Tension's Whetstone Is the Best Beginner Hangboard

Feb 09, 2024

Described by Tension as “an ideal first hangboard for climbers beginning their training journey,” the Whetstone is a thoughtfully designed wooden hangboard whose asymmetric layout and large edge sizes—ranging from 20 to 40 millimeters—are well suited for beginners and intermediate climbers engaged in their first structured hangboard protocols, as well as for more experienced climbers engaged in general fitness and weighted hangs.

Very friendly for both skin and tendons // Jugs have “ergo bumps” that comfortably distribute load across all the fingers // 40mm two-finger pockets are incredibly comfortable on the tendons // Incut 40mm center edge is a good size for entry-level one-arm hangs // 20mm and 25mm edges have the perfect radius to maximize comfort // Top jug is more demanding yet also more comfortable than most hangboard jugs, which is good because it engages the flexors during pulling and core exercises.

Not ideal for one-arm hang progressions since there’s no 35mm edge and going from 40mm to 30mm is a huge step up in difficulty // Smaller top jug may make core work and pull-ups more challenging for beginners // The design of the 40mm and 30mm edges allows you to hang on your skin instead of forcing you to engage your flexors // The board’s minimal overhang means that the lower edges interfere with thumb placement when you’re hanging from the upper edges.

Despite several minor weaknesses, the Whetstone is probably the single best board specifically designed for less experienced hangboarders. For more advanced climbers, however, or intermediate climbers particularly interested in one-arm hang progressions, it shines brightest when paired with its more serious sibling, the Honestone.

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Roughly five years ago, after more than 15 years in the sport, I came to the belated realization that the hangboard is the single most useful supplementary training tool for my climbing. Part of this is simply about time: hangboards are a very efficient way to get a workout, and I find having a setup at home helps me stay consistent. Another part is about physiology: I don’t have naturally strong fingers, and I tend to lose my ability to recruit what strength I do have after just a few days off, so engaging in consistent finger workouts helps make me stronger in the long term while keeping my strength available in the short term.

I tested the Whetstone over the course of four months, and I did a wide variety of exercises, including repeaters, one-arm max hangs, weighted pull-ups, and assisted one-arm pull-ups, front lever progressions, and various low-intensity “no hang” protocols designed to stimulate the tendons and keep them healthy for a variety of holds.

My first impression was that the Whetstone is perhaps the most thoughtfully considered beginner-focused fingerboard on the market—an upgrade from aging classics like the Beastmaker 1000 and the ever-present Metolius lineup.

The basic layout is relatively simple and standard. There’s an upper jug; a slightly incut 40mm center edge for one-arm hangs; a pair of 40mm two finger pockets; and pairs of flat edges at 40mm, 30mm, 25mm, and 20mm.

The level of care put into this board is immediately noticeable in four features:

1. The “ergo bumps”: The upper jug rail has four “ergo-bumps”—upward protrusions designed to put the fingers in a rounded, ergonomic position—which are niftily designed to maximize comfort and finger health. I liked these, but I’ve also got a longstanding wrist injury that made the ergo bumps uncomfortable for my left hand. Luckily, there’s enough space in between the bumps for me to use the jug rail without the bumps when my wrist was acting up. Our other tester, however, has healthy wrists and very much appreciated the ergo bumps.

2. The pockets: The 40mm two-finger pockets are far roomier than pockets on other hangboards. This makes them slightly more challenging to use, since you can’t use friction from the sides of your fingers to decrease the force demands on your tendons. But this also makes them better for training (maximizing friction doesn’t help build strength gains) and more comfortable, particularly when mixing up two-finger teams. For me, hanging from the second team—middle and ring finger—is comfortable on most hangboards. It’s where I’m strongest, and when using pockets outside, I generally aim to use those two. But since outdoor holds are often strange, requiring you to put isolated pressure on different finger orientations, I also make a point to recruit my first team (index and middle) and third team (ring and pinky) on the hangboard. For me, these orientations were noticeably more comfortable on the Whetstone than on any other board I’ve used.

3. The wood texture: The Whetstone is well machined and nicely sanded and has very little friction or texture—which is exactly what you want in a training tool. This may feel counterintuitive to beginners, but minimal texture is easier on your skin, which means you can train more. More importantly, when holds lack texture they force your fingers and flexors to do the work to stay on them, which is the point of training. Trickily, however, if holds lack too much texture the risk of slipping increases, which causes sudden changes in load direction and can cause injuries. Some other boards, for instance my Beastmaker 2000 and my friend’s Beastmaker 1000, have more grain in the wood (which means more texture) and narrower edge widths (which means that you can rely on side-friction to decrease downward tension)—neither of which are helpful when your goal is to make honest gains. This same problem is endemic to the super-grippy plastic boards, like Metolius’s classic Project and Simulator hangboards—at least until they get used a lot, after which point they can become dangerously slippery. For me, the Whetstone has the perfect texture.

4. Incut center edge: Designed for one-arm hangs, the 40mmm center edge features a slight, 10° incut, with a rounded front edge and scooped back. Even though these features make the hold feel shallower but better than the board’s other 40mm edges, they also (at least for my hand size) encourage me to use a less open grip position that seems to better engage my flexors—thus making the center edge an especially strong training tool.

