[shark]

In general, it seems to me that the baseline load should be estimated from the load in the muscle being trained. As left and right arms are independent systems, there is an argument that we should never consider their combined performance, or, at least, we should assess the arms separately.

If you think about deadhanging on a fingerboard, maximums for most people on two-handed hangs are typically not exactly 2x the maximum for one-handed hangs on the same edge; in fact generally they are significantly less than 2x. For example, I can do a one-armed 5 sec hang with about 5Kg removed on the lattice rung, which is a net load of about 60Kg (65 less 5). Last time I tried I was failing around 30Kg added for a similar two handed hang, which is a net load of only about 95Kg (65 plus 30). So my two-arm performance is barely more than 1.5x one-arm; they are distinctly different exercises

Not thought of this. Why is the discrepancy so big between one arm and two arm performance. By extension does this mean we should be training assisted one armers as the proportional load is higher?

[tomtom]

Using a block with 10kg weight attached for pinches so 20kg total for both arms

If you are picking up a block, with 10Kg attached, with one hand, your reference base-line is 10Kg.

What about if I pick up two blocks at the same time..

Well, one obvious question is whether your strength is symmetric between the two arms? When I was doing those pinch deadlifts (I have stopped as the exercise seemed to lead to thumb and wrist injuries) I found my right hand to be materially stronger. <insert  joke here >

In general, it seems to me that the baseline load should be estimated from the load in the muscle being trained. As left and right arms are independent systems, there is an argument that we should never consider their combined performance, or, at least, we should assess the arms separately.

If you think about deadhanging on a fingerboard, maximums for most people on two-handed hangs are typically not exactly 2x the maximum for one-handed hangs on the same edge; in fact generally they are significantly less than 2x. For example, I can do a one-armed 5 sec hang with about 5Kg removed on the lattice rung, which is a net load of about 60Kg (65 less 5). Last time I tried I was failing around 30Kg added for a similar two handed hang, which is a net load of only about 95Kg (65 plus 30). So my two-arm performance is barely more than 1.5x one-arm; they are distinctly different exercises and baselines have to be looked at separately. I am not sure whether the results for pinch deadlifts are exactly analogous as I have not experimented but it seems a reasonable assumption.

First - I agree  one arm is going to pull differently to two together.

Though - and I’m being devils advocate here - in the exercises you are comparing, one is reducing 5 kg - the other (should be) adding 60kg. I doubt I could stand with 60kg strapped to me let alone pull up....

[highrepute]

In general, it seems to me that the baseline load should be estimated from the load in the muscle being trained. As left and right arms are independent systems, there is an argument that we should never consider their combined performance, or, at least, we should assess the arms separately.

If you think about deadhanging on a fingerboard, maximums for most people on two-handed hangs are typically not exactly 2x the maximum for one-handed hangs on the same edge; in fact generally they are significantly less than 2x. For example, I can do a one-armed 5 sec hang with about 5Kg removed on the lattice rung, which is a net load of about 60Kg (65 less 5). Last time I tried I was failing around 30Kg added for a similar two handed hang, which is a net load of only about 95Kg (65 plus 30). So my two-arm performance is barely more than 1.5x one-arm; they are distinctly different exercises

Not thought of this. Why is the discrepancy so big between one arm and two arm performance. By extension does this mean we should be training assisted one armers as the proportional load is higher?

Because with one arm you can rotate in to a more powerful position?

[jwi]

OK, so I've always found it a bit of a mystery how my better half can do certain moves on routes, using quite bad holds. On the fingerboard she is ridiculously week in the half crimp position. I've had quite a few ad hoc theories to explain this, but yesterday I tested her on one-handed hangs, and lo and behold: she was quite OK on them, almost strong enough for some of the moves she does on rock—I never seen anyone with that kind of bilateral deficiency in the hands.

I suspect that this might explain why she does seem to have a very hard time progressing on the fingerboard. Her coordination might be bad enough that she simply cannot load the forearms sufficiently to induce strength adaptions when hanging from two arms.

The last year she's done some one-armed work on pinching and have progressed nicely, but have had no progress on half crimp at all for over one year, and are at levels well below her recorded max (in 2011/12 when she did a lot of foot on campusing for short end strength endurance).

