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ceebo
Jun 8, 2011, 11:23 AM
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The general opinion as far as i can gather on rc is that pull ups have no substantial baring on climbing. However when it comes to campusing that opinion seems to sway the other way for most.
What actual physical difference in gains would their be from doing pull ups on multiple style holds over campusing?. I realise the obvious difference in contact from doubles, but is that not more a motor/coordination based gain rather than physical?. It is not like we climb in such a way.. so anybody new to campusing doubles will have to learn the relatively unique technique it involves. In other words, would explosive pull ups that almost lift you off the hang board not amount to the same concept physically?.
Ladders are also comparable to slow pull ups, their not a world apart, especially if you add weight to the pull up to compensate for the obvious altered arm height in ladders. Apart from again slight motor skill differences they appear to be of the same nature.. but we mostly do actual climbing in a ladder style fashion anyway so that is a skill that should already be well trained?.
Just curious for opinions of those who have done both to compare. And for clarity, i was referring to pull ups done on a hang board.
(This post was edited by ceebo on Jun 8, 2011, 12:32 PM)
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rtwilli4
Jun 8, 2011, 11:35 AM
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Pull-ups, campusing and Bacher Ladders are all completely different, with pull-ups being the most different.
On a ladder or a campus board, you are moving up and down the rungs. Naturally, there is dynamic movement involved. The stronger you are, the better you can hold a one arm lock off, the less dynamic the move. But then you are working on one arm lock offs which is something else that a pull-up doesn't work.
A campus board also works finger strength and to counteract the fact that the rails are tiny, it is a bit less steep than a Bacher Ladder. There are different types of finger strength and I don't know which a campus board works best but it's not necessarily the same as a hang board.
Ladders and campus boards mimic climbing movement, while a pull-up is just a pull-up. There are often times when you need to do a one arm lock off and/or a dynamic move in which you reach with one hand and this is why ladders and campus boards train you to do so. Moving down on a ladder or campus board is using the principle of negative resistance, much like weight lifters do when they train.
There are never times in climbing when you need to to a pull up, hanging from both arms and raising your chin above the holds. What would be the point of that?
What does work for climbing in terms of pull-ups is to do offset pull ups. Double a towel over your pull up bar. With one hand hold the bar and the other hold the towel, about a foot under the bar. Do sets, switch hands, etc. This begins to train you for one arm lock offs, and is not as intense (or effective) as campusing or ladders.
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ceebo
Jun 8, 2011, 12:03 PM
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rtwilli4 wrote: Pull-ups, campusing and Bacher Ladders are all completely different, with pull-ups being the most different. On a ladder or a campus board, you are moving up and down the rungs. Naturally, there is dynamic movement involved. The stronger you are, the better you can hold a one arm lock off, the less dynamic the move. But then you are working on one arm lock offs which is something else that a pull-up doesn't work. A campus board also works finger strength and to counteract the fact that the rails are tiny, it is a bit less steep than a Bacher Ladder. There are different types of finger strength and I don't know which a campus board works best but it's not necessarily the same as a hang board. Ladders and campus boards mimic climbing movement, while a pull-up is just a pull-up. There are often times when you need to do a one arm lock off and/or a dynamic move in which you reach with one hand and this is why ladders and campus boards train you to do so. Moving down on a ladder or campus board is using the principle of negative resistance, much like weight lifters do when they train. There are never times in climbing when you need to to a pull up, hanging from both arms and raising your chin above the holds. What would be the point of that? What does work for climbing in terms of pull-ups is to do offset pull ups. Double a towel over your pull up bar. With one hand hold the bar and the other hold the towel, about a foot under the bar. Do sets, switch hands, etc. This begins to train you for one arm lock offs, and is not as intense (or effective) as campusing or ladders.
It is certain though that a hang board will give a far greater range of holds than a campus board. Multiple angle lock off's and 1 arm raises can also be done from a hang board.
Also, im unclear what you mean by bacher ladder, i was referring to the technique used on a campus board where you go up with 1 hand instead of with 2. Perhaps i miss understand but it looked like we are talking about 2 different things?.
(This post was edited by ceebo on Jun 8, 2011, 12:05 PM)
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Rufsen
Jun 8, 2011, 12:04 PM
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It seems silly in general to use supplemental training for your upper body. Steep bouldering is more than enough for most people.
I used to do a bit of strength training, mostly pullups. I was able to do a one arm pullup at a point, but i just quit because it was affecting my recovery from climbing.
1,5 years later im still almost able to do a one arm pullup, with no training except climbing 3-4 times a week.
