Today we have a true legend of finger strength – the one and only Yves Gravelle. He has some of the strongest fingers in the world, pound for pound and has demonstrated this in both the climbing and arm lifting world, whilst also holding down a full time job and the added role of parenting on top of that. 

In terms of his climbing, Yves is an International comp athlete, having represented Canada for a number of years, he’s bouldered V15 and repeated and established multiple problems in the double digit range. For Arm Lifting, he is 3 x APL World Champ, the lightest person the lift the Thomas inch dumbbell and has a PB of 105kg on the Rolling Thunder.

If you’re someone who’s interested in the opinion, practices and methods of an athlete at the top 0.0001% of their game, when it comes to building strong fingers, then listen in hard!

In this episode Tom and Yves cover the following topics:

1. Yves’s classic feats of strength.
2. His early climbing years.
3. The tools in the last 20 yrs that he’s felt were most effective.
4. How often he trains grip strength. 
5. How he balances that with normal climbing.
6. What has been the role of arm lifting and when he got into it.
7. Are arm lifters doing anything different to climbers?
8. Hang vs lift tools for finger strength training.
9. How he ‘transfers’ his training strength across into climbing.
10. His balance of low intensity and high volume training.
11. How he trains with limited time and resources. 
12. His tips for climbers getting into their first season of arm lift training.

Yves’ Sponsors: Bloc shop, Kailas, Tembo, Digit Climbing, Xcult USA, Coyote rock gym

His YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/yvesgravelle/videos

His Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yvesgravelle/?hl=en

I’m from Ottawa, Canada

Been climbing for 22 years. 

Ex Canadian National Bouldering team member. 7-8 time???

3 x arm lifting World Champion (APL federation)

8C boulder

Multiple World records and class world records order in the sport of Armlifting. 

Feats Highlight 

– lightest person the lift the Thomas inch dumbbell

– 6mm one arm pull-up and deadhang

– lattice test edge + 32kg

– 105kg on the rolling thunder

– 1-5-9 with construction gloves 

The Lattice jingle is brought to you by Devin Dabney, music producer of the outdoor industry who also hosts the American Climbing Project.