Open hand, crimp and the grips in between

For something so central to climbing, the way we hold on is weirdly under-discussed. New climbers tend to grab everything the same way, usually a tense, knuckle-bent grip that feels secure and quietly wrecks their fingers over time. The truth is there is a whole vocabulary of grips, each suited to a different shape of hold, and learning which is which does two things. It makes you climb harder, and it keeps your fingers in one piece for the long haul.

Let us name the grips, explain what they do, and clear up the jargon that gets thrown around.

The main grips, named

There are really three families of grip, with a couple of useful variations. The names refer to what your fingers are doing, not the hold itself.

• Open hand (or open three-drag). Your fingers are nearly straight, draping over the hold with very little bend at the knuckles. The load spreads across the tendons gently. This is the grip for slopers, big rounded holds and most outdoor edges.
• Half crimp. The big knuckles bend to around ninety degrees, the fingertips press down, but your thumb stays off. Strong, versatile, and the workhorse grip for edges of all sizes.
• Full crimp. Like the half crimp but you wrap your thumb over the top of your index finger for extra power. The most forceful grip you have, and the hardest on your finger joints and tendons.

Between open hand and half crimp sits a continuum, and most climbing happens somewhere along it rather than at the extremes. The skill is choosing where on that line to sit for a given hold.

What each grip is for

Matching grip to hold is the whole game, and getting it wrong is one of the more common reasons people get gripped and pump out.

The thing worth burning into memory is that the full crimp is powerful but expensive. It puts the most strain on the small pulleys in your fingers, the bits that go ping when people get a finger injury. Use it when a hold genuinely demands it, not as your default for everything.

If you grab every hold in a full crimp out of habit, you are spending your finger health on holds that did not need it. Learn to default to open hand and half crimp, and save the full crimp for when nothing else will do.

The open hand habit

If you take one thing away, make it this: train yourself to default to the open hand. New climbers almost universally over-crimp because the bent-knuckle grip feels more secure on small holds. It is more secure, in the short term. But it loads your fingers hardest, fatigues fast, and is the riskiest grip for the kind of slow, nagging injuries that sideline people for months.

The open hand feels weaker at first because, frankly, it is weaker until you build it. But it is far kinder to your tendons and it transfers brilliantly to outdoor rock, where slopers and rounded holds reward an open grip. Spend a few sessions deliberately holding things more open than feels natural and you will build the strength while protecting your fingers. Our piece on finger strength without the injuries goes deeper on building that base safely.

Pockets, pinches and the awkward ones

A few grips do not fit the open-to-crimp line neatly:

1. Pockets. Holds with a hole you slot one, two or three fingers into. The fewer fingers, the more each one is loaded, so two and three-finger pockets are kinder than the brutal single-finger "mono". Spread the load when you can and warm up thoroughly before pulling hard on them.
2. Pinches. Holds you squeeze between fingers and thumb. The thumb does real work here, and pinch strength is its own thing you can train. Common on volumes indoors and on certain outdoor features.
3. Gastons. Not a grip exactly, but worth knowing. A gaston is when you push out against a hold with your elbow flared, like prising open a lift door. The fingers are often in a half-crimp, but the body position is what makes it a gaston.

You will meet all of these as you climb more, and the jargon stops sounding mysterious once you have actually used the grip on the wall.

Building the habit on the wall

Knowing the names is step one. Making the right grip automatic takes deliberate practice. A simple way to work on it:

• On your warm-up, consciously name the grip you are using on each hold. Out loud or in your head, "open hand, half crimp, jug". It sounds daft but it builds awareness fast.
• Pick an easy traverse and climb it forcing yourself to use open hand on everything, even holds you would normally crimp. It will feel weird and that is the point.
• When you do reach for a full crimp, notice it. If you find you are full-crimping a hold that did not need it, file that away.

Over a few weeks this stops being effortful and becomes how you climb. You will find you naturally drape an open hand over the rounded stuff and reserve the crimp for when it is truly required. That habit is one of the quiet markers of an experienced climber, and it is the difference between fingers that last decades and fingers that keep letting you down. Hold on cleverly, not just hard, and your climbing will go further in every sense.