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Grip Climb Tips: Managing Pump and Choosing Holds

Updated October 2026

Grip Climb is a climbing game in which your forearms are the timer. Every second you hang costs something, the cost depends on what your hands are gripping, and the hold you grab now decides how far you can reach next. Players who simply tap the highest ring usually peel off in the mid-teens. Players who read the hold types climb noticeably higher. This guide sets out the numbers behind the pump bar, explains why the run always ends, and gives a hold-choosing method that works.

How a move works

You start on two good holds at 0.9 metres, side by side. Every hold you can currently reach carries a white ring. Tapping one sends your lower hand to it while the higher hand stays where it is. When both hands are level, as they are at the start, the right hand is the one that moves and the reach is measured from the left. Taps register on the nearest ringed hold within about 0.38 metres of your finger, so you do not need to be pixel-perfect, but on a crowded patch of wall make sure you are closest to the hold you mean.

Each move takes 0.34 seconds, and during that time you hang from a single arm. You cannot start another move until the hand arrives. Your height is the midpoint between your two hands, and the score is the best height you reached during the run, shown in metres.

The hand that stays put decides how far the rings stretch. Reach is measured from it, and it depends on its hold type:

You may also reach slightly down, up to 0.45 metres below your higher hand, which allows sideways traverses. If at any point no hold at all is within reach, the run ends immediately.

The pump bar, in numbers

The bar is the sum of two parts. The first rises or falls depending on your holds. When both hands are on the wall, its rate per second is the average of the two holds' costs: jug −10, edge +4, crimp +9, sloper +14. It cannot drop below zero. The second part is fatigue that builds by 0.5 every second you are on the wall and never comes down. When the total reaches 100, you fall.

Some useful combinations, with fatigue left out:

While a hand is moving, the rate becomes the cost of the hold you are hanging from multiplied by 1.6. One move off an edge therefore adds about 2.2 to the bar, and one off a sloper about 7.6. A jug is the exception: the multiplier only applies to holds that pump you, and with one arm on a jug you neither pump nor recover, so a move whose staying hand is on a jug costs nothing but recovers nothing either (two hands on jugs would have recovered about 3.4 points over the same third of a second). Moving from a jug is free; moving from a sloper is expensive.

Because fatigue alone reaches 100 after 200 seconds, no run can last longer than that, however much you rest.

How the wall changes with height

The wall is generated as you climb. A guaranteed line of holds runs upward, each one within reach of the one below it, and extra side holds are scattered around it. As you climb, the gaps along that line grow, decoy holds become fewer, and the hold mix gets worse.

The chance that a new hold is a jug starts near 40% at the bottom and falls by about three percentage points per metre, reaching zero at fourteen metres; above that there are no jugs at all. Edges also become less common and crimps more common. The gaps are capped by the reach of the hold below them, so the guaranteed line always stays climbable, but from fourteen metres up your pump can only rise, and every move costs something.

Choosing holds: the core skill

The single most useful habit is to judge a hold by two things at once: how high it is, and how far you will be able to reach from it next. A high sloper gives you height now but leaves you with the shortest reach of any hold, often with nothing ringed above it. A slightly lower edge or jug keeps a wide fan of options open.

In our simulation, a bot that always tapped the highest ring with no thought for hold type reached a median of about 16 metres and ran out of holds in roughly a fifth of its runs. A bot that gave up a little height to favour better holds and longer next reaches climbed to a median of about 18.5 metres, with the best runs above 27. Neither bot rested at all.

When to rest, and when not to

Resting looks attractive because two jugs drain the bar quickly, but the simulation above found that resting on jugs made almost no difference to height. The reason is that fatigue keeps building, and jugs disappear entirely above fourteen metres, so the pump you recover low down is gone before the hard section. If you rest, keep it short and only before a visible run of poor holds. Moves made from a jug do not hurt, so climbing a jug ladder quickly is better than hanging on it.

Above fourteen metres, speed matters more than anything. Take decisions quickly, keep moving, and save the long reaches for edges where possible.

Common mistakes

▶ Play Grip Climb Pick the holds, manage the pump, climb as high as you can.