Training Wall Angle - functional differences

[avaserfi]

Since building a woody I've been giving some thought the functional differences for training as wall angle becomes more or less steep?

For example: 45 vs 40 vs 35 vs 30 degrees


From rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2015/06/10/designing-a-home-training-wall/

Once you have a sample of goal-route angles, add a few degrees of steepness and then use those augmented angles to inform your wall design. The reason for this is that artificial holds, especially footholds, will always be bigger than the outdoor holds they emulate. Furthermore, small holds are hell on your skin, to the point that they can create skin injuries that will limit the duration of your training sessions, and may even impact your outdoor climbing. It’s better to go with slightly larger, more comfy holds, and compensate by kicking the angle back a bit further. Plus you can downsize holds much more easily than you can change the wall angle. Erring on the side of “too steep” will give you the potential to grow into your wall as you improve.

So at what point are we getting too steep and sacrificing specificity? How does this change if goals include hard bouldering (typically much steeper than sport climbing)? 

[tedwelser]

I am not sure that I have clear answer to your questions, but here are some thoughts that I have on wall angle and hold type as they relate to different training goals.

As far as finger forearm muscles go the biggest limitation for a steep wall is in ARC training. Not many people can ARC on a super steep wall while using crimps and shallow open hand holds with bad feet. This means that if you are training strength on the RPTC on holds that are shallow open hand and semi crimps then you will not be working endurance on holds of the same specific joint angles and muscles used.

Power and power endurance seem fine on steep walls-- since the TUT is so much shorter.