Day 17

After Day 14 we took two days of rest to allow our fingers and bodies an extended recovery period. We required this recovery period as we have been grinding at a high-intensity for two-weeks. By allowing our body to heal, we gain greater access to our high end power and can begin to use a bit of the training that we have completed to better our future sets.

Over the seven days, we will strive for maximum effort. Each athlete will have learned more about what “trying hard” means by this point in our power routine. Trying hard, or that moment of face-reddening effort that allows you to reach your personal best, will be the goal this week. It is unlikely that you will achieve new personal bests in every exercise, but the conscious effort to make any burn “the burn” will translate well to climbing when you are looking to send your project after having figured out the moves. Being able to execute is essential to improving your climbing and, though the real gains will come in eleven days, work to produce results this week. c4hp discusses the concept of “athlete intent” below.

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?It doesn’t have to look powerful? I wanted to give everyone an idea as to how "not powerful" something can look, but still optimize power output. The literature suggests that 70% 1RM might be the optimal intensity for producing power output in the prone pull-up. It's important to understand that this exercise doesn't look very powerful (high-velocity) though. That doesn't matter! ▫️ This demonstrates why athlete intent is so important. Even though the load is still heavy, trying to move the load rapidly is what matters. Are you, or your athletes giving maximal intent every rep? That does matter! ▫️ As you slide left, you'll see that my velocity (m/s) drops each rep (mostly), as well as my power output. I performed 3 sets of 4 reps total at max velocity. These principles should help guide training decisions, but they should also be demonstrative of athlete effort. ▫️ Train the curve wisely. @exsurgo.us @bstrongtraining @performance.climbing.coach @usaclimbing #pulluptraining #pulluppower #rockclimbingtraining #StrengthTraining

A post shared by Camp4 Human Performance (@c4hp) on Apr 29, 2020 at 1:12pm PDT

Warm Up:

• Warming up will likely differ between people, but these are a few good warm ups.
  • Shoulder rolls
  • Rotations: hold arms out perpendicular to the length of your body. Your arms should be parallel to the floor. Begin by rotating your wrists clockwise while your arms are straight. Then increase the rotation from the shoulders, maintain g your straight arms. Steadily increase the radius of rotation until your arms are wind milling, then reverse the direction.
  • Hang on a bar and retract and relax your shoulders
    • Complete a number of pull ups that would warm you up but not tire you out

Hangboard:

These hangboard exercises listed below are simple and easy to follow. The training is still exceptionally difficult, and that thought should remain present at all times. When pulling onto a board, you should constantly consider the safety of your fingers.

Step 1:

Know the hand positions.

• Open-hand is defined by a straightened pointer finger, a 90 degree bend in the middle two, and a relatively straight pinky finger.
• Half-crimp is defined by the pointer, middle and ring fingers bent to 90 degrees, with a semi-straight pinky finger
• Full-crimp: we will not train.
• Watch Dave MacLeod’s video on hangboarding for alternative hand-positions for more advanced climbers and general tips and tricks

Step 2:

Warm up the fingers.

• Warm up your fingers by hanging on progressively smaller holds for increasing amounts of time.
• Pull on various edge sizes while retaining contact with the ground. This is known as the “French Traverse”.
• After your fingers are warm, a process which should take at least as long as it takes to warm your fingers up on easy climbs in the gym (10-30 minutes), begin training.

Step 3:

Training

• For those doing two handed hangs:
  • 3 sets of four-finger open-hand for 7-10 seconds
  • 6 sets of four-finger half-crimp for 7-10 seconds
  • Rest for 2-5 minutes between each hang.
• For those completing one handed hangs:
  • Place on hand on edge, on hand on a static rope to the side of the edge
  • Hang on the edge with one hand, and pull on the rope to counterbalance the weight that your edge-hanging hand cannot sustain.
    • Hold the rope as low as possible and aim to lower that hand between sessions so that you can increase the weight on the engaged hand.
  • Complete 9 sets of 7-10 second hangs on a large edge (15mm-35mm) on both sides.
    • If you fall part way through the hang, move your hand higher up the rope so to ensure that you complete the set on the set.

