[fiveknuckle21]

I have two different routines which vary depending on what I'm aiming to improve on. I figure the rucksack off the back jobby is good for two arms and the pulley good for one. Obviously. I find though that I tend to increase weight for two arms by adding more into the pack, a little like a pyramid I suppose per set so I'll do two hangs with 5kg added, two with ten, two with fifteen then two with twenty if I'm in a pulley gambling mood.

Once I'm comfortable upto twenty (well relatively comfortable) I'll try and transfer to one arms with the pulley. For instance my current aim is to deadhang/one arm the bottom crimp on the Beast and I've just moved from rucksack hangs to assists. For my tuppence worth it is significantly harder to deadhang off one/one arm with alot of assistance than it is to hang with loads of weight on your back. What Beef said pretty much. In addition, the pyramid thing described a couple of pages back (0,2,4,6,8,10...) works a treat when your trying one armed even if you do it with 4,6,8 etc.

[saltbeef]

there you have it. a consensus!

[Paul B]

it was an invite for me to go and see if I can jam his crack 

[Serpico]

I reckon that the decision to one arm or two depends on how much assistance you need, and how strong/stable your shoulder girdle is.
If you don't need a lot of assistance (weight taking off) to hang one-armed then it means that you're likely going to have to add an impractical amount of weight to do max hangs two handed, especially in light of the research by Eva Lopez that suggests that max hangs on larger (but still 1st joint) edges gives greater gains than max hangs on tiny edges where skin and fingertip pulp is a factor.
If you're using assistance to hang one-armed then how you apply that assistance makes a difference; I've found from testing myself and others that if you use scales, either standing on them or pulling down on hanging scales with your free arm, that once you're down to about 5kgs assistance if you ditch the scales completely and instead just focus on hanging one-armed and reaching up for an imaginary hold with your free arm, you can often hang one-armed, in one case with extra weight. This could be related to the bilateral deficit effect as mentioned previously where the sum of the load lifted by 2 limbs is less than double the 1RM of a single limb, it's suggested that this is down to the reduced neural drive, so in the case of using assistance it's possible that the focus on reducing the amount you pull with your free hand is a distraction from pulling your maximum with your other hand, or maybe not... the effect is real enough though.
The other factor for hanging one-armed is shoulder strength, as I mentioned in the other thread a weak shoulder girdle will inhibit the entire kinetic chain; it's similar to the fad for instability training that was popular in conditioning a few years ago - people started lifting weights on unstable surfaces because it was supposed to work the stabilising muscles more, what they found was that it decreased force development, so the prime movers weren't getting worked to the same degree. If you're close to doing a one-arm hang you can rule out shoulder weakness by grabbing the bicep of the arm your hanging by with your free hand and pulling your arm into a slight lock, I've found with myself and others that this can enable you to hang one-armed. If this makes a difference then you need to work on your shoulder girdle strength.

[miso soup]

So the obvious next question is what's the best way to work your shoulder girdle strength?  Is hanging one-armed off progressively smaller holds enough to do it?

[Serpico]

Google YWLT, especially the Nick Tuminello (sp) variation and do them.

[Duma]

http://nicktumminello.com/2009/06/the-truth-about-ys-ytwl-shoulder-upper-back-exercise/

[gollum]

If you're close to doing a one-arm hang you can rule out shoulder weakness by grabbing the bicep of the arm your hanging by with your free hand and pulling your arm into a slight lock, I've found with myself and others that this can enable you to hang one-armed. If this makes a difference then you need to work on your shoulder girdle strength.

Years ago this was also seen as a good way of making sure the failure was in the fingers and not in the arm, what goes around comes around. Definitely works.

[iwasmexican]

Google YWLT, especially the Nick Tuminello (sp) variation and do them.

http://nicktumminello.com/2009/06/the-truth-about-ys-ytwl-shoulder-upper-back-exercise/

does anyone have any experience with these? another website says that 8 pounds would be a lot for doing ytwls but that wouldnt really  help all that much in max weight deadhangs? is it worth doing them with more weight or are they just good for general stability?

[Serpico]

If you can do 3 sets of 15 reps of each letter with 8lbs you definitely don't have any issues with your shoulders, I feel pretty worked just using 2.5lb dumbbells.

[shark]

http://nicktumminello.com/2009/06/the-truth-about-ys-ytwl-shoulder-upper-back-exercise/

Looks interesting. This video looks better doing it with a gym ball to prevent lower back extension (my nemesis)

[Serpico]

I'm not a fan of doing them on a Swiss ball, I prefer to either do them unilaterally lying along the back of a couch, or bilaterally on a folded bouldering pad stood on it's side (you need a thick, old-school hinged pad like the Alpkit thud).
Despite recommending YTWLs it's worth reading this.

[shark]

Nothing's ever straightforward. Bloody training 

[iwasmexican]

If you can do 3 sets of 15 reps of each letter with 8lbs you definitely don't have any issues with your shoulders

but say though if you wanted to do them as pure power training, like with 5 reps, are they practical or are you better off doing other stuff?

[Serpico]

With YTWLs you're targeting muscles that act in a stabilising/fixator fashion, so power training is totally inappropriate for them.

[Paul B]

I reckon...

Thanks for the insight (as ever), unfortunately it seems thinking about training is enough to get me injured. NNFN.

[Paul B]

Ok, I had a quick session with various forms of the pulley/weight/assisted setup the other night and it went pretty well.

Adding weight was a bit troublesome as my harness was trying to remove my pelvis with any more than 15kg.

I had to ignore anything involving the ring fingers which limited things a bit (unless people think its ok to train open on an A2?) however, I could complete a set of Front 2, 1-arm repeaters with about 15% assistance which didn't seem like overkill. It also allowed for 1-arm encores which left me exhausted.

I also rigged it up so the pulley was suspended from the BM and clipped the assistance point into my harness. This allowed me to do assisted two-arm stuff with about the same kind of assitance (although more room to get the weight off to one side might help). Judging from the muscle soreness in my forearms, it must be good (although it feels a little risky but then again I'm not used to mono's.).

I mostly stuck to repeaters to get a feel for it rather than wading in all guns blazing for a max hang session.

[chris05]

Bit of a tangent but the few times that I have injured myself or aggravated an injury on the beastmaker have been when doing repeaters rather than max hangs. I seem to find short bursts of intense hangs less injury prone than more prolonged periods of easier hangs. probably just me being a bit weird or the fact that after a couple of injuries whilst doing repeaters I mainly do max hangs now