Campus boards can be useful for some climbers because you train the fingers, and for the few who need a high level of upper body power. More than you can reasonable get from bouldering that is.
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ceebo
Jun 8, 2011, 12:08 PM
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Rufsen wrote: It seems silly in general to use supplemental training for your upper body. Steep bouldering is more than enough for most people. I used to do a bit of strength training, mostly pullups. I was able to do a one arm pullup at a point, but i just quit because it was affecting my recovery from climbing. 1,5 years later im still almost able to do a one arm pullup, with no training except climbing 3-4 times a week. Campus boards can be useful for some climbers because you train the fingers, and for the few who need a high level of upper body power. More than you can reasonable get from bouldering that is.
No i think the purpose of such training is to eliminate other factors getting in the way of raw strength gains, such as technique (As in too much of it). I can't remember who.. i think Dave Mcleod, but he summed it up well.
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Rufsen
Jun 8, 2011, 12:30 PM
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ceebo wrote: Rufsen wrote: It seems silly in general to use supplemental training for your upper body. Steep bouldering is more than enough for most people. I used to do a bit of strength training, mostly pullups. I was able to do a one arm pullup at a point, but i just quit because it was affecting my recovery from climbing. 1,5 years later im still almost able to do a one arm pullup, with no training except climbing 3-4 times a week. Campus boards can be useful for some climbers because you train the fingers, and for the few who need a high level of upper body power. More than you can reasonable get from bouldering that is. No i think the purpose of such training is to eliminate other factors getting in the way of raw strength gains, such as technique (As in too much of it). I can't remember who.. i think Dave Mcleod, but he summed it up well.
Yes that is the purpose of campus boards. Im just saying that removing technique is not necessary for most people. A lot of us will see strength gains even with the element of movement present.
My upper body still gets tired from steep bouldering, i dont think thats just because my technique sucks.
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Rufsen
Jun 8, 2011, 12:33 PM
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And im not saying nobody should campus, ever. Its a tool, it has a purpose. But for most of us its not the best available tool for upper body strength.
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ceebo
Jun 8, 2011, 12:49 PM
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Rufsen wrote: ceebo wrote: Rufsen wrote: It seems silly in general to use supplemental training for your upper body. Steep bouldering is more than enough for most people. I used to do a bit of strength training, mostly pullups. I was able to do a one arm pullup at a point, but i just quit because it was affecting my recovery from climbing. 1,5 years later im still almost able to do a one arm pullup, with no training except climbing 3-4 times a week. Campus boards can be useful for some climbers because you train the fingers, and for the few who need a high level of upper body power. More than you can reasonable get from bouldering that is. No i think the purpose of such training is to eliminate other factors getting in the way of raw strength gains, such as technique (As in too much of it). I can't remember who.. i think Dave Mcleod, but he summed it up well. Yes that is the purpose of campus boards. Im just saying that removing technique is not necessary for most people. A lot of us will see strength gains even with the element of movement present. My upper body still gets tired from steep bouldering, i dont think thats just because my technique sucks.
Ofc, and a side question to that.. do you not think a weakness in the upper body will heavily impact posture or a technique position their for putting more needless weight onto the fingers? as a basic example, sagging butt out on a overhang to keep arms straight due to their fatigue. Under such conditions isn't it likely the fingers then fail before the big muscle groups have a chance to be pushed into failure to improve?. I only mention this because it seems like scenarios many people may encounter time and time again, not the butt sag thing.. but you get me right?.
In light of that, is it better to just keep climbing to the point where your fingers need to be so strong just to allow your big muscle groups to get a solid work out?.. on top of many ''bad'' habits you may pick up for compensating to their weakness?.
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rtwilli4
Jun 8, 2011, 5:01 PM
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I think you are looking at climbing in very much the same way that I did until Dan Hague came on this website and recommended that I try a different approach. He didn't drop the name of his book, but someone else did and it is still helping me. It's called The Self Coached Climber.
I can't say it as well as him but here is my take:
Think about your movement and technique, and strength and power all working together. You can try to train them separately but it is not always the most efficient way.
Training for climbing involves training slow twitch muscles and also fast twitch muscles, and you train them differently. To put it simply, high reps and less force trains slow twitch, and low reps with high force trains fast twitch.
A hangboard is going to train mostly slow twitch while things such as a campus board or system wall are usually used to train fast twitch. However, the latter two give you more freedom since you can change the hold shape and size, along with changing the type of exercise. A hang board gives you some of that freedom but it is just impossible to do the same type of dynamic movement on a hang board. Sure you can do lock offs, levers, single arm raises, but we both know that's not the same as a campus board workout.
