The Frequency Challenge

It went very well! Thanks for asking.

Broke my all time PRs for singles, doubles, and 5-rep sets on the hangboard in terrible conditions. I added size to forearms, no question (a couple dress shirts with sleeves that won't fit around the forearms anymore), and got a fair bit stronger.

It seemed to bootstrap me out of the last lingering weakness (destroyed a shoulder about 15mo ago), after recovering from that injury. I'd rehabbed pretty well, but couldn't quite get back to my prior level. This high freq phase seemed to help me break through.

My fingers felt better on this routine than normal. Day to day performance would be all over the place, it was mentally tough to try to go into a session without expectations. Some days I'd feel ok and perform terribly. Some days I'd feel wrecked before the workout and set PRs during it, even when very fatigued.

The biggest downside is I had to throw any calorie restriction out the window and eat freely while training this way. I also had to sleep A LOT, and still was cranky and depressed. At the end of it, I was 12lb heavier. I've had a hell of a time trying to get that weight off (still 8lb heavy). Even at 8lb heavy, I set a PR on max singles and max doubles on the HB last week.

After running this scheme on myself, I am impressed and pretty sold on the idea. I think it's useful as something to run occasionally as a plateau breaker. I wouldn't try to adopt it as my main template, I think the risk of overtraining or injury would get pretty high if used long term.

It also gives me food for thought on possibly training my youth climbers with lower vol/higher freq.

Will S wrote: It went very well! Thanks for asking. Broke my all time PRs for singles, doubles, and 5-rep sets on the hangboard in terrible conditions. I added size to forearms, no question (a couple dress shirts with sleeves that won't fit around the forearms anymore), and got a fair bit stronger. It seemed to bootstrap me out of the last lingering weakness (destroyed a shoulder about 15mo ago), after recovering from that injury. I'd rehabbed pretty well, but couldn't quite get back to my prior level. This high freq phase seemed to help me break through. My fingers felt better on this routine than normal. Day to day performance would be all over the place, it was mentally tough to try to go into a session without expectations. Some days I'd feel ok and perform terribly. Some days I'd feel wrecked before the workout and set PRs during it, even when very fatigued. The biggest downside is I had to throw any calorie restriction out the window and eat freely while training this way. I also had to sleep A LOT, and still was cranky and depressed. At the end of it, I was 12lb heavier. I've had a hell of a time trying to get that weight off (still 8lb heavy). Even at 8lb heavy, I set a PR on max singles and max doubles on the HB last week. After running this scheme on myself, I am impressed and pretty sold on the idea. I think it's useful as something to run occasionally as a plateau breaker. I wouldn't try to adopt it as my main template, I think the risk of overtraining or injury would get pretty high if used long term. It also gives me food for thought on possibly training my youth climbers with lower vol/higher freq.

Will S, is this something you still do?

Hi Eric,

Long delayed response, I'm rarely on internet forums or social media these days.

It's not something I did for hangboarding after that trial run, but I've done similar in other strength training. It's essentially an over-reaching block, and the real gains appear when you allow that accumulated fatigue to dissipate. I remember Dave MacCleod writing or commenting about doing enough hard bouldering training in a compressed period of time, to the point his performance would start to significantly drop off, then dialing it back and seeing good permanent gains from it.

I've been concentrating on powerlifting for the last year and a half, and have used over-reaching blocks, training beyond your ability to recover, in that barbell training to good effect. I don't think people really need to use that approach until they've reached an advanced training age and need some intense stimulus to break a plateau.

The downside to using it is that you feel like shit a lot of the time and need to be able to sleep a lot, you need to eat beyond your maintenance level, and are flirting with both acute and chronic/overuse type injuries. In the powerlifting training, I'm usually programming over-reach blocks during the middle to final third of a 12-14 week meet prep phase, and will overreach for about a month. Then I start tapering the volume, allowing full recovery as the intensity continues to go up. Two weeks from the meets I feel like a hot mess, but by meet day am fully recovered and set lifetime PRs. It's been pretty interesting training for another strength sport, especially training in a powerlifting specific gym with some nationally competitive lifters. I feel like I've learned a lot that I would not have gotten from our climbing training circles.