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Post by jcm on Dec 6, 2016 17:35:21 GMT -7
I don’t have any good answers for you regarding max hang weights. Doing max weight 1RM hangs in Session C will be a new variation for me. In the past, my power days used minimum edge 1RM hangs, not max weight 1RM hangs. Otherwise the session structure was the same: warm up bouldering, then hangs, then limit bouldering.
By “minimum edge 1RM hangs”, I would do hangs at bodyweight on the smallest holds I could. Having access to a bunch of boards at my gym, including an Eva Lopez Board, made this possible, since I could fine-tune edge size. Whenever the edge I was using for a grip got too easy I just downsized to the next smallest available edge. So I wasn’t doing my max hangs on the same hold sizes that I was doing repeaters on. This had some pros and cons. Pros were simplicity- less time fussing with weights. I only did 2 grip positions (1/2 crimp and 3-finger open), again for brevity and simplicity. The hangs were just a supplement, and I deliberately avoided getting to wrapped up in quantifying. The cons were, well, less ability to quantify and less ability to fine-tune intensity.
This season (in a few weeks when I start doing Session C), I’m *probably* going to switch to doing max weight hangs. For the reasons mentioned above- better adjustability mostly. I’ll probably just take my season PRs from the repeaters, add 5 or 10 lbs, and go from there with the single-rep hangs.
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Post by daustin on Dec 6, 2016 22:58:45 GMT -7
Thanks, that's helpful. I was actually toying with the idea of doing min edge hangs instead of max hangs, as smaller edges seem to be a bigger weakness for me, and my gym also has a transgression board.
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Post by jcm on Dec 7, 2016 10:52:10 GMT -7
Thanks, that's helpful. I was actually toying with the idea of doing min edge hangs instead of max hangs, as smaller edges seem to be a bigger weakness for me, and my gym also has a transgression board. That seems like a reasonable plan, and matches my motivation for doing min edge hangs also. Based on the programming I describe (plus my goals/weaknesses), I think it is better to do the "Session C" hangs at low weight on really small holds. This gets at the idea that there are two separate types of edge strength- pulling really hard on a decent (say, 18 mm) edge, vs. trying to gain purchase on a small (6 to 8 mm) edge. The way you recruit for each is quite different. During seasons when I’ve primarily trained on decent edges with a lot of weight, I found that I was plenty strong for hard pulls on decent holds, but had a hard time recruiting correctly any time the holds got to be really thin. When I added in the minimum edge hangs before my limit bouldering sessions, this problem started to go away. I think that the limit bouldering I do during Session C (mostly on a Moon Board) provides plenty of stimulus (in terms of both intensity and volume) for pulling really hard on a 14-25 mm edge. This is true for campusing also. So adding in supplemental hangs of this type is unnecessary and could even be counterproductive, since it would produce muscular fatigue that interferes with max-effort power work. I don’t do limit power work on 6-8 mm edges, though, so I find it is useful to provide supplemental hangboarding at these sizes. Also, the weights used on these holds are small enough that they don’t produce any significant “big muscle” fatigue, and don’t negatively impact the limit boulder Moon Board sessions that follow. Regarding “minimum edge” versus “max weight”, my guess is that it really doesn’t matter that much. As long as you are putting in the time hanging on tiny edges, and progressing the difficulty somehow, you’ll make good gains. One might be marginally more effective than the other, but neither of us is at the point where those differences become important. And no one really knows which one is more effective, so we’re all just guessing. Just do what feel better and is more convenient. My reason for switching to “max weight” hangs is that I want to put in more time on the smallest edges (~6 mm). This is the size I feel I need to improve at for vert-tech projects. I can’t hang this size at bodyweight yet, and doing hangs on the smallest edge with weight removed feels like a more direct way of addressing this deficiency than doing bodyweight hangs on an 8 mm edge. And once you start using the pulley system to remove weight, it then follows logically that the way to progress the difficulty is to adjust the amount of weight removed. Hence “max weight” hangs, albeit at negative weight added.
