How I'm Hangboarding

[Charlie S]

I had a friend who wasn't sure what I meant when talking about pulleys, time on/time off, rests, weights added/subtracted, etc.  This video was created to clear up confusion and show which weights and holds I'm currently using:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfXAPUwbW7I



Clarification: the description in the book is very clear.  I just think he read that part too fast.

Some questions:
1. My current plan is to bump up my max hang weight by 5 pounds per season.  Is this reasonable?  Am I aiming too low?  However, every time I get on the hangboard, it feels like max capability.  At least there's still improvement.
2. I'm currently on a "beginner" type hangboard workout except going for 7 reps instead of 6. I'm on the 10/5 on/off ratio. I'd like at some point to move up to the intermediate, but right now it's taking everything in me to complete this comparatively brief hangboard session.  It is better to go for max strength in this case? Or a balance on strength/endurance?  To add 10 pounds for 6 additional reps feels undoable at the moment.  I would almost certainly have to lower weight to make it through that hangboard session.  (Maybe I'm just not strong enough yet!)

[Chris W]

Charlie, I can only compare your stats to mine, but it looks like you're a good bit stronger than I am. I jumped right to the intermediate workout and didn't do the beginner version. Not sure if it was a good idea, but I seem to be getting better.

Including two sets the warm up jug, I do a total of 7 grips and my session takes about 1 hour or less. Judging by the resistance you use, I'd bet you'd do just fine on the intermediate workout. Adding 10 pounds does seem like a lot, but you'll be holding it for only 7 seconds instead of your current 10, and you'd only be doing 6 reps.

I'm new to hangboarding and am only on my 4th season ever, but I'm shooting for 10 pounds improvement per season. I'm still experimenting and learning what is possible for me. Whatever you're doing, it seems to be working judging by your graph. Hope this helps give you some context.

[MarkAnderson]

That's sweet man! I like it. Hopefully everyone knows there's a video on Trango's website that describes how to do a hangboard workout:

www.trango.com/p-232-rock-prodigy-training-center-by-trango.aspx

Frankly I like your video better!

To your questions, 1) it really depends on how long you've been training. When I started training, increasing by 10 lb per season was pretty realistic. These days I would love to be able to consistently improve 5 lb per grip/per season, but that's really tough to do. In the warmer seasons I'm lucky if I match my previous best (since friction is much worse). In the colder seasons (like right now) I can easily hit my previous best, and maybe be able to improve by 5-10lb. Realistically 10 lb per year is a good goal for me (or 2.5 lb per season on average).

2) I think you're ready for the Intermediate routine. As far as which is "better", that would depend on your goals, but most of the time I think it makes sense to trend toward the 7/3 protocols.

[Charlie S]

Dec 1, 2014 15:45:41 GMT -7 MarkAnderson said:

2) I think you're ready for the Intermediate routine. As far as which is "better", that would depend on your goals, but most of the time I think it makes sense to trend toward the 7/3 protocols.

Thanks for the kind words and additional info.

Even though I tend toward trad, 7/3 will be best?  Doing the math, it will increase my TUT using the intermediate routine which I suppose is the end goal.

[MarkAnderson]

If you're doing a ton of onsighting or gear fiddling, you could make the argument (and I have) that the 10/5 protocol is a more specific duty cycle to that type of climbing. But I think 7/3 makes you stronger in the long run (because the intensity is higher), and that is the best way to become better at every type of climbing. And of course, becoming strong will also improve your endurance, etc. That's long term thinking.

If you have a goal for this season that would benefit more from the longer duty cycle of 10/5, you might consider using that protocol to improve more on the endurance end of the Strength spectrum.

[jorgemendoza]

Fellow fingerboarders -- I just completed my first fingerboard cycle... ever. I used the moon board in my climbing gym (new fingerboard with pulley system.)
I followed the intermediate hangboard (HB, from hereafter) workout in the book. It took me 4 HB sessions to get my baseline as can be seen in the graph below, thus, I would appreciate if you ignore the data from HB1 through HB3.



Now, here is what grinds my gear. I found that the hardest exercise for me was the two finger (Middle-Ring, i.e., MR) combo. It never seemed to be getting better (Though, my notes suggest that each time it was feeling easier, based on the lack of profanities).
I used the same hold in the moon board (Hold 5, for whoever is familiar with this board) for my three-finger combos (IMR and MRP) and the MR combo. So, is it normal to have such a poor gains with my MR combo compared to my IMR or MRP? Perhaps I am having a technique problem hanging with MR?

I appreciate the thoughts that any of you experience fingerboarders have in regards to this issue.

[tedwelser]

Hey Jorge- I think that the way we usually document our hangboard progress is imperfect, and that the apparent lack of progress on your MR might be due selecting a relatively harder starting baseline than for some of your other grips.

I think that if we had more accurate data we could see your progress in MR. One good strategy for measuring progress in HB routines is to multiply weight by total seconds, and then summing that value across the sets. The constraint is that if you do a partial set you have to force yourself to make the required # of attempts at reps. So with intermediate that means that you would record the total # of seconds under tension, and multiply that by the weight that you actually held.

So lets take MR for HB4, lets further assume that you weigh 165 pounds. So, your max weight held was 125 pounds, that would typically be in your second set, so it would be 7X7X115 for set one, and 7X6X125 for the second set if you finished all reps.   You add those up and that is the measure for that grip for that day.

