What is a campus move?

A campus move is climbing with your feet doing nothing. You move between handholds using only your arms, fingers and upper body, with your legs hanging dead beneath you. It is one of the most powerful, demanding things you can do on a wall, and it is also one of the easiest ways to hurt yourself if you rush into it.

Climbing with no feet

In a normal sequence your feet carry a large share of your weight and generate a lot of the movement. Take them away and your fingers, forearms, shoulders and back have to do all of it. A campus move means releasing a hand, pulling and pushing through your upper body to launch towards the next hold, and catching it without any help from your legs.

You will see campus moves in two places. Sometimes a route or boulder problem genuinely demands one, the feet run out, or the only foothold is so bad it is faster to ignore it and throw between holds. More often, though, "campusing" refers to deliberate training on a dedicated piece of kit.

The board it is named after

The move is named after the campus board, a training tool of overhanging wood or plywood fitted with horizontal rungs at set spacings. The story behind it is part of climbing lore: a strong climber called Wolfgang Güllich is credited with building the first one at a university sports facility, a campus, in order to train the finger and pulling power he needed for an extremely hard route. The name stuck to both the board and the moves done on it.

On a campus board you climb the rungs with your hands only, feet hanging free. Typical drills include:

• Ladders. Moving up the rungs hand over hand, building basic contact strength and coordination.
• Bumps. Moving one hand up several rungs in quick succession before bringing the other up to match.
• Max moves and double dynos. Launching both hands or one hand to a distant rung to build explosive power.

It is brutally effective at developing the kind of snappy, dynamic finger and arm power that lets you stick hard moves. It is also notoriously hard on the body.

Why it is best left until you are strong

Here is the warning that comes with every campus board, and it is worth taking seriously. Campusing loads your fingers, elbows and shoulders with your full body weight and added momentum, with none of the cushioning that footwork normally provides. The forces through your finger tendons and pulleys, and through the soft tissue around your elbows, are very high.

Newer climbers simply do not have the years of accumulated tendon and connective-tissue conditioning that this kind of training demands. Muscles strengthen relatively quickly, but tendons and ligaments adapt slowly, over months and years. That mismatch is exactly where injuries like finger pulley strains and elbow tendinopathy come from. Jumping onto a campus board before your body is ready is one of the more reliable ways to end up injured and off the wall for a long time.

The usual guidance is to leave campus training well alone until you have a solid base of climbing behind you, you are climbing at a respectable intermediate level, and your fingers are used to load. Even then, you warm up thoroughly, keep the volume low, and stop at the first hint of joint or tendon pain. Power training is a finishing touch, not a foundation.

So if you are early in your climbing, admire the campus board and walk past it. Build your strength through climbing, hangboarding sensibly, and time on the wall. When you are genuinely strong and well-conditioned, the campus board is a sharp tool for the last bit of power. Used too soon, it is mostly a fast track to the physio.