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Post by jcm on Dec 7, 2016 11:37:04 GMT -7
There is a notable edit that I’ve made to the plan posted above. Originally Session A looked like this:
Focus: Aerobic Capacity, Anaerobic Capacity Session goes in this order: - 20 Min ARC. Low intensity on 5 degree wall for 1st 10 min to warm up (little to no pump), medium intensity (light pump) on 25 degree wall for second 10 minutes. Shake out as needed. -10 minutes rest -Anaerobic Capacity protocol: 12-15 move boulder/traverse (takes 30-45 seconds), with 90 seconds rest between reps. Do 8 reps. Adjust difficulty by switching out holds to make moves harder as needed. Should fail or nearly fail at end of 7th and 8th rep. I’m doing this using a 12 move traverse I set on a 25 degree overhanging wall. -10 min rest -10-15 minutes ARCing right at the aerobic threshold- upper end of the ARC spectrum. Minimal resting, steady pace. I use the treadwall for this. - 10 min rest - SE’s
Now it looks like this:
Focus: Aerobic Capacity Session goes in this order: - 20 min ARC. Low intensity on 5 degree wall for 1st 10 min to warm up (little to no pump), medium-low intensity (light pump) on 25 degree wall for second 10 minutes. Shake out as needed. -10 minutes rest - 20 min ARC. Start on the 25 degree wall at medium-low intensity (light pump) for 1st 15 minutes. Cool down on 5 degree wall for last 5 minutes. Shake out as needed. - 10 min rest - SE’s (mostly core and anatagonists)
The reason for the change is that once I started ramping up the strength work (i.e. adding in Session B), it very quickly became obvious that I was not recovering adequately between strength sessions. The original Session A had too much middle-intensity work, which was tiring me out and detracting from the strength days. Also, I think that the shorter, more intense 10-min treadwall session was verging into the wrong energy system. So, again, not hitting the right training goals and just producing middle-intensity fatigue. When I suspected this middle-intensity issue, I went and re-read Kris Hampton’s blog posts on High/Low. His descriptions of the issues with middle intensity work aligned very well with what I was noticing. Once I dropped down the intensity of Session A these issues immediately went away. Session A is now just a standard low-intensity ARC day (modeled after Brendenn) with some SEs added in. I’m not worried about dropping the An Cap work from Session A, since hangboard repeaters in Session B hit this.
I’m in “Cap 3” now, doing strength work (Session B) 2 days per week, and ARC (Session A) once per week. I’m liking this more than the traditional RCTM program of strength every third day. By mixing the high and low intensity work I’m getting in more training time AND better recovery. I’m also preserving aerobic fitness and the movement “flow” better than if I were just hangboarding, without any noticeable loss in the hangboard gains.
The tiny bit of limit bouldering at the end of the “warmup” and before hangboarding is also fitting in nicely. This is something I’d done in previous seasons and liked. It isn’t enough to push my power to new levels, but it is just enough to maintain a high baseline power (and movement efficiency), so that I start doing quality power work on day 1 of the next phase, without any lost ground to make up.
Overall it has been a productive season and I’m liking the plan laid out, once I made the necessary adjustment to remove the middle-intensity work from Session A. I'm hitting good numbers on the hangboard, while also climbing better than I normally do during the strength phase.
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Post by daustin on Dec 7, 2016 15:16:01 GMT -7
Cool, thanks for the update.
I also made a bit of a modification to Session A, as well as B. Unlike you, I found that working up hard boulders to my limit before my HB workout took too much out of me and felt like it was detracting from the strength work. This was probably my own fault for overdoing it on the boulders (and probably getting into that same middle-intensity problem as you, but with a different cause). I should be more disciplined about the amount of bouldering before the HB workout, but realistically I just don't want to tempt myself with it so I removed bouldering from my session B and swapped it into Session A.
With the tweaks my sessions look like this:
A) Focus: Aero Cap; maintain: power -20 min ARC x 2 - ~30 mins of hard/limit bouldering
B) Focus: An Cap / strength; maintain: aero cap -20 min ARC [x 2 if time permits] - HB Repeaters
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Post by jcm on Dec 7, 2016 16:36:46 GMT -7
Do you find you have issues with mixing endurance and power in a given day? In past seasons I've tried ARCing before hangboarding, and find that the long low intensity endurance work kills my ability to recruit later in the session. You sound like you have had better results?