I think that if that was our default strategy for recording our performance we would generally see consistent improvement up until we get to our current limit, and then we would see intermittent progress that would depend somewhat on the length of the between rep rests we take and on how rested we felt that day.

Hope that helps, but when I finish this HB cycle I will report my data as I just described, and I hope that it will reveal a closer picture to the incremental progress that I have actually experienced.

[tedwelser]

The other thing I would say is that every time I do a new HB cycle, and I have new grips, I spend time on my last base fitness day on HB#0 where I experiment with weights till I get an estimate of my baseline.   This does not go into my data, just my plan for where to start on HB1.  Then on HB1 I am closer to my true baseline.  

[MarkAnderson]

Jan 10, 2015 12:36:31 GMT -7 jorgemendoza said:

Now, here is what grinds my gear. I found that the hardest exercise for me was the two finger (Middle-Ring, i.e., MR) combo. It never seemed to be getting better (Though, my notes suggest that each time it was feeling easier, based on the lack of profanities).
I used the same hold in the moon board (Hold 5, for whoever is familiar with this board) for my three-finger combos (IMR and MRP) and the MR combo. So, is it normal to have such a poor gains with my MR combo compared to my IMR or MRP? Perhaps I am having a technique problem hanging with MR?

I appreciate the thoughts that any of you experience fingerboarders have in regards to this issue.

In what order did you train these grips? Also, did you track temperature & humidity? Looking at your sloper data, I would guess the environmental conditions were inconsistent and perhaps generally deteriorating over the phase.

[jorgemendoza]

Thanks for such prompt responses.

Tedwelser -- I will post-process my next HB cycle as you recommended and will share the results.

Mark --

I trained the grips in the following order: Jug, IMR, MR, Edge, MRP, Sloper, Pinch. The environmental conditions are not consistent as you guessed. I am living now in Houston, and the climbing gym considers 70 degrees a rather cold environment, and the training room might be 3 degrees colder. My guess is that humidity is pretty high as well. However, I don't have a hygrometer nor thermometer to support my speculation. Funny fact, the slopers felt really good the first 3 hangs, but suddenly got super difficult (I was blaming high levels of pumpness). I tried to fight this by chalking up my shorts so I could chalk up my hands ASAP after each rep.

Also, I want to clarify as well that I performed all the grips in one set, i.e., in my first set I did the repeaters for Jug (7x7x3), then move to IMR (7x7x3), etc.; for my second set I did Jugs (6x7x3), then IMR (6x7x3), etc..
Does it make a difference to do it this way instead of doing 3 sets per grip ( i.e., after resting 3 minutes from Jug grip... IMR (7x7x3), rest 3 min; IMR (6x7x3), rest 3 min; IMR (5x7x3))? If it does, why the order of the factors alter the product?

Finally, now that I am on the topic. Would it be likely that due to exhaustion my last half of grips are not being trained as efficiently (despite I am trying as hard as I can) as my first half? I would like to hear your thoughts about training first half of grips, rest a day; train the remaining half, rest a day; repeat until developing Popeye forearms. This would yield less sessions in a 30 day period (8 instead of 10 sessions) compared to the recommended cycle. Have you (or anyone in this forum) done this kind of experiment before?

Again, thanks for your comments and the book.

[MarkAnderson]

It could be that your MR is fatigued from having trained IMR just before. If possible, it can help to put as much time as possible between "like" grips. So for example, you might try: Jug; MR; Edge; MRP; Sloper; IMR; Pinch. This splits up the pocket grips a bit more, and gets the weakest pocket combos earlier in the workout.

It's pretty common to struggle on the grips later in the workout. I don't have any hard data to back up the following claim, but anecdotally it seems to me that strength in those grips is still improving, you just don't see that in the form of improved performance on the hangboard because each time you attempt those grips your level of fatigue is slightly greater than it was earlier in the Strength Phase (because the overall intensity of the workout typically increases throughout the phase).

Regarding the question of "station training" (performing all sets for a given grip at once) vs. "circuit training", anecdotally there is no question that Station Training is the far more popular method of Strength training, while Circuit Training is preferred for aerobic conditioning and fat-burning. However, that is based almost completely on the assumption that Circuit Training uses shorter rest periods between sets (since fatigue in one muscle group has little impact on fatigue in another, rested muscle group). Apparently there are weight-lifter types who like Circuit Training (as long as the rest intervals are the same as for Station Training), because that gives the trained muscle groups much longer rest periods between like sets.

The problem with applying that to finger strength training is that I don't believe there is enough differentiation in "muscle groups" when you're talking about training different hand grips. In many/most cases you are training the exact same fibers between different grips (yet they are contracted differently). That doesn't mean it's definitely bad, it just means that the use of circuit training for full-body strength training isn't a great analogy for climbers training finger strength. So if you want to know the answer, try it both ways and compare notes.

Regarding Split Training of grips, bottom line, try it and see what you discover. This is a common approach in weight lifting, but again, the smart weight lifters are training particular muscle groups on each day, and ensuring that each muscle group gets substantial rest between training bouts. With finger strength training, the same muscle groups are involved in almost every grip position, so it would be difficult to train alternating muscle groups on alternating training days.

[jorgemendoza]

Thanks for your response!

[Charlie S]

An updated video depicting a workout based on the intermediate hangboard routine:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJvfRnLwdw

Things are getting difficult!