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

Not arguing that we shouldn't stop at "good enough" and train for specificity--I certainly do this based on my goals. I guess I simply wanted to caveat the assertion surrounding the lack of benefit to training for strength (or at least my perception thereof, though I may have simply misread what you intended). 

So, yes, we agree there's definitely a baseline strength/power requirement, and certainly this analogy can fall apart at the extreme ends (as can many analogies). But in the case of that cruxy 5.13, if you're a V11 climber who then trained the relevant endurance, I'd argue you're still going to have an easier time than the V8 climber. As for Usain Bolt, yeah, those numbers probably don't correlate. But if you wanna look at 5K time with respect to say, half, marathon, 50k, etc., there's some pretty convincing data that correlates them (can't remember exactly where, but it's in Noakes' Lore of Running). This text also clearly lays out that strength training is beneficial for the endurance needed for distance running. Those whose baseline strength is greater can then train endurance following the strength period to achieve faster times. This is the same reason power endurance follows the strength and power phases in a traditional periodized plan. This isn't climbing specific, but I don't think it's a wholly unreasonable position.

evan h wrote:

Thanks Derek. Yeah, I hear you on the recovery and training management, but hell, 30 is the new 20!

I appreciate the clarity on your program. I like that, and makes me feel like I'm progressing, even if only an illusion. And if I understand it, seeing as this is a year-round program, the weights will be increased indefinitely instead of returning to an "elevated baseline" each cycle, like in the RCTM.

Not an expert, but cycles of load & deload are commonly used in weightlifting to break plateaus. Which, having learned about the cycle of supercompensation, makes sense to me.

Derek DeBruin wrote:

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

I have been kind of structuring my training based on the idea of capacity and utilization, and usually we're talking about aerobic capacity, aerobic utilization, anaerobic capacity, anaerobic utilization. Often we group them all into "endurance" (aerobic and anaerobic). My following statement is probably not correct in terms of exercise physiology, but I've come to think of strength as "strength capacity", and power as "strength utilization". So my thinking is that the training of strength and power have very high correlation with each other, but fairly low correlation to any of the "endurance".

My guess is Steve Bechtel doesn't care if you do the 3-6-9 protocol or max hangs or repeaters: https://www.climbstrong.com/articles/20170215.  

I think he just put it in the book as an example of another way to progress on the hangboard as most other protocols focus on increasing weight instead of volume.  He also had an anecdote about progressing volume as a way of helping a lifter break a long plateau on the bench press on one of the climbing podcasts...

About the actual program, i personally like it because I couldn't adhere to the rock prodigy program...but I don't think you're likely to see better results In a vacuum

Just a couple notes on the 3-6-9 protocol.  For starters it is not a max hang protocol.  If you are maxing out on any of your hangs you are doing it wrong.  3-6-9 is based on a ladder program established by gyraveks (Russian strongmen) who train almost exclusively with kettlebells and one of their primary lifts is the overhead press.  A big challenge with kettlebell training is that most bells increase in 4-8 kg increments which is 8-16 lbs.  Anyone who has done much pressing will know that progressing  by 8-16 lbs with a single arm press will only go so far before stalling out.  What the gyraveks discovered is that increasing the volume of less than max presses was the fastest way to break plateaus in their max press.  Generally if you were training to press the 32kg  bell ( 74 lbs) you would train ladders with a 20 or 24 kg bell, generally doing sets of 1-3 or 1-5 depending on the program.  You would increase the volume of sets (1,2,3 to 1,2,3,4,5 to 3x 1,2,3,4,5) and after 6-8 weeks suddenly you were able to press 1.5 times the weight you ever trained with.  I know some scientific minded folks might struggle with this but it is a proven plan used by thousands of strength enthusiasts, even those who don't use steroids like myself.

Now back to the plan.  We do the 3 and 6 second hangs ( equivalent to the 2 and 3 rep sets) and they are easy.  The point is not to make them hard, the point is to increase the total time under tension in a way that does not overload the forearms and cause injury.  You can choose to progress the hangs by adding sets, or choose to progress the training  by overloading through your climbing.  The body does not care.  The key principle is to vary the load to the forearm flexors and remain injury free.  The beauty of the ladder program is that it allows you to climb and fingerboard more frequently with a lower chance of injury.  Once you discover that you are not feeling gains in your training it is probably time to switch to max hangs or repeaters.  The key is to keep training, and Betchel's 3-6-9 protocol is a great bridge program to break up more intense training modalities.

Kevin, thanks.

I'm enmeshed in a Bill Ramsey lite type training day, so can't respond at length but appreciate having something to think about.

Kevin Stricker wrote:

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.

I have a hard time reading folks like Pavel etc, as there's such a strong sales pitch element for their own respective approaches. 

