Hey all, I'm thinking about how I am going to structure a fall training plan and I was hoping someone out there could answer this question. Before I ramble here's the concise version of my question: does training hypertrophy on a hangboard train 100% of muscle fibers or just the ones being recruited?

By the way, I'm still new to training so if that is a dumb question feel free to let me know.

Here is why I'm asking. The training plans I have been looking at suggest training hypertrophy first, recruitment second, power endurance third, then having a bit of a rest and finishing the deal with some hard sending. I suppose the theory behind that is to enlarge the muscles then teach them to work better. The reason I came up with the question is because if hangboard training only enlarges the muscles recruited then it would seem to be a good idea to train recruitment first so that more of the muscle fibers benefit from the hypertrophy training, then doing some more recruitment training before going into the PE, rest, send phases. So the training would be recruitment, hypertrophy, recruitment, PE, rest, climb.

Any help would be appreciated!

-Chris

not a dumb question at all. i think that the order in which you train them actually comes down to the amount of time it takes to get to your highest point in that phase (whether it be hyp, rec, pe), and also the rate at which you lose it. by putting each phase in a specific order, you are trying to schedule an optimum period where you will be as high as you can at all of them at the same time.

here is a very basic example, not necessarily accurate, but simplified.

you can improve at hypertrophy for 4 weeks in a row, and keep those gains for a total of 12 weeks.
then you can improve at recruitment for 3 weeks, and keep it for 9 weeks
then you can improve your power-endurance for 4 weeks and keep it for 5 weeks.

so, you do hypertrophy for weeks 1-4
recruitment for 5-7
power-endurance for 8-11
and you have everything at a pretty high level for weeks 12-15.
at the end of week 15, all of your phase peaks are probably considerably diminished. after a couple of weeks of rest, you start over again.

of course, in the real world, after your peak in each phase you will move to the next phase, and you will start losing the effects of the previous phase. each person is different when it comes to the amount of time it takes to reach a phase peak, and the rate that you will lose phase benefits. it takes a lot of experience and analysis to really optimize it.

By hypertrophy do you mean increasing the size of your muscles? I would think that you would only want to do this in order to enter a bodybuilding or fitness competition.

I followed a very specific training program last spring and upped my max outdoor climbing ability significantly. There was no part of the program that focused entirely on enlarging the muscles. If hypertrophy happens in climbers then perhaps it is just natural development of climbing-specific muscles. Personally I have never noticed an increase in muscle size that relates directly to climbing performance.


What is it that you are trying to accomplish with your training?
What resources are you using to design a training plan for yourself?

The term "hypertrophy" is a legacy term that appeared in Performance Rock Climbing, and it may be obsolete in light of modern terminology. The goal of the training is not to increase forearm size, that would be ridiculous. The goal is to improve finger strength, which can happen with very little increase in size. That said, if you do this type of training long enough, your forearms will get big. I know a couple guys whose forearms are as big as their biceps.

I would love to hear the details of any training program that was successful. As far as I'm concerned, the only measure of merit of a climbing training program is how well it raised the subject's outdoor climbing ability. That said, you should realize that most climbers will experience an initial rapid improvement with ANY program they start, mostly because what you've been doing up to that point is so ineffective. The "holy grail" is continuous, sustained improvement throughout your climbing career.

A great visual example of Mono's explanation can be seen in Dosage IV when Sharma sends Dreamcatcher. Very few climbers could even hold on to the slopers at the start of the traverse, fewer still could catch a "rest" on them as he does mid climb. I am always in awe when I see that scene.

That was a really good training article! I think there's a little much there to be able to squeeze into a training cycle without getting hurt. I tend to take training to the extreme and have had to cut back and not train so hard. I'm realizing now that I can't go to %100 fatigue 3 times a week!

Every person is different and responds to training differently. Age changes things as well. You have to be aware of signals from your body to determine what is an appropriate training frequency. When I was in my early 20's I could do a hard climbing workout every other day, but now (early 30's) I do them every third day, and even then, I occasionally need more rest. If you quantify and record your workouts, you can use the data as an indicator of whether or not you are recovering between workouts. Otherwise, it's a game of guess and check.