"Limits of Fingerboard..."

Joel Maywrote:

I commented on a recent Instagram post of Tyler's to ask some questions in regards to his new recruitment-focused finger training ideas. I brought up a few questions that I consider to be pretty central to his suggestion that recruitment-focused finger training is a preferable replacement for standard high-load hangboarding protocols, and I don't think I got very good answers to those questions. My opinion is that Tyler has not yet sufficiently demonstrated that recruitment-focused finger training is generally preferable over standard hangboarding protocols. The ideas are certainly interesting though, and I do believe that they have their place. Here is the comment thread, copied and pasted:

Me: 

Hey Tyler, I have a couple questions on recruitment-focused finger training.
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First, when hanging with weight, are we maxing out our muscular recruitment, and then the remaining force required to stay on comes from passive tension? Or are we somehow not achieving the same level of muscular recruitment that we would with your suggested protocol?
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Second, are there benefits to the passive tension associated with hangboarding? Intuitively it seems like it could make the connective tissues in your fingers stronger, since they’re directly undergoing more load.

Tyler:

check out the article if you haven’t already

Me:

thanks, Tyler. I just went back to reread it.
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From what I can tell, it seems like you’re saying that we are maxing out muscular recruitment when hanging with weight, so the muscular recruitment benefits would be the same for both protocols.
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As for the benefit of undergoing more passive tension when hanging with weight, I wasn’t able to find an answer to that in the article.
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It seems to me like your recruitment-focused protocol has the advantage of maxing out muscular recruitment while minimizing fatigue to achieve that recruitment. However, it has the potential disadvantage of not loading the connective tissues as much, thereby not making them as strong/resilient as a weighted hangboard routine would. Is that fair?

Tyler:

that was a good synopsis. Loading the ct more with weighted hangs though would only be actionable with the weight. Once that weight is removed, the adaptation goes away. So, more load isn’t better necessarily, but it has some downsides as well (pulley stress, fatigue, joints etc). I still like hanging to warmup and rehab actually. But certainly not with added load.

Me:

it sounds to me like you’re saying there isn’t a benefit from the passive tension that would come from a standard hangboard protocol.
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You’ve demonstrated that one can hang with more weight than one could produce solely through muscular recruitment. When the weight goes away, the muscles alone are unable to produce the same amount of force that was used to hang on the edge with that weight. That makes sense to me.
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What I’m still unclear on is the idea that there is no benefit to the passive tension associated with weighted/one arm max hangs. Is it correct to say that you’re claiming the extra passive tension that comes from a standard max hang protocol does not produce positive adaptations for the connective tissues?

Tyler:

you could be confused because you are referencing Max weighted hang adaptations on an RFD post. To answer your question regarding Max weighted hangs and additional adaptation I would say, if the adaptation cannot be used in the sport, then, yes, it is not worth gaining. Risk> reward

Me:

I just used this post to ask more generally about your recruitment-focused finger training approach since it gets at some of the same principles and was your most recent post.
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You seem to be saying that the passive tension adaptations that would come from a standard max hang protocol would not transfer to climbing.
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My understanding is that a standard max hang protocol would have the benefit of increasing muscular recruitment while also strengthening the connective tissues, which would have transfer to climbing in the form of tissue resiliency.
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For me this brings up two questions:
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1. How often does one undergo passive tension in the connective tissues of the fingers when climbing?
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2. If the answer to question 1 is very rarely, could the connective tissue adaptations that come from passive tension in a standard max hang protocol still be beneficial in the resiliency of the connective tissues?
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I think your suggestion of a recruitment-focused finger training protocol is really interesting. I’m just trying to critically evaluate it and get to the bottom of precisely what its benefits and drawbacks are as compared to a standard max hang protocol, and if it can truly be thought of as a complete replacement.

Tyler:

question limit reached

Me:

haha that’s totally fair. However, I do think you should consider addressing those questions at some point if you want to adequately defend the idea that your suggested recruitment-focused finger training is a preferable replacement for the standard high-load hangboarding protocols.

Below is the continuation of the above conversation.

