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Low effort / high result Fingerboard routine (Read 19831 times)

shark

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Low effort / high result Fingerboard routine
February 09, 2021, 09:38:53 pm


Seems too good to be true. Be great if others can replicate this.

Wood FT

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I wonder what other training/climbing he was doing in that time period. Seems like a protocol one could manage during the summer season, where ordinarily I drop all fingerboarding, to keep finely tuned. 

RobK

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If you didn't want to just scrap all your training because of a guy on the internet, you could pretty easily combine this with other stuff right? For example if you had a session planned in the evening then just do this in the morning. And on rest days you could do it twice, as it's not going to fatigue you in any serious way. I'm tempted to give something like that a go. I mean, who isn't drawn in by 2600% gains.

mrjonathanr

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Hi Shark, interesting little experiment.

You should read this by Tom Herbert about collagen synthesis, drawing on the same research.
https://useful.coach/articles/nutrition-for-soft-tissue-training-recovery-and-injury-prevention/

And for balance regarding collagen supplementation, Herbert’s co-podcaster on https://climbsci.buzzsprout.com/, Brian Rigby’s sceptical blogpost (which predates the paper, it should be said)
https://www.climbingnutrition.com/diet/dietary-collagen-worthless/

DAVETHOMAS90

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I mean, who isn't drawn in by 2600% gains.

What's the bid/offer? - or have I got lost?  ;)

Seriously, the timing is uncanny.
It's something I've always suspected, however every commitment to a training strategy is a significant investment. As with finance, it's easy to be drawn in to strategies that give you a greater sense that you have more influence on the result, than more uncertain and slower, incremental approaches. Somehow "pulling harder" gives me a psychological - and probably completely mistaken - sense of reassurance that the gain is "what I deserve". Which of of course complete rubbish!

I'd caution against believing that you can do "both" however. In my experience, finger injuries tend to occur at lower loads - when you're fatigued. Having to recruit more for higher loads, in my experience, brings with it the protection of having to be recovered sufficiently for the load.

There's a circuit I do regularly on the Heeley boulder in Sheffield, and one move requires a (back)two finger drag on a pocket, with my left hand. It's a relatively low load, high frequency hold, and I've noticed how much stronger I am on the L than R, on those two fingers.

I was on the fingerboard at 3.30 this morning, mulling this over, before seeing this thread! (Covid diaries moment there  ;) )

tomtom

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Can we rename the thread SnakeOil for training?

:D


teestub

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You should read this by Tom Herbert about collagen synthesis, drawing on the same research.
https://useful.coach/articles/nutrition-for-soft-tissue-training-recovery-and-injury-prevention/


I had a quick scan of this, the outcome seems to be that I should eat wine gums an hour before training? Sounds good to me.

The findings of the first study also didn’t seem to go against the second link, there didn’t seem to be any control in that experiment where people were just getting a complete protein as opposed to the gelatine.

Liamhutch89

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If the research says every 6 hours then why only twice a day? I'm setting my alarm through the night for 5200% gains

tomtom

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HaHa :D

Gravy Granules. Lots of Gelatine in there :) Add a bit of texture to the protein shake....

Anti

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I find this all a bit unlikely. The effort levels he's putting into hangboarding (80% of his bodyweight) are barely moving the needle. I'm sure I've seen this guy one arming campus rungs etc. He's able to hang massive weight off his body in other videos of his. He's campused Never Ending Story stand etc. He's not weak. Hanging with his feet on the ground seems like nothing more than rehab for injury.

My uneducated assumption is that; if you pay any attention to this guy he's a route setter, he climbs all the time, every day, most days, hard and trains a lot etc. Now he's switched to light hangs, which apparently have to be 6 hours apart from any other training and twice a day. Now, unless he's given up sleeping that means he's had to cut his training/climbing down significantly which makes this appear more like some sort of massive deload, to a seemingly tired athlete. Meaning he gets a significant peak after his dip.

If this were to be true, we could get Aidan hanging off 20mm edges with a load of weight taken off and within 30 days he'd be able to levitate.

shark

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It worked for his brother too though  :-\

Anti

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His brother had been struggling with a finger injury for ages and is basically back to climbing at the same level injury free. He's not mentioning benchmarks, just says his fingers don't hurt anymore.

shark

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6.15

“I increased my max hangs by 10kilos..”

jwi

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I thought this was pretty interesting.