But when I plateau on my current regimen I'll definitely keep it in mind!

Hard to know exactly what Bechtel is advocating wrt load- in his Climbing article he suggests 9 second hangs on a hold you could maintain for 10-12 seconds. So a 75-90% resistance. 90% seems pretty close to max hang level to me.

I am sure some people can develop max strength from low resistance exercise, but it goes against one of the fundamental training principles I accept- i.e. specificity, that is, what you train is what you get.

Bechtel is a well established trainer. Anything he suggests is worth considering. 

But IMHO he misrepresents the scientific literature. 

I'm not sure why, as he doesn't really needs to augment his authority in the field by vague and misleading appeals to science.

Derek DeBruin wrote:

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

Am I missing something, or is this article simply a verbose way of saying that you need both strength and technique? 

With perhaps a bit of a plug for strength first (i.e. come to our gym so we can train you.)

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Just a couple notes on the 3-6-9 protocol.  For starters it is not a max hang protocol.  If you are maxing out on any of your hangs you are doing it wrong.  3-6-9 is based on a ladder program established by gyraveks (Russian strongmen) who train almost exclusively with kettlebells and one of their primary lifts is the overhead press.  A big challenge with kettlebell training is that most bells increase in 4-8 kg increments which is 8-16 lbs.  Anyone who has done much pressing will know that progressing  by 8-16 lbs with a single arm press will only go so far before stalling out.  What the gyraveks discovered is that increasing the volume of less than max presses was the fastest way to break plateaus in their max press.  Generally if you were training to press the 32kg  bell ( 74 lbs) you would train ladders with a 20 or 24 kg bell, generally doing sets of 1-3 or 1-5 depending on the program.  You would increase the volume of sets (1,2,3 to 1,2,3,4,5 to 3x 1,2,3,4,5) and after 6-8 weeks suddenly you were able to press 1.5 times the weight you ever trained with.  I know some scientific minded folks might struggle with this but it is a proven plan used by thousands of strength enthusiasts, even those who don't use steroids like myself.

Now back to the plan.  We do the 3 and 6 second hangs ( equivalent to the 2 and 3 rep sets) and they are easy.  The point is not to make them hard, the point is to increase the total time under tension in a way that does not overload the forearms and cause injury.  You can choose to progress the hangs by adding sets, or choose to progress the training  by overloading through your climbing.  The body does not care.  The key principle is to vary the load to the forearm flexors and remain injury free.  The beauty of the ladder program is that it allows you to climb and fingerboard more frequently with a lower chance of injury.  Once you discover that you are not feeling gains in your training it is probably time to switch to max hangs or repeaters.  The key is to keep training, and Betchel's 3-6-9 protocol is a great bridge program to break up more intense training modalities.

Kevin, good point about the big jump between kettle bells. The BRC has a few with 2kg jumps, which is great.

I find the example above almost impossible to believe. But maybe I'll give it a try, its time to change up my weight routine anyway.

How would you adapt it for one arm pull-ups? I don't care enough about overhead press to spend the time doing 15 sets of them. But one arms...that's different.

Also, do you have any evidence that high volume training is actually safer than high resistance? Seems to me it could go either way.

Your last point about changing things up when you hit a plateau is one I agree with completely.

Still not seeing how 3-6-9 is different in kind from max hangs. Max hangs is not a 1RM protocol either, the most common version I see is about a 75% effort protocol (10" hangs at a load you could hang for 13") that increases volume first before increasing load. I guess adding the 3" and 6" increases the TUT for 3-6-9 but still seems like a variation of a max hangs protocol rather than something different in kind.

Dan, while it is possible to treat the 3-6-9 as a max hang protocol it is not going to be a very effective one.  Consider a typical max hang set is :30 sec of hanging in 6:30, and you may repeat 1-2 more times for your entire workout (1:00 hang in 16:00) or (1:30 in 26:30).  3-6-9 is :18 sec in 1:30 if you are going on the :30, with one cycle of :54 in 4:30 and a full workout of 2:42 hang in 13:30.  Obviously you are not going to be able to hang with the same intensity in both workouts.  

Mark,  For pull-ups you want to check out Fighter Pull-up Plan or Grease the groove training plan.  Just don't try either during a period with lots of climbing unless you want to see your elbows blow up.  Personally I don't do pull-ups during on-season training ( which is 10+ months of the year) because I can still crank out a reasonable number without training them and they tend to make my elbows hurt.

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Mark,  For pull-ups you want to check out Fighter Pull-up Plan or Grease the groove training plan.  Just don't try either during a period with lots of climbing unless you want to see your elbows blow up.  Personally I don't do pull-ups during on-season training ( which is 10+ months of the year) because I can still crank out a reasonable number without training them and they tend to make my elbows hurt.

I've been lucky with my elbows, not many issues there lately.

