Why 7 second repeaters

Hey just a quick question.

Why the certain time schedules for fingerboard repeaters?

I.e. why 7 seconds on 3 seconds off (seen frequently around) and why the 10-5 split e.g. Anderson bros?

Thanks, hope this wasnt already covered in depth

It has to do with how much time you spend grabbing onto a hold and letting go as you climb up a route. Someone figured out (guesstimated?) that when you are climbing a route you grab a hold for an average of 7 seconds and then let go for an average of 3 seconds while moving to the next hold which you then grab for 7 seconds again, and so on. In this way the 7/3 repeaters were born.

i go 5 on 5 off. easier to watch the clock and i can get a quick chalk. also, i think 7 on 3 off starts getting towards the PE spectrum.

slim wrote:i go 5 on 5 off. easier to watch the clock and i can get a quick chalk. also, i think 7 on 3 off starts getting towards the PE spectrum.

This is true, I think it was Mark Anderson who talks about changing your times on the basis of working weaknesses. If you have a lot of endurance, then 5/5 might work better to give pure strength, and if you have strength, then 7/3 will help build some endurance.

I personally go with 8/8 to keep the longer hang time, but still train strength without endurance. Timing it on a regular timer is a bit of a pain, but you pick it up pretty quickly.

I wonder if somebody has studied this, but unlike finger boarding, the load you put on a hold isn't close to being constant while climbing/bouldering. So I'm not sure how much I'd worry about the whole average time you spend on each hold. Pick an interval or vary it as you see fit.

There is an android app for this called beastmaker training app ive used. It is like a metronome, and is appropriately annoying which helps distract the mind from painful holds! Thanks all for all the replies so far!

There's no science to the choice of work and rest intervals.

Several elite climbers advocate hanging for 6-10 seconds and resting for 120-180 seconds between hangs.

Ken

Re: timing strategies, there are a slew of "tabata timer" apps for Iphones and Droids. There is also the Gymboss gymboss.com/.

kenr wrote:There's no science to the choice of work and rest intervals. Several elite climbers advocate hanging for 6-10 seconds and resting for 120-180 seconds between hangs. Ken

Although there's no definitive science, I would argue there is some logic to people's methods.

I thought short hangs with large rests were generally power oriented, rather than strength. Regardless, I think that whatever you do to workout should mimic what you're going to be doing. So if that's 6 second hangs, and 120 seconds rest, it's probably for short hard cruxes, with easy climbing or rests in between.

Do what makes sense, try something different from time to time, and stick with/improve upon what works.

Brendan Blanchard wrote:
> "I think that whatever you do to workout should mimic what you're going to be doing."

I guess twenty or thirty years ago that made sense, before most people had access to indoor climbing walls on rainy days, or owned a crash-pad for mid-week bouldering after work --
So then trying to simulate climbing on a home fingerboard was the best they could do.

But nowadays if you want to "mimic" what you're doing in actual climbing, most serious climbers just go to an indoor gym -- or a short session of outdoor bouldering after work.

So now I think it makes more sense to target fingerboard training to kinds of stress which are very different from actual climbing.

Ken

Funny that you just posted this. I was just thinking the exact same question after doing some more reading on training and hangboarding.

It seems like the Beastmaker guys' 7-3 repeaters are the highest advocated ratio of time on to rest time. I tried these for my last session and it felt very different than the 8 on, 10 off repeaters I have previously done. Much more endurance oriented and I was not able to finish sets on holds that I would have done fine on with 8-10s.

They mention something on their website about how the 7-3 repeaters mimic real climbing and "give you a solid pump" (paraphrase). I know those guys are on top of their shit, but this seems totally counter to the point of doing Hyp workouts on a hangboard. If you're pumped, its PE, right?

It seems to me that 7-3 repeaters must be sub-optimal for Hyp workouts if I can't do sets on holds that I can do sets on with 8-10s (or whatever else). 2 cents from a hangboard (and training) noob.

sanz wrote: It seems to me that 7-3 repeaters must be sub-optimal for Hyp workouts

I'd guess that intelligent serious weight-lifters nowadays would find it amusing that any static Isometric exercise could be seriously proposed for a HYPertrophy phase.

I thought the idea of using static isometric exercise for building muscular strength was debunked in scientific studies like 50 years ago ...
Not that Isometric contractions could not build muscles fibers at all, but that it was obviously inferior to Concentric (or at least Eccentric) contractions. Maybe some serious weight-lifters nowadays introduce Isometric pauses into a mainly Concentric / Eccentric exercise, but is anybody (except unscientific climbers) doing pure Isometric for HYPertrophy?

