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The Campus board and transfer to bouldering performance (Read 12131 times)

jwi

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There have been very few academic studies of transfer from strength training (specific or general) to climbing performance. (I know about 1 study in total, that one basically concluded that electrostimulation has no transfer to climbing performance).

Based on my own experience, friends experiences and experiences by coaches [I've talked to] I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of stuff that has lead to performance increases in some people sometimes, under some circumstances: which in absence of larger studies is the best one could hope for.

Among things that sometimes work for some people under certain circumstances I've found fingerboarding (for better bouldering performance), pullups (for strength endurance routes), “core”-stability work (for bouldering), and running (for stamina and long routes).

I know of several instances where both foot-on and normal campusing have lead to increases in performance on strength endurance routes, but I am only aware of one single instance where campusing lead to increases in bouldering performance: supposedly a campus-board routine lead Wolfgang Güllich to be able to do the first move/s on Action Directe.

So, what I'm asking for is some anecdotal evidence where campusing for maximal strength have had clear performance transfer in bouldering. Your best stories please
« Last Edit: September 14, 2017, 01:47:53 pm by jwi »

yetix

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In Jerry Moffats book he talks about campussing helping for competitions/routes I believe (although I can't recall specifics and don't have access to the book presently. Not directly helping as you've noted bouldering but thought I'd note it for you

jwi

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Yeah, as mentioned I've found plenty of examples (including myself, but that is likely to be extraordinarily biased...) of instances where the campusboard routines [mostly pe-based] have transferred positively to strength endurance.

duncan

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(around 10.00)

Moffatt talks about bouldering at Font. after a winter of campusing.


Palomides

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That reminds me - there's a great bit in unclesomebody's font film where he describes his prep for font as "campusing and listening to techno".. don't know if he had improved performance afterwards in terms of strength though, the film shows a lot of good ticks but I don't know him so have no idea if that was due to training, living there or just talent!

tim palmer

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Edinburgh climbing in the early '00s contained some of the more prodigious campus boarders I have seen and I am not sure it did any of us much good

Doylo

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 :agree:
That reminds me - there's a great bit in unclesomebody's font film where he describes his prep for font as "campusing and listening to techno".. don't know if he had improved performance afterwards in terms of strength though, the film shows a lot of good ticks but I don't know him so have no idea if that was due to training, living there or just talent!

Well you can rule out talent  :lol:

Nibile

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Nibile

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My experience: I used to campus quite a lot when I didn't have my board. It surely made me strong but I was also doing loads of fingerboarding, so I can't exactly isolate the campusing effect with respect to rock climbing.
On the other side, when I got access to a good wall or board I almost completely quit campusing and I didn't notice a drop, in fact, I climbed some of my hardest projects with no campusing.
 :shrug:

T_B

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I haven't done any campussing for a couple of years, but am quite keen to do some at the mo. I guess it depends on where your natural strength (<lank>) lies but for me deadhanging is more useful. The longer your arms, the 'stronger' you will be at campussing, so beware of your ego  ;).

I hold campus rungs very open and don't think campussing makes your fingers strong, as I believe you need to half crimp or crimp to develop finger strength.

Finally, climbing ability on rock is probably inversely proportional to campussing ability.

jwi

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A quick thought:

I have reason to believe that Jerry Moffatt and Wolfgang Güllich were more trainable than most.

Nibile

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It's a good thought.
I've had more than just a few arguments with climbers who were blindly following pro climbers' training plans.

rodma

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Edinburgh climbing in the early '00s contained some of the more prodigious campus boarders I have seen and I am not sure it did any of us much good

 ;D

DDDD

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Back in the 90's I used to do a three/four week cycle of just campus boarding every eight weeks or so. After the cycle and going back to doing problems on my board, my hardest problems used to feel easy. So, yes, at least for me, campus boarding worked for bouldering.

jwi

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I am sorry, I have a hard time letting go of this subject.

Like many recreational climbers, I can only do 1-4-7 on incut campus rungs (like these https://www.metoliusclimbing.com/campus_rungs.html) juggy side up. This usually looks something like this
(Apologies to the person in the video, I look as sloppy myself, and I could have taken almost any search result on campus 1-4-7 from youtube to illustrate my point. But this clip was mercifully short). This is not a movement I recognise from any route or boulder I've done, indoor our out. When climbing with the feet on, like you normally do, you would never twist that much in the middle of a slap unless the leading hand is on an enormous jug.

