Splitting Repeaters Workout in Half

[daustin]

TL;DR Question: does anyone have any experience or opinions on splitting up a repeaters workout across 2 days? Not necessarily consecutive days, but for instance instead of:

Day 1: repeaters on Grips 1-6
Day 2: rest
Day 3: rest
Day 4: repeaters on Grips 1-6

Doing something like:

Day 1: repeaters on Grips 1-3
Day 2: rest
Day 3: repeaters on Grips 4-6
Day 4: rest

The impetus behind me asking isn't to optimize a repeaters workout (if it ain't broke don't fix it, right?) but rather to accommodate my new schedule, what with a 2 month old baby at home and returning to work after my paternity leave. 

Basically, I want to reserve my weekends for climbing at the gym, since that's probably the only chance I'll have to actually climb in the foreseeable future (no idea when I'll touch real rock again!) and I don't have a wall at home yet. This leaves Monday through Friday for training at home on the hangboard.

With no specific performance phase in sight, I'm not too worried about following a strict periodization program. I just want to maintain or maybe build finger strength to the extent my schedule allows. Right now I'm thinking that I'll alternate between doing a ~month of repeaters and a ~month of max hangs.

With max hangs, the TUT is low enough that I often feel like I only need 1 day of rest between workouts, which means hangboarding on Tue & Thu could work well with gym climbing on Sat or Sun. However, I definitely need 2 days of rest between repeaters workouts, which would make scheduling trickier than I'd want to deal with given my gym climbing will be restricted to Sat/Sun.

So instead, I was thinking I could split a repeaters workout in two, working half the grips on e.g. Tue and the other half on Thu. This would also make each individual workout shorter, which would be easier to manage in my schedule right now.

Thoughts? I've searched the forums and found some threads discussing similar ideas (example), with the general consensus being that this wouldn't be a good way to improve upon a standard repeaters workout, but I'm less interested in improving upon it and more interested in not doing something that will be significantly less effective. My guess is that I'll just have to do the experiment, in which case I'll be sure to report back!

[Chris W]

I can't answer your question directly, but I have a lot of practice training and climbing with kids (and a job). It's very do-able. Mine are age 6, 4, 2 and new. It really helps to have a home wall.

[tetrault]

Congrats!
I have had this same thought lately with a new baby as well, except the gym on weekends part...

For me, so far I have decided that since time for workout “prep”, warmup, cool down, and stretching are about the same whether I performed 3 grips, 1 grip, or 6 grips plus supplemental exercises, it has made more sense to stick with fewer, longer workouts per week.

Kris Hampton may think your suggested schedule is an improvement over the “endurance” aspect of a “marathon” hang session. However, I am not sure if other peoples’ opinions matter at all in this case. If you HAVE to split up the workout, then do it. Maybe it will work great. Maybe just OK. It will only be temporary anyway (so I’m told; it gets easier).

[Lundy]

I'm with Chris - I have a 4 and a 2 year old, and (a) it definitely gets easier, and (b) it's definitely workable to keep up your routine. Just get up earlier.

Regarding your question, when in a strength phase, I like to do two HB workouts a week, and one session at the gym. I don't get outside much (my stretch goal this year is 15 days), so I think keeping the movement practice consistent is important for me. So, I do an HB workout Wed and Sat, then a climb on Monday morning. You could easily switch this to be HB Monday and Thursday, with a climb on Sat. I don't really think the HB sessions get impacted, but I can definitely tell I'm not climbing like a superhero when I'm at the gym. Still worth it for me...

[daustin]

Thanks all. Definitely hoping to get a home wall built to make this less of a concern. I think I may try a few weeks of splitting it up just to see how it goes.

