Postactivation Potentiation (PAP) and Climbing Question

[jdgilberg]

Mike/Mark,

Hey guys I love your new book and this forum to go along with it.

I have been reading Steve Edwards' blog for a while now and I remembered an old post from when he was helping develop P90X2 (steveedwardsfitness.com/post-activation-potentiation/). He talks about incorporating postactivation potentiation (PAP) into the program. He links a paper that explains it saying that a "prior heavy loading induces a high degree of central nervous system stimulation, resulting in greater motor unit recruitment and force, which can last from five-to-thirty minutes" (www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/postactivationUNM.html)

What I have been wondering off and on since first reading about it is how to apply it to climbing training. Steve recently had a post where he tries to work PAP into a power workout (steveedwardsfitness.com/experiment-power-climbing-workout-2/) but even admits that he is unsure if it is more effective than standard training.

Have you guys (or anyone else) ever experimented with this? Would doing a few sets of campus max ladders increase your training performance on the hangboard? Or vice versa with heavy hangs prior to a campus session?

Thanks

[MarkAnderson]

Mike experimented with this concept about 10 years ago. It sounds like a fancier name for "Complex Training", which is essentially the same idea. We discuss Complex Training in Chapter 10, including a suggested workout routine for integrating Campus and hangboard sets into a single session. I think this approach has potential, but I still keep them separate, for logistical reasons as much as anything. If you did see better short term results, I would still wonder if that was due to more recruitment occurring during the "strength" phase. You would need to compare results at the end of the Power Phase to get a fair comparison.