Cultivating deep hold fitness

[tedwelser]

I have been working on a follow up and clarification of the premise I introduced earlier in my "Missing ingredient" post.  I will try pasting the whole post in here, but here it is at Bouldering in Athens County too. 

Actually, I would have to re-link to all the images, and that would take too much time!  

Anyways, my new post is motivated largely by insights that I have into my own climbing over the course of two largely distinct time periods, and how my experience was shaped by the holds and routes at my local areas in contrast to those that were so pivotal in Mark and Mike's early climbing development.  During my earlier climbing career I climbed extensively at the Red and New, but also traveled around the country a good bit.  But I tended to be strongest on steep, featured routes and problems.  

In that process I came to understand my strengths and weaknesses but I mistakenly thought them to be static and relatively invariant.  But now, 20 years later I no longer have stacks and stacks of deep hold endurance, yet my fingers are stronger on crimpy face climbs than they were when I was younger.  

I know the hangboarding and general RCTM approach are the source of the progress in terms of finger strength-- but it made me wonder, what am I now failing to do that gave me so much endurance in the past?  I have come to understand that my conception of endurance and even general climbing fitness were not really accurate because I had not thought through the role of hold depth on the muscles that are primarily engaged.  

Anyways, I am really interested in hearing what all of you think about hold depth and implications for different types of training.     
 

[slimshaky]

i think it all boils down to what you are climbing/training. i definitely agree that there are differences in strength for deep big hand holds vs fingery holds. i don't really climb on big holds much, and i don't really train on big holds much. so, when i do wander onto these types of routes i am not as solid on the 'jugs' as some of my friends who spend more time in this area. i think in another post you mentioned strength through the wrist - this really jived with my experience on these types of routes (especially big open handed sloper routes). it feels like my wrists are working really hard and getting whipped.

after realizing these things many times i am very confident that if i did have a steep jug route in mind that i could build a training plan towards it. i have done it for crack routes, crimp routes, pocket routes. once you focus on what needs to be done and stick with it, you can make a lot of progress fairly quickly.

[tedwelser]

Hey Slim- 

I guess that I wrote all of that up because I am very enthusiastic about how Mark and Mike have advanced the empirical scientific basis for climbing training.  The RCTM is based on an invitation to contribute to both the application of the principles behind the approach and also to refining and extending the insights on which it is based.  

There are a whole host of interesting implications of the insight that hold depth is a type of specificity that (to some unknown extent) activates a different set of muscles.  If these sets overlap strongly then simply training on shallow holds will prepare climbers for deep holds well enough.  However, if they are somewhat distinct then most climbers would want to consider what aspects of their training should include use of deep holds.  

Consider the array of grips on the RPTC: all are in the shallow range.  Even the jug loads the first two pads of the fingers.   If I misuse the pinch, by grabbing it as a jug I can get a slight deflection at the wrist joint but the primary loading is still in the first two pads.  How does the range restriction on the RPTC affect the strength development of a beginning level climber who follows the RCTM approach?

Well, I can answer that anecdotally because my climbing partner Yoichi has three seasons of workouts in following the beginning hangboard program to a T (as well as the RCTM approach in general).  He is progressing well, and has moved up grades in his climbing and leading to the point of redpointing a few 10a's and flashing some 8's and 9's.   At the end of Spring season we went to Summersville lake and he got on "Personal Pronoun" a 5.9.  He was utterly shut down on the route because he kept pumping out as he tried to use the long series of squarish ledges that either sloped or were slightly juggy.   

It was baffling to me in the moment, because I just thought he would do fine on the route but it was like he had a vitamin deficiency for climbing the deep, flattish holds.   He seemed really insecure on the holds and kept bending his arms instead of staying straight arm and hanging below the hold.  The reason was not that he had forgotten his technique, but because he could not engage the grip with his hand.  

So, a more complete general strength training program should also include a couple hold options that provide primary friction at the base of the fingers.  A simple way to do this would be to make the space behind the jug deep enough to not block the fingers.   However, some thought should go into which shapes best engage the MCP and wrist joints in ways that build strength and avoid injury.  I am not sure that anyone has really thought that through carefully. 

I would guess that most climbers would benefit from building some more baseline strength and endurance on deep holds but that power and power endurance on deep holds would mainly just be the domain of specialized climbers, like Maple Canyon addicts or compression block bouldering speRCTMkicksAssts. 

Anyways there are lots of other implications of the hold depth issue, but the gap in the strength training array on typical hangboards is one key example.