eddym
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Posts: 7 
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Post by eddym on Apr 7, 2018 16:09:40 GMT -7
Just read a very interesting article published by Eva Lopez a few weeks ago. In it she summarises the results of a study she did a couple years ago comparing three different HB protocols focusing on Max Hangs and Repeaters. en-eva-lopez.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/maximal-hangs-intermittent-hangs.html?m=1Her third group she studied tried to mix Max Hangs with Repeaters whereby she used the sequence of 4 weeks of Max Hang first followed by 4 weeks of Repeaters. I believe the Andersons make the point their program uses Repeaters first followed by Power training so effectively hypertrophy followed by neurological loading. Her choice appears to be the opposite sequence (neurological followed by hypertrophy). It was interesting to see her conclusion that despite Max Hangs producing the biggest strength improvement, it may be that a mix of Max Hangs and Repeaters could be best as Max Hangs solely can lead to plateaus. I’d be interested in people’s thoughts on this. |
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Post by Chris W on Apr 7, 2018 18:32:48 GMT -7
Does she mention weather or not it improved anyone's climbing?
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Post by jetjackson on Apr 7, 2018 18:46:14 GMT -7
Firstly, I think it's worth noting that the participants were not completing the hangboarding as part of a strict periodized program. They hangboarded Monday and Wednesday, and then they did other training around the sessions, as well as weekend climbing. To me, this puts a limitation on the conclusion that Hypertrophy on the int hangs wasn't noticeable until after the 4th week. When I train with the RPTM program, I rest for 2 whole days between hangboard sessions - 80% of the time, and I get stricter about it the further into the hangboard cycle I go, ie. as I get closer to my PR on each grip. With my limited experience (I think I'm on my 7th season now) - I find that I can do about 3 days rest, but as I get to 5 days between hangboard workouts I will struggle to bump up to the next weight increment. On the other side, only a single day of rest will also restrict my ability to recover. The point is, that I'm purely training grip strength on the HB - and all my recovery time is dedicated to rebuilding those muscles. Where in this test format, the climbers were climbing on the Sunday and then coming in the next day and getting on the hangboard - I wouldn't expect them to do very well in that case.
Still, the max hangs had the same limitation I guess.
It seems that the strength test at the end of the training was a Max Hang test. It's no surprise to me, that the group that trained max hangs, performed better at max hangs. I think this was the general feedback that I read over on r/climbharder, of this research.
Personally, I find the research write up pretty hard to follow, and the test design seems overly complex.
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Post by jetjackson on Apr 7, 2018 18:51:44 GMT -7
Does she mention weather or not it improved anyone's climbing? Yeah, this gets back to the old; "I can hang for 10sec on 17mm edge with BW+(x) weight added, so based on this test I should be climbing v(x) outdoors, but I'm only climbing v(x)-3, what do I need to do?" Eva Lopez has obviously read the feedback on her work, and seen how it's getting interpreted, she recently added the following comment to that link; "Please, remember that a single work must not be taken as definitive proof, and that an intervention evaluated through a scientific study can’t be generalized to every kind and level of climbing or repeated in your planning time and again. Training prescription should be always specific to individual goals and abilities (Sentence added on 21 March 2018). Furthermore, reading just an abstract and extrapolate it, as well as jumping directly to the conclusions here or the infographic below keeps you from learning the details, 😝 where more often than not resides the nuance that we need to relativize and actually learn)."
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Post by MarkAnderson on Apr 7, 2018 18:55:46 GMT -7
This is the study you see cited time and time again when advocating Max Hangs. It's total bullshit, to put it mildly. This is one of the studies I'm thinking about when I lament the sad state of climbing "research" (the ridiculous chalk study also comes to mind). If you read the actual study you will notice it was blatantly concocted to ensure Max Hangs produced the best results: "The finger strength test (ST) consisted in hanging off a 15-mm deep edge for 5 seconds with maximum added weight."
Does this sound like a fair test for the efficacy of Repeaters? Or even a reasonable predictor of climbing ability? This is essentially the same as asking one group of runners to run 10 miles each day, asking a second group to run 10x 100m dash every day, then at the end of the study declaring the best training method to be whichever group produced the best 100m dash. Yes, obviously doing max hangs is better for improving at...max hangs. Do what you want with that conclusion.
In the words of John Steinbeck, "No one wants advice, only corroboration." |
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Post by jetjackson on Apr 7, 2018 19:04:58 GMT -7
Mark - is this the chalk study you're talking about - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23259237 ? I'm doing a bit of a write up on chalk at the moment, as my career has given me exposure to magnesium mining and processing operations and I want to share my perspective on how the chalk gets from the mine to your chalk bag. |
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Post by MarkAnderson on Apr 7, 2018 20:06:19 GMT -7
No, it's this one:https://commons.nmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1056&context=theses
The following factoid will tell you all you need to know about the study: it took 42 pages to demonstrate that chalk improves hang time on a hangboard (compared to not using chalk). Thank god we have these diligent researches helping us uncover the secrets of climbing performance! Note this was published in 2015, not 1963 (and as a thesis for a Master of Science degree no less, albeit in a state that went for Trump).
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eddym
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Posts: 7
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Post by eddym on Apr 8, 2018 5:54:39 GMT -7
Thanks for taking the time to post comments. It’s appreciated. I was also interested in hearing people’s thoughts on the hypertrophy followed by neural loads as opposed to the opposite sequence she had used.
Also, I’m a bit surprised about the attacks on the studies method of measuring improvements from the different HBing protocols. Isn’t the point of HBing to increase maximum finger strength? What would be proposed she should’ve used to test it?