Campusing on large incut rungs is often rationalised as training power in pull down/push up movement (see e.g. https://www.trainingbeta.com/campusing-part-2-when-and-why-to-use-the-smaller-rungs/ ), but as it is firmly established that power training has to be done at similar contraction speed and with as similar movement pattern as possible to the actual skill I am quite sceptical that the transfer will be that great. To me the movement seems to be a lot slower compared to big moves when we use the feet, and the rotation-pull movement is difficult to learn and seems very unspecific.

On small sloper rungs this movement pattern can rarely be seen. In fact most climbers are forced to stay much more front on when campusing on bad edges. Like this video of Wolfgang himself on his celebrated Pan Gullich in the Campus gym in Nürnberg with is imfamous glassy edges

cowboyhat

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I find the campus board a useful tool but not regular campussing.

Other exercises have effect; have definitely got me stronger. Touches, Power endurance foot off ladders, 1-5s, 1&3-7 (one move), etc

1-4-7 type campussing itself however because of the technique involved, the twisting, only serves as a way marker and isn't really an actual 'exercise' that leads to gainz.

As you mention about the Wolfgang video - we have some slippy big wooden half dome things at Stronghold and they, being really hard to hold, require much more body and shoulder tension meaning you can't twist and have to be way more controlled to progress. A stronger individual might disagree with that. I haven't used them enough to say whether this style of more controlled 'campussing' would be beneficial but it feels akin to just practising an openish lock on a poor hold so might be more transferable?

jwi

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Power endurance foot off ladders,

These have been really efficient for me as well. They feel very injury inducing though... and I've found that now they take more than 48 hours to recover from

Ged

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I built a small campus board in my shed when I moved to Devon. I went from not really being able to do any moves on tuppence, to being able to do all the crux sections pretty reliably,and repeatedly falling off the last move on redpoint. For those that haven't been on tuppence, it most definitely requires bouldering strength and power.

On anither note, I'm not sure you can dismiss the strength endurance gains brought about by campussing. Strength/power endurance is improved by being stronger and more powerful due to working at a lower %of max surely?

moose

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I am always torn reading threads like this; my usual performance on a campus board is 1-2-3-fall off (not an exaggeration, as anyone who knows me will attest). Does that mean campussing is an untapped potential source of major gains, or since I have so far managed without any ability in that sphere, I can happily continue to avoid it!

mrjonathanr

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Power endurance foot off ladders,

These have been really efficient for me as well. They feel very injury inducing though... and I've found that now they take more than 48 hours to recover from

Had never had golfer’s elbow till I did them; now it plagues me.

monkoffunk

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I've just started doing a bit of campus training to mix things up. I feel like changing stuff to get a different stimulus of sorts can only be helpful. I'm using the middle size beastmaker rungs and 1-4-7 is totally beyond me, but 1-4-6 I can do. What I'm not sure about is the balance between trying hard enough and injury. I wasn't trying as hard as in Ondras video, didn't want to go to failure, and I'm not really sure how long I should go for. Went for 5-6 sets per hand as per Jerry followed by a some safe reasonably hard but submax bouldering.

Will stop if get anything elbowy!


DAVETHOMAS90

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MoF  ;)

"1-4-6 I can do".

1-4-7 I'd suggest is not way beyond you  :2thumbsup:

Have you tried mixing it up with 1-3-6? Generally seems to help, as does adding some weight carefully/training after Christmas.


monkoffunk

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Thanks for the advice, haven’t tried that yet! I’ll give it a go next time!

Yossarian

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I was making some quite good progress towards 147 before I cocked up my shoulder.

My issue was / is lock strength and firing my considerable bulk upwards, rather than finger strength. So was doing assisted one arm pull-ups and deep locks, both of which seemed to be helping. And both felt more controllable / less likely to cause injury than repeated 147 failures.

Bradders

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I'm a dedicated boulderer and I've almost never trained on the campus board. In my humble opinion there is very little to be gained from it that couldn't be developed in a far more specific way by climbing on a steep board with poor holds.

That said, the one thing I've heard of which I think might be beneficial is described in this Training Beta interview with Will Anglin.

https://www.trainingbeta.com/media/will-anglin/

He advocates campus as a method of developing finger power only, I.e. not as a way to develop muscular power which is better done on a steep board as above. He recommends adding weight, but making small hand movements, thus targeting finger power and contact strength (contact power?) without the weird body positioning and elbow grief usually associated with making long moves in campus training.

