Ned briefly goes over the basic training concepts, including overload, progression, repetition, recovery, specificity, and reversibility. A large section of the chapter is devoted to the importance of tracking your fingerboard training progress. The 200 page training guide carries 18 chapters and includes interviews with some of the world’s best climbers. You’ll find lots of training advice and also little tricks from someone who knows what it takes to climb hard.

Pinching is particularly common in indoor climbing, but there are crags where having a steel vice of a hand is essential - think tufas and granite.It makes what could have been a rather academic text far more approachable and should help see this book sat on many a climbers bookshelves or hopefully open beside the fingerboard. It keeps me motivated (perhaps even a bit too much - I tend to forget taking rest days a little 😅) even while training my weaknesses. Unfortunately, you're bound for a disappointment if you've been itching to learn the specific differences between MaxHangs, Eric Horst's "7-53", IntHangs, and Endurance Repeaters. Thankfully, Ned has you covered - at least with a few basic drills to help you avoid injury and make the most out of your climbing.

At the end of the book, there are interviews with Alex Puccio, Adam Ondra, Jerry Moffat, Melissa Le Nevé, Tomoa Narasaki, Alex Megos, Alex Honnold, and Coxsey. Beastmaking covers what finger strength is, how to best achieve it, how to train on a board, upper body strength exercises, mobility drills, and more.With insights from some of the world’s top climbers, including Alex Honnold, Shauna Coxsey, Adam Ondra, Alex Puccio and Tomoa Narasaki is this the book you need to push your climbing goals further? While a lot of training knowledge exists online for free, finding what works within it is challenging and time consuming. These are perfect for warming up, chucking huge moves or (if you're that way inclined) full on endurance training. How to take care of skin splits, what superglue is good for, and why you shouldn't leave your house without hand warmers on a cold day? Ned is known for his flexibility, so no surprise that there is an entire chapter to this aspect of training.

Organized and structurally broken down for ease of reading, Beastmaking contains a wealth of information based around the premise that every climber is different and individual anatomies will yield varying strengths and weaknesses. He has published more than a dozen military action-adventure novels, including the six-book series Force Recon. Now a trail of violently mutilated corpses litter the West Texas countryside - a trail that began on a night of bloodlust that left only one living witness. Ned emphasizes that good finger form is essential when hangboarding and that you should not shy away from crimp training.The book features sections on finger strength, fingerboarding, board training, mobility and core, along with suggested exercises and workouts. If you're one of those people, you'll find the included 3-stage step-by-step program invaluable at getting you on par with one of the strongest but trickiest finger positions. There are insights from some of the worlds top climbers, including Alex Honnold, Shauna Coxsey, Adam Ondra, Alex Puccio and Tomoa Narasaki. The writing feels like talking to a knowledgeable friend, informative and informal in the perfece balance. Amazing book about Boulder training… I’m getting back to the suggested training routines and training patterns mentioned in the book almost on a daily basis.

Feehally does touch on some of those aspects, briefly, but not as much as some of the nerdier training enthusiasts (me) might want. For example, athletes at either end of the height bell-curve, the extremes, will reach their peak strength quicker than athletes who fall below it primarily because they are so advantaged on those problems that fit their boxes. As a result they are great for burly side pulls and undercuts as well as working body tension and full body squeeze. Would you like to try on some climbing shoes or mountain boots for size before you make your purchase? Beastmaking will no doubt be on many a bookshelf providing helpful advice to many climbers over the years and is recommended for anyone interesting in even the smallest amount of training for climbing.

In this chapter, we will learn whether and when it's practical to invest our time in pinch training. Ned stresses that improvement is not linear and that you might have great climbing days and days when you feel like you suck.