Some thoughts:

1) The proposed mechanism is increased tendon stiffness. It is well known to be one of the trainable determinants of strength. The program is focusing on this single aspect of strength.

2) Emil had pretty horrible scores on the FB for someone who regularly does 8B before his month of training.

3) N=1.5, no control (a good control group would be doing a regular fingerboard program for the same time, controlling for volume).


General thought for 99% of all tests of climbers:

To evaluate training programs for climbing, test the outcome on climbing, not on the apparatus used for training. The bottom line should always be: can I do harder moves (for strength), more moves or recover faster between attempts (for local strength endurance).

Anti

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6.15

“I increased my max hangs by 10kilos..”

Woops, sorry I missed that bit. That's why I'm just a random tosser on a forum!

I notice it a lot with Lattice when they re-post Instagram stories. Lots of people who didn't fingerboard very quickly start adding lots of weight to their hangs. Like the specificity / recruitment catches up to their level, but it's not exponential increase.

teestub

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To evaluate training programs for climbing, test the outcome on climbing, not on the apparatus used for training. The bottom line should always be: can I do harder moves (for strength), more moves or recover faster between attempts (for local strength endurance).

100% this

Scouse D

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As a man with niggly fingers for the past 30 years I will gladly be the UKB sacrificial training lamb.

Benchmarks - cant hang middle slot 1 handed
Fingers always feel tweaky so never do weighed hangs anymore- just steer clear of the fingerboard because I have injured myself on it before.

My approach is not going to be based on metrics or testing protocols, just whether my fingers feel better. Standard fingerboard routines always feel like russian roulette and seem to require a lot of recovery for me, so this system looks appealing as a way to build resilience into the finger structures.

Duma

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The critical bit of info that's missing from the vid is what other training/climbing he's doing, and if that changed at all from before he tried this.
Seems feasible to me that frequent loading at a level that doesn't require more than a few hours recovery may be a successful strategy.
Fuck it, for a few minutes a day I'll give it a go every morning, and twice a day if I'm not climbing.
For ref, I need between 5-10kg assistance to hang the middle bm slot one armed (depending on the day and arm) and just managed the 14mm crimps with 20kg added for 5s.


Though obviously what jwi said.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2021, 10:32:10 am by Duma »

shark

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Of course you should test on the apparatus as it is most directly measurable way of quantifying the training response. Whether that training response is useful can be extrapolated but in this case hanging a hold that was too small before and one handed hanging is obviously beneficial. But I take your general point that sometimes the end goal of being a better climber can get lost.

remus

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2) Emil had pretty horrible scores on the FB for someone who regularly does 8B before his month of training.

On this point, he went from scores that were below where you'd expect for someone of his grade to about where you'd expect for someone of his grade. To me, this suggests there was something artificially lowering his scores before (too much training, not enough rest etc.)

RobK

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Emil has added some more info in a comment. Copied below. Interestingly he didn't change his other training by sounds of it, so his new protocol was supplementary rather than an outright programme.

Quote from: Youtube comment
Q: What did the rest of your training and climbing schedule look like during this period? Did you add or remove anything from your usual weekly training with the addition of this new protocol?
A: I kept my training almost identical from December to January. No form of periodization and similar session-lengths. However, about 1 week after I started doing this my fingers started feeling a lot more durable, which consequently made me have climbing sessions where I pulled harder on small holds without my fingers opening up. I think a big part of the strength increase could’ve come from that. However, since there’s no good way to prove that that is why I got stronger, I left it out.



Q: did  you warm up before each session?
A: Most of the sessions I did some very light finger warm ups, sometimes nothing at all. Warming up never hurts though.
Since the intensity was so low it felt harmless, felt like the same risk as when carrying a heavy grocery bag honestly.