The Hypertrophy section (page 158+) in The Self-Coached Climber book by Hague + Hunter, carefully avoids any mention of Repeaters or static hanging exercises.
Dynamic moves like in intense bouldering, or campus-board or system-board exercises, do force the finger/forearm muscles to perform Eccentric contractions (both in launching and in catching). And I've seen that strong climbers on the campus-board use Concentric contractions (to "roll up" their fingers from Open grip to half-Crimp grip on the same rung, in the transition from catching one move to launching the next).

Ken

For training for any sport, I always adopted the motto of "train hard, fight easy." Does anybody think this approach would not be conducive to climbing?

3-5 second hangs for Repeaters is what I found in Eric Horst's books, Conditioning for Climbing and Training for Climbing.

The first book puts another fingerboard workout with hangs of longer than five seconds into the category of "endurance".

As for HYPertrophy, the second book says (p 82-83) that this comes from high-intensity heavy-load training. And (p 90) again that high-intensity heavy-load is key factor for building maximum strength. But then in the table (p 138) comparing different finger-strength exercises (the others are all more dynamic) - the rating of Repeaters for the "High Intensity" category is only Maybe.

Doesn't sound like Repeaters would be the first choice for the goal of Hypertrophy (by those books anyway) -- though they're good for targeting training of specific grip positions.

One thing I don't get is that if 3-5 second hangs in Repeaters are only "Maybe" enough intensity for training max strength, then why do the books not suggest cutting the hang time to less than 3 seconds? Why not 2 second hang time, or even only 1 second? (with correspondingly short rest times between hangs).

Ken

Maybe the fact that its isometric isnt such a big deal if we are actually getting failure, if we want hypertrophy... thoughts?

What would be a safe and effective version of specific concentric and or eccentric training for those muscles? Nonspecific I can think of a million.

adamcmarshall wrote:
> "What would be a safe and effective version of specific concentric
> and or eccentric training for those muscles?"

The obvious not-fully-specific Concentric exercise is "Heavy Finger Rolls". More specific Concentric might be "rolling up" from Open grip to half-Crimp while hanging from the same hold (but some say that is done rarely in actual climbing).

Eccentric is easy to get specific: Any dynamic climbing pulling move which is on a small-to-medium edge (but not on a sloper or large edge or bucket or handle or pull-up bar) - whether launching the dynamic move, or catching/latching it on an appropriate size/shape hold -- requires Eccentric contraction of the finger/forearm muscles. So either intense high-level bouldering or campusing surely delivers Eccentric stress.

Problem with Bouldering is that the stress is not well-measured (? or "safe" ?) - and you don't get a number of repeated contractions to fit the recommended optimal count of 6-12 reps for Hypertrophy (as opposed to the count for Recruitment). Some people think Campusing is not "safe" - (but by following the guidelines in major training books like Dave MacLeod's 9 out of 10, I've never had any injuries from doing campus workouts twice a week).

Eccentric "safer" I guess might be the "Hypergravity Isolation Training" recommended by Eric Hörst (he calls it the "gold standard" of finger-strength training). Makes sense that it should work for Hypertrophy, and his description makes it sound pretty climbing-specific, but I haven't tried it yet. Hörst and perhaps other authors also mention "one-arm lunges" (with feet on holds). Yet another idea might be 1-second on / 1-second off repeaters on fingerboard, with emphasis on the intensity of the onset.

Concentric in Detail: What I've been trying for the past few months is what I call "finger curls": Hang some weight on a climbing sling/runner looped over one of the segments of my finger, then curl my finger upward to lift the weight. I do it on three different segments: (1) hang weight on the tip pad, to focus on the DIP joint; then (2) on the next pad in from the tip, to focus on the PIP joint, then (3) on the next, to focus on the MCP joint. Three sets of 6-12 reps on each joint -- classic Hypertrophy weight-strength training. For the PIP- and MCP-focus "curls", I put tape around my finger segments/pads, also wear a light full-finger glove on my hand -- to protect my skin.

Is that "specific" enough, focusing on each key joint of my finger? So far I'll say that the intensity on an individual finger feels very convincing for Hypertrophy. And my outdoor climbing has gone up a grade or two since I stopped doing Repeaters and started on "finger curls" and Campusing.

