How quickly should I expect to progress on a hangboard?

Hi all, new climber here (coming up on about a year). I have a hangboard and I've started getting serious on it, following some of the training principles outlined here. I'm hangboarding twice a week in addition to 2-3 days of climbing, doing 6 sets of five 10 second hangs with 5 second rests. I do like the rock prodigy system and I'm going for a periodized schedule, but I enjoy rock climbing too much at this stage to spend time ONLY hangboarding. I have my board set up to add or subtract weight as needed.

My question is about progression. I'm coming from a weightlifting background, so progressive overload for hypertrophy is no new concept to me. In weightlifting, if I wasn't able to add weight for two weeks, I'd reset and go back down to a lower weight and work my way back up. Two weeks is generally the longest I'd go without making progress before changing something.

I'm currently three weeks into my hangboard regimen and I haven't yet been able to add weight to any hangs (or rather, reduce the weight I'm taking off). I realize that I'm training muscles far smaller than those that I'm used to, and in addition having to deal with tendon strengthening.

Is this normal? Is this a sign that I should be on easier holds, or taking off more weight? When hangboarding, would you generally expect to be working at the same intensity for weeks at a time, or am I doing something wrong? Dedicated, systematic training for climbing is still new to me.

Thanks for any advice.

Since you're into the rock prodigy method, check out the Anderson Bros newer information. Hangboarding Faq - How Do I Progress on the Hangboard?

If you're stuck for three weeks at the same weight for any grip type, it's time to take a break from the hangboard. Instead of just few days off, lay off for a week or more and then start again from a lower weight. You might not be resting enough for your muscles to super compensate.

Say you've been hanging bodyweight minus 20 lbs. Take a break and maybe start over at bodyweight minus 35 lbs and each session add weight (say 2.5 or 5 lbs) until you get back to bodyweight minus 20 lbs, you'll probably be able to reduce that to minus 17.5 or minus 15 lbs the next go around and then plateau shortly after. Rinse and repeat.

Personally, after each hangboard cycle, I only tend to increase by 5 or so lbs above the previous cycle.

Are you not progressing at all?

Time under tension (amount of time your hanging on the holds) is also important. Its worth staying at a specific weight rather than adding more and failing a lot of reps and not getting the same time on the holds. Look at what you did in previous workouts and you might find small evidence of advancement, which is good. It might take 4-5 workouts just to get the routine ironed out so you might not improve there.

How often are you doing it?
You should be totally well rested from your climbing and previous hangboard workouts. If your already sore you should be resting more, not thinking about progressing that day. Your saying your climbing up to 5 days a week, as a climber with 1 year experience, thats a very high volume, especially if your days climbing are tough. Right now I'm hangboarding 2 times a week and climbing 1 day a week, and finding I have just enough energy to make progress on the hangs.

Which grips are you prioritizing?
I generally will make 2.5 - 5 lbs of progress on some of my sets. A lot of them might stay the same for a few weeks, especially if they are the most challenging grips, or towards the end of your workout. So make sure you identify what is most important to improve for you, so you can get to it earlier in the workout when your fresher. Its pretty amazing how much progress you can add and subtract to a grip just by switching up the order of your hangs.

Whats your hang?
if its a greasy gym board, thats probably your problem.

i'd guess to 5.14a within a month or so....just kidding. cool that you're hang boarding, you'll likely see some awesome gains in finger strength.

Thanks so much for the quick responses, guys!

Ryan- that sounds like exactly how I'd do it with a regular lifting routine- reset and work back up. It sounds like I started too close to my limit!

Jon- I always hangboard after rest days. I'm generally failing on the 4th or 5th rep, so TuT is there.

I'm using a Metolius Simulator in my home. I'm mostly working on half-crimp edges and two finger pockets. I use the slopers, too, but that's the one area I've made progress on.

Thanks for the tips, guys. It gives me a better idea of how to procede, and tells me that I can apply my knowledge of non-climbing weight training to the hangboard.

Kyle: awesome to hear it, I've got my gopro rig all ready to go and I've been practicing my "Ondra Scream". just waiting for my skill to catch up !!

Tony Monbetsu wrote:Two weeks is generally the longest I'd go without making progress before changing something.

But in weightlifting, you normally do concentric-contraction and eccentric-contraction motions - Yes?

And those kinds of contractions have been well-demonstrated in many comparative scientific studies to be effective in producing measurable hypertrophy and strength gains.

But now on you hangboard I guess you're doing mostly static isometric-contraction hangs. Which in the weightlifting world are usually thought to be inferior for producing measurable hypertrophy and strength gains.

So perhaps the "changing something" you might consider trying is switching from the inferior isometric to proven concentric and eccentric contraction training motions for your fingers -- just like for your other muscles.

I find it interesting that of the five English-language training books, the two that say that gaining finger strength is slow and long-term are also the ones who put the biggest emphasis on isometric training.

Ken

In my experience day to day hang board workouts seem to be a poor judgement of fitness, as things such as diet, temperature and general quality of rest/sleep time have a fairly large impact on my ability to hang well, thus in the past I've occasionally taken occasional days where I'm feeling good to do a few single max weight hangs as a sort of measure of progress. My process has been as follows:

First set of repeaters of any given workout I start somewhere ~10 lbs below where I've been and each hang add 2.5 lbs until failure, then remove 5 lbs and carry out my typical repeater workout. On days I wish to measure progress I start with my previous best and add weight, hang for 10 sec. rest for a minute and a half, add weight and repeat.

Another interesting thing to point out is that for a while the smallest increment of weight I owned was 5 pounds, I think this is too great a jump to be very effective for progress, 2.5 pound weights make it easier, and I've been tempted to try out 1 pound increments next time I throw myself at hang board cycle.

kenr wrote: But in weightlifting, you normally do concentric-contraction and eccentric-contraction motions - Yes?

