier to do a lot reps with higher resistance and you'd probably get better results.