Mono Training
So I was presented with some interesting information on individual finger strength that I have gone and tested out in the past week or two. The two major points of interest from the paper were that a) training individual fingers [mono holds] allows for greater gains than training all of the fingers at once, and b) the pinky is stronger than the index finger.
Now a) simply reinforced the notion that training individual fingers was a crucial part of training, however the second point was a huge discovery. As the video demonstrates rather obviously, the pull strength off of my pinkies is far better than that on my index finger. This would make our index fingers the stand alone weakest link in our finger strength, now the solution is not to switch to pulling with our three outmost fingers as the leverage doesn’t work due to finger length [ie. the pinky is far shorter than the index finger, so when gripping holds the disparity in finger length makes the pinky less then useful as the third finger on a hold]. So there is obviously only one option left available, train the index finger like crazy.
The training methods I am playing with currently are largely self evident from the video clip. Straight pulls, statics, and weighted work are all coming in to play here. I am of course not neglecting my other fingers, however some extra special attention is being paid to this newly discovered weak link. If the index finger can be strengthened to the point where it is at least as strong as the pinky then a noticeable increase in crimp strength should become evident.