Abstract
It has become almost obvious that finger strength is, on the strength side, most commonly the main bottleneck in climbing. Indeed that is true, but the problem is that this weakness is banalised to the point where it is considered as a problem “per se”, rather then a consequnce of some other weakness within the interconnected kinetic chain…
I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to. God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off.
Introduction
Fingers are the most distal segment of the upper body. On top of that its the contact site of climber’s body to the wall. Most of the time climbing is a closed chain movement. To be precise, it is closed(or at least semi-closed) chain exercise throughout the initialization of the movement and its termination. The only time when the chain is open is when the climber is in the air, which is, relatively, of tiny importance in the context of strength. Any sort of imbalance results in joint destabilisation. As a consequnce, the remaining elements of the kinetic chain will try to compensate for the instability, which in fact means that the compensating joint will be suboptimally loaded from the local (isolated) point of view. The possible resultant scenarios are the following. If the compensating joint operates within safe margin, it will transmit the suboptimal tension via torques to the more distal part. The weak link in the kinetic chain will become more prone to injury. But if all the joint segments downstream the compensating joint are operating within the stability margins, then the very last segment will be the one that will be overloaded. In the case of climbing, the last segment are fingers.
To Wrist…
Fingers themselves are from the movement perspective highly connected with the wrist, a condyloid joint with ability of radioulnar and dorsopalmar plane movement. Except from the adduction and abduction of fingers, other actions are mainly in charge of polyarticular muscles: extensor digitorium, extensor digiti minimi, extensor pollicis longus and brevis, extensor indicis, flexor digitorium superficialis and profundus as well as flexor pollicis longus. From the monoarticular musculature there are 8 muscles between elbow and wrist: Abductor pollicis longus, extensor carpi ulnaris, radialis brevis and radialis longus, brachioradialis, flexor carpi radialis and ulnaris and palmaris longus. Others of the monoarticulars are connecting wrist and fingers: Adductor pollicis, flexor pollicis brevis, abductor pollicis brevis, opponens pollicis on the radial-ish side and abductor digiti minimi and flexor digiti minimi brevis on the ulnar side. Therefore 14 muscles alltogether are either inserting or originating on the wrist itself, while 7 polyarticulars are held in the exact position via intercapral and carpometacarpal articulations. It is obvious that monoarticulars are of the utmost importance for the wrist stability. But that is just the seed for the upcoming discussion… 
… or not to wrist
Any instability of the wrist will be, as aforementioned, compensated and all the polyarticulars are highly convenient for such a role. Is it already seen where the dog is pointing its paw? The carpal tunnel inflammation uprising, to just name the most prominent one among the problems. Efficiency of polyarticulars is highly dependent on their leverages which are regulated via additional articulations. Any excess force wil thus be translated to one of those such as flexor retinaculum. As a resultant swelling the nerve disruption might occur and there we are. 
To complicate the things even more, multijoint muscles are especially prone to uneven hypertrophy, especially when loading is concetrated to more distal regions as it is in case of climbing. I hope it sheds light on the injury train of unstable wrist, followed by the carpal tunnel, later on by epycondylitis and lastly finger pulley or tendon injuries.
He-wrist-ics
“Train fingers to make them bullet proof” is a way to common one. However for quite a long time already the community is at least becoming avare of the importance of the proper form during finger strength training. It to be honest it truly is the most important advice. Just as in case of kyfosis - no matter how many face pulls one does, as long as the posture is not mindfully maintained throughout the day, the problem will not be solved. Climbers are attentive to the proper shoulder form in order to avoid rotator cuff problems. But wrist awareness is still in dormant state. Even as obvious tool as hangboard or just a warmup traverse can be an encyclopedia for the evaluation of state of our wrist status. What kind of deviaton from neutral position occurs with progression to the smaller edges? With isolation of fingers? With transition from crimp position (neutral to hyperextended distal phalanx) to the openhand (distal phalanx in the highest degree of flexion)? Any imbalances of forearm and hand muscles are quickly discoverable with a litlle bit of attention to this forgoten joint. You don’t have to wait until epycondylitis hinders your performance. It is worth keeping in mind that the inverse is also valid. Wrist flexion and exstension are interconnected with the very same action of the fingers. No matter how obvious it might sound, so far it cannot be emphasized enough since exercises such as wrist wrenching in any kind of form is lagging far behind fingerboarding. High percentage of recrutation demands high forces especially from the neuro-muscular point of view. Submaximal methods such as BFR and density hanging here just won’t do the job by themselves. Stop taking the risk and rather start working on the wrist. Last but not least - do not forget on radioulnar movement.
Conclusion
“I am sick of gyms. My elbows hurt and wrists are pulled out on a regular basis. I am just gonna keep climbing outdoors.”
Sounds familiar? Well, I hope I have managed to at least partially sucessfully threw some light on the bottleneck of this issue. Attentive reader might have already recognized the difference in the manner of this article between indoor and outdoor climbing. Think of the position of the wrist during rock climbing. With some level of deviation it is rather neutral for the majority of time, while indoors it is eihter extended (smaller holds) or flexed (big volumes). Spray walls and training boards and wrist extension lowers, just think for a moment. Or ask pioneers from Sheffield about the Old school room times and elbow inflamations. I am not about to provoke and say that indoors are key to the injury, it is just time to become creative for another degree of freedom in the training and start to think about the wrist. Remember that there is a 15 degree interval of a certain isometric joint position, where trained power is tangible.
If most of your time you spent grueling the overhang board with small holds and thus in wrist extension, why on earth the majority of your off the wall training would be in the neutral wrist position?
Climbing is the best training for climbing. This cliché is far more fundamental than one would ever thought- it is just rather hard to uncover all the details once we start adding supplementary training. So the next time you are about to train on hangboard, rather than playing solely with the hold types, experiment with the tilt of your wrist. It would be of no surpise if such an intervention would be the best bang for you buck at this very moment. Stay creative. It is worth the wrist.