UKC

as above! last year i climbed more than usual due to having more time off work and my main climbing partner being my girlfriend so we got out lots. by the end of the year i was cruising e1 and did a few e2's and e3's since October ive not climbed at all but been using a beastmaker roughly every other day that i bought this winter, I'm intrigued how my climbing will be once i can get back to it and interested to hear how others found it made them inprove or not. ive obviously improved lots on the board but done know what that will mean on the rock.

Your fingers and arms should be stronger. Your footwork will, in all probability be weaker. Hope this helps.

Andy F

I'd go even less far than that - "fingers should be stronger; arms, core, footwork, judgment of risk, and ability to place gear will, in all probability be much weaker"!  Fingerboarding makes a difference to fingers; nothing else (unless you are doing combinations of simultaneous hangs and pull-ups / leg lifts).  Endurance will probably be an issue too, unless some very tedious finger-boarding regimes have been embraced.

Stronger fingers maketh not a better climber. 

I'm hopeful for you.

If you know can cruise a silly little hold. That's gonna help the head. And may actually matter physically. 

I used to expect to onsite sport 6b every time and 7a half the time. That knowledge would carry me through E1 and e2 with confidence and would mean I'd give E3 a solid try too. 

Surely the same applies in other dimensions as long as the routes apply that skill

I can attest that it makes no difference whatsoever if you buy it just before the November lockdown and it's still sitting on the floor as of today.

Good question.  I've been using one diligently during lockdown.  I feel it's helped maintain finger strength.  But - been able to get out a couple of times in the last week, and my wife (who hasn't done any finger training, but plenty of yoga) comprehensively handed me my ass on exactly the sort of terrain I'd expect Beastmaker sessions to help with - vertical, crimpy 7a-ish limestone.  Interested on other people's experiences...

You will have done too much too quickly at first, enjoying seeing gains and trying to hard.

Then your elbows will have started twining but you will carry on.

Then you elbows will be sore but you continues.

Eventually, you are crying in pain when washing your hair or wiping your butt.

The Beast maker is relegated to many months of density hangs/isometric on big holds.

You train in other ways and hope to maintain a standard.

Just me? 

After ankle surgery I trained entirely on the beastmaker 2/3 times a week for 4months pre Font trip and then sent my hardest font climbs to date (I'd been going every year for about 15 years). Motivation to start climbing again while in Font was probably a key factor though!

saying that, i restarted with the beastmaker back end of last year following another injury and overdid it as progressed too quickly and got excited and tweaked fingers so had to take a month off!

Grades are an illusion. Observe the lichen, how it clings effortlessly to the steepest inclines. Be like lichen. Become the lichen.

You will be crimping like a demon on those VDiffs whilst your head games worry that your feet are gonna pop.

Specificity!

If i told you I'd bought a fancy running machine and was using it every other day, for me to then ask you  how my running will have improved would be a pointless exercise; you'd need to know had i been sprinting on it, doing long steady-state runs, high-tempo runs, fartlek or Tabata protocols?

The same applies to your chosen training protocol on the Beastmaker. 

Million dollar question. It certainly can help a lot, but there are so many variables. I feel that it's actually improved my finger strength and that this, in turn, has helped my climbing. It's great latching small holds and knowing you could hang your whole body weight off them for 15 seconds - and now you even have feet to help! I think it helps with the mental reluctance and even the pain of holding smaller things and really pulling hard. Likewise, with repeaters, you get to know that, even though you're getting pumped, you'll still be able to go a fair bit longer. I actually found, in turn, that this allows you to concentrate on good footwork - precisely because you're not as worried about smaller handholds.

But, this season so far I've found my headgame is a bit all over the place and getting on a sport route I felt I had no stamina at all. Hopefully ground can be regained in these areas quite quickly, especially when we're allowed to adventure a bit further again.

I think it's been an odd winter for many of us in that we've been training more than usual with very little reference point to mark progression. Having recently stepped back into the game after around 3-4 months of pure home training, my experience was thus: 

• Core, shoulder, leg conditioning and flexibility work really paid off. I feel much more mobile and possibly due to this didn't feel like my technique suffered much. That said I spent a bunch of time time visualising how I wanted to focus on good movement over the winter, and already had a history of good movement to build on. Also, my feet seem to be glued to footholds now which is a remarkable feeling and definitely made all the suffering through long core sessions worthwhile. 
• Crimp/pinch strength has improved significantly - definitely the result of mainly training on edges and a short campus board for months on end. I also had good history of crimp strength but was very surprised at the significant gains over the winter. In terms of pure numbers, my one arm hang on the lattice rung improved by 9% - I think shoulder conditioning played a large role in this increase. 
• My lead climbing head game also got much better - first few times on lead I was very surprised indeed about how much better I felt on runouts - I spent a fair bit of time over the long winter watching climbing films and visualising feeling psyched and calm over the bolt and enjoying the feeling of falling (this was a big limiting factor for me last year), but frankly I was shocked how much this paid off.

The result has been overwhelmingly positive so far and I'm very psyched to make use of the new strength base over the coming year. Hope this offers a good motivation boost and hopefully a sign of things to come from your longer period of consistent training 👍

I've been training more or less every other day on the Beastmaker for the best part of a year now, with a brief pause over Autumn when climbing walls were open again.

I'll be interested to see how my climbing goes once I get back, I'm certainly a lot stronger on the Beastmaker but it's going to be difficult to make direct comparisons to how I was before all this happened as normally I climb lead routes (both indoor and out the longer the better!), but my climbing and romantic partner is now pregnant, and my other main climbing partner has moved to New Zealand so I'm going to be limited to short indoor top rope walls for the next few months and just isn't the same!

I'll have to find someone else to belay me on lead walls...  

Seems to be working for me. There's a crag a couple of miles from me where I've been bouldering since the indoor walls shut, haven't been there much with the winter weather but it's been dry recently and everything feels easier. Got a bit more serious with the BM in Feb with a pulley system, made weight gains on the BM and climbing also improved. Finger strength was probably holding me back though, which won't be the case for everyone.

In my experience it will make a differences once your technique (which you haven't practiced for months) catches up - basically don't expect miracles on day 1. To fast track this process last year I initially went out and top roped routes at, and then above, my previous limit which allowed me to get to a point where I could benefit from the finger board gains pretty quickly. 

I got overzealous on the hangboard during lockdown, made some good strength gains, tweaked my shoulder, kept hangboarding anyway, tweaked my shoulder some more and finally had to stop hangboarding entirely. So probably a net-negative for me! On the other hand I definitely have stronger legs and core and probably even shoulders now for lack of anything better to do in my living room, so hopefully that counterbalances at least somewhat my weaker fingers and forearms.

Honestly, though, I’m so desperate to get out of this damn London flat and onto some rock, I hardly care what grade I’ll manage. 

What if you have put it up in November and used it twice since? I anticipate strong results come May. 

Sounds like cunning periodisation. You will crush.

I’m sure you can fit in another session before the walls open. 

To be fair my head game is normally good and also technique pritty good too, my week point has been generaly been overall strength but mainly finger strength so I'm fealing confident about getting out from next monday

I recon my finger strength has usually been my week point so hopefully it will be the same for me

last year after not climibng and home training I returned stronger on limestone and shit on grit. And awful headgame for trad, so bad that I gave it up.

 I got massively stronger and went up 2 grades by home training but slightly delayed effect. Took about 2 weeks back to remember how to climb before I noticed the improvements.