UKC

Following on from the "is fingerboarding effective ?" thread could someone please clue me in on the Max Hangs deal.  Again, is there any concensus about how effective they are ? if so what constitues a max hang session, how much weight,  which holds, which hand grips, held for how long (or to failure?) how many sets, using what rests,  and how frequently ? Just one or two questions

Your knowledge is appreciated.

Good discussion on a UKB thread at the moment. This weeks power club. Someone recommended me this.

youtube.com/watch?v=eKwkKaKluuk&

Good vid from David Mason that answers most of your questions.

youtube.com/watch?v=eKwkKaKluuk&

I also like this guide from Steve Maisch (his website is down so hence the archive link) https://web.archive.org/web/20170505101457/http://www.stevemaischtraining.c...

Surely max hangs are just one of several types of fingerboard exercise so they are exactly what the other thread is referring to, is that not right?

A 10 second hang, where you fail at around the 10 second point. The length you can hang for will naturally fluctuate but aim between 8-12seconds, so adjust load/hold type etc to achieve this. About 8 max hangs with 4 to 5 mins rest between is about right. Full recovery needed between hangs. It is a recruitment exercise to 'fire' up muscles fibres. Used in conjunction with 'strength' building protocols it is useful. On its own you'll hit a ceiling. How to combine the two is still fairly untested, and no specific conclusions. I'd say its likely there isn't and its down to your own responses to them.  I can do a couple of sessions of this and be upto my max, so I respond to fbing the best by doing lots of strength/hypertrophy and a little bit of max hangs. 6 weeks strength maybe 1 to 2 week max hangs.

Many thanks for the rapid responses to my many questions, these of course have thrown up a new set of questions Firstly what is the primary goal of these exercises, increased contact strength? grip strength ?  power ? 
Not read through all the resources yet but having viewed Dave Masons short training video he states that he uses a 20mm edge for these exercises. Which if any, of the holds on a beastmaker (1000) equate to 20mm). In the video Dave only uses a 'half crimp' hand position, is there any benefit to using full crimp or open hand positions ?
I know I should get out of the mindset that this seems like a lot of resting and not a lot of training, especially if training opportunities are limited hence my questions about effectiveness.

Cheers

Having read your two threads it sounds like you need to stop doubting and start training. 

Any amount of fingerboarding will be more beneficial than none. 

Here's a real quick breakdown of why some training gets more rest than others: 

a) Training designed to make you hold on for longer keeps you on the wall for longer. 

b) Training designed to make you able to hold on at all gives you more rest to allow for max effort. 

The above two points pretty much encompass the (very) basic philosophy behind different types of training. 

Fingerboarding is type b so more rest, higher effort. (in most cases, excluding aerobic fingerboard work)

Why not just download the crimpd app, follow a few of the training sessions and see how it improves your climbing? 

Increased strength.

Power and contact strength are both about force applied at speed, which is hard to train on a fingerboard; generally that would require something like campusing or limit bouldering.

(Obviously improved strength and recruitment might contribute to developing greater power, etc. etc..)

None. The bottom rung is a miserable rounded 15 (I say that with love).

Doesn't mean you can't do max hangs on that, of course. And if you only have access to a BM 1000 and want a 20mm edge as well, you can easily and cheaply buy a single campus rung of that depth.

Much debated. Many people recommend never training full crimp because of the injury risk, while a few advocate doing some cautious training of it if you're going to be doing a lot of full crimping on your projects.

Some people advocate training both half crimp and open hand, while some seem to use only one or the other and get good results from that.

If you know you're much stronger with one grip, it makes sense to train the other!

Yup, you should! *g*

Based on what we know, max hangs (like strength training exercises involving very few, very heavy reps) should be a good way of increasing pure strength.

Whereas repeaters are likely to be better for power-endurance (and some hypertrophy). Doesn't mean they won't improve strength too, but they (probably) won't be as good for pure max strength.

It's easy to feel like you've had a really good training session and it must have been productive if you feel absolutely wrecked afterwards, but the evidence suggests that might not be what you want to aim for most of the time.

Agree 100%

Crimpd app highly recommended and evolving all the time as the Lattice guys research continues.

If you are unsure about what, why or for how long then download this app now!

Thanks for that comprehensive answer, I guess i'm more programmed to do the 'old fashioned' repeater style fingerboading exercises, as my 'weakness' is my weakness, obviously I need to get with the new program !

I've always wanted to sit on the floor under the fingerboards at The Works with a book telling everyone "I'm training"

Thanks, will check out the Crimpd app.

P.S. This may be stating the bleeding obvious, but if you're using a smaller edge, you'll need to add less weight (or subtract more) so that you're failing at the same point.

Whether it's better to use a larger edge with more added weight or a smaller edge with less, or to do both and if so in what order in your training -- the scientific jury is still out on all of that.

It actually is a lot of training; quality training at very high intensity. "Training" isn't the goal. Forcing adaption is the goal. This happens in between training, but only if the correct signal is sent to your body.

It's not like repeaters are "out" and all the cool kids only ever do max hangs now -- just they have different uses.