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Post by solwertkin on Dec 7, 2016 23:52:41 GMT -7
I go high intensity to low. I may ARC for up to 5 minutes as a warm-up but then put my ARC/Aerobic Power work at the end. I think if you approach a workout via a hierarchy of intensities/energy systems then you can train multiple facets in a single training session. Eric Horst recently put our a video on energy systems where he feels you cannot train multiple components in a workout and I would be interested to hear why.
Strength/Power-> Anaerobic Cap/Anaerobic Power -> Aero Pow -> Aero Cap -> ARC
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Post by daustin on Dec 8, 2016 10:23:14 GMT -7
Yeah, I know that high to low intensity is the prevailing wisdom on training multiple systems in a session. Take my programming with a grain of salt, as a huge factor for me is working around peak hours at the gym for everything but hangboarding. Particularly for ARCing, I have basically a 40 minute window when the gym first opens where I can ARC traverse before it gets too busy. JCM to your question, I definitely do notice feeling a bit sapped for power when I boulder after an ARC workout, but this is really driven by the constraint of training in a big commercial gym that doesn't have a great dedicated training area. I tend to focus more on hard boulders than truly limit boulders, though, which qualitatively feels like I can still maintain some power through the Capacity phases.
For Session A days, I do "high intensity" ARCing (relatively speaking) and do 2 sets of 20 mins each, and then a bit of hard bouldering afterward. For Session B days, I do lower intensity ARCing that's really more about warming up for the HB as opposed to focusing on aero cap. I often times do just one set of 20 mins, but even when I've done 2 sets I haven't noticed any ill effects on my HB workout. I definitely need much more than 5 mins to warm up before HBing, and for me it feels like lower intensity ARCing is the best way to accomplish this without eating into my reserves for the HB.
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Post by aikibujin on Dec 21, 2016 12:47:12 GMT -7
I go high intensity to low. Strength/Power-> Anaerobic Cap/Anaerobic Power -> Aero Pow -> Aero Cap -> ARC I can understand the logic behind doing high intensity workout first, but I often find that high intensity workouts take so much out of me that I pretty much can’t do anything else afterwards. For example, during my power phase I’ll plan something like this: 30 min –warmup bouldering (V1-V4) 30 min – limit bouldering (attempts on V8-V9s) 15 min – campusing 30 min - ARC But I’m usually so beat after campusing, I have a very hard time ARCing afterwards. My forearms just feel very fatigued, and I get pumped much quicker. This week I was to start my PE phase, after not doing anything for a week due to a cold. I attempted to do some laps on some overhanging routes, but my endurance was so bad my fingers started to uncurl from the biggest jugs on a roof. Not wanting to go home after just an hour of climbing, I decided to do a little bit of campusing fully expect it to go badly. My first set of warmup ladders was indeed very bad, I had a hard time recruiting the muscles in my forearms and just felt really un-coordinated. But after the initial clumsiness, the rest of the workout actually went really well. I was able to hit all my previous high points, on the large, medium and the small rungs. This was very surprising because I literately couldn’t hang on to the biggest jug in the gym before the campus workout. It’s like even though I was pumped out of my mind, I can still perform high intensity workouts for very short period of time (so endurance was not in the equation). Has anyone else experienced something similar?
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Post by jwills on Dec 21, 2016 14:28:29 GMT -7
I've experienced a similar experience, but often it relates to hard bouldering after leading a couple pumpy routes. It's interesting in that if I ARC (near zero pump) for 15-20 mins first thing on my limit bouldering days I usually have an unimpressive to poor workouts. As mentioned though, if I climb a couple routes (3-5) and get pumped during them I usually have pretty good to stellar limit bouldering workouts. I've actually sent projects 10-15 minutes after pumping off an overhanging sport route multiple times which never ceases to amaze me.
Not sure the physiology underlying this and why for me the ARCing actually "depletes" me more than getting pumped on a route. Seems sorta counter-intuitive to me. Nowadays I'm trying to glean parallel information from other sports and I wonder if strength training is affected differently by interval training vs low intensity steady state cardio ahead of time?