Worth giving the interview a listen. His method has been on my list of things to try for ages but have yet to get round to it. Will report back as and when I try it.

spidermonkey09

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Are to take from this that campus boards are actually an anachronistic waste of space in most walls then? They are pretty ubiquitous; is it as much about their image as their practical use for wall operators?

jwi

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I like the campus board in the gym we've been going to lately. Sloping rungs, and feet jibs. So it can be used for strength endurance training when the walls are to packed, or there are no appropriate linkups of boulders to be found. And it is deserted 100% of the time.

Bradders

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Are to take from this that campus boards are actually an anachronistic waste of space in most walls then?

Yeah, they're mainly just a fast-track way for punters (myself included) to injure themselves. The space in the Leeds Depot for example would be far better utilised with a load of fingerboards.

galpinos

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I thought the matt under the campus board was the dedicated stretching/yoga/climbing avoidance area?

T_B

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I feel like I should defend the humble campus board, as it's getting some stick on here.

Campussing develops explosive power, shoulder strength and finger contact strength. It is not as effective as deadhanging for developing your finger strength, unless, you are campussing with crimped fingers perhaps (madness).

That explosive power comes in handy, even if the moves on 'real' climbs are not exactly like the movement during campussing.

I've found that I am strong on shouldery stuff when I am doing a lot of campussing. A Peak example would be Powerband.

Campussing is good for benchmarking power in the same way that you can benchmark finger strength via deadhanging.

You can replicate the level of explosive power on a steep board by, er, doing campus moves on it.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and those who favour big campussy moves are probably not as good tick tacking up a steep climb on crimps. E.g. Ben's OG sequence on what was to be Northern Lights, versus Ste's.

TobyD

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Like most training methods, I feel that the campus board has considerable value if it is appropriate to your goals and level.

As TB and Ged have attested if you want to do Tuppence or hard problems at the tor it's appropriate. If you climb say sport 7c and want to do a non specific 8a as a totally hypothetical example my opinion is that you're wasting your time.

gollum

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I tend to find them exceedingly useful for a whole host of things and at one point had a really good one on the side of my house built by Al Manson that allowed me to swap rung size etc. At the time I was climbing better than I ever had before or since.

The two biggest things that they improve for me are contact strength and oooomph.

Latching small holds at speed via long moves or bumps and then tensing the entire body to hold it and move on seems to have helped me develop stronger fingers that can react quickly and the associated core strength.

Looking up, thinking “that looks a long way” and then pulling through works my mind really well and builds the process for when I am actually climbing. It unleashed my inner ooomph.

It brings its problems. My footwork is infamous for how lamentable it is and I do tend to campus moves when others would do something much more efficient, but it does kinda work for me.

Campus training is much closer to physical training methods that are common in most other sports. I think of it a bit like running intervals or compound exercises. It is actually more technical than it would appear.

Finally, building on the achieving 1-4-7 mentioned earlier, I would also advocate 1-3-6 as a progression but then 2-4-7 which I found much harder but once I cracked it 1-4-7 came quickly as the aim and the body position were identical and I believed in reaching the seventh rung.

If you think it works do it, if you don’t do other things.

T_B

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As TB and Ged have attested if you want to do Tuppence or hard problems at the tor it's appropriate. If you climb say sport 7c and want to do a non specific 8a as a totally hypothetical example my opinion is that you're wasting your time.

I don’t think it’s as simple as this. I would argue if you want to get good at trad on-sighting  either get stupidly fit or have some excess power to power through the sequence without dicking about. Sure if you want to redpoint a stam plod with the most refined sequence at your limit, no doubt you can achieve that on efficiency and technique. Boring though!

monkoffunk

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If you climb say sport 7c and want to do a non specific 8a as a totally hypothetical example my opinion is that you're wasting your time.

So on that hypothetical theme, what if I sport climb 7c and I hypothetically want to climb an 8a that breaks down 4 bolt 6b+ to a good rest followed by a hard, technical, tensiony 12 move sequence (with a hard clip at move 4), followed by another good rest and 6a to the top, and the thing that is stopping me is a move off two crimps where you really have to generate a lot of power at move 11, is there any merit then? Given that in this hypothetical situation I’ve been doing a shit load of PE training and am a lot fitter than ever before, not feeling even a smige of pump at the first rest, when previously I’d been getting there slightly pumped, recovering and then feeling strong to the crux but trying whack beta?

I just wonder if having a bit more top end power might just help on a basis of being reasonably fit, as this seems to be what has dipped since I sorted out the beta to something possible. I don’t know though, I’ve kinda always been in the camp of ‘it’s not more helpful then other training methods before you get to 8c+’ before.

spidermonkey09

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If you climb say sport 7c and want to do a non specific 8a as a totally hypothetical example my opinion is that you're wasting your time.