Tyler:

first of all, don’t pull that shit on me. I don’t have defend anything via a comment on Instagram. Second, the answers to your last question are already answered in the article and the podcast, your just not getting it (It is a hard one for sure). We always get passive tension when climbing. The amount though is limited by active recruitment levels (because there is no external load). That’s the whole point. The extra tension/adaptation you’re describing with heavy hangs will never be used on the wall because of this. ✌️

Me:

I really didn’t mean to offend you with that comment. I appreciate you bringing the distinction between muscular recruitment and passive tension into light in regards to finger training.
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I don’t think you have any obligation to defend your ideas to me personally. However I think that as a leader in the climbing-specific training community, when you’re suggesting people replace standard hangboarding protocols with a new form of finger training, you do have an obligation to thoroughly defend and support your ideas to the community in general.
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This conversation is clearly over at this point, but I’ll leave it on this: in my opinion there’s more to investigate with how much passive tension (beyond the level of muscular recruitment) plays a role when climbing, and if it is something that we should consider as important to include in off-the-wall finger training or not.

Tyler:

leaving a conversation with the classic “I still don’t want to change what I do” without any validated suggestions isn’t helpful to anyone. End conversation

@Joel — I think his point is that when you’re actually trying to do the move, your body and gravity are the only things producing force. The launching hand can produce only as much force as is sustainable in its grip, which for an active crimp has to be pretty close to your “max recruitment”, because exceeding that would force you into a more open grip. Latching the next hold would allow for much more passive tension (e.g. latch dragged, then reel into a crimp) but as I contended earlier I don’t think the peak forces are all that high relative to body weight.

RE: Soft tissue — I think the science on this has improved a lot since the books I have were written, but even the new stuff focuses on relatively low loads but high training frequency (albeit via a different proposed mechanism). The research behind Emil’s 6h hang program comes to mind.

"Tyler:

first of all, don’t pull that shit on me. I don’t have defend anything via a comment on Instagram. Second, the answers to your last question are already answered in the article and the podcast, your just not getting it (It is a hard one for sure). We always get passive tension when climbing. The amount though is limited by active recruitment levels (because there is no external load). That’s the whole point. The extra tension/adaptation you’re describing with heavy hangs will never be used on the wall because of this. ✌️

Me:

I really didn’t mean to offend you with that comment. I appreciate you bringing the distinction between muscular recruitment and passive tension into light in regards to finger training.
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I don’t think you have any obligation to defend your ideas to me personally. However I think that as a leader in the climbing-specific training community, when you’re suggesting people replace standard hangboarding protocols with a new form of finger training, you do have an obligation to thoroughly defend and support your ideas to the community in general.
.
This conversation is clearly over at this point, but I’ll leave it on this: in my opinion there’s more to investigate with how much passive tension (beyond the level of muscular recruitment) plays a role when climbing, and if it is something that we should consider as important to include in off-the-wall finger training or not.

Tyler:

leaving a conversation with the classic “I still don’t want to change what I do” without any validated suggestions isn’t helpful to anyone. End conversation"

Yeah so this is all kinds of wrong, especially coming from a training/PT professional. Diplomacy and nuance cost nothing to give and form a critical piece of the practice for people in helping professions. Not acceptable IMO.

I think he has some good hypotheses, but mostly just a business model to usher people through a paywall to get the real scoop. He suffers from the ole more you know, the more there is to know, loop. If you combine all of his content, the many posts, articles and appearances on trainingbeta, etc, there really isn't anything verifiably better. Some highlighting of interesting concepts, and maybe he means well, but it is a business. He will have a new or modified protocol soon, not directed by research or data, but concepts. 

I have to side with Tyler - Joel M is leg humping and arguing his own logical perception against a guy with a rather impressive formal education and actual data posted to the article.  You got your answer crystal clear in the first few responses and Tyler was above and beyond polite when you continued to “not get it” - seemingly continuing to argue for the sake of personal attention.

The one thing I can’t get over, though, is that 2 variables were changed - his posture for the pull (hanging 1 arm extended vs sitting at a table with his arm flexed) and moving from eccentric-isometric to a concentric-isometric contraction - both were changed at the same time.

The argument for board climbing seemed pretty well explained, but this is not new information.

Removing weight and choosing more challenging holds rather than continuing to add weight - not new either.

Overall - an interesting contribution with some good bits of information.