Anecdotally, a lot of people seem to mix it up and do a cycle of one type of fingerboarding then switch to the other, or alternate sessions, or vary it depending on what they're trying to focus on at that point in their training.

If you've always done repeaters, you might find you get a lot out of max hangs just because it's a different stimulus for your body.

Also you can always throw in something else like core work if you need to feel you've suffered enough! *g*

Finally you can live your dreams!

Slightly hijacking the thread: How do people warm up for FB? Also when do people generally fit it into their training?

I've been experimenting with early morning max hangs as per the crimpd app but struggle to manage 90% of my 7 sec rep max whereas a post work session this weight feels ok. The reason for the morning session is so I can then climb on the evening with a rest period between. I don't seem to have much trouble with the evening session given how short the crimpd app max hangs protocol is.

This is one of the few things that does actually have some scientific backing courtesy of Eva Lopez

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19346182.2012.716061

I don't see that one paper as very strong evidence personally - it's only one paper with a small cohort, and is methodologically flawed. From memory, the test she used to assess improvement in strength was too similar to one of the exercise protocols, so the group who did that exercise protocol last was at an advantage in the testing. I'm not sure that the search for the optimal protocol is even a valid question - it the optimal one will depend on what you want to achieve, what you've done before, and a host of other characteristics. Then you will plateau so will need a new optimal yourself

I've recently switched to doing hangs in the morning, ideally before my downstairs neighbour puts her heating on so things are nice and chilly (almost certainly a marginal gain here). I also CBA in the evenings. I warm up with a bit of jumping about, waving my arms around, rolling my shoulders and wiggling my fingers. I then do a few (4-5) easy, short hangs - obviously this is relative, but I use the two four finger slots on the middle rung of the BM 2k, between 6-12 seconds with a bit of rest. Then 10 reps of 10 sec on, 50 sec off, twice over - once half crimping (bottom rung) and once on the slopers (35s, but aiming to progress up to combining the 35s/45s). When it starts to feel easy I'll add a bit of weight or switch to worse holds if available. Whole thing takes about 30 mins, just long enough to drink the first coffee of the day.

It's an interesting question. In asking how effective something is it implies a comparison to something else - eg. not doing max hangs perhaps? Any training that increases climbing related strength will be better than not and finger strength is obviously a key strength in a high percentage of climbing situations.

A general principle of strength training is specificity:  the closer an exercise mimics what goes on in a sport or movement pattern the greater the benefit will be to that movement. So the question is how close to climbing movement is doing hangs? If we think simply about the fingers and joint angles then it seems very specific especially if you train the fingers for the joint angles to match the climbing you want to do, eg. open handed grip for pocket climbing.

However if you step back and think in terms of the whole body then I'd say hangs aren't as specific as many other exercises. For one thing climbing, like all sports, is about movement. Yet in static hangs there isn't any movement at all. In the Gimme Kraft book they talk about 'chains', groups of muscles working in unison rather than isolating single groups of muscles and training them separately. So whilst I'm sure hangs can be beneficial they may not be as useful as doing another exercise like campusing, bouldering or fingertip pull ups for instance. Interestingly the Gimme Kraft book doesn't include any type of max hang training, and that's despite the fact their local climbing in the Frankenjura requires very strong fingers.

I have a friend who coached a top British climber. I remember him saying how he didn't understand why that climber was so much better than he was when his hang strength on a fingerboard was clearly better. I think the answer is that whilst finger strength is obviously important it's not the be all and end all of climbing training. At best I think hangs should always be just a supplement to a much wider program of training. There's plenty of very good climbers who don't use them at all.

Dave MacLoed has been advocating less than two minutes rest between reps, more recently advocating 1.5 minutes in his lets videos. Does anyone understand a rationale behind this? I haven't seen anyone else who suggests less than 3 minutes.

I wish I'd Thought of Max Hang as my UKC username.... 

 >Which if any, of the holds on a beastmaker (1000) equate to 20mm?

Petty sure the lowest outside edges are 20mm on a BM1000, and the lowest middle hold on the BM2000. Radius is different (more positive on the BM2000), and different again on a Lattice edge.

There is evidence that ATP replenishes to about 90% within a minute, so a minute or two is understandable for rest. But to fully recover 4+ mins is needed. Eric Horst refers to this, and advocates a protocol of 7 sec hang 53 rest.

Whoops, I'm an idiot, for some reason my brain switched the 1000 and 2000 and I only just noticed. Apologies.

The bottom rung on the *2000* is the miserable 15.

The bottom rung on the 1000 is maybe not quite 20? I've seen it described as 18-19mm; it's hard to judge or measure precisely because it's more rounded than some rungs. I definitely found it harder to hang than the 20mm Lattice rung.

To add to the anecdata: I've had decent results from max hangs with 1 minute rests (and didn't see a noticeable difference when I tried 3 minute rests, except that I suddenly plateau-ed and think I may have overdone it).

Might be that it's because I'm operating at a fairly modest level of strength so anything's going to help, and stronger people would need the full 3-5 minutes to exert maximum strength and get really good quality reps.

But then it obviously works for Dave Mac, who is no weakling ...