How to practice on the Campus board

The campus board and exercises on it are something that amazes novices and advanced alike, especially when the exercises are performed by someone like Adam Ondra or Alex Megos. Unfortunately, as useful as the campus is, it is also dangerous. Countless people have injured themselves during exercise or played with their injuries. How to practice on the campus board? In the following text, we will pass on all our knowledge.

Overview

The first must is to have access to a good campus board. The best climbing walls, such as Prague's BoulderBar or BigWall, have their own campuses, which we recommend using. Of course, you can also build your own (instructions here).

Campus board training has two main variations, which differ according to the type of grips you use. Standard bars (crimps) are for strengthening the fingers and shoulder mobility, while the large hemispheres are mainly for grip strength and explosiveness.

How not to get hurt

Be careful to use the correct technique. A climber can very easily get injured while exercising on the campus board.  

Strong

The very first thing you should check before you start trying to campus is whether you have enough strength. Find the biggest catch and try to get to the last one after them. If you can do it without much difficulty, you can continue to the next training session. If not, it's better to try to build more strength first. You can go deeper into campusing later.

Shoulders and middle

As with hangs and lunges, you can quickly injure your shoulders with incorrect technique on campus. It is necessary to have both the shoulders and the center (abdomen and lower back) "activated." That is not to be on campus like a scared fish. The shoulders should not touch the ears, but on the contrary pulled down and back.

How the bar is held

Here, as with every climb after slats, it's important how you hold it! There are three main ways to hold the slats. Open grip, semi-open and locked (i.e. a grip where the thumb is over the index finger). The best for campus board training is an open and semi-open grip. Locking the bar (full crimp) is not recommended, as it is much more demanding to go from bar to bar and the strain on the tendons is also greater.

Campusing technique

Campusing is relatively simple as long as you remember proper technique and activated shoulders. So how to practice on the campus board? The first important thing is to practice on campus relatively early in the climbing day. If you save hangboarding or campusing for the end of the climb, there is a greater chance that one of the fingers will be injured, either from fatigue or due to incorrect technique.

Static force

The basis of campusing is to be able to get from the first hold to the next, with the smoothest possible movement. Beyond technique and shoulder mobility, this exercise technique targets explosive power. The key to this exercise is to keep your shoulders activated and not lock your elbows.

„1-5-9“

Every catch on campus has its own number. Mostly 1 to 9. This exercise aims to combine movements into a smooth progression up the campus. "1-5-9" is the most difficult combination of this move, which even we who write this cannot master. So feel free to try another one. A favorite for beginners is "1-3-5" and a more advanced variant "1-4-7".

The key to this variation of campusing is fluidity and stamina. Repeating the series of exercises is very demanding, but excellent for finger strength, mobility and fluidity of movements. Not to mention stamina.

Explosive power

The variant for gaining explosive power is probably the easiest to implement. You will find the biggest grips on the campus bag and you will explosively throw yourself from one grip to the other with both hands, usually in a "1-3-5" combination. After you have completed your ascent, slowly and controlled return back down.

Routine

The exercise routine is quite simple. But don't pretend to be tired and don't forget to rest.

Our advice is ideal for beginners. Focus on one category of exercise only. There is no reason for more combinations and overeating. Choose your exercise and set a timer. A suitable start is 20-30 seconds of campusing and 30 seconds of pause. Do this combination 3 times and take a minute break. Repeat the whole thing 3 to 4 times. Then take a longer break and you can go climbing.

If you are a more advanced climber, we probably don't have much advice for you. However, we recommend the application Lattice (or similar YouTube channel), which is dedicated to training for climbers. You will definitely find suitable training there!