Q: Two questions: How strongly did this increased finger strength affect your climbing ( do you think you can climb harder grades on crimps now )? and will you continue with this training after these 30 days (or at least do another 30 day block in a month or so)?
A: This increase in my finger strength was incredibly noticeable in my climbing. My fingers have never felt this solid on small holds before. I’ll continue doing the program until I have a good argument against it (since it takes very little time and I sacrifice nothing for it) :-)



Q: So in your benchmarking video 4 months ago you were able to hand the BM 20mm edge 1 handed for 7s. I was wondering what happened between then and the start of January and if your improvements could be more attributed to re-recuitment rather than actual improvements in strength?
A: I would’ve included this, but my strength there is quite incomparable to my current state. I’d been bulking and trying to get really strong, I weighed like 4kg more than I do now. It had both upsides and downsides to it! (it was also shot  ~ 6 months ago)
The result I got in January better reflect how I most often perform on a hangboard. Re-recruitment could most definitely play a big part in it, but since I broke every record I’ve had before I’ll at least give some credit to the new program.



Q: Did you do any other hangboard training during this period?
A: I didn’t lift off the ground from a hangboard for a single second during this period (I did the 9c test before new years)



Q: Did you take any collagen or gelatin supplements?
A: The study states that this has a big impact on sinew health, but I was just curious about how the hangboard protocol would affect me so I made no dietary changes from december - february.

Q:Do I understand it correctly that you did 10 sets in total, where each set was 1 minute in total, but consisted of only 10 seconds actual work and 50 seconds rest?
That would be 1:40 minutes (100 seconds) of actual work and 8:20 minutes of rest.
Which is much less than the 10 minute maximum advised in the paper.


A: Good point! Potentially my gains would’ve been much greater if I did, for instance, 10sec on 10 sec off for 10 minutes. I was scared it could potentially be harmful and that it would be hard to find a good level of intensity, and therefore opted for a more careful method. I
As mentioned, there’s a sample size of 1 in this video, so it would be arrogant of me to claim that this protocol is THE protocol people should try. Hopefully this can spark some interesting new experiments, and maybe in 5 years time we’ll have a perfect formula.
To clarify, I hung for a total of 100 seconds in 10 minutes  yes  (with the exception of stretching my pinkies).






Also, when it comes to the % of weight I take off when doing the weighted hangs:
If you try the program, find your own limit and what works well for you. Ideally you should have a pulley system to see how much weight you take off, I just went with my gut feeling since I don’t have one. As somebody suggested I tried using a scale to see, and put in some approximations of how much weight I took off in the description.



Why do I think this program is good?
Basically it’s all about tendon health. If your tendons are good you can climb more which will get you stronger and better. This program is what I’m trying out in order to get my sinews, tendons and ligaments as solid as possible.



Lastly, I did this two times per day including days when I climbed (except one or two maybe). You can consider a climbing session to be the same as a hangboard session, if you view it from a “molecular response”-perspective. The only big rule to try and follow is to give your fingers 6 hours rest between each session where you engage your fingers (hangboard, no-hangs or climbing sessions for instance), and then try and do as many as your schedule will allow. If it’s once per day, that’s all right. Three times? That’s probably great too!

shark

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1) The proposed mechanism is increased tendon stiffness. It is well known to be one of the trainable determinants of strength. The program is focusing on this single aspect of strength.

Thanks for highlighting this - the routine was intended for finger rehab after all. Extrapolating if this happens to be a weak link then you are going to get a one off massive gain like our man.

The Tyler Nelson 30 sec hangs also targeted tendon stiffness. I gave up on these up when Duncan pointed out that it was for those newer to climbing and I’d been climbing so long and didn’t have finger issues so was probably a fully developed component.

Just musing. Nothing prevents having a go like Duma says on rest days etc

Will Hunt

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All anybody ever wants, is some “quick fix” minimum effort (at least mentally) magical system, preferably celebrity endorsed.

But, it doesn’t work like that.

Please remember that training only works if it is very boring.

mrjonathanr

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This video is curious because it presents a protocol which research evidences strengthens collagen production in tissues as a strength training protocol.

The only evidence for that is a group size of 2...

but logically, if tendon strength is the limiting factor, the overall performance will be improved as a result.

I don't know if there is a strong argument for doing this to get stronger, but I do think the evidence exists for doing this (with or without wine gums/type 1 collagen supplements/high quality protein) to prevent injury.

key points being: collagen production signal switches off after 10 mins loading
only switches back on agaoin after 6 hours rest

RobK

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Well I have just done my second set of this (one last night, one this morning). Incidentally I have also put my life savings into a small speculative mining company. I fully expect my power club entry next month to read something along the lines of "enjoying my unassisted one arm hangs on my diamond encrusted lattice edge". Down with the naysayers!

 

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