Anyone out there experimenting with the Bechtel Logical Progression Format (Nonlinear)?

Mark E Dixon wrote:

With all due respect to Steve Bechtel, his contention that low resistance training leads to strength gains equal to high resistance training is not supported by the scientific literature, which concludes exactly the opposite.

Low resistance training, if carried to failure, can produce equivalent hypertrophy, but not strength (as measured by maximum voluntary contraction.)

As with all things training, any one person's response to exercise regimes can be entirely idiosyncratic and contrary to the conclusions of research.

From what I gathered from his 3-6-9-12 ladders program is that similar strength gains can be made with isometric exercises (hangboarding) when one increases volume systematically and/or decreases hold size, but maintains relatively lighter loads. I believe this idea is grounded in sports science literature, and he has obviously seen it work with athletes.

jaredj wrote:

Where does Bechtel claim this equivalence?

Page 49-50 of Logical Progression.

Also in this passage from Climbing https://www.climbing.com/skills/training-hangboard-ladders-for-finger-strength/

"Several studies on isometric strength have shown that the total volume of load (time hanging) is more important than the degree of load (weight). Using varying percentages of maximum weight and adjusting the total time each athlete worked under load, these studies demonstrated that it matters less how hard the muscles were worked than how long muscles were under tension. In one study, the team showed that seven one-minute contractions at just 30% of maximum resulted in a strength increase of about 30% in just six weeks. Similar studies showed that it’s possible to gain just as much strength at slightly reduced loads (65 to 75% of maximum) as one might gain while training at maximum (more than 90%) effort. Clearly this is the better method for most climbers, as it provides faster recovery between sessions and minimizes injury risk to sensitive fingers."

Unfortunately, he does not include any of these references.

The article referenced in LP- The effects of two forms of isometric training on the mechanical properties of the triceps surae in man shares all the typical short comings of exercise research- small sample size, short term training, probably previously untrained subjects. Nevertheless, it actually reports that high resistance exercise led to 67% greater strength increases over the study period than low resistance exercise. 

Steve has vastly more experience training climbers than I. His advice based on that experience deserves careful consideration. 

But I'm pretty good at scholarly google-fu and I don't think his description of the research findings is accurate.

I don't mean to discourage anyone from trying his protocols. 

My personal belief is that successful training must be individualized. 

What works for you (or me) may be the exact opposite of the research findings. 

We are all unique snowflakes after all :-)

@ Evan H- there's more research than you might think. 

I criticize Eva Lopez's work, but her latest study seems fairly persuasive that max hangs are best for increasing 1RM max on 15mm by 5 second hangs. 

Whether that's the best surrogate measure of utility for climbing performance is a matter for debate.

climberish wrote:

 I believe this idea is grounded in sports science literature, 

Citations?

Its important to note that Steve is talking isometric strength.  He argues that isometric gains can be had with lower loads.  One of the caveats is that the gains are only realized across a very small range (joint angle variance).  This is partly why he suggests training at open hand as well as full and half crimp.

He sites a study that two German scientists did in 1953 as well as a study done by Davis and Young in 1983 to support his claims.

I have not looked at the 1953 study and doubt that I will bother to review a 64 year old paper. 

The article from 1983 The effects of two forms of isometric training on the mechanical properties of the triceps surae in man I have discussed briefly above.

Whether a 34 year old paper is truly relevant is also debatable.

Mark E Dixon wrote:

I have not looked at the 1953 study and doubt that I will bother to review a 64 year old paper. 

The article from 1983 The effects of two forms of isometric training on the mechanical properties of the triceps surae in man I have discussed briefly above.

Whether a 34 year old paper is truly relevant is also debatable.

I looked at a number of studies that cite the 34 year old paper.  I had the same impression.  Low sample size and relatively untrained subjects.  I think more than the age of the study the fact that a bunch of studies containing sample sizes of ~20 are all referencing each other is the major issue.  Its easy to get off and in the weeds with several small poorly designed iterative studies.  Unless, you are using age of a study to indicate something like "30 years ago all sports science was weak, 60 years ago... even worse".

Has sports science improved at all since then?  Are scientists using deeper and more relevant statistics to design studies and analyze results?  Who would fund research like this that is specific for climbing?

Interesting discussion here. My two cents. Whenever training for climbing, you want to keep the end goal in mind and tailor your training to be relatively sport specific to it. If your goal is repeated sub-maximal effort, as in sport climbing, you want to make your training reflect that. 1RM with lots of added weight is probably not going to be helpful compared to focusing on repeaters and reasonably lengthy route climbing sessions. Despite statements out there that high 1RM strength will make endurance easy by comparison, to me that sounds more like bro science than valid theory. "Good enough" 1RM strength is what you want there, not a focus on it.

