[spidermonkey09]

30 pullups at body weight is nails. Fair play if you can just crank them out, but not sure its common!

[jwi]

In my life I have never seen anyone do 30 consecutive pull ups in perfect form and reasonable cadence.

[gme]

That is elite level on his charts and he says once you can do that it’s pointless working to try to do more.

I think 20 is pretty standard in CrossFit. Guess he thinks climbers should be able to do more. 

[shark]

Crossfit pull-ups aren’t pull ups

[PlainCroi$$ant]

Lots of useful stuff on this thread, thanks!

Whenever I've done some fingerboarding (which isn't much) I've only ever bothered that much with what I thought was a 'normal' grip and a three finger drag. It turns out my normal grip is to always chisel, which I can comfortably use to hang for 10 seconds on a 10mm edge (both arms at bw) - but after reading this and some other material it seems a half crimp is what I should be using but I've found I can barely engage a half crimp on a 20mm edge let alone a 10mm (both arms at bw).
Does this mean I just have weak index fingers and I should spend some time training my half crimp on bigger edges?

[jwi]

Guess he thinks climbers should be able to do more.

As I said, a crank.

[tomtom]

Lots of useful stuff on this thread, thanks!

Whenever I've done some fingerboarding (which isn't much) I've only ever bothered that much with what I thought was a 'normal' grip and a three finger drag. It turns out my normal grip is to always chisel, which I can comfortably use to hang for 10 seconds on a 10mm edge (both arms at bw) - but after reading this and some other material it seems a half crimp is what I should be using but I've found I can barely engage a half crimp on a 20mm edge let alone a 10mm (both arms at bw).
Does this mean I just have weak index fingers and I should spend some time training my half crimp on bigger edges?

I similarly re trained to half crimp over the last 18 months. It’s mainly just adjustment for me - getting used to it and your fingers getting comfortable in the different position.

[Duma]

Crossfit pull-ups aren’t pull ups

Glad somebody said it

[gme]

They are if they are a pull up not a kipping pull up.
Guess he is just wrong then and doing 30 pull ups is just a ridiculous thing to expect from an elite level athlete.
Is 10 good enough or 20. 

[teestub]

That weights section is heavily caveated and I guess it just goes to show the variety in physical strength in elite level climbers. To take 2 examples who have both climbed 8C this year, I bet Matt Fultz is fullstekur for all of the strength ones and Eliot Stephens may not get Halfstekur on any of them! For me this is one of the beauties of climbing.

[gme]

Pretty much in line with this as well, in fact a bit easier if you go to the lower weights most climbers will fit into.
https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/pull-ups/kg

[gme]

That weights section is heavily caveated and I guess it just goes to show the variety in physical strength in elite level climbers. To take 2 examples who have both climbed 8C this year, I bet Matt Fultz is fullstekur for all of the strength ones and Eliot Stephens may not get Halfstekur on any of them! For me this is one of the beauties of climbing.

He suggests that you should work on the aspects you have weakness in. If both of them can tick the fullstekur for the fingers but fall short on the others you may make more gains improving them. Same ideas lattice works on.
I am a bigger unit for a climber and guarantee I have way more chance ticking the weights stuff than the fingers.

[shark]

I similarly re trained to half crimp over the last 18 months. It’s mainly just adjustment for me - getting used to it and your fingers getting comfortable in the different position.

+1

Also couldn’t hang a 20mm Edge with a strict half crimp. Neither could Mina. It felt so uncomfortable and plain weird and inspired me to design an ergonomic hold where all the fingers could be at the same joint angle.

[Paul B]

https://www.trainingbeta.com/media/tbp-025-steve-maisch/

So it’s even better to do more weight on a bigger edge than less weight on a smaller edge, even if you’re training for really small edges?

Yeah. The study – it’s basically the only fingerboard study we have out there – they split two groups and one group trained more weight from a larger edge and the other one less weight from a smaller edge and then they brought them back to test them on the smaller edge. The group that trained more weight from a larger edge performed better on the small edge than the group that trained less weight on the small edge.

 

[Davo]

Just had a brief look at the Maisch site. His weights and body weight stuff doesn't seem that hard with a bit of training. Not sure the training would be worthwhile for your average climber like me who is fairly time limited. For your pros, they should have a whole load of time and therefore can do more ancillary training.

[Rob F]

Very vital question: when training 3 fingers (front 3 or back 3) what do you do with the other finger. Bend it or keep it straight???

[monkoffunk]

Very vital question: when training 3 fingers (front 3 or back 3) what do you do with the other finger. Bend it or keep it straight???

Gresh had an answer to this on his ongoing instagram series. I think he had it bent, but not aggressively. My back three is so poor compared to my front that I wonder if I'm using my pinky much at all.

[Fultonius]

I similarly re trained to half crimp over the last 18 months. It’s mainly just adjustment for me - getting used to it and your fingers getting comfortable in the different position.

+1

Also couldn’t hang a 20mm Edge with a strict half crimp. Neither could Mina. It felt so uncomfortable and plain weird and inspired me to design an ergonomic hold where all the fingers could be at the same joint angle.

+1+1

I used to always chisel, and on the smaller BM rungs I still find it easier, but I've swapped to half crimp for training. At first I could barely hang bodyweight, but I seemed to rapidly catch up once to +24kg, now at +36kg so going to consider losing an arm soon.

[jwi]

Is 10 good enough or 20.

More strength is always welcome, but 10 is not needed to onsight Kale Barroca. And 20 is definitely not needed for 9a in Frankenjura.


Also

[teestub]

I bet Romain could do a one armed pretty sharpish if he put his mind to in, likewise 30 pull ups.

It’s very easy to look at what you potentially don’t need (i.e. Dave Graham couldn’t do a one armed but made up for it with wizardry), but a lot more difficult to say what’s would be beneficial on average.

Of course it’s  fine that you don’t agree with that list but I think it’s the start of a v interesting conversation. Someone like Megos, despite having enviable twiglet legs, is probably ticking a lot of boxes in the weight exercises that a lot of others aren’t.

[jwi]

The point is that Desgrange did not waste his valuable time (having started climbing in his late teens) on getting to impressive level of pullups (and neither did Arnaud Petit as you can see in the comments). He just did his climbing training, which is important if you want to be better.

[teestub]

I guess my point is that if you asked the top 10 ranking in difficulty (just had a look at 2019, pretty strong list, no Romain), the majority of them would be able to do a 1 armer, unlike Romain. (Traction un bras means one arm pull up right?)

Edit: didn’t realise how old Romain was, man I’m getting old!

[gme]

This has been trotted out for years and yes you don’t need to be able to do one armers or 30 pull ups to climb hard but It probably would hep you to get better.

This wasn’t about one arm pull ups though and I would put money on him being able to easily do 30 pull ups.

He counts for fuck all anyway as he’s about 55kg wringing wet.

[gme]

He’s not actually done anything hard either has he. Some obscure 8C and some 8Bs.

Maybe he should have worked on his one armers rather than another of his obviously good “caps”

Similar could be said of petite.

[Yossarian]

Thanks to the lucky discovery of a couple of sheets of 12mm ply we might be able to laminate them and cobble together a mini systems board which would massively help with a training reboot and not require the following, but anyway...

On the pull-up theme - what’s the current consensus re Bachar ladders? Are they outdated and injury-inducing relics of an ancient civilisation? It struck me that, together with a fingerboard they could be quite useful for slightly more climbing specific strength exercises...