James Wwrote:

I have to side with Tyler - Joel M is leg humping and arguing his own logical perception against a guy with a rather impressive formal education and actual data posted to the article.  You got your answer crystal clear in the first few responses and Tyler was above and beyond polite when you continued to “not get it” - seemingly continuing to argue for the sake of personal attention.

I’m not too sure this discussion will progress much from here, so I may just leave this as my last comment. 

@James, you saying that I got my answer “crystal clear” makes it obvious that you don’t understand the nuances being discussed. I’m not going to spell it out for you again, but I encourage you to go reread the article and the comment thread if you’re actually interested in understanding what’s being talked about. Also, why be mean? Is it that hard to just discuss the merit of ideas without devolving into shit talking? I sincerely doubt you’d talk to me that way if we were having this discussion in person.

@Kevin in response to your last comment, I’m curious how true that is. Consider a one arm hang on a hangboard. There’s no additional load there, but Tyler contends that for him, this still produces a lot of passive tension because he can’t recruit 1x body weight with just his muscles. Why would we say that one can achieve passive tension beyond muscular recruitment on the hangboard with no added load, but not on the climbing wall?

@Joel — I think you meant "Dan" since there are no Kevins in this thread.

Every one of your questions is answered in the thread, in the article, or has an obvious answer. I didn't outright say what James commented, but it's definitely what I was thinking. If you want to continue the conversation, please quote the original article to avoid further topic drift. I've read it a few times now, and while it could definitely use an editor, all of the claims seem basically obvious.

To your last point, here's what the article says:

So what’s wrong with more passive tension? Are there any downsides? Nothing is “wrong” with it, and it can make a beginner gain recruitment to high levels, but if you recall the term in the previous paragraph, the load is what dictates the outcome. The ability to tolerate those big loads with an eccentric depends on the load itself. Once we remove it, the adaptation, or the ability to resist it, goes away. So, once an athlete is well trained and has high levels of finger recruitment [emphasis mine], heavy fingerboarding loads are more about adding passive tension that is not usable on the climbing wall…

[uses his personal numbers as an example]

There is no way I need the tension equivalent of twice my body weight on my fingers when climbing [emphasis mine]. In addition, the loss of the half-crimp is nothing more than an objective marker to end a test. It is not a direct reflection of force loss. It is only for that grip. But once you change the grip, you change the test and its numbers. 

This tracks to me, just based on having gotten really strong myself at stuff that ultimately didn't matter at all (one-arm hanging the Beastmaker at 180lbs, adding 120lbs on a 20mm, …). So I don't quite get the hate, honestly. We're really just saying, "climbers with a lot of training behind them should focus training around intensities close to their overcoming isometric maximum, not their yielding isometric maximum". If you've got a lot of training history, you've already milked the passive recruitment gains, and it makes more sense to target active recruitment. That's impossible to do accurately at super-high loads because you're never quite sure how the load is distributed, and thus what the actual exercise intensity is. 

@Dan, sorry about that. Not sure why I used the name Kevin.

"So, once an athlete is well trained and has high levels of finger recruitment [emphasis mine], heavy fingerboarding loads are more about adding passive tension that is not usable on the climbing wall". This is again getting back to the assumption that I don't agree with, which is that the passive tension beyond muscular recruitment is not usable on the climbing wall. As we discussed previously, this claim is not based in evidence. It's something that Tyler is simply claiming without support. It's been demonstrated that there does not have to be additional load to achieve passive tension beyond muscular recruitment. Tyler saying that he can one arm hang a 20mm edge but not produce 1x body weight on that same edge through just muscular recruitment shows this. If this is the case, then why should we conclude that one isn't achieving passive tension beyond the level of muscular recruitment on the climbing wall? Not being able to produce enough force through your fingers is an extremely common reason for falling on a climb, meaning that our fingers are being taxed to their limit while we climb all the time. So again, why should we conclude that we're not achieving passive tension beyond the level of muscular recruitment when climbing? 

"If you've got a lot of training history, you've already milked the passive recruitment gains, and it makes more sense to target active recruitment." What's the evidence for this? Why would we conclude that we've milked our passive recruitment gains? It seems to again be based on the assumption that I mentioned in the above paragraph. In certain instances (i.e. people who want their fingers to be able to tolerate more load, which is most of us), it makes sense to train our connective tissues to handle higher and higher loads, which it seems can be done through standard, high-load hangboard protocols. However, we have already determined that this might not be the case, in which case the standard hangboard protocols would seem much less appealing. But as I stated before, I'm very doubtful that high-load hangboarding is not good training for the connective tissues at the right doses.