So on that hypothetical theme, what if I sport climb 7c and I hypothetically want to climb an 8a that breaks down 4 bolt 6b+ to a good rest followed by a hard, technical, tensiony 12 move sequence (with a hard clip at move 4), followed by another good rest and 6a to the top, and the thing that is stopping me is a move off two crimps where you really have to generate a lot of power at move 11, is there any merit then? Given that in this hypothetical situation I’ve been doing a shit load of PE training and am a lot fitter than ever before, not feeling even a smige of pump at the first rest, when previously I’d been getting there slightly pumped, recovering and then feeling strong to the crux but trying whack beta?


MoF, I may be late to this but thought I'd just mention something that might help as I recall this feeling of frustration well from last year! For me it went something along the lines of recovering well at the rest, doing well over half the long PE crux sequence feeling totally fine and suddenly experiencing a dramatic powerout towards the end of the second third of the PE sequence. The thing I established was that I'd been fit enough for a long time but the problem was in my head; I'd failed there so many times that my body sort of expected it. Several times I experienced an amazing sense of flow through the first bit of the PE section, barely trying, before falling off without really understanding what happened.

The key to it for me was hammering the crux while totally, totally boxed at the end of the session, trying as hard as I possibly could, and discovering how much improvement could be made when I climbed quickly, efficiently and had the belief that I could do the moves when tired. I came back the next day and boshed it out, and remember feeling good halfway through the sequence and knowing I could do it because I had experience of doing it totally boxed the previous day.

Campusing might help but you sound close so you're probably already physically capable! Just thought worth mentioning. Apologies for the opp topic; interesting thoughts above and I'm going to continue messing around with campusing as its something new and gives a good benchmark indicator at the very least.

Duma

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Finally, building on the achieving 1-4-7 mentioned earlier, I would also advocate 1-3-6 as a progression but then 2-4-7 which I found much harder but once I cracked it 1-4-7 came quickly as the aim and the body position were identical and I believed in reaching the seventh rung.

????

1-3-6 is the same thing as 2-4-7 no?

monkoffunk

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If you climb say sport 7c and want to do a non specific 8a as a totally hypothetical example my opinion is that you're wasting your time.

So on that hypothetical theme, what if I sport climb 7c and I hypothetically want to climb an 8a that breaks down 4 bolt 6b+ to a good rest followed by a hard, technical, tensiony 12 move sequence (with a hard clip at move 4), followed by another good rest and 6a to the top, and the thing that is stopping me is a move off two crimps where you really have to generate a lot of power at move 11, is there any merit then? Given that in this hypothetical situation I’ve been doing a shit load of PE training and am a lot fitter than ever before, not feeling even a smige of pump at the first rest, when previously I’d been getting there slightly pumped, recovering and then feeling strong to the crux but trying whack beta?


MoF, I may be late to this but thought I'd just mention something that might help as I recall this feeling of frustration well from last year! For me it went something along the lines of recovering well at the rest, doing well over half the long PE crux sequence feeling totally fine and suddenly experiencing a dramatic powerout towards the end of the second third of the PE sequence. The thing I established was that I'd been fit enough for a long time but the problem was in my head; I'd failed there so many times that my body sort of expected it. Several times I experienced an amazing sense of flow through the first bit of the PE section, barely trying, before falling off without really understanding what happened.

The key to it for me was hammering the crux while totally, totally boxed at the end of the session, trying as hard as I possibly could, and discovering how much improvement could be made when I climbed quickly, efficiently and had the belief that I could do the moves when tired. I came back the next day and boshed it out, and remember feeling good halfway through the sequence and knowing I could do it because I had experience of doing it totally boxed the previous day.

Campusing might help but you sound close so you're probably already physically capable! Just thought worth mentioning. Apologies for the opp topic; interesting thoughts above and I'm going to continue messing around with campusing as its something new and gives a good benchmark indicator at the very least.

Thanks for that! Yeah I think at least some is in my head for sure. I’m sure I’ve had sessions when I was at top form and could have done it, no more training required.

gollum

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Finally, building on the achieving 1-4-7 mentioned earlier, I would also advocate 1-3-6 as a progression but then 2-4-7 which I found much harder but once I cracked it 1-4-7 came quickly as the aim and the body position were identical and I believed in reaching the seventh rung.

????

1-3-6 is the same thing as 2-4-7 no?

You’d think so but for me it definitely wasn’t. Same physical movement but different body position and swing, as your body doesn’t go under the board. Took me a couple of weeks when I returned to campusing after a long time off it to be able to do 2-4-7 consistently.  1-3-6 I could do off the sofa.

 

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