Worked at the works yesterday afternoon. Usually for me, 'working' from the works has to be cut short as I basically dont do anything. Yesterday was different, I actually got quite a lot of work done. Strongly expect this had much to do with Sam and Percy being out and it just being me and Graeme in the office. Anyway, took 15-20 minute rests between laps on the comp wall traverses which I hope will fill me with steely stamina.
James texted yesterday to say he had been doing the repeater hangs of despair. There are now two schools of thought on repeater hangs: The Zippy old school forearm destructicon - 10 sets of 30 seconds with 30 seconds between reps, and the Variable Varian Velocitisation Verkout - 7 seconds on 3 seconds off. Dont know how many reps mind. Anyway, the point being, both of these guys have climbed hard stuff, so its got to be worthwhile. Hasn't it?
8 comments:
there's also the mason middle school hang time. if you remember, he reckoned it was good to do about 15plus seconds. anyway it was academic, i was trying to do the 30 second ones on the campus board, i was doing about 15 seconds then having 30 to 40seconds rest, because i couldn't hang for that long. and cos my skin absolutely murders!!!!
Hmmm i'm not convinced by the Zippy/Varian/Mason schools of thought on this one i'm afraid.
To crush zippys theory, 30 seconds is just ridiculously long and just because something leaves you feeling absoloutely shagged does not necessarily mean it's the best thing for you, we all know how true the stop strong addage is, you don't do a 6 hours session up the board because, well it makes you ache like hell do you?
Varian's way, well I dont know how many sets-reps, but Dave's way, there's absoloutely shed loads of literature out there that suggests no more than 12 seconds is useful, I even remember seeing a graph in one of the spanish training books rich had at the woodie one day that had a "SCIENTIFIC" graph of hang time versus gains or something similar and after about 12 seconds it flattened completely...
i usually do no more than 6 seconds, as a sub max, and 2 seconds or even just one as a max.
and i havent climbed anything hard.
;)
Nibile
I normally go for 8 second hangs. The problem is that you soon arrive at holds that are too small to hang. You can't really hang 4mm edges because you just can't get enough purchase (prove me wrong someone?) so you end up using 5 or 6mm with weights. I have been trying to get some fingerstrength recently which has meant I have been doing 8-9sec hangs on a 6mm edge. I have tried doing it with weights too, and with a 10kg weight it just mangles my skin. In my opinion, that is the major obstacle in deadhangs. Anyway, being able to hang is one thing, being able to pull is quite another. So that's why I try to do deadhangs as follows;
pull on at nearly straight arm hang for 2 seconds, 3 seconds at 90 degrees lock, then 3 seconds at full lock (chin way over your hands), and another 2 seconds to lower down slowly. I think this is a good way but have no hard evidence as I have never climbed anything hard AND I have weak fingers.
yes, with smaller holds skin damage is an issue. i always tend to use thicker pieces of wood than the desired hold, so i can file down the edge and have the proper width but with a gentle edge.
ive been doing lots of deadhangs in the last year and they are effective, and are a great way to sneak in one more session between two "muscular" sessions.
Nibile
while zippy was instructing dave on deadhangs to wreck his forearms he said that some german guy had done a Phd in campussin and basically found that for finger strength there was NO benefit using holds smaller than first joint edges, but that people that used edges smaller than first joing were much more likely to injure themselves...Found that intriuging.
this last commment, paul, is very interesting indeed. i think every climber's dream would be training on bigger holds, without suffering and risking injuries.
problems:
- if the research was really about campusing, how does it relate to pure finger strength, as we all know that campusing isnt exactly a finger training tool;
- why many people can easily hang onto a 2cm edge (first joint more or less), but alot less can hang onto 1cm (or smaller) edges?
i can see the logic in the research: there arent any more joints between the top of the finger and the first joint so the portion of tendon interested in substaining the effort of the hang is the same.
but on smaller holds, the leverage is less favourable, because the distance between the end of the edge and the joint gets bigger, so the vector is longer.
and one has to get used also to feeling the big pressure that small holds develop on smaller portions of skin, and learn how to get contact with the decreasing surface of small holds.
so i think that everythings good, also using big weights on first joint edges, but i also think that we have to get used to everything that the rock can throw at us, and learn to deal with that also by training on similar features.
what do you think?
Nibile
Hmmmm I dont really know without reading the paper he was on about, I dont think i've got access through university for the sports science papers and my german is a little shakey, I may have a look and see what I can find. To be honest i'm not really qualified to talk about deadhanging as i've done very little, only a little bit at the back end of last year desperately trying to get some open strength. Personally I think you'll have to pull on small holds to get good at pulling on small holds although i'm not sure where the line lies between finger strength and pain endurance on the smallest of holds.
In my experience the best way to get stronger fingers is to climb as much as possible on cressbrook style boards (Nibs: its roughly a 15 deg board that has a small roof at the bottom or you just start hanging about 2ft off the ground and they are littered with small holds)...They lead to lots of snatching and pulling on tiny holds. I've got some proof to back this up as well: had dave on one for the last few weeks and you can see some really huge gains he has made.
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