For bouldering or very short powerful routes, the required minimum strength thresholds make 1RM development mandatory for success on individual hard moves. Endurance development can be filed away under "good enough" and not worried about too much.

I think it's unlikely that straight repeaters are actually going to develop the intense levels of finger strength required for true limit bouldering. OTOH, too much 1RM work will lead to stagnation and plateauing or worse, actual injury. The best way to transition between the two ends of the spectrum is probably climbing especially gym bouldering which can be tailored to actually apply isolated strengths developed on the fingerboard and take that where you want to go.

Mark E Dixon wrote:

Whether that's the best surrogate measure of utility for climbing performance is a matter for debate.

This is basically my issue. I don't read much of the climbing literature, but from what I've gathered, there are maybe some studies that might say one hangboarding protocol makes you better at hanging (if you think the sample size is statistically significant), but I've seen none that can actually demonstrate how it relates to climbing performance. In other sports, especially weight lifting, performance is much more measurable, and as such, there are many more useful studies.

What I like about what Steve is offering is that it's a way to train while still maximizing time on the rock. We can all hangboard by any means necessary and get stronger fingers, but if your technique/movement skills/tactics/mental state/movement vocabulary/etc aren't to snuff, then so what?

evan h wrote:

This is basically my issue. I don't read much of the climbing literature, but from what I've gathered, there are maybe some studies that might say one hangboarding protocol makes you better at hanging (if you think the sample size is statistically significant), but I've seen none that can actually demonstrate how it relates to climbing performance. In other sports, especially weight lifting, performance is much more measurable, and as such, there are many more useful studies.

What I like about what Steve is offering is that it's a way to train while still maximizing time on the rock. We can all hangboard by any means necessary and get stronger fingers, but if your technique/movement skills/tactics/mental state/movement vocabulary/etc aren't to snuff, then so what?

You could still do regular repeaters or max hangs once a week, right?

Does it have to be 3-6-9?

tks wrote:

You could still do regular repeaters or max hangs once a week, right?

Does it have to be 3-6-9?

True. Well you guys sort it out and I'll do that! :)

Peter Beal wrote:

Interesting discussion here. My two cents. Whenever training for climbing, you want to keep the end goal in mind and tailor your training to be relatively sport specific to it. If your goal is repeated sub-maximal effort, as in sport climbing, you want to make your training reflect that. 1RM with lots of added weight is probably not going to be helpful compared to focusing on repeaters and reasonably lengthy route climbing sessions. Despite statements out there that high 1RM strength will make endurance easy by comparison, to me that sounds more like bro science than valid theory. "Good enough" 1RM strength is what you want there, not a focus on it.

I agree entirely, except I think you need to also consider your own weaknesses, especially wrt how they impact end goals.

I also think that different people respond differently to the same training, and that the same person responds differently to the same training at different times! 

Nothing is constant except change.

evan h wrote:

This is basically my issue. I don't read much of the climbing literature, but from what I've gathered, there are maybe some studies that might say one hangboarding protocol makes you better at hanging (if you think the sample size is statistically significant), but I've seen none that can actually demonstrate how it relates to climbing performance. In other sports, especially weight lifting, performance is much more measurable, and as such, there are many more useful studies.

I've seen at least one study that tested whether hang boarding improved bouldering performance- surprise, it does!

Don't have it at hand or remember the reference. Not much more to it than that simple conclusion.

Mark E Dixon wrote:

With all due respect to Steve Bechtel, his contention that low resistance training leads to strength gains equal to high resistance training is not supported by the scientific literature, which concludes exactly the opposite.

Low resistance training, if carried to failure, can produce equivalent hypertrophy, but not strength (as measured by maximum voluntary contraction.)

As with all things training, any one person's response to exercise regimes can be entirely idiosyncratic and contrary to the conclusions of research.

Hi Mark,

  I'm sorry to inform you but you have been remiss in your reading.  The Russians have been employing these training philosophies for over 50 years with outstanding results in both olympic and powerlifting programs.  Research Tsatsouline, Schiff, and Justa to get started.  Power to the People Professional is a good read if you want to look at the roots.  Also check out Strongfirst for an entire strength community based on these principles.  Just be prepared to have your eyes opened to a whole new world of strength training.