For now, I will set her a program of 1) one-armed hangs for half crimp and open hand, and 2) pullups on the fingerboard (in order to try to get over the bilateral deficit).

Any thoughts? Experiences?

[bendavison]

I've also never seen anyone who is considerably better at one-arm than two-arm hangs, and can't even imagine being bad at two-arm hangs but still okay at one-arm hangs.

Have you looked at her form when she's doing a two-arm hang? Perhaps with a bit of guidance, she may be able to learn how to hang from two arms sufficiently well to load the forearms enough to induce adaptation. If not, your suggested protocol sounds reasonable to me.

If the equipment is available, crimping/pinching a block with weight attached might be an alternative way to strengthen her fingers.

As Habrich pointed out in the link Shark posted, there is a mechanical advantage with one-arm hangs, which means they can take a higher load than each individual arm in a two-arm hang. This might help to explain some of the difference between your partners one- and two-arm hangs?

[jwi]

If the equipment is available, crimping/pinching a block with weight attached might be an alternative way to strengthen her fingers.

She's been using pinch blocks for pinch training. Very successfully as well.

As Habrich pointed out in the link Shark posted, there is a mechanical advantage with one-arm hangs, which means they can take a higher load than each individual arm in a two-arm hang. This might help to explain some of the difference between your partners one- and two-arm hangs?

Yes of course, everybody except possibly the most well trained specimens, have a significant bilateral deficit. Still, I never came across anyone with such an extreme difference of what they can hang on left + right compared to with both hands.

[teestub]

Do you think the failure is in shoulder engagement/strength during the two arm hangs due to the shoulder position compared to the more ‘closed’ position you can take with 1 arm, or are the fingers actually uncurling?

I found that when I got up to a certain amount of added weight on two arm hangs I actually had to go back to training basic shoulder strength to make sure I could maintain the hanging position well with the sufficient load.

[jwi]

I don't think so as I've set up our pulley system so that you stay mostly front on one arm hangs.

[Teaboy]

Could she be injured? For years I've struggled with press ups because one part of one shoulder barely works, if I do a press up I'd say 80% goes through my right hand, you wouldn't know from my climbing as it is very specific and I guess I naturally work around it. If she has something that is specific to hanging or crimping that doesn't manifest itself unless you actually do something that relies almost wholly on the injured part of the body it could be similar.

[duncan]

In the case of jwi's better half, one arm hangs correlate with performance, two arm hangs don't, training one armed (foot-on campusing) works, but training two arm hangs doesn’t. Is that right? Why then are we worried about two arm hangs at all? Why not just train one arm hangs?

Theory: nearly all climbing moves are highly asymmetric, involve one arm much more than the other. Even when you start a move with a (bilateral) pull-up you usually end it with one arm pulling much harder as you reach/slap with the other. The consequence of this is training should be highly asymmetric. All that bilateral non-specific strength work (pullups, levers, rings), great for showing-off but how useful is it? Which is not to say that people (especially women and old men) shouldn’t do basic strength work but perhaps they should think a bit more about making it asymmetric: single-arm rows, single-arm planks, side lever/flag (if you still want to show off!), and for the legs, pistols rather than dead-lifts. This also applies to injury rehabilitation but that's another post.   

[jwi]

Theory: nearly all climbing moves are highly asymmetric, involve one arm much more than the other. Even when you start a move with a (bilateral) pull-up you usually end it with one arm pulling much harder as you reach/slap with the other. The consequence of this is training should be highly asymmetric.

I mostly agree with this, but when bouldering a lot of the time we pull hard with both hands at the same time, even when we don't have the body in a symmetric position. On techy vertical routes it is very rare to pull hard with both hands at the same time. Incidentally, my better half is ridiculously bad at bouldering compared to routes.

As I understand it, unilateral strength training — which seems to follow the specificity principle better the bilateral s.t. — has some weak support in the literature, but bros don't like it because of lower force production? I'm not totally au courant with current thinking in sport science/professional strength coaching tbh.

[BicepsMou]

Because with one arm you can rotate in to a more powerful position?

In addition to the more powerful position (getting more “under” the grip with a more inward rotated arm position), there seems to be some consensus that a uni-lateral load has some neurological advantages over a bi-lateral one and thus you would be able to pull harder. 

