[jwills]

Like many, winter is when I typically focus on regaining all of the strength I've lost following sport climbing in the fall. Over the years I've noticed my "baseline" strength (measured by max hangs on my BM 1000) is almost always nearly the same. While I have made gains over those same years in my maximum strength achieved in each strength block I'm wondering if it's possible and beneficial to increase that baseline strength?

Throughout the year I tend to do more max hang fingerboarding rather than repeaters and still do at least 1 fingerboard session per week during sport climbing season.

I'm guessing this is a very common consequence of neglecting dedicated finger training in favor of the endurance needed for sport climbing. I'm suspicious though there would be benefits of increasing that "baseline" strength at any given time and wondering if others have been successful with this and how they went about it? I've considered  incorporating more repeater/hypertrophy-focused fingerboarding as tool to address this but not sure if that'll do the trick.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[shark]

I’m surprised that your baseline hasn’t moved up when you are still doing one Max FB session pw during the sport climbing season as that should maintain most of your winter gains. Maybe you just need to do more. Perhaps a set of recruitment pulls and speed pulls after you’ve come home from a climbing day during the climbing season would do the trick.

[PeteHukb]

Thought I'd resurrect this for future searchability with my own related, but slightly different, query.

Those of you who who read my recent YYFY post are permitted a wry smile, but I've recently had a pretty dramatic loss of my already meagre finger strength - I've gone from +22.5kg on 2-arm 10sec max hangs, pretty consistently, to +12.5kg, over only about six weeks. This has been a period of focusing on PE and endurance but I've still done a 10sec max hangs session once a week and have only been training 2-3 short sessions a week. I get that some loss of strength is to be expected with endurance, but this is way beyond what I've noticed before. My weight's been stable and I haven't changed diet significantly.

Questions:
1) Am I broken? Is the end nigh?
2) Any point in switching to 20sec max hangs instead? I note that Ned for one reckons these are better for building/maintaining hypertrophy etc while 10sec hangs are more for recruitment. My finger strength responded pretty well over winter to combining 10sec max hangs with some density hangs (30sec).
3) If I only have a single hour and a half session a week to maintain finger strength during an endurance phase, am I better with a limit board session?

Thanks all.

[jwi]

Have you gotten noticeable weaker on boulders? I.e. did your boulder-grade drop by about one full letter grade (like from 7B to 7A) as you would expect from a 10% drop in finger-strength, all else being equal?

[User deactivated.]

Thought I'd resurrect this for future searchability with my own related, but slightly different, query.

Those of you who who read my recent YYFY post are permitted a wry smile, but I've recently had a pretty dramatic loss of my already meagre finger strength - I've gone from +22.5kg on 2-arm 10sec max hangs, pretty consistently, to +12.5kg, over only about six weeks. This has been a period of focusing on PE and endurance but I've still done a 10sec max hangs session once a week and have only been training 2-3 short sessions a week. I get that some loss of strength is to be expected with endurance, but this is way beyond what I've noticed before. My weight's been stable and I haven't changed diet significantly.

Questions:
1) Am I broken? Is the end nigh?
2) Any point in switching to 20sec max hangs instead? I note that Ned for one reckons these are better for building/maintaining hypertrophy etc while 10sec hangs are more for recruitment. My finger strength responded pretty well over winter to combining 10sec max hangs with some density hangs (30sec).
3) If I only have a single hour and a half session a week to maintain finger strength during an endurance phase, am I better with a limit board session?

Thanks all.

If you've still been climbing and training and everything else in your life has been relatively stable etc. then it's basically impossible to have a 'real' strength loss of 10% over 6 weeks and it is much more likely a result of fatigue, lack of top end recruitment, or both. Power endurance workouts are quite fatiguing. If it was me I'd do a 1 week deload, cutting the training and climbing volume in half but keeping the intensity up and then do a block of higher intensity max hangs e.g. 5 s hangs on one session and 10s on another. Once you plateau you could then switch to longer duration hangs to build further since you had good results in the past

[PeteHukb]

Thanks both. I haven't been bouldering much over the last six weeks, certainly not enough to get that sense; but on my sport project I have noticed that while I've got the fitness for most of the route that I've previously lacked, I'm struggling with the last hardish move of a power endurance sequence which previously wasn't a problem.

I thought fatigue wasn't a likely explanation as all these max hangs were after at least 2days test, and I'm not exactly doing a lot of volume generally at the moment; but maybe I need even longer to recover in the context of a lack of volume? I'm due a rest week anyway so will take up Liam's advice. Anyone got strong opinions on the board question?

[Bradders]

Anyone got strong opinions on the board question?

Assuming you mean this bit:

3) If I only have a single hour and a half session a week to maintain finger strength during an endurance phase, am I better with a limit board session?

I would say yes, and do a handful of max hangs as part of your warm up for said board session, particularly given you're not bouldering much generally so a board session will work a lot more than just your fingers.

[jwi]

For future reference, this is a good overview of detraining: https://sci-fit.net/detraining/

To wit: experienced athletes can take up to 3 weeks of no strength training (but keep doing sport) before seeing any loss of strength. Sport specific power might decrease. After 3 weeks of DT strength losses accelerates. 2 weeks of complete detraining do not lower strength significantly.

Strength can be maintained with volumes from 1/3rd all the way down to 1/9th of previous training volumes. Strength can retained with one session a week for 8-12 weeks.