Also to clarify, Betchel is not endorsing a low resistance, high rep program.  Working in the 70% of max load at a 3-6 rep range is still in the realm of strength.  Adaptation is caused by increasing volume.  Neuromuscular adaptation can be achieved both through Max strength efforts and those at lower loads that fatigue the CNS through higher volume of low rep sets.  The latter method just happens to be much less prone to causing injury.  Cheers.

Steroids

I like a lot of Steve Betchel's ideas, but the 3-6-9 just didn't make sense to me. I tried it for a hangboard cycle, but in the end decided to not use it again. There were two things I didn't like about the 3-6-9 ladder program.

1. It's supposed to be simple. No need to mess around with adding weight and subtracting weight between sets. In practice though, the different hang time proved to be too complex for my simple little brain to track. I did it on a 30-sec clock (3s hang/27s rest, 6/24, 9/21), and often after resting for 20 some seconds and letting my mind wander around on the routes I've been working on or what's for breakfast tomorrow morning, I'll be like, "Wait, did I just do a 3 sec hang or 6 sec hang?" Probably not a problem to most people, but to my little bird brain, I'd rather stick to a program with a simpler clock.

2. I think the biggest issue I had with the 3-6-9 ladder was that I wasn't sure what the 3s hang, or even the 6s hang was supposed to achieve. I've never tested my max on a hangboard, but I doubt that I was using 70% of my max load for the ladder, when I need to hang for 9s with a bit of residual fatigue. Looking at my notes, I was using a weight that is higher than what I would use for repeaters, but less than for max hang, which makes sense. But then what exactly does the 3s hang do? To recruit the muscle and get ready for a hard effort? The weight was too light to feel like I was "recruiting" anything. I felt like I didn't do anything after the 3s hang. To build a little fatigue? Then why not just use the standard repeater? Then to progress you're supposed to add a 12s rep, and I had a hard time adding a full 12s rep even when I didn't feel too tired after the 9s rep.

I just feel the whole ladder thing was too complicated, so I went back to simple repeaters and max hangs.

Kevin- I'll try to post a serious response later, although the steroid picture does make it hard to interpret the Soviet block results.

I think I'd like to clarify what we both think Bechtel is advocating for hang boarding. It doesn't look to me like his 3-6-9 means 3-6 reps. Now that I think about it, he's really advocating max hangs with two warm-up hangs. 

Since we've now come around to realizing that Bechtel's program is mostly a max hang protocol, let me give my anecdote. I am 36, and I've been climbing for 18 years. For most of that time, I haven't really followed a climbing-specific program. I broke an ankle in 2003, and I popped a finger pulley around 2005, but those are about my only real climbing injuries. About 2 years ago, I started hangboarding regularly with repeaters as advocated in RCTM. Went all in with both Rock Prodigy boards and the pulley system. In less than a year, I had progressed from projecting V6-V7/5.12- to occasionally flashing V6/5.12- and projecting V9/5.13-. But I felt my progress plateau (as maybe it should have). I read Eva Lopez' paper comparing repeaters to max hangs (here). Started doing her thing back in February of this year. I was doing my hangs on an 18mm edge with 90 additional pounds.

Around April of this year, 2-3 months after starting max hangs, I started having tendinitis issues in both elbows in addition to pain in my right shoulder. Weird, as I've never had problems before. By May, I started having intermittent tingling in the thumb and pointer of my left hand that I learned was a median nerve issue. By June, anytime I climbed, I'd have constant tingling in that left hand that remained for at least 24 hours. I have since learned that it's a combination of carpal tunnel syndrome in addition to nerve impingement at the left shoulder. I quit climbing entirely in mid-June.

It is now the end of July after about 6 weeks off. My right shoulder seems to be healed, and I don't feel any tendon issues in either elbow. But I still cannot lie on my left shoulder at night without getting tingling/pain in my left fingers. And if I try to think about it, I still feel some mild tingling while I'm just sitting here.

Maybe it's all just coincidence, and maybe it's just that I'm getting old. But I'm now very wary of max hang protocols.

@Brian Abram: I had some significant impingement issues in my shoulder that were resolved with PT (and continually rehabbed with regular PT). A lot of it came down to my posture and pulling position when climbing, hangboarding, etc. Direct quote from the PT: "You have the strongest lats I've ever seen (he works with all the local university athletes). Also, your back is really weak." Basically, poor form when pulling built up over 12 years of climbing and 8 years of training (not very well) left me with a significant trap/lat imbalance that was exacerbated by basically everything else I was doing. 

