2 CRUCIAL techniques to make fist jams easier

Point 1. Contact area

The side of your hands are the contact points in fist jamming, so these are the important parts to tense. Remember those jamming rules; soft and relaxed on insertion, then tense and make rigid inside the crack.

The easiest way to tense the side of the fist is the use of the pinkie and index finger, when you wrap these into the centre of your palm to create a fist shape, actively think about pushing into the palm with these two fingers. It sounds incredibly simple (and it is), but so often I see people create fist jams, and the side of their fists is still soft...and then they wonder why it’s slipping.

Point 2. wrist flexion

When you feel a slipping fist jam a really common thing I see is, people starting to flex at the wrist. I believe it's a compensation thing; trying to engage other muscles, or create another position to stop the slipping (similar to when you start getting pumped in the forearms and your elbows rise up).

whilst lifting your elbows in extremely pumpy situations seems to work, flexing at the wrist during slipping fist jams only gives a further negative effect to the jam. As soon as you flex your wrist either up or down, the amount you can push with your index and pinkie (as in point 1) decreases.

The key here is keeping the back of the hand and back of the forearm straight and flat. As I always say, imagine there is a steel rod running down there which prevents any flexion.