But looking at the protocols, they are both about increasing the number of reps of pull-ups one can do. 

This isn't really my interest. I'd like to increase the resistance I can overcome in a single (one arm) pull up. 

So I'm not convinced they would really help.

In addition, the schedules are totally unrealistic for me. Training 5 days in a row is too much. And it's unlikely that I will be able to add a rep every single training day. 

Might give it a try anyway though.

Kevin Stricker wrote:

For pull-ups you want to check out Fighter Pull-up Plan ...

Maybe the plan is fine, but their analogy falls flat for me: I'm sure Mike Tyson does plenty of pull ups, but boxers in general do a shit ton more pushing, core, & neck training.

reboot wrote:

Maybe the plan is fine, but their analogy falls flat for me: I'm sure Mike Tyson does plenty of pull ups, but boxers in general do a shit ton more pushing, core, & neck training.

The value of regular bar pullups as training for climbing has always been uncertain to me. Probably better to do something else with the time and energy

The Russian approach Kevin speaks about has also been used by their powerlifting team, and is well known in powerflifting circles, called the "Sheiko" method. Boris Sheiko has produced many world champs and world record holders. After Westside Barbell, it's probably the most well known powerlifting approach. 

It's based on a high volume, medium frequency, low rep sets, at relatively low % of max. You should not be missing lifts or hitting failure in these. A very basic example would be something like a bench press workout done 3x/week with sets of 1x5 @ 50%, 1x4 @ 60%, 1x3 @ 70%, 5x2 @ 80%, the next week addding some weight so you're doing 1x5 @ 55%, 1x4 @ 65% etc. So it's a lot of doubles, usually for 4-5 sets somewhere in the 75% to 85% range, using a wave loading from week to week (i.e. backing off a bit). 

It clearly works for the powerlifters, with the main drawback being time required. Because they're not just training a single exercise (like hangs), they're training M-W-F doing bench in every session, squats in two of them and deadlift in the other. 16 sets with the recovery time between, loading barbells, etc starts creeeping toward a 2.5-3hr workout. That wouldn't be the case with hangs.

If you think about it, it's not really all that different from the 15-18 sets of repeaters in the Andersons' protocol, just lower rep totals and more rest between sets (Sheiko doesn't have a specific timed rest interval AFAIK, rest until you're ready to go again). As a sort of reference point for intensity, most people can manage doubles in most lifts at about 92-95% when fresh, so the worksets of doubles in Sheiko at 80% feel relatively easy for the first few sets and you should be able to complete the sets without hitting failure. 

http://www.strongfirst.com/keys-to-executing-a-successful-weighted-tactical-pull-up/

I thought this was kind of funny since I think many many reasonably strong climbers could easily do a pullup with 50 pounds

Peter Beal wrote:

The value of regular bar pullups as training for climbing has always been uncertain to me. Probably better to do something else with the time and energy

It's non-specific, but generally considered a really good general lift that works a lot of generally important muscles. Similar to squat. If you can already knock out twenty beautiful pullups with elbows back & 50lbs added, you're right, probably not much value in continuing. You can probably crush rocks between your scapula. But a lot of us (like myself) are not quite there yet!

aikibujin wrote:

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.

1. Use a timer app on your phone. Seconds pro let me make a customized timer with both a color change on the phone and audio alert. I listed the holds in text as well. My bird brain doesn't have to think about anything but form. 

2. I did test max hangs after 7 days off after completing a 4 week set (I did the 3-6-9-12 in 3 sets on the 4th weeks). I would use the same hold I had been training and add weight in 5lb increments until failure at 10 seconds. Note that starting around a year ago this was my first time hangboarding, the only protocol I have tried, and I started out with really weak fingers. Weights listed are body weight AND additional weight in one:

166lbs Before any hangboard training

158lbs used for all hangs on first round of ladders
193lb max hang after first round

173lbs used for all hangs on second round of ladders
210lbs after second round

After this I went down in edge size to have only one pad, didn't bother with retesting max hangs for that edge size. I have to reinforce that as I was new to hang boarding a LOT of that increase is likely the "newb gains" you would expect from increased recruitment. You would really need to run this test after hang boarding for a longer period of time.

Mark, the fighter pull-up plan can be scaled to weighted pull-ups.  Start at 75% of your max weighted pull-up and build to 5 reps (1,2,3,4,5) then step up 5 lbs and repeat.  Lot's of posts on Strongfirst forum on this, worth checking out if your serious.

Peter Beal wrote:

http://www.strongfirst.com/keys-to-executing-a-successful-weighted-tactical-pull-up/

I thought this was kind of funny since I think many many reasonably strong climbers could easily do a pullup with 50 pounds

Peter, 

the "Beast Tamer" is performed with a 48kg KB, not an easy feat for most climbers.