Beginning with the Campus Board

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Now we meet the famous campus board for the first time, although certainly not the last. The campus board is excellent at building finger, arm and upper body strength, power and endurance. But to avoid injury you must build up slowly and carefully and stop at the first sign of any pain in the fingers, arms, shoulders and upper body!

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So to ease you in gently we are going to start with some feet on campusing. These are exactly what they say, keeping your feet on a rail and therefore removing weight whilst campusing. Now days most good gyms have campus boards with a selection of handhold rails from jugs reducing down to tiny edges and also have a foot rail on the wall below. An example of a campus board set up at our local gym is shown above and you will notice that it has a selection of different holds forming ladders. To get you started use a rail that has a nice flat or slightly incut top edge of about 40mm depth.

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Before starting your campus board session it is essential that you warm up your upper body with some light exercises.

To start you off we are going to train campus laddering with feet on. Hold the lower campus rail with both hands in the open hand position and both feet on the foot rail (as our local gym has no fixed foot rail we have had to improvise with a gym bench and keeping just the tip of the toes on). Now reach with one hand to the next rail and weight it, then the next rail and weight it. Carry on until you attain your maximum reach and then work back down to the bottom rail, weighting each rail as you grip it. Now go up and down with your other hand. When you reach the bottom again this is one repetition and you want to do 5 full repetitions for one set.
If you cannot complete the full 5 repetitions, don’t worry, just drop off and leave until your next session. Remember that if you feel any pain to stop immediately. Once you can complete one set of the above add a second set and then a third set.

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