It is generally accepted that the best way to progress is to do a mix of aerobic training (continuous climbing well below your on-sight level), anaerobic training (4x4s) and power and strength training (different types of bouldering, with most of it being hard or very hard).
The training devices I described above are all used to supplement bouldering in training strength and power. But in all honesty you unless you are a consistent 5.12 climber you probably don't need to waste your time using any of them. You don't need to be THAT strong to climb 5.12, and most of us climb well below our physical limit because we fail to use our endurance, strength and power efficiently.
Learning to rest at the right places, having better on-sight and red-point strategies and moving more efficiently will help you much more than trying to build more strength and/or power. I've been climbing non-stop for three years and off and on for many years before that and I still haven't hit a real plateau in regards to grade because I continue to focus on climbing as efficiently as possible in every way possible. I have toyed with adding a campus board or system wall workout to my bouldering workouts but I just don't believe that I am ready for that. I still have a lot to learn about efficient movement.
People develop problems and bad habits because they don't try not to. It has nothing to do with a lack of strength or power. If you focus more on your hips and knees that you do on keeping your arms straight, then you will find that you can keep a lot of the weight off of your fingers by simple adjustments to body position, and that you don't need to hang your butt out to keep your arms straight.
You seem to be quite interested in different types of training and the associated benefits, but you come on this website and ask questions before you have done any proper research. There are loads of books, blogs and websites dedicated to training for climbing, and they are all much better than 99% of the stuff you read on Rockclimbing.com, including what I write.
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flesh
Jun 8, 2011, 6:30 PM
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There's lots of info out there. It's easy to make your head spin. I suggest keeping it simple.
When climbing at lower levels, say 5.12 or lower, and when comparing hangboards to campusing, it doesn't really matter. Like the other post says, you don't really need to be that strong to climb 5.12 or lower. Your no where near most anyone's genetic limitations.
Things change quickly when you get to let's say 5.13a and above. You get into the genetic limitation category. As you go above 5.13a, the further you go, the less people there are that can potentially climb that hard. The question you need to ask changes. It's not simply a question of what helps more, hang boards or campusing. It becomes a question of what gets you stronger without injuring you, injuries are what slows one's progress most at the higher levels. You get to a point where you must find a way to say put more weight on your fingers without injuring them, to get stronger. Also, you must become more concious of how your bodies feeling and how close it is to injury.
My belief is simply this; when comparing hang boards vs campusing simply ask your self this, which will put more weight on your fingers without injuring them? Whether you call it fast twitch or slow twitch or any twitch the bottom line is, the more weight you put on your fingers without hurting them, the stronger you'll get and therefore climb harder.
IMO, when doing doubles campusing, open handed, you put more weight on your fingers than with a hang board, even if it's only for 1-2 seconds before you pop back down or up. Therefore, it will get you stonger than a hang board. This is taking into consideration that your long term plan should include not getting injured as the fastest way to improve over years of time. In otherwords, in order for you to create the same amount of weight on your fingers as one would doing doubles campusing open handed on a hang board, you would need to hold such a small hold, that it would be more likely to injure you.
Mutants may have different advice and until you are sure you are a mutant (you've climbed v10+ for years on crimps without any injuries or nothing to speak of that held you back) I'd suggest sticking with friendly holds and open handing crimps as much as possible.
Brian Antithusse (sp?) in his v13 workout from hell posted on dpmagazine.com for example. He suggests in addtion to other things, that you should hang on a hang board off a one hand open crimp as long as possible repetitively. He is a mutant and doesn't understand the genetic limitations most of us suffer from, namely that almost anyone would get finger injuries from repeated one arm hangs off crimps. He suggests this because his fingers can handle it and is assuming that either everyone is a mutant like him or that only elite climbers would try his training. The fact is, doing his training would get anyone stronger very quickly, and also injured in most cases.
More weight on your fingers = more strength gained. The crux comes in when your don't want to get injured.
When it comes to pull muscles, I think you will get all you need from bouldering. I don't know if I can do a one arm, because i haven't tried. What I do know is that I've never been on a boulder problem that convinced me that the reason I couldn't send was because of a lack of pull/lock off power. It's always been because of finger strength to weight ratio.
I can't climb v13 but the v13 I've seen my friends climb do not require more pull power than I have right now.
There's a threshhold where you can only do a move that's so big, limited by reach, height, etc. Once you hit that threshold.... around v9 or v10 I'd say, you won't benefit from training pull power. This depends on height of course and I'm using rough numbers based on experience.