Either way... this is something completely anecdotal I've noticed in myself and may have to do with the fact that my base endurance/aerobic capacity is relatively lower/less trained compared to the other energy systems.
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Post by aikibujin on Dec 21, 2016 22:38:48 GMT -7
Either way... this is something completely anecdotal I've noticed in myself and may have to do with the fact that my base endurance/aerobic capacity is relatively lower/less trained compared to the other energy systems. I'm also wondering if what I'm experiencing is a sign that my base endurance is way too low or I'm just not working endurance correctly. Another data point from today, I was able to sneak away for a second gym session in a week, pretty much unheard of in my schedule. My plan was to do: 30 min - warmup bouldering (V1-V3) 30 min - linked bouldering 45 min - ARC To be honest, my linked bouldering session quickly disintegrated into a bouldering-for-fun-session since there were actually a bunch of people bouldering at the gym in the middle of the afternoon (don't people have to work?!) and it was a very small bouldering cave. After 30 mins of medium-high intensity bouldering, I went to finish up with ARCing. My plan was to do two 15 or 20-min sessions on a vertical or slightly overhanging wall. But in reality, I could barely stay on the wall for 5 minutes. I was getting super pumped on 5.9s, the only way to stay on the wall longer was to pick holds at random(often jugs), but by then I don't feel like I was getting much good out of it. However, during my base endurance phase when I warm up by ARCing, I was able to stay on the same walls for 30-40 minutes at a time. After that I can still boulder at a medium-high intensity, I just can't link long problems. So I just seem to have a hard time following a high-intensity to low-intensity order for training.
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Post by scojo on Dec 21, 2016 23:28:38 GMT -7
One question we should ask is whether or not ARCing in this fatigued state will give us the same training effect as ARCing in a fresher state. You may have to ARC on easier holds at a lower intensity, but does this mean that you're not getting a big enough training stimulus? If you can get the same or nearly the same training effect, then you shouldn't worry about the decreased performance during your ARC session.
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Post by aikibujin on Dec 22, 2016 9:29:04 GMT -7
You may have to ARC on easier holds at a lower intensity, but does this mean that you're not getting a big enough training stimulus? If you can get the same or nearly the same training effect, then you shouldn't worry about the decreased performance during your ARC session. You have a good point, based on how I feel today (like I was hit by a bus), I’m definitely getting a big training stimulus. So I suspect I’m getting some endurance improvement out of it. But my technique goes to the wind when I’m having a hard time hanging on to jugs on the kiddie route, so I feel like I’m missing a big benefit of ARCing on a climbing wall – skill practice.
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Post by daustin on Jan 21, 2017 16:29:07 GMT -7
Hey jcm , how's your program going? I'm just wrapping up my UTIL3 phase. I've been mostly replacing Session D with indoor projecting & redpoint attempts, as it's been my only chance to build up some semblance of a lead head and shake the rust off my clipping, etc. So far this hasn't seemed to impede gains in my an/aero utilization -- I'm feeling GREAT right now, but we'll see what happens when it's time to actually perform on real rock. In my gym sessions I've been able to quickly send 5.12+, which is definitely progress for me. And in general, I'm just feeling well balanced across the different energy systems. Pretty sure this will be my new training program, though I'll continue to experiment with the types of exercises and protocols in each phase. I was supposed to be in Red Rock this weekend and next, but because of rain and some other unexpected personal circumstances, I changed the trip to be next weekend only. Since I haven't climbed outside in a long time, I'm not too attached to any specific goal route at RR -- I'm mostly just excited to feel like I'm moving well and having fun on real rock. In some ways it's nice not to have any expectations or goals to be anxious about. At the same time, I wouldn't be too upset if I could onsight or flash Fear & Loathing, redpoint Agent Orange and/or put in a solid effort on The Gift. I'll report back after next weekend!
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Post by suprcrmpr on Feb 6, 2017 7:06:44 GMT -7
I had a stupid question instead, found the answer myself.. so I'll say "thanks for giving us this" instead.
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