How to train your fingers when you can't hang your bodyweight yet

"Three years of climbing and I can barely hang 20 mm"

Posts like that turn up on climbing forums all the time, and the replies are full of strong climbers saying they couldn't either, for years. A 20 mm edge with your feet off is a harder test than it looks. Hanging from a board is also partly a skill: shoulders set, hand shape held, no swinging. Climbers who've never trained on one usually improve fast in the first weeks, because they're learning the position as well as getting stronger.

Take weight off, then add it back

You don't need to hang your full bodyweight to train your fingers. You need a load you can control, and a way to add a little more over time. There are three ways to take weight off.

• Keep your feet on the floor. Stand under the board and let your hands take only part of your weight. That's how Abrahangs work: 10-second hangs, with the effort measured against what it would take to lift your feet, and they should never feel hard.
• Put one foot on a chair and push through it as much as you need.
• Hang with a pulley and a counterweight. The counterweight tells you exactly how much you've taken off, so you can take a little less off every few weeks. The hangboard calculator turns that into a share of your bodyweight.

Pick-ups are the other route. You stand, take a small edge in one hand and lift a weight just off the floor. The weight goes up a small plate at a time, and each hand works on its own, so you'll see if one side is weaker.

A starting week

• Abrahangs at home on two or three rest days.
• Once or twice a week, after a proper warm-up, finger maintenance hangs on a 20 mm edge with a foot on a chair, or pick-ups. Leave two days between them.
• Keep climbing. Hard bouldering on steep walls and small holds trains your fingers too.

When those feel routine, recruitment pulls are the hard version of a feet-on hang: short, all-out pulls where your feet stay down, so you decide the load. Longer, lighter density hangs are another option for a second hangboard day, with a foot on a chair if 30 seconds is too much.

How to progress

Write the load down every session: the counterweight, the weight on the pick-up, or how hard the feet-on hang felt. When every hang in a session feels controlled, take a little weight off the pulley or add a little to the pick-up. Change one thing at a time, whether that's the load, the hang time or the edge. If your hand shape changes during a hang, the load's too high.

A common check before full bodyweight hangs is holding 15 seconds on a 25 mm edge. Until you can, keep taking weight off.

"Is this even worth it?"

A 2024 study of 526 climbers' training logs found that those who only climbed didn't gain finger strength, while short, easy feet-on hangs three or more times a week did about as much as max hangs. It wasn't a randomised trial. It's still a good reason to start with the easy option now instead of waiting until you can hang your bodyweight.

Who this isn't for

If you've climbed for less than about a year, skip the hangboard for now. Climbing lots of different problems, on steeper walls and small holds, is already training your fingers. If you're under 16 and still growing, leave the hangboard for later too.

If a finger hurts, see a physio before you hang from anything. This page is about training healthy fingers.