ProView – Duonamic Ultimate Grip Package

Living the nomadic climber lifestyle can be great for climbing, but without the permanence of a gym to train in, fine-tuning that tendon strength to pull hard can be tricky. Enter Duonamic’s Ultimate Grip Package. The perfect way for a dirtbag like me to stay fit when my Subaru’s roof rack bars are too low, and the campsite tree branches keep snapping under the weight of my heaping irresponsibilities. The portable and hardy Duonamic package helps me pull hard on trailhead bathrooms and couch-surfed doorways to my heart’s content, all within a well-organized little case that stows well inside my crammed residence.

As someone who began earning his chops in the humble climbing gym, a year of living on the road meant huge changes to my workout routines. Instead of nightly tendon-stretching workouts pulling plastic, I had to contend with whatever my current location could give me, which meant my years of regular forearm workouts degraded to sporadic and unregimented. The Duonamic Ultimate Grip Package was an amazing addition to my kit, and I quickly carved out the little room required to fit it in my Subaru studio apartment. I suddenly had access to a pull-up bar anywhere that had a compatible door frame, and could even attach the rock holds to dumbbells to train without a structure. As summer turned to Sendtember, the Duonamic was the perfect companion as I migrated north and attempted to build what little strength I could in a last-minute frenzy before Rocktober temps in the desert.

Fit/Comfort

While my hands may not be as wide as my painfully duck-shaped feet, they are definitively in the “adult male” category for size. The rock holds that come with the package produced no finger cramming and were sized well to fit my hands, as well as a range of my climbing cronies, who vary greatly. Unless you have some Michael Phelps oar-sized hands, this workout setup will fit any individual. The fancy proprietary texture of the rock hold is a great balance of sticky for hanging, but won’t shred your skin like J-tree granite. The bar attachment is the perfect diameter to avoid a tight, skin-pinching grip or an oversized chunk that you might slip off when the workout gets long. 

Look/Style

Not too much to say about look and style here. There are no color options to choose from, but the equipment is a discreet black color with lime green highlights. It’s the kind of design that is simple and rugged, and gives exactly what it promises.

Features

While the Duonamic system might not give a climber the full feature set that a hangboard at the gym might provide, it does pack quite a punch of versatility for its weight class. The standard pull up bar handles can easily be switched out for the rock holds, which can be grabbed on top like a jug, or inside the pocket for a smaller more positive edge. Magnetic spacers allow you to adjust the depth of the pocket with incredible ease. No screws or bolts to fiddle around with, no tools required, just a simple snap in place and you are back to abusing your fingers in classic crimp style. The rock holds also have deep grooves down the side, which allows you to adjust the angle at which the hold sits. I found this to work surprisingly well, and the grooves were deep and tight enough to ensure the angle did not slip out, even with my weak-armed thrashing on the other end.

Weight/Packability

In terms of weight and packability, I have yet to see a competitor to this setup. We all know the classic door frame pullup bar that seems to lurk in climber bro hallways, easy enough to twist onto your doorway, but you wouldn’t consider bringing it on a road-trip or changing locations often. Meanwhile, the whole Duonamic setup weighs about 5 lbs with extra rock holds, and all of it fits in a convenient little carrying case. It packs down well, and sets up in an instant. You can easily pull the whole thing out of the bag, set it up to your liking, and whip out a few sets before anyone else at the rest stop even knows what is happening.

Function/Performance

When it comes to workout performance, so much comes down to personal use. A dumbbell is just a lump of weight, but can be used for so many different exercises in the right hands. The Duonamic Ultimate Grip Package mirrors the accessibility of a dumbbell through its simplicity and ease of use, but it does so with a range of workouts that require some form of door frame or overhead attachment. For those without access to a climbing gym, it is difficult to find the tools needed to match amenities one can provide, so having a small bag with all the ability to change hold types is incredibly convenient.

Durability/Construction

Workout equipment should take a beating, and this one is definitely up to the challenge. The vice mechanism is simple and seems failsafe enough, the holds are made of thick, tough plastic, and the cordage and quicklink are both top quality. More importantly, the equipment isn’t going to wear out your door frame, as the contact points are covered in a softer plastic, and won’t scuff or tear even with body weight applied.

Friendliness to the Earth

I can’t seem to find any information on Duonamic’s manufacturing process, but I do appreciate a well-made piece of equipment that feels strong in your hands. Nothing is worse than single-use plastics, and this grip package will certainly stay with you for the long haul.

OPL contacted Duonamic for further comment on their sustainability practices:

“At Duonamic, we recognize the fragile state of our environment, and are committed to doing our part to help. While acknowledging that no manufacturing operation is going to have zero environmental impact, our main focus has been on designing items that last, that you will be proud to own and happy to use for years or decades to come.Tricks that have been used throughout history to keep you buying more, such as planned obsolescence, are simply not in our genes. We design our products to be as good as we can make them, period. While no design can be truly timeless, we strive to make our products reflect the best of their era, so you will be able to look back many years later, connect with the present, and still enjoy their flawless functionality. During the design and prototyping, we use both computational methods, and we build custom testing machines, to ensure that this happens.As a simple, concrete example of this philosophy, take a look at the stainless steel shaft of your Eleviia. We could have just as easily made it from aluminum, saved a few cents, and nobody would really notice. However, over time, the glass fiber reinforcement in the parts that rub against the shaft would have caused the shaft to wear, and if you use your Eleviia heavily, years down the line, the shaft would fail due to this wear.”

The Final Word

The Duonamic Ultimate Grip Package allows for many of the training options offered by a full size climbing gym, all wrapped up in a small package that can easily be taken just about anywhere you may travel. I even found space in my pack to bring the rock holds out into the mountains for an enjoyable, if not gratuitous, stretch of the tendons before a climb. The simplicity of the design leaves little that begs for improvement, but huge room for growth. I would love to see the company come out with many more attachment options in the future to suit rock climbers.

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