People often overlook jugs on hangboards, but I think they’re quite important, and far too many boards have gotten them wrong. The exercises I do on jugs tend to be long in duration (training core or doing frenchies) or involve high weight (weighted pullups or one-arms), so the most important thing about jugs is that they’re comfortable. It’s more than demoralizing when you have to bail on that final set of core because your skin can’t take it.

The size, shape, and radius (roundedness) of the jug is also an important factor for me. If the jug is too large and incut, I find it trains you to hang off your skin, which causes skin issues when doing longer hangs. Conversely, if a jug is too small it relocates the failure point of a core workout or pull-up set from the big muscles to your hands.

So how does the Whetstone stack up? The jugs are gently rounded—both in the sections with the ergo bumps and those without—and are, to my mind, the perfect medium. They’re bad enough that I feel like I’m engaging my forearms while training core but not so bad that my forearms will ever fail first. And they’re comfortable enough to always justify that next set of exercises. The jugs’ relatively small size (as hangboard jugs go) makes them a good flexor training feature for beginners doing their first body-weight hangs—but could be too small for some. In this vein, one of my fellow testers prefers larger and more incut jugs, like those found on Tension’s Grindstone and the Beastmaker 1000. So in the end it’s just a matter of experience level and preference.

With large paired edges (I’m defining large as anything 20mm and up, a category into which everything on the Whetstone fits) comfort is once again key since the exercises I do on these holds involve long duration (density hangs), fatigue (repeaters), and/or added weight (weighted hangs). Skin pain shouldn’t be the reason you don’t complete these exercises—nor should a desire to conserve skin for outdoor or gym climbing be a major factor in whether you decide to hangboard on a given day. The Whetstone gets mixed scores in this category. The 20 and 25mm edges are perfect, with comfortably rounded front edges. But—as mentioned above and explained in depth below—the 30 and 40mm edges allow for a passive open-handed grip position that leaves you hanging on the rolls of your calluses rather than actively engaging the holds.

One arm hangs are (for me and almost everyone) shorter in duration, so the comfort of the edge is somewhat less important to me. (That said, I’ve tried hangboards that don’t have much roundness to their edges at all, and they’re unusable, so comfort does matter.) What’s more important, however, is whether the shape of the hold encourages cramming my index or pinky fingers into the side wall—a practice that makes the hold feel better but is problematic because it (a) changes your finger position on the hold, and (b) allows you to rely more on friction than strength.

Explicitly designed for one-arm progressions, the Whetstone’s 10° incut 40mm center edge is excellent (even though I’d have preferred it to be 35mm for reasons I’ll mention below). The flat 40mm and 30mm paired edges, on the other hand, are a bit too slot-like; beginners should take care not to get too used to cramming their fingers in the corners. Furthermore, the 30mm and 40mm edges don’t overhang the lower part of the board as much as I’d have liked—which meant that the lower edges get in the way of my thumb during one-handed hangs. The 25mm and 20mm are, for my hand size, perfectly shaped for both one-arm and two-arm hangs.

As a beginner board, the Whetstone doesn’t have any small edges, which is why more experienced hangboard users will want to also buy a Honestone, which has edges as small as 8mm, or go with a Grindstone, which has a wide array of edge sizes.

Perfection is a rare thing, and even if the Whetstone is my favorite hangboard in its class, it’s got some things I would change. Principally, I’d change the angle of the 40mm and 30mm edges. If they had a 5° or 10° incut (similar or slightly less than the 40mm center edge), they would encourage a less open grip position and more effectively train newer hangboarders to load their fingers in the same sort of grip position they’ll use once they progress to smaller edges. To get in the weeds a bit: the completely flat 40mm and 30mm edges, which are large enough that the front edge of the hold hits my fingers at or behind past the PIP joint, don’t force me to engage my flexors very effectively. The slight incut on the 40mm center edge makes it feel more positive than its flat peers, but it also—and counterintuitively—encourages me to hold the hold with the same flexor-intensive position I employ on smaller holds. It essentially feels like a much easier version of the 25mm edge, whose smaller size demands flexor engagement even though it’s flat. The flat 40mm edges, on the other hand, feel qualitatively different—objectively worse holds that you can nonetheless “cheat” by hanging off your skin.

Adding a small incut to the 30 mm and 40mm edges would make them more effective and comfortable for 1-arm work—which would free up the center edge, which at 40 mm would be entirely redundant at that point, to drop to 35 mm. This would allow you to do a steady 5mm progressions from 40mm to 20mm on the same board. The jump from an incut 30 mm to flat 25 mm would feel substantial in terms of difficulty, but it would be less extreme than the transition from a flat 40mm to a flat 30mm, which currently exists on the board.

The Whetstone feels, to me, like a substantial improvement from the classic Beastmaker 1000, the board to which it is most comparable. The holds are less slot-like; there’s a better progression of edges; the pockets are ingeniously designed; the jugs are both more demanding and more comfortable; and the 40mm incut is a great hold for beginners new to one-arm work.

But it’s important to gauge your hangboarding level before committing to the Whetstone. If you have some hangboarding experience and you’re strong enough to climb powerful V6s or V7s, the Whetstone may not be enough on its own and should probably be paired with the Tension Honestone [review forthcoming]. If you can only have one board, however, it’s worth considering Tension’s Grindstone, which, though less sleek, has a more versatile range of edge sizes (8mm to 30mm).

An excellent first hangboard, the Whetstone may not be a one-stop shop for more experienced boarders, but when paired with the Honestone it’s found a permanent place in my hangboard quiver.