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ceebo
Jun 8, 2011, 8:52 PM
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So the general feeling im getting here is that provided a person can handle it.. the best gains will be made through building up to 1 arm dead hangs. I assume accompanied with at least some form of upper body work out, like weighted doubles on big rungs?.
And yes rt, i realise their are allot of places to find info on climbing.. that i have done and constantly continue to do. Their are also many conflicts in info, so rc ''can'' be helpful to debate those.
(This post was edited by ceebo on Jun 8, 2011, 8:55 PM)
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flesh
Jun 9, 2011, 5:59 PM
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ceebo wrote: So the general feeling im getting here is that provided a person can handle it.. the best gains will be made through building up to 1 arm dead hangs. I assume accompanied with at least some form of upper body work out, like weighted doubles on big rungs?. And yes rt, i realise their are allot of places to find info on climbing.. that i have done and constantly continue to do. Their are also many conflicts in info, so rc ''can'' be helpful to debate those.
I disagree for the most part ceebo. The essential problem for most anybody with one arm dead hands is that you would be better off in terms of building power and not getting injured doing doubles or weighted doulbles. The dynamic movement allows you to use bigger holds but still put alot of weight on your fingers.
I believe you can get to the v13/v14 range just from using the rung size i use and up to 20-30 lbs of weight. Supposing you we're already at the level, my vote is that you would be better off doing one arm campusing on a bigger open hand hold that you would hanging one handed off of what would have to be a micro hold to create the same amount of weight on your fingers, if you we're at the v13/v14 level already.
I tried one arm campusing on the biggest rung last night but wanst strong enough in the pull muscles to go from one to the next one on the way up.... so what I did was start at the top with one hand and without skipping go down one rung at a time. This was surprisingly hard considering i can hang off the biggest rung with one hand in a dead hang without even trying. The rung is two pads for three fingers and one for pinky, so rather big.
In the future I may start including down campusing on one hand to mix up my routine. I don't think I want to add the muscle necessary to campus one armed on the way up, because it would add unnecessary pull muscle that I believe to be overkill for climbing.
(This post was edited by flesh on Jun 9, 2011, 6:07 PM)
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suprasoup
Jun 9, 2011, 6:17 PM
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In reply to: I don't think I want to add the muscle necessary to campus one armed on the way up, because it would add unnecessary pull muscle that I believe to be overkill for climbing.
Once you've gained the requisite strength to do one arm pullups and have good contact strength it's only a matter of technique to do a one arm campus. Besides, they're really just cheap party tricks to wow your friends.
Supra
(This post was edited by suprasoup on Jun 9, 2011, 6:19 PM)
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bmylius
Jun 9, 2011, 9:23 PM
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Flesh: "It's always been because of finger strength to weight ratio."
yeah absolutely! bingo!
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ceebo
Jun 9, 2011, 11:22 PM
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flesh wrote: ceebo wrote: So the general feeling im getting here is that provided a person can handle it.. the best gains will be made through building up to 1 arm dead hangs. I assume accompanied with at least some form of upper body work out, like weighted doubles on big rungs?. And yes rt, i realise their are allot of places to find info on climbing.. that i have done and constantly continue to do. Their are also many conflicts in info, so rc ''can'' be helpful to debate those. I disagree for the most part ceebo. The essential problem for most anybody with one arm dead hands is that you would be better off in terms of building power and not getting injured doing doubles or weighted doulbles. The dynamic movement allows you to use bigger holds but still put alot of weight on your fingers. I believe you can get to the v13/v14 range just from using the rung size i use and up to 20-30 lbs of weight. Supposing you we're already at the level, my vote is that you would be better off doing one arm campusing on a bigger open hand hold that you would hanging one handed off of what would have to be a micro hold to create the same amount of weight on your fingers, if you we're at the v13/v14 level already. I tried one arm campusing on the biggest rung last night but wanst strong enough in the pull muscles to go from one to the next one on the way up.... so what I did was start at the top with one hand and without skipping go down one rung at a time. This was surprisingly hard considering i can hang off the biggest rung with one hand in a dead hang without even trying. The rung is two pads for three fingers and one for pinky, so rather big. In the future I may start including down campusing on one hand to mix up my routine. I don't think I want to add the muscle necessary to campus one armed on the way up, because it would add unnecessary pull muscle that I believe to be overkill for climbing.
I get that but the question was assuming a person can handle it with ought injury. No doubt that eventually you will have to move onto smaller rungs and then begin adding weight to those to continue improving. The only alternative i see is adding even more weight to big rungs leading to extra pull muscle you already said to be overkill. What is your plan at that point?.
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