I think this is why IIRC Tommy/Lattice said on one Podcast that they recommend uni-lateral Max Hangs for really advanced and otherwise maxed-out athletes, as it allows them to create some higher load and thus extra stimulus.
And referring to habrich’s point above on the relationship btw 2-arm and 1-arm max hanging finger strength scores, I assume that Lattice would also have some side-by-side benchmarks on how these compare to each other, as their regular test protocol is 1-armed, vs. their test protocol coming along for free with the test rung (as in the “my fingers” space on their site) seems to be 2-handed.

Anybody got any experience with that / could share their own values of how 2-handed is comparing to 1-handed?
For me it is (not tested on an original Lattice rung, but on well rounded 20mm edge from the wooden Rokodromo hangboard), half crimp @68kg BW

# 1-arm ( 5 secs): - 7 kg, so 61kg absolute load (for stronger arm, but with both arms being roughly at same level, within 1-2 kgs)
# 2 arm (5 secs): + 36 kgs, so 104 kg total load
=> Which makes my 2 arm load only 1,7 times the 1-arm load (104/61), as opposed to habrich’s roughly 1,6 factor (95/60 ).

Anybody has got any further reference values for this?

[AMorris]

It seems what you guys are referring to is the Bilateral Deficit phenomenon. A fairly well know, if not very well understood or studied phenomenon in sports science and physiology.

A pretty good review of the current schools of though can be found in "Bilateral deficit in maximal force production" (Škarabot et al., 2016) published in Eur Journ Applied Physiology.

[jwi]

Maybe somehow merge with this https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,29794.msg576377.html ?

[thekettle]

Incidentally I tested both of these on a lattice rung (7s hang) recently and measured up:

1 arm = -6kg
2 arm = +37.5kg (not comfortable hanging this off my harness!)

5.25kg or 9% weaker per arm on the 2 handed test.
So a 1.81 factor - a smaller discrepancy again than BicepsMou

[T_B]

BW: 86kg

1 arm = -18kg (68kg)
2 arm = + 30kg (116kg)

116/68 = 1.7

[gollum]

For me it works out at 1.84, although wasn’t convinced that just getting comfortable with loads of kettlebells didn’t become at least one limiting factor.

BW - 68
One arm  -3kg = 65
Two arm +52kg = 120
120/65 = 1.84

On the opposite side of this and probably not bouldering related but with squats the opposite seems true, pistol squats feel much harder than +70kg squats of any kind.

[remus]

In the 1 arm v 2 arm testing we've done there's quite a lot of variation, but on average 2 arm ~= 1.7 * 1 arm.

[yetix]

Body weight around 63kg

1 arm 59kg for 5 seconds
2 arm hang 96kg for 10 seconds

Not tested 2 arms for 5 seconds though which in guessing others have? If not then 1.62 ratio

[Duma]

on a lattice edge:

BW = 71 kg

left = -12 kg (59 kg)
right = -15 kg (56 kg)

Both = +34 kg (105 kg)

105/57.5 = 1.83

I always thought I was shit at one arm stuff but it's interesting to see it confirmed.

[tomtom]

I still think this exercise is flawed as in one you’re adding weight and in the other you’re subtracting it.

Large Weights dangled around your waist (makes it hard to really go for it non? - and also means you have to try really hard with core and other muscles holding that weight up) vs pulling a small force on a rope/handle next to where you are pulling really hard with the other hand.

[Nibile]

Last time I tried this was ages ago for Eva Lopez.
On a 1,5 flat edge (not incut) I added 63 kg for two arms at 65 BW.
At the time I wasn't really able to one arm it, so probably it was more or less the same for me.
I'm quite a bit stronger now, I can fully one arm it LH and I can add 5 kg RH at 67 BW, and I seriously doubt that I can add ~73 kg for two hands. In fact I'm not even going to try.

Full story here: http://totolore.blogspot.com/2012/08/63-kg.html?m=1

[shark]

Maybe somehow merge with this https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,29794.msg576377.html ?

Done.

Removed my (now) extraneous posts and kept subject titles so its obvious which post was formerly in which thread.

[Stu Littlefair]

Oddly enough, neither I, nor my better half has any bilateral deficit. Our 2-armed scores come in at more-or-less 2x our 1-armed scores.

Better get training our shoulders...

[teestub]

Come on Stu, you can’t leave us without numbers!