James Wwrote:

I have to side with Tyler - Joel M is leg humping and arguing his own logical perception against a guy with a rather impressive formal education and actual data posted to the article. 

Impressive formal education? Are you kidding me. The dude is a chiropractor for god's sake who calls himself a physician on his website. He goes by Dr. Nelson so people will give him some sort of credibility while he tries to reinvent the wheel behind a paywall. 

James Wwrote:

The one thing I can’t get over, though, is that 2 variables were changed - his posture for the pull (hanging 1 arm extended vs sitting at a table with his arm flexed) and moving from eccentric-isometric to a concentric-isometric contraction - both were changed at the same time.

I can sort of understand why he did it: to isolate the fingers from shoulder/lats, you'd ideally want to do both sitting at a table with arm flexed (or with a more sophisticated test fixture), but then for the eccentric-isometric case 1) you'll need something/someone to progressively add load, and 2) your arm needed to be strong enough to hold that position (which I surmise many wouldn't be able to once it's close to or beyond body weight).

My biggest gripe, though, are his statements related to climbing:

heavy fingerboarding loads are more about adding passive tension that is not usable on the climbing wall...

That smells like someone who doesn't understand how fingers are actually used in climbing: one can rely on eccentric-isometric almost exclusively. In cases where one needs concentric contraction, there are ways to lower the required load by doing a bit body "shrug" to help w/ the contraction. Of course, having a stronger concentric contraction helps... As for actual concentric-isometric, that's like actively squeezing a hold beyond what's necessary to hold-on.  It can sometimes help right before you start a dynamic move, but it's quite wasteful in general.

There is no way I need the tension equivalent of twice my body weight on my fingers when climbing.

I'm assuming he's talking about 2 handed (since it's not like he can hang 2x body weight 1 handed). Well, what do you suppose happens when you make a long hand move & cut your feet? Most of the load will be on the high hand as you try to latch the hold, absorb the momentum (additional load beyond your body weight), and re-place your feet.

i think the comments about fingers in climbing not experiencing the kind of loads they experience hangboarding (at least this sounds like what tyler / some folks are saying???) is pretty crazy.  i can maybe see that argument if you are doing one arm hangs on a jug with +50 pounds (?), but when you get on small holds?  that just doesn't make any sense.  maybe if you are ultra-strong and can 1 arm hang a tiny edge for a while?  what percentage of climbers can one arm the smallest campus rung for say 5 seconds?  i sure as fuck can't.  i would have to take probably 40 to 50 pounds off to do it.  and the small rung isn't even a small hold, really.

Bumping this because I think this is pretty cool…

Over the past week or so, I've measured my finger strength in the crimp (all fingers flexed at the PIP joint) and half-crimp (front-three flexed at the PIP, but with a straight pinky) using three methods:

• Force meter — Isolate the forearm in the gripping position and pull maximally.
• OTGs — One-arm deadlift a Tension block with attached weight.
• Hangs — Traditional short-duration hangs (3-5s, I just made sure to establish) with added weight.

For the crimp, I scored 109lbs on the force meter, 105lbs on OTGs, and 209lbs (BW+35) on the hangboard.

For the half-crimp, I scored 125lbs on the force meter, 135lbs on OTGs, and 269lbs on the hangboard (BW+95, though being a tiny bit less strict about DIP angle adds 10lbs).

Methodologically, the force meter works well for the isolated crimp grip because all fingers are free to flex into the hold, but it doesn't work for the isolated half-crimp because the straight pinky can't really be engaged without pulling. That said, I don't think it really matters, because OTGs seem track that number quite closely, are easy to monitor for form failure (it is really obvious when you pull the weight off the ground!), and require minimal equipment. (This is why I love OTGs…)

One interesting finding is that my hang scores were just about identical to twice my OTG score (210lbs vs. 209lbs for the crimp, 270lbs vs. 269lbs for the half-crimp). That extremely accurate relationship makes a lot of sense for me, personally: first, I have a lot of experience with both methods over several years, so I'm not artificially good or bad only in one; second, my body is very strong compared to my relatively weak forearms, so it doesn't get in the way of expressing my finger strength in a hang or deadlift.

