I’ve always avoided hangboarding, probably because I prefer to be outside climbing. Hanging on a board alone in my garage and doing repetitive exercises on sunny days while my friends are all at the crag laughing at me hasn’t been my idea of fun. Until now.

Hangboarding is like putting yourself on some kind of medieval torture rack. You literally hang from your fingers, off variously sized grips, for various lengths of time, while adding (or decreasing) weight.

I’m not really selling it, am I? Well, it also happens to be one of the most effective tools for increasing finger strength. And let’s face it, in climbing, it always comes down to finger strength. Determined to make it fun this winter, I turned it into a game (see my post on Building Your Hit Points).

Now I look forward to these sessions (even during the few sunny days we have had that ordinarily would have distracted me). I’m focused, I have a plan, and I’m sticking to it. So what’s different?

First, I have a couple of big, inspiring goals this season—projects that motivate me to train. Second, by crafting a hangboard session that targets these larger goals, I’ve been able to create mini goals. Feedback for each exercise is immediate: I can either do a set or I can’t. I record all my results in a training log. Every time I’m successful, I increase the resistance.

By creating specific goals with immediate feedback, I’ve been able to turn hangboarding into a Flow experience. It’s amazing—something I used to find boring and repetitive is now an endless source of complexity and enjoyment.

We all know that strength gains don’t happen overnight; it’s a process, and you have to be patient and learn to play the long game. That said, when we bust our asses and train hard, we want to see results! Incremental improvement is almost impossible to see if you’re not watching closely enough. It’s like watching hair or grass grow. It’s only over a period of time and by actively logging your sessions that you’ll actually see the results.

Some days, it’s not going to feel like you’re making any progress, but if you know where to look, it’s there: maybe two pounds more, two seconds longer, or one rep more. The key is not where you are on the scale, but that you started, tracked it, and stayed with it.