Crimps, Grips, and Technique: How Climbers Spend Their Fingers

Every grip is a transaction

Holds don't injure fingers — grip positions do. The same edge held four different ways sends four different bills through the tendons and pulleys, and the climbers who last decades are the ones who know the prices. Here's the menu, from most expensive to least:

Full crimp — fingertips on the hold, joints hyperextended, thumb locked over the index finger. The strongest position on small incut edges and by far the most expensive: biomechanical testing of the crimp position shows it concentrates the highest forces on the A2 pulley — the structure behind climbing's signature injury. The thumb lock adds force the pulley has to answer for.

Half crimp — fingers bent about 90 degrees, no thumb. The training standard, and what coaches mean by "crimp strength." Strong on edges, substantially kinder than the full version, and the position virtually every structured finger program is built around.

Open hand / drag — fingers extended, hanging from the fingertip pads. The pulley-friendliest geometry, the grip for slopers and big edges, and the position rehab plans return climbers on. Weak at first for crimp-raised climbers; trainable into a superpower.

Pockets — one to three fingers in a hole. Not a grip angle so much as a load concentration: body weight through one or two digits. The research is specific about who pays — the middle and ring fingers carry the most pulley exposure in pocket positions, which is exactly which fingers pocket climbers hurt.

Pinches and slopers. Priced in different currency: pinches spend thumb strength, slopers spend skin, body position, and shoulder stability. Both are friendly to pulleys and hard on technique — which is the trade you want.

The honest rules

• Full crimp is a tool, not a default. Use it when the hold demands it; train it occasionally so it isn't a stranger; never default to it on holds the other grips could hold. Climbers who full-crimp everything are prepaying for the sport's most common injury.
• Train half crimp and open hand deliberately — they're the grips you'll live on, and strength in them is what makes the full crimp optional. The strength guide covers finger loading done right.
• Grip-switching is a skill. Matching the cheap grip to each hold mid-route is learnable — drill it on easy terrain, where open-handing everything turns a warm-up into finger training.
• Pockets deserve respect. Ease into pocket-heavy routes and boards gradually, prefer three-finger and two-finger open positions, and treat mono moves as the specialty equipment they are.