Back to Basics Pt. 2 - Simplifing Grip Choice

[tahmad]

Hi All,

Apologies in advance if this is somewhere in the archives - couldn't find anything after a cursory search.

For a few years now I've followed the Rock Prodigy advanced repeaters protocol. I think its a great training method and it's worked well, with very slow, but reasonably consistent, gains. That said I'm also always interested in what else is out there.

I've been curious about focusing in more on a single or perhaps two grips, instead of the wide variety the RP method uses. I.e., instead of doing a 6 different grips, why not just focus on half crimp and full open hand (three finger drag or a two finger pocket depending on specific projects), and possibly a pinch? Half crimp and three finger drag alone should work all the joint angles you need to make gains in all grip positions, generally speaking. I feel like I need to push pretty hard to make solid gains in my training, and was wondering if sticking to fewer grips and upping the sets per grip would be more effective than focusing on such a wide variety of grips. The reason I'm thinking this way is because during a 6 grip workout I sometimes feel like the last 2-3 grips I do just aren't giving me that much, since I'm already a bit too worked to give a full effort in them.

I'd keep the overall TUT the same for the workout, or even increase it - given my training history I feel I may need to pile on even more volume to get HYP gains, but am unsure...

So the overall questions:  Has anyone experimented with downsizing the number of grips and focusing just on the essentials?  And has anyone experimented with increasing TUT further beyond the advanced protocol?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated - on the above but also HYP training for climbing overall.

Thanks!

Taimur

[tahmad]

Oh, I forgot to add - part of this question was spurred on by someone telling me that Mark and Mike had advocated doing less grips on some blog or podcast. This may be a totally false rumor, and I couldn't find an article/blog/etc. confirming this, but was definitely curious!

[MarkAnderson]

Feb 13, 2019 14:38:33 GMT -7 tahmad said:

Oh, I forgot to add - part of this question was spurred on by someone telling me that Mark and Mike had advocated doing less grips on some blog or podcast. This may be a totally false rumor, and I couldn't find an article/blog/etc. confirming this, but was definitely curious!

I think that's unlikely, but I would absolutely love to be proven wrong. Bonus points if anyone can locate the source.

[tahmad]

Haha, I thought it was unlikely too, but I wanted to check. Just to be clear they said less grips, not less sets/TUT.

[MarkAnderson]

Back to the OP, I think its a really interesting question. I've read a fair bit about Schwarzenegger's training methods and philosophies and he was a big fan of hammering a single muscle group with endless sets, like doing just squats for hours, until they could barely squat the bar. He was also a fan of horse steroids (just sayin). But the point is, its pretty common in other sports to do many more than 3 sets of a given exercise. That said, if you're doing the Advanced protocol, you're doing ~20 sets of intense forearm loading. That's a shitload of sets by any standard. So the question becomes, home much does grip type really matter? Every single one of my 20 sets works my middle fingers. If you broke it down by muscle fiber, I'm sure various groups of fibers are working hard during all 20 sets.

Anyway, I think there could be value in focusing on 2 or 3 primary grips and doing more sets. It's something that will have to be tested (by you). I haven't done it myself because:
-I tend to go more for quality over quantity
-I worry that, say, 6 sets would wreck my skin (especially 6 closed crimp sets)
-I still care about pocket strength
-If there is a difference, I doubt it will be very significant

I could be wrong about any of those things.

[MarkAnderson]

Also, FWIW, its not uncommon for me to do 4 sets of a given grip (for ex, if I crush the first 3 and think I'm ready to make a big step up, or if an early set is a shit show but then I recover well and feel like I can do more).

[tahmad]

Hmmm, maybe I should check out horse steroids then...

Ha, but in all seriousness, this is really interesting. I should experiment, but I'm always a little scared to stray from the core protocol since I know how important consistency is (and that that protocol works).

One other question this brings up for me - the advanced protocol is indeed already a huge amount of volume. But as it gets harder and harder for you to make gains, have you ever considered upping the volume even more? Or doing drop sets or something equivalent to that? Just curious.

It's also interesting to me what you say about recovering well. Perhaps its a function of being a boulderer who never ARCed until last year, but I never felt like I could recover significantly between any sets of the advanced protocol, really. It was a slow buildup of fatigue with each set being a bit harder than the previous one, unless a certain grip was easier, in which case I might get a bit back if I didn't hit failure. Well I just finished my last of 10 ARC workouts today (my longest ARC cycle to date) so I'll be curious to see if that has some sort of impact on this coming strength phase...