Finger Bar

When training in a gym for a specific sport, there’s a piece of equipment for everything, ‘cept this:

The upper body strength most needed for rock climbing is in the lats and the fingers. For lats, there’s a lat pulldown machine. The exercise performed on this machine is like a chinup with several possible variations. Besides these variations, what makes this better than a chinup for training is that you aren’t confined to lifting your own weight. You can train correctly with weights both heavier and lighter than your own.

For finger strength, there’s a training board, a.k.a. finger board, a.k.a. hang board. I rarely see these at regular gyms, sometimes at climbing walls. On these, there are shallow finger slots of various dimensions to hang from, pull yourself up with, etc. However, like chinups, you have no weights with which to train appropriately, only your own weight.

The finger bar is a standard lat pulldown bar with a variety of matching finger slots built into both ends of the bar. It’s two exercises in one, or you could do finger pulldowns as a separate exercise. Either way is an improvement.