Power Strips | Level Up Your Campus Training
Noticing a gap in modern campus boards, coach Nate Drolet teamed up with our friends over at Tension Climbing to create the Power Strips.
Sold as a pair and designed with both 10mm and 15mm edges, Power Strips are wide enough to be an easy target, but compact enough to fit onto a busy campus board, and the split design means you have the option to get your thumb in on the training and place the strips at a width that suits your needs.
Who is this for?
The campus board is one of the most underused tools by the people who need it, and overused by those who aren’t quite ready yet.
The Power Strips were designed for experienced climbers with a history of training in a systematic manner to see improvement over time. While the original intent was higher level campus exercises, it quickly became apparent that these could fill the needs of a much wider range of climber.
Tension’s medium campus rung is 24mm and small rung is 19mm. The flippable 15mm/10mm edges of the Power Strips represent the next two sizes down from what has been previously available. This allows further use of the campus board for endurance and strength-endurance work using foot-on exercises, and encourages a more direct focus on the fingers when using traditional campus exercises.
For seasoned trainees, using the campus board to work on hand strength means having to do bigger and bigger moves to reach the appropriate level of intensity for the fingers. For many, this can put a higher volume of stress on the elbows and shoulders than what they can handle. Using smaller holds means you can challenge your hands without having to do the too-big moves that add extra stress and greater potential for injury.
Why Campus Boarding?
The campus board is a simple, controllable, and time efficient method of training. The standardized layout means that you can easily measure your progress over time.
The relative simplicity of the movement means that beta and body positions aren’t a limiting factor. Focus can be put into level of effort rather than spending time and skin unlocking the subtleties that are required to execute complex bouldering moves.
When combined with foot rungs, a full campus board with Power Strips can be an effective training tool for every quality from endurance to power, and for athletes of every level. Whether it’s using our Campus Punks drills , explosive foot on drills, or the more traditional methods of campusing, the Power Strips are an obvious progression from the small rungs currently on the market.
Kris and Nate discuss their favorite protocols, both that they use themselves and in programming for their clients.