[daustin]

Did my first "half" repeaters workout today. Overall, it went well. My approach is to try to train similar grips within the same workout in terms of open vs. crimp. Today I did:
- Warm up edge
- Half crimp on the SVDER
- Full crimp on the thin edge
- MRP half crimp on the 3F pocket slot

On Thu I'll do:
- Warm up edge
- IMR open/drag on SVDER (also debating replacing this with a sloper)
- MR open on deep 2F pocket
- Wide pinch

By being able to focus on one "family" of grip types in my warm up, and by doing less sets overall, I was able to cut about 30 minutes out of a full repeaters workout. This is just enough time savings that I can squeeze this in before work while the wife and baby are still sleeping, without having to get up a totally ungodly hour (I'm not a morning person). I consider this a success in and of itself.

I'll check back in periodically to share how this goes.

[scojo]

Feb 6, 2018 11:57:27 GMT -7 daustin said:

- MRP half crimp on the 3F pocket slot

Off topic, but I'm curious. What's your motivation for choosing this grip?

[daustin]

Feb 6, 2018 13:26:44 GMT -7 scojo said:

Feb 6, 2018 11:57:27 GMT -7 daustin said:

- MRP half crimp on the 3F pocket slot

Off topic, but I'm curious. What's your motivation for choosing this grip?

Haha was hoping no one would notice. Honestly, it's the grip I'm least enthusiastic about. I wanted to have 3 grips per workout, and as I mentioned, wanted to have the workouts split roughly into open vs. closed grips. The obvious closed grips are the half and full crimp on all four fingers, and I was struggling to think of another grip to include. I started hangboarding MRP a couple years ago in order to rehab a pinky pulley injury. It has since healed completely, but I do feel like my pinkies are under-trained/weak so I thought I might as well include it for now.

I'm not at all married to it though, and in the spirit of experimentation I'm willing to try just about anything. I was actually thinking maybe I should just stick with the 2 grips (half- and full-crimp) but do an extra set each (4 sets instead of 3). Actually as I'm typing this out right now that seems to be a better and better idea Hmm.......

[daustin]

Update: I completed 7 of these 'split' repeaters workouts during February. I didn't push too hard since I was fairly stressed and tired all month (returned to work after paternity leave, not sleeping great, waking up early for HB workouts), but still wanted to share some lessons learned:

- Even given the aforementioned fatigue and stress, I made ok progress across grips, with mid-to-high single digit increases of net weight (incl. BW) per grip

- I liked the plan of splitting workouts between 'open' and 'closed' grips; I think this was super helpful especially given the fatigue/stress. Even if I had had the time to do a full repeaters workout every 3 days, I'm not sure my body would have been able to handle it

- As I suggested in an earlier post, I think for the 'closed' workouts I might move from 3 to 2 focus grips (eliminate the MRP half-crimp; add 4th set to the 4-finger full crimp and half-crimp)

- I think I would keep the 3 focus grips in the 'open' workouts, though I need to think about the IMR Drag/Open grip. I felt some mild lumbrical pain from my pinkie finger curling. I do this grip on the SVDER, and my stopgap solution was to let my pinkie rest in the deep slot below the SVDER. Not optimal since I would unconsciously shift some of the load from the IMR onto the pinkie, though I think this probably has a nearly negligible effect on strength gains so maybe it's not such a big deal if it reduces lumbrical strain risk. Or maybe I should just back way off on the grip and hope that there is some lumbrical conditioning over time. Or maybe I should just do a IM 2-finger grip since I'm already doing a MR 2-finger grip. Oh, the possibilities!

- Throughout Feb, I did ~2x HB workouts during the week and then would boulder in the gym one day during the weekend. My bouldering sessions felt great. I mostly just tried to have fun and do a lot of different movement, since I'm not really training for anything specific and this was my only chance to actually climb. I was expecting that I might maintain my climbing ability over this timeframe, but I actually felt like I was continuing to improve even though I was only getting to climb 1x per week.


All in all, I consider the experiment a success, and definitely something I'll continue (with some tweaks) going forward in the world of extremely limited time for training. Hopefully I'll actually get around to having a home wall built and can get some more movement practice at home, but in the meantime this seems like a good way to use an hour before work a couple times a week!