Low intensity hangboarding at high frequency?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBTI9qiH4UE

This is crazy, goes against everything I've learned about hangboarding, yet the result looks extraordinary.

There are a number of really interesting podcasts featuring Keith Baar if you're looking to go down that rabbit hole. I felt motivated to learn more about Baar after listening to Horst cite him and wanting to try and understand some of the source material for myself regarding Horst's claims about sinew training, supplementation, Etc. Interesting stuff and pretty much way beyond me!

Woah, those are some pretty mind-blowing results. I'm definitely going to give this a go.

Wow. For such low impact training (and such a low risk of overdoing it), this is definitely worth a shot.

Interesting.

I recently started hangboarding twice a day at low intensity/high frequency. My goal is more to see if I can increase endurance since I do not have access to a gym right now. But I think I'll test my max hangs and see how it evolves under what I'm doing (20 minutes of 7/3 repeaters at bodyweight w/ 60 second rest between sets).

I’ve been following that crew for a few years. Emil’s ‘after’ numbers are something he has already done, and what you would expect from a V14 climber.
I think he probably just needed the deload month of nohangs to see the progress of his previous weighted hanging.
It seems improbable that he would continue progressing with the nohang protocol he outlined. 

Brendan Nwrote:

I’ve been following that crew for a few years. Emil’s ‘after’ numbers are something he has already done, and what you would expect from a V14 climber.

My B.S. meter went way off seeing him doing such controlled (almost one-hand frontal pause, w/o the usual shoulder twist + lower hand push) 1-4-7 on the small Metolius campus rung (I'm sure he could easily do 1-5-8 or better) & somehow was having trouble hanging one handed on the Beastie 2K middle lower hold (which is marginally shallower than the campus rung but easier to hang). His "after" finger strength is what I'd expect of someone w/ his "before" campusing ability.

IF the theory was correct, your training could easily have been to climb a lead route 2 number grades below your RP ability twice a day, once in the AM & once in the PM, and improve your finger strength by the equivalent of a full number grade in 30 days. With the amount of days Warren Harding spent on El Cap, you'd think he'd have free climbed everything.

The silver lining is you probably aren't go to get injured trying this workout.

The reality is finger strength gain doesn't come easily once you are reasonably well-trained (on a hangboard or otherwise), but that kind of message isn't gonna get you insta-face-tube follows/likes/watches.

Brendan Nwrote:

I think he probably just needed the deload  

Deloads feel wrong but are so good.

rebootwrote:

My B.S. meter went way off seeing him doing such controlled (almost one-hand frontal pause, w/o the usual shoulder twist + lower hand push) 1-4-7 on the small Metolius campus rung (I'm sure he could easily do 1-5-8 or better) & somehow was having trouble hanging one handed on the Beastie 2K middle lower hold (which is marginally shallower than the campus rung but easier to hang). His "after" finger strength is what I'd expect of someone w/ his "before" campusing ability.

IF the theory was correct, your training could easily have been to climb a lead route 2 number grades below your RP ability twice a day, once in the AM & once in the PM, and improve your finger strength by the equivalent of a full number grade in 30 days. With the amount of days Warren Harding spent on El Cap, you'd think he'd have free climbed everything.

The silver lining is you probably aren't go to get injured trying this workout.

The reality is finger strength gain doesn't come easily once you are reasonably well-trained (on a hangboard or otherwise), but that kind of message isn't gonna get you insta-face-tube follows/likes/watches.

If 2x10min light hangboarding can replicate the gain of lead climbing twice a day at 2 numbers below RP (like a dirtbag would), that actually sounds pretty good to me! While I certainly don't believe that Emil's dramatic gain in finger strength came from his 30-day hangboarding protocol alone, what I find most interesting is the claim that the fingers are ready to benefit from another round of workout after just 6 hours of rest (I had thought much more is needed).

Xi Yinwrote:

If 2x10min light hangboarding can replicate the gain of lead climbing twice a day at 2 numbers below RP (like a dirtbag would), that actually sounds pretty good to me! While I certainly don't believe that Emil's dramatic gain in finger strength came from his 30-day hangboarding protocol alone, what I find most interesting is the claim that the fingers are ready to benefit from another round of workout after just 6 hours of rest (I had thought much more is needed).

My point of using the lead climbing example is precisely that: it has (frequently) been done before, and hasn't made anyone achieve remotely close to the gain Emil had.

As to your remark of frequent workout, I'm currently rehabbing a pulley injury and have been loading my hands twice a day (if I can remember) w/ light isometric & concentric exercises (mostly via a finger block & weights stacked on a loading pin instead of a hangboard). I certainly feel like 6 hours (or even less) is completely adequate. And FWIW, my non-injured hand hasn't magically gotten way stronger than before.