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eddym
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Posts: 7
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Post by eddym on Apr 8, 2018 6:09:37 GMT -7
Sorry. Meant to also mention, she states in her conclusion that while Max Hangs achieved the best results (in the short term), it may be that a mixture of Max Hangs and Repeaters could be best for an athlete in the long term as Max Hangs alone can lead to plateaus. Anyone using this study to justify boosting Max Hangs as the sole protocol for HBing is ignoring its author’s own conclusions. Or not focusing on the long term.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Apr 8, 2018 7:31:33 GMT -7
Isn’t the point of HBing to increase maximum finger strength? No. The point is to become a better rock climber. |
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Post by daustin on Apr 8, 2018 11:17:48 GMT -7
Isn’t the point of HBing to increase maximum finger strength? No. The point is to become a better rock climber. I respectfully disagree. HBing alone is not going to go too far in making most people better rock climbers. That's why the RCTM isn't just a book about the Strength phase. The point of HBing within the context of a broader training regimen is to become a better rock climber, but surely one point of HBing itself is to increase finger strength. I don't think it's THE point of HBing, as there are other important points: tendon conditioning/injury prevention, finger tip pulping, etc. I think most of us accept that finger strength is directly correlated with climbing ability, so I don't necessarily see it as a problem to have this as a key outcome in a study about HBing. Becoming a better rock climber entails so many variables in addition to finger strength that it would be effectively impossible to study rigorously, but that doesn't make studies of finger strength worthless. The real problem, which I think Lopez has tried to address in some of her more recent discussion of the study, is the over simplistic interpretation of this study (i.e. max hangs > repeaters). As others have mentioned, the study is "rigged" to favor the max hangs protocol, and it's an extremely short timeframe that doesn't address the potential long-term need for hypertrophy that may not be produced by such low duration, high intensity reps as in max hangs. But again, I don't think this makes the study worthless -- the flip side of the last point is that if you're looking for extremely short-term gains in finger strength (e.g. you've got a bouldering trip coming up in a month or two and for whatever reason you haven't been training recently), you should consider max hangs. Not that this is a groundbreaking insight or anything, but it's not nothing... |
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Post by Chris W on Apr 8, 2018 16:09:49 GMT -7
Also, I’m a bit surprised about the attacks on the studies method of measuring improvements from the different HBing protocols. Isn’t the point of HBing to increase maximum finger strength? What would be proposed she should’ve used to test it? -I think the question shouldn't be: "What type of hangboarding best leads to max finger strength?" -The real question should be "What type of hangboarding will help me become a better rock climber?" They're very different questions. That may be part of Mark's frustration. I haven't looked into anything Eva Lopez is doing. I also don't know anything about her. I do know that Mark and Mike's circumstances are similar to mine. I'm a 35 year old man. I started climbing in my mid 20's. I'm going bald. I'm married, have a professional job, a home, and 4 small kids (I think Mark and Mike only have 2 each). I'm not physically or genetically gifted. Mark and Mike spent years figuring out what helps them to be better rock climbers. Fortunately for me, I get to skip all the initial experimenting they did and jump right in where they left off. |
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Post by Charlie S on Apr 8, 2018 18:57:04 GMT -7
I think Mark needs a cookie. Or three.
But I see the point. In the end, you need to experiment and see what works for you. Repeaters have been a game changer for me.
Based on listening to a number of interviews, podcasts, and articles, the general takeaway I've seen is that pro-level climbers (climbing all the time!) seem to mention max hangs a lot. The rest of us with "normal" work seem to gravitate towards repeaters. And then newbs don't want to put in the work and gravitate towards max hangs. But that's all anecdote.
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Post by wellhung on Apr 9, 2018 11:54:07 GMT -7
I think an erroneous assumption being made in these "do 1 microcycle and test" procedures is that the max hang "strength gain" is due to a hypertrophy adaptation, and not primarily due to neurological adaptations. Even in repeaters, I would hypothesize that the biggest 1 microcycle gains are significantly neurological in nature, and this aspect is aided by the huge rest times between workouts.
I also think it is dubious to think that fast-twitch mutants should necessarily train the same way as the slower-twitch endurance athletes. Do all the bouldering fanatics love max hangs because they work for bouldering, or are they all super fast-twitch dominant (so they love bouldering) and thus respond well to max hangs? Maybe the latter? If this is true, who cares what the results of these studies say, they only tell you how the average study participant should train, for 1 microcycle, to maximize a 10s max hang.
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Post by Lundy on Apr 9, 2018 18:32:02 GMT -7
I think Mark needs a cookie. Or three. But I see the point. In the end, you need to experiment and see what works for you. Repeaters have been a game changer for me. So I did a bit of a year-long experiment with this, and the results were really interesting. When I switched to max hangs for over a year, I greatly improved my max hang max, but when I did a quick test on repeaters, there was no such improvement. I was basically back to where I started. When I did repeaters then for another year, I made great improvements in my repeaters, but also made some non-trivial improvements in my max hangs (thought obviously not as much as with my max hang protocol)... So for me, even though I really enjoyed max hangs, and they made me a better campuser (weird), in the end repeaters seem to add value to both, whereas MHs only helped with MH.
When I was playing with these protocols, I recall reading a study that there's no such thing as pure hypertrophy training or pure CNS training - everything falls on a continuum. I wonder if the way the Bros have setup repeaters, they tend to be more in the middle of that continuum, thus providing both benefits, whereas max hangs are quite far to one end, and so while they might promote minimal hypertrophy, the don't balance the two types of gains as well?
Just thoughts...
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