Agonist muscles:

Once your biceps and shoulders are fully warm, or so warm that you could pull as hard as you would want, begin offset pull-ups.

Lock-Offs:

Once your offsets are complete, rest for five-minutes and begin your lock-offs.

Try and hold a lock-off with one arm bent at 90-degrees. If this is too challenging, complete the exercise in a full lock-off on one arm. If this is too difficult, complete ten negatives.

• Negatives: Hold a full lock-off with two arms at the top of the bar. Let one arm go and try and resist gravity with the other arm. You will either hold the lock-off or slowly descend to a straight arm position. The goal of a negative is to increase the time it takes to descend.
  • Complete ten one-arm negatives on each side
• Lock Offs:
  • If you are able to complete the lock-off, then…
  • Aim to hold lock for 10 seconds. 3 sets a side.

Rest for ten minutes, warm into pull ups, then move into offsets.

Offset pull ups:

Offsets are designed to help you build one-arm power. Though we completed a few of these over the course of our conditioning period, we will adjust them for maximum output. For Day 17, hang a rope from your pull-up bar. Place your hand as low as you can on that rope. Either knot it or tape the rope so that you know your maximum offset distance between days.

• Complete 4 sets of 3 repetitions on each arm
  • Rest for two to five minutes between each set, even between arms
    • Be careful of your wrists during this period.
  • If you are already capable of completing a one-arm pull up, then strive to complete between 6 and 10 one-arm pull ups, a side, separated by two-minutes rest.

Core:

Front Levers:

To complete this exercise, hang from a bar and strive to pull into a front-lever-like position. A front lever is primarily defined by straight arms, a straight body, and the plane of that body as parallel to the floor. Remaining parallel to the floor is the most difficult part of the lever, so to train it we will pull into as “high” a lever as we are capable, and then we will hold it as hard as we can.

• Ideally, another person will hold the timer for you so that you can close your eyes and try super-hard. With an exercises like this, trying hard is essential.
  • If you are unable to come anywhere close to maintain a lever, strive to do this exercise with a leg retracted
• Complete 6 front levers at 10 seconds a lever.
  • Rest 3 minutes between each lever

Antagonist Muscles:

Push-ups: High Intensity

Complete 5, 7, or 10 repetitions depending on your skill level per exercise on Day 17. Once that is established…

Complete the following exercises three times in a row for a total of nine sets. Your total push-up count for the day will be either 45, 63, or 90 repetitions.

• elbows-back push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds
• diamond push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds
• archer push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds

Flexibility:

Day 17: Hold each stretch for 15-30 seconds:

• Straddle Splits: This stretch is important to climbing as it increases a climber’s lateral flexibility for moves like stemming in a corner.
• Hamstring: keep your legs straight and bend down to your feet. Keep your back flat for an alternate version of this stretch.
• Hip-flexor: Flexible hip-flexors allow a climber to high-step.
• Quadricep: preventative against injury
• Triceps stretch: preventative against injury
• Shoulder stretch: increases mobility
• Calf stretch: increased heel-hooking mobility

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7/11 is probably my proudest bouldering send, mostly because it’s absolutely not my style. Projected this with a group of tall dudes and had to find all my own beta to get through a reachy bottom section. May as well try to win some shoes with this quick doodle. Screenshot from my send video on the right. I miss rock, I miss the outdoors. #thebestsend @tenayaclimbing @astridsrn @midoriontherocks @willtam85 @thri11ow – get out those sketchbooks and enter! #climbingart #steepsouth #cumberlandboulders #petiteascension #womxnwhoclimb

A post shared by Michelle Ang (@michyllica) on Apr 25, 2020 at 11:21am PDT

Featured photo by 360 Holds.