Point being, max hangs may be the culprit. Or it might be something underlying and preexisting just waiting for the right moment to strike given your much longer climbing history. While the ladders are similar to max hangs, the "built-in warm-up" noted above ultimately limits the max load on the 9sec hang (at least for me). I think this brings it more into the realm of "strength training" but not necessarily "max rep" strength training (my max weight/time are less on the 9sec hang after the other 9 seconds of hanging than they would be if I didn't do the preceding hangs).

@Peter Beal:

I'm with you on the ideas about endurance and max hangs, though I don't think it's entirely "bro science" to posit that greater strength allows for better endurance later. To paraphrase Tony Yaniro, "Without power, there is nothing to endure." I haven't taken a deep dive into the literature (and don't have time for significant google-fu right now) but I've seen similar positions stated in texts on climbing, running, and lifting. An analogy to illustrate: say you wanted to deadlift 200lbs for 20 reps in a single set. This task will be far easier if your deadlift max is 400lbs than if it is 225lbs. If you want to climb a 5.13 with a V8 crux, this will be way easier if you boulder V11 than if you boulder V8. My experience has borne out that greater ultimate strength now lets me do better at endurance/power endurance later.

Alternately, you can think of it as a capacity vs. utilization argument. See: https://www.uphillathlete.com/capacity-training-vs-utilization-training/

Brian Abram wrote:

I was doing my hangs on an 18mm edge with 90 additional pounds.

IME, 2 handed hang w/ lots of added weight (>50% BW) feels way more stressful on the body than 1 handed hang and is way less climbing specific.

Derek DeBruin wrote:

An analogy to illustrate: say you wanted to deadlift 200lbs for 20 reps in a single set. This task will be far easier if your deadlift max is 400lbs than if it is 225lbs. If you want to climb a 5.13 with a V8 crux, this will be way easier if you boulder V11 than if you boulder V8. My experience has borne out that greater ultimate strength now lets me do better at endurance/power endurance later.

This analogy falls apart if one takes it to the extreme...

Derek DeBruin wrote:

@Peter Beal:

I'm with you on the ideas about endurance and max hangs, though I don't think it's entirely "bro science" to posit that greater strength allows for better endurance later. To paraphrase Tony Yaniro, "Without power, there is nothing to endure." I haven't taken a deep dive into the literature (and don't have time for significant google-fu right now) but I've seen similar positions stated in texts on climbing, running, and lifting. An analogy to illustrate: say you wanted to deadlift 200lbs for 20 reps in a single set. This task will be far easier if your deadlift max is 400lbs than if it is 225lbs. If you want to climb a 5.13 with a V8 crux, this will be way easier if you boulder V11 than if you boulder V8. My experience has borne out that greater ultimate strength now lets me do better at endurance/power endurance later.

Alternately, you can think of it as a capacity vs. utilization argument. See: https://www.uphillathlete.com/capacity-training-vs-utilization-training/

No question that you need a certain degree of power to climb hard endurance, But following that logic would imply that Usain Bolt should be amazing at running a 5K or even 1000m because of his power. He's not nor is likely to be. There is no guarantee that a V11 level of bouldering will ease success for a 5.13 with a V8 crux, especially if you focus on the bouldering at the expense of endurance. 

 That's why I say it's fine to train to "good enough" as opposed to an end in itself. Again goals and sport specificity should be the guide

Also as a follow-up

From uphill athlete https://www.uphillathlete.com/capacity-training-vs-utilization-training/

"As an example Alex Megos, the German sport climber and boulderer posted this on his Facebook page on 11/28/15:

“BAAAM! Did “Demenicia Senil” (9a+/5.15a) on my 2nd try today! Once checked it out till the 3rd bolt two years ago but it felt too hard. Today I checked it out the whole way up and (then) did it on the go after! Huge fight!”

What he’s describing is that two years ago he didn’t have the capacity to make the moves. Wasn’t even close from the sounds of it. Then, two years later, he did have the capacity, and he utilized it to climb a 5.15a second try. As an aside I think it’s also instructive to note that when he checked out the route to the third bolt, he realized he didn’t have the capacity, and presumably he moved on to another route. He didn’t waste what capacity he had at the time on something he couldn’t do."

It's worth mentioning that Alex Megos onsighted a 14d in 2013, the first time this had been done in the world and then did La Rambla 5.15a in two tries, almost flashing it and did another 14d in two tries

http://climbingnarc.com/2013/04/la-rambla-5-15a-2nd-go-by-alex-megos/

So I am going to call BS on this "example." Demencia Senil is a short and steep bouldery route that Megos for whatever reason may not have felt like pursuing that day but clearly could have done if he wanted to. If all 5.15as were the same then the argument might make sense but in climbing this is not the case.