Your Finger Strength is Unique: Why That Matters
Finger strength is unique.
Have you ever wondered why you can’t produce as much force through your fingers as others?
You put in the work, do the right things, and still can’t reach that same intensity.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, it could be your anatomy. To be clear, I am not giving people an excuse to blame their anatomy for all their performance deficits, but this is a legitimate thing to consider.
let’s take a real-life comparison.
Below are two hands compared, my own and C4HP coach Gabe Olson’s . The first picture is our hands lined up next to each other. The next two images are our fingers on a Tension Climbing 20mm edge at half-crimp.
It is obvious there is a difference in the length of our fingers— but what does that say about our leverage?
Well, thanks to diagnostic ultrasound measuring the length of the distal phalanx as well as the distance of the flexor tendon attachment away from the joint…
My tendon attaches at about half the distance of my bone (.61 cm on a 1.27cm long bone). Gabe’s attaches about an eighth of the distance of his bone (.27 cm on a 2.18cm long bone).
What that means for mechanical advantage
If you know anything about the basics of physics, my mechanical advantage is huge compared to Gabe’s. He has classically had trouble training on that edge size as well because it commonly produces injuries to the distal inter-phalangeal joint. That’s another consequence of his mechanics.
This definitely doesn’t mean that he can’t train his fingers. It does mean that he should use a 25 mm edge though.
You can still get strong using a bigger edge while reducing your injury risk.
Key takeaways:
We all have unique anatomy.
Comparing yourself to someone that is very different than you (height, weight, age, etc.) is not that productive.
There are fewer rules with finger training than you likely think. Using a bigger edge to make your fingers stronger is totally acceptable.
Science is cool!