Yes, but, in weightlifting you are training for concentric/eccentric motions. Thus you would be well advised to train for those motion types. Finger strength is, on the other hand, isometric[1]. So, in my very non-knowledgeable head (and supported by some training literature), it would make sense to train isometric strength rather than concentric/eccentric strength. The other interesting thing highlighted by that article is "When absolute hand strength was assessed, there was little difference between climbers and the general population." and "However, during sustained contractions until exhaustion, climbers did not differ from the normal population" again, this, to me, means that isometric training will be more likely to produce gains that translate to climbing rather than training gains that translate to better training.

[1] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/167…

I think that everyone here is overthinking this, and the beauty of hangboarding is its simplicity.

If the OP has not progressed in three weeks, he needs to re-evaluate what the FAILURE point feels like. If you are truly taking yourself right up to failure at the end of every set, you will be adding more weight right up until you plateau.

if you've been climbing for just about a year I would say forget the hangboard and just climb for now..I'm into my second year and just working on better technique has done more for me. Also, it's just asking for an injury.

I only recently started hangboarding and while I've certainly progressed with some grips my results vary each sesh simply because my warmups vary. Some days I'm able to ARC beforehand, other days just a lazy warmup on the hangboard, still others a crossfit sesh prior to hangboarding.

Greg DeMatteo wrote: a crossfit sesh prior to hangboarding

Why, oh why, would you do that?!

Mike Collins wrote:if you've been climbing for just about a year I would say forget the hangboard and just climb for now..I'm into my second year and just working on better technique has done more for me. Also, it's just asking for an injury.

This whole it's asking for injury idea seems a little whacked to me. Hangboarding allows for measured increase in difficulties which is hard to produce say by just climbing, if an individual is hang boarding with good form and a reasonable level of awareness they are much less likely (in my opinion) to greatly damage their fingers than if they are in the gym (or at the crag really) and decide to try that one problem with pockets or small crimps and happen to come off when they are positioned just so and pulling a touch too hard. If injury is your worry, avoid full crimping and the really tweaky mono pockets and stick with the more slopey grips on the board maybe.

if you are climbing 3 days a week on top of 2 HB workouts per week, that is way too much. i'm not surprised that the progress is slow - you need time for your body to rebuild the machine.

as for concentric finger exercises, are there really any out there that would have any sort of crossover to climbing? not really any that i have seen.

slim wrote:as for concentric finger exercises, are there really any out there that would have any sort of crossover to climbing? not really any that i have seen.

I've been experimenting one recently, I'll call it "finger pullup": dead hang off an open grip & contract into a half to full crimp grip, w/o using your arm muscle or any other body momentum (seem hard not to). I feel it's pretty critical, when doing consecutive big moves, to be able to latch a hold in open grip, change into a more closed grip, before making the next big move. When you are making a long move, the grip changes throughout the movement. What you can hold on to can be very different from what you can move off of. Can't tell if it's been working so far, but seems plausibly useful.

i'm always nervous to try that - although i could probably do it on my HB and start out with a ton of weight removed. when i am actually climbing, i usually make that transition (rolling from an open latch into a crimp) while trying to 'pop' my body up a bit and unweight it.

Thanks guys. I should have been more specific about my volume - the "Two days of hangboard, three days of climbing" was a maximum. Generally I'll do two hangboard sessions on weekdays and one day of woody climbing. On the weekend, I'll go to the gym (two hours away) or go climb outdoors, occasionally both. My outdoor abilities are such that I don't feel my fingers get very stressed from doing it.

I can't do that on holds anywhere close to what I can dead hang off of, so I think there isn't too much worry w/ overload.

Regardless, as I boulder more (& watching/analyzing many top boulderers either in-person or during competition), I'm finding that so called "finger power" isn't just contact strength. Well, it's one of 2 components. While having good contact strength means you can latch a hold even if you are a bit out of control, the flip side of it is with good movement quality, you can reach a hold w/ minimum residual momentum. The latter requires, along w/ timing, core strength & many other things, "finger power" for controlling your movement. Campusing trains both types of "finger power" (albeit with a very restricted movement pattern), but dead hang on the fingerboard seem to over-emphasize one type.

reboot wrote: I've been experimenting one recently, I'll call it "finger pullup": dead hang off an open grip & contract into a half to full crimp grip, w/o using your arm muscle or any other body momentum (seem hard not to). I feel it's pretty critical, when doing consecutive big moves, to be able to latch a hold in open grip, change into a more closed grip, before making the next big move. When you are making a long move, the grip changes throughout the movement. What you can hold on to can be very different from what you can move off of. Can't tell if it's been working so far, but seems plausibly useful.

This seems to achieve/target the same approach as the finger curl workout outlined here:
stevemaischtraining.com/cli…
but probably is easier to cheat. I've been playing around with the pinch and crimp workouts on blocks a bit and find them pretty useful

Tony Monbetsu wrote:Thanks guys. I should have been more specific about my volume - the "Two days of hangboard, three days of climbing" was a maximum. Generally I'll do two hangboard sessions on weekdays and one day of woody climbing. On the weekend, I'll go to the gym (two hours away) or go climb outdoors, occasionally both. My outdoor abilities are such that I don't feel my fingers get very stressed from doing it.

so it sounds like HB workouts on 2 days, woody on 1, and gym/climbing on weekends for a total of 5 days a week? if this is the case it is too much. if you are younger than 30, or maybe mid-30's you might be able to do 2 HB's a week and climb on the weekends. Another good strategy would be HB on tues, woody on thurs, climb hard on sat, climb mileage/technical on sun.