Certainly worth trying a more moderate workout but twice per day.  

I feel like training for every sport ends up just following the same pattern of other sports. Two a day running was really popular for awhile but then has faded a bit.

My thoughts are along the same lines as Brendan/reboot. I don’t think these results are typical/expected, snd most likely reflect the individual climber’s special circumstances.

But the only way to know how it would work for you is to try. And I think a short low-impact workout like this is not too hard to commit to for a month.

A friend and I were just talking about it the other day, and we are going to test it out. I’m going to do my test hangs tonight, to see where I am at 20mm, 10mm, and 6mm hangs, bc those are the ones that I have at home. Then we will start. The plan is to climb as usual, and do these hangs 2x a day on non-climbing days, and once on climbing days 6+hrs before climbing  

My expectations are low. But if all I get out of it is  some gentle finger rehab-type benefit, I don’t think it would be too bad. 

I'm on day four of doing a modified workout like this, twice a day.I do hangs for 10 seconds every 30 seconds for 10 minutes.  Four finger open, three finger drag, then four finger crimp 3 sets of each with feet off the ground (actual hang on middle rung of MacLeod board)  then ring, middle, pointer and finally pinky "no hangs" for the rest of the time. Going on a two week climbing trip next week, but will return to it when I get back.  

I've got a project with a bad mono that I'm interested to see if this helps on. Middle finger doesnt fit, ring finger fits great but was too weak to do the move before. .

Lena and Ward, very interested in your results, please post updates if you don’t mind.

I'm taking a mid ground approach. I'm still doing a max effort session once a week that involves one-arm max-pull isometrics. On the remaining days of the week, except for weekend outings, I'm doing a light 10 min no-hang in the morning, and dumbbell finger rolls in the evening (low impact exercise that induces a good pump like in sport climbing).

Interesting.

I'm not conceptually very surprised that relatively low intensity/high frequency (so basically high volume) of training can yields gains in strength. Pavel Tsatsouline has lots of interesting things to say as well about that (not for climbing, but still strength-related). He calls it "greasing the groove".

On a personal level, I've also had pretty good results on 5k (running) with pretty much only jogging consistently 60+ km/week. Got pretty close to my PR (which I had ran years ago while I was running lower volume/higher intensity), even though I hadn't even run the 5k pace in the... well few years prior to the more recent race. If I had only done a tad of running at 5k pace, I think I would have had decent chances of beating it. I know running & climbing are very different and all, but to me that's a few smoking guns already that higher volume at low intensity is an interesting approach.

Franck Veewrote:
On a personal level, I've also had pretty good results on 5k (running) with pretty much only jogging consistently 60+ km/week. Got pretty close to my PR (which I had ran years ago while I was running lower volume/higher intensity), even though I hadn't even run the 5k pace in the... well few years prior to the more recent race. If I had only done a tad of running at 5k pace, I think I would have had decent chances of beating it. I know running & climbing are very different and all, but to me that's a few smoking guns already that higher volume at low intensity is an interesting approach.

This is kinda the ultimate debate in training. The low intensity high volume approach is generally the beginning of a training pyramid with high intensity at the end. The gold standard of periodization is often attributed to author lydiard (the most successful? coach of all time across all sports.) it’s worth reading about him I believe he is multiple pages in horsts book.

I’m not sure this falls under category of low intensity high volume.

When I think low intensity high volume, I think of something like ARCing. This seems like low intensity, low volume, high FREQUENCY.

Lena chitawrote:

I’m not sure this falls under category of low intensity high volume.

When I think low intensity high volume, I think of something like ARCing. This seems like low intensity, low volume, high FREQUENCY.

You mean this approach linked in the video from the OP wouldn't qualify as high volume? Yes, actually that's kinda true. Dunno though if it's low volume either - if we consider he's doing 2x10x7 = 140 minutes of "hangs" (including the rest time). That's still 2 hours of hangs a week. I've never done a lot of high intensity hangs,  but typically I'd do part of my training session campus or hangs, at most twice a week. I doubt they would have amounted to even 1 hour total.

I'd be curious to know how much time dedicated hangboarder here do per week...

Just to fan the flames of volume vs intensity in training: the first few minutes of this Joe Rogan podcast is pretty good.

For those who don't want to listen, the best part (paraphrasing) to me is this:

Says we both do jujitsu. In your session, you go and do 5 rounds going as hard a you can, twice a week. You totally kill yourself in the last 2 rounds each time. In my session, I do 3 rounds 5 days a week, keep it reasonable. At the end of the year, I've done countless more rounds than you. [...] All I have to do is spinkle a few high intensity along the way to keep used to going hard. Going hard a few times is going to yield great benefits, almost the same as going hard much more more often.