Perhaps you can’t get down the climbing gym as easily as you’d like, or you’re simply looking for a way to top-up your training regime. Either way, having access to a home fingerboard, or hangboard as they're sometimes known, is a great option to have.
Many of you will be hesitant to purchase a hangboard on the grounds it is either too complicated to install or you live in a rented home, where the option to drill into interior walls simply isn't an option. Worry not! There are a number of generally simple options for having a home finger training board and avoiding the associated DIY work.
Most of the options available revolve around the use of an Iron Gym (or similar) pull-up bar. These are essentially a cheap, removable pull-up facility which cams between the doorway and its upper trim. When used with a little common sense, the Iron Gym will leave your home interior unscathed.
The following video shows perhaps the slickest method we have come across for utilising the Iron Gym and a few other cheap components to create a removable mounting facility for your home hangboard.
Where to Purchase the Components?
As the video above is made for a US audience, the measurements and suggested purchasing points (such as Home Depot) are not relevant to the UK market. As such, we have sourced the items from relevant UK retailers:
Another tip; if you don’t have any “Hotel Slippers”, a pair of old (clean!) socks double rolled will do the same job.
Other Mounting Methods/Ideas
The following is a mechanism for achieving the same result as the above video, using a wood frame. This will obviously take a little more time and effort to assemble.
Here's another slightly simpler method, using angled metal hooks and a back board. We'd recommend adding some adhesive backed foam padding to the back board, at the point where it comes into contact with your door frame:
Finally, if you have a set of Metolius Rock Rings (or similar) this is a neat way (quick and easy) of modifying them, again using an a Iron Gym, into fingerboard like set up:
