Training for Monos
When you think about hanging your whole weight on one finger, injury is the first image that comes to mind. And yet monos turn up as a fairly natural part of climbing. Building single-finger strength transfers to other grips and helps you avoid getting hurt. Here’s the why, the how, and what the training actually looks like.
The injury risk
Pulling a large load through one finger is traumatic. The most common injury is a tear to the lumbricals — the small muscles in the middle of the hand that connect the flexor tendons. When you pull with one finger curled, those muscles are stretched and take a lot of tension. The same thing happens when a finger slips suddenly off a hold.
By stretching those muscles gradually under progressive load, you prepare your body to pull with fewer fingers. Disengaging the lumbricals by lifting the other fingers out of the way is another way to avoid injury, though you give up the added strength you’d get from the pulley effect of the neighbouring tendons.
Practise in a controlled environment
Going gradually is the approach that lets the muscles of the hand stretch and the tendons adapt. Several methods let you modulate the intensity. We obviously suggest using our own tools to train at a known force on the hold and to adjust that force during the exercise. Portable mono holds also isolate the fingers, but they’re riskier to train on.
Strengthen your weakest link
Monos are rarely trained. If it’s a grip that repels you, that’s probably a good reason to train it. Assessing your climbing, your physique and your goals helps you find what to work on. To start with mono training, testing the individual strength of each finger is a good place to begin.
Transfer to other grips
Individually stronger fingers help you hold other grip types. Grips where the fingers sit at different heights isolate the strength of each flexor. Stronger individual fingers also help stabilise the hand, letting you generate the rotational effort through the hand that often turns out to be useful. And finger locks in cracks often demand a strength similar to a two-finger pocket. Without necessarily being stronger on an edge, you end up better equipped for climbing.
A finger training protocol
Mono training is done one finger at a time, in isolation. Measure the individual strength of each finger, leaving a small margin before you feel anything in the middle of the hand. Then train at 50% of the maximum strength of the two-finger pair. After a month-long cycle at that low intensity, take a week off and reassess.
Finger profiles on the Beastmaker 2000 are integrated into the app — a useful way to see how much each finger differs. In my own testing, both hands measured the same overall while individual fingers varied a lot: an injured middle finger measured weaker while the others overcompensated. That pattern is worth catching early.
Consistency and good warm-ups
Adding these routines to every session stretches the lumbricals, prepares the fingers, and surfaces injuries before they get worse. One trick for keeping the habit is to slot the low-intensity work into the end of your warm-up. Good climbing!