A subtle finding is that if I was just going for numbers, as I might've done a few years ago, I could've easily inflated those scores by ignoring subtle changes in grip position and allowing the pinky to extend in the crimp or the index to extend in the half-crimp. Extension changes the grip to a stronger, more mechanically-advantaged open position, and to me feels harder to detect in hangs than any other method. I suspect (and yes, this needs more testing) that this is basically what happens when people hang far in excess of what their OTG or force meter "recruitment" score would predict: their grip fails. That's it. The "passive tension" is simply their fingers opening up slightly, enough to take the extra load, but not so much that they discount the rep. They call it good even though their joints ended the rep more open than they started.

I could see a case for training that. For instance, whatever position you settle on is probably anatomically optimal for you—that's why your body settled there. But I'd note: 1) just because it's optimal on the hangboard doesn't mean it's desirable in climbing; 2) it's already very common in hard climbing, since it basically happens every time you latch and then reel in a crimp; 3) it makes more sense to train specific grips rather than the in-between you get from overloading a more close grip; and 4) if you were to train extension for its own sake, you should probably do that intentionally rather than as a byproduct of hanging more weight than your muscles can recruit.

So basically, I'm suggesting that Tyler's "passive tension" is really just "form failure" by another name. Your forearm can only provide so much force at a given angle; when load exceeds that force, the fingers open up into a stronger, "more passive" position. Thoughts?

Dan Schmidtwrote:

Force meter — Isolate the forearm in the gripping position and pull maximally.

How did you do that exactly, like Tyler's test or something else?

rebootwrote:

How did you do that exactly, like Tyler's test or something else?

Basically, elbow at a 90* angle on a bench with the force meter above it, set at the height needed for the given grip. You can’t pull down through the bench, so pretty much all the force comes from flexing the fingers into the edge. I didn’t produce enough force for this to matter, but I did hold my elbow in place with my other hand when testing. 

This topic, and pretty much everything coming from Tyler Nelson seems to be a woeful case of "majoring in the minors". It is possibly interesting as a pure research endeavor, but I'm pretty dubious that any of this is ready to apply back to real world training applications. 

His whole brand seems to be about making things as unnecessarily complex as possible to impress his audience. I've yet to hear a single statement come from Nelson that was useful, practicable training advice. 

Dan Schmidtwrote:

...You can’t pull down through the bench, so pretty much all the force comes from flexing the fingers into the edge....

where else would the force come from?

slimwrote:

where else would the force come from?

With the elbow fixed, only the wrist and fingers are able to flex into the hold, which ensures that the hand remains in the grip you actually want to test. When the arm and shoulder are free to move, as in an overhead pull test, the strong muscles of the shoulders and back can (obviously, do) pull on the arm. Since they're stronger than the forearms, they cause the fingers to open up slightly—you get higher numbers, but because you're testing a different grip than intended. Fixing the elbow is just a way of ensuring you test the grip you actually care about.

This is an interesting video that came to mind when watching a lot of Tyler Nelson's posts:

https://youtube.com/KQu-3nvo33I 

"3 Ways to Spot a Charlatan" - it talks about common issues with coaches and trainers posting online that may indicate people that shouldn't be fully trusted.

Starting at 0:48 he lists some characteristics that do seem to apply to Tyler Nelson: 

1. Overly educated, overly technical
2. Infuses jargon unnecessarily into every description, has long complex overly wordy explanations for what they do
3. Everything is novel, everything is hyper-functional
4. A lot of the things they portray coincidentally work really good as marketing tactics

Now I don't think that Tyler Nelson is a charlatan, in fact a lot of his ideas are to simplify finger training and I don't feel like he's disingenuously selling a product. But he definitely covers his ideas in lots of overly technical jargon which makes it difficult for the layperson to comprehend and allows him to dismiss any questioning with "you just don't get it."

slimwrote:

where else would the force come from?

Lol - I think we need a free body diagram here.

Fixing the elbow is about ensuring your grip is consistent when pulling maximally. Are you all seriously this dense? Come on.