Lotsa options people are trying.

Ken

I believe weighted 4x4s have caused the most hypertrophy for me (I think* this is an extremely hard thing to judge without a "control" for your self-study).

The repeaters are starting to feel somewhat bunk to me. Its a new idea since I came back to training for climbing...10 years ago we werent even talking about these...the fad 10 years ago was max hangs for 3-5 seconds.

kenr wrote:adamcmarshall wrote: > "What would be a safe and effective version of specific concentric > and or eccentric training for those muscles?" The obvious not-fully-specific Concentric exercise is "Heavy Finger Rolls". More specific Concentric might be "rolling up" from Open grip to half-Crimp while hanging from the same hold (but some say that is done rarely in actual climbing). Ken

why have your feet off???? That makes the movement much more unspecific imo. Why not add weight and have your feet on the wall and roll up and down on a hold if you want to train that movement? That way you could get reps, it would be specific, and you could progress the movement over time (add weight) for gains (as long as nutrition, rest, and hormones were in check).

kenr wrote:Concentric in Detail: What I've been trying for the past few months is what I call "finger curls": Hang some weight on a climbing sling/runner looped over one of the segments of my finger, then curl my finger upward to lift the weight. I do it on three different segments: (1) hang weight on the tip pad, to focus on the DIP joint; then (2) on the next pad in from the tip, to focus on the PIP joint, then (3) on the next, to focus on the MCP joint. Three sets of 6-12 reps on each joint -- classic Hypertrophy weight-strength training. For the PIP- and MCP-focus "curls", I put tape around my finger segments/pads, also wear a light full-finger glove on my hand -- to protect my skin. Is that "specific" enough, focusing on each key joint of my finger? So far I'll say that the intensity on an individual finger feels very convincing for Hypertrophy. And my outdoor climbing has gone up a grade or two since I stopped doing Repeaters and started on "finger curls" and Campusing. Lotsa options people are trying. Ken

Ken - I know it's an old post but I figured I'd chime in,

In response to the bold part above, it seems like you're confusing Specificity with Isolation. I think you should focus your training on being as specific as possible to actual climbing grips. The exercise that you're describing doesn't really compare to any climbing movement that I'm aware of.

Consider this:
When is the last time you grabbed a hold with a single finger, weighted it, did a "finger curl", then moved your free hand to a new hold?

When is the last time you grabbed a hold with 4 fingers, closed your grip into a crimp or a static position, weighted it, then moved your free hand?

It seems like what you're training is too dissimilar to actual climbing to ever be of use on real rock. You may have lost faith in the hang-board, but whatever method you choose should be as similar to climbing as possible while still isolating the muscles you're training.

5.samadhi wrote:I believe weighted 4x4s have caused the most hypertrophy for me (I think* this is an extremely hard thing to judge without a "control" for your self-study). The repeaters are starting to feel somewhat bunk to me. Its a new idea since I came back to training for climbing...10 years ago we werent even talking about these...the fad 10 years ago was max hangs for 3-5 seconds.

I used to do 4x4s almost exclusively in an attempt to get really strong at on-sighting. Gave up on that and now I basically do the Rockprodigy/Anderson routine. Turns out I on-sight a lot higher now.

Originally I did the basic Horst repeaters and was not really impressed. I changed up to pyramids (rockprodigy method) and initially had my doubts as well, but now that I have a couple years of logs to look at, I can clearly see the gains that I made over the course of time.

In 2 years of hang-boarding pyramids, here is how I progressed:
- Added weights until I couldn't add more (70 lbs)
- Switched to the smallest holds on the board (lowered weight)
- Added weights until I maxed at 70 lbs again
- Added homemade wood rungs to get smaller holds
- Currently adding weights using the tiny homemade holds

It's pretty convincing that I can hang a 1/4" crimp for 7 seconds with 30 lbs added, whereas 2 years ago I couldn't do that on a much larger edge (or do a 1/4" crimp with body weight only).

I respect your journey with training...but the truth is that we never have a "control" for our study we are doing...and there is no way to know what level you would be at if you had taken another path.

Whose to say that if you had not done weighted 4x4s (on progressively harder and harder problems) you would have progressed more?

We have to make our way with trial and error, and I respect your knowledge you've gained.

Its a constant assessment especially in the early days of training. I'm thankful that I really personally enjoy training...and thus love the process...