Day 25

Today’s training will be our last set of hangboard for this training cycle. We will also complete our front-levers and lock-offs today and refrain from all high repetition exercise. As we continue to deload over the course of these next few days, it will be important for each athlete to rest, eat well, and drink water so that we can offer our bodies the greatest opportunity to heal. The goal for Day 25 is to prime ourselves for maximal strength at the end of this training period, so please refrain from additional exercises today. Tomorrow we will rest, and our last training day of the cycle will occur on Day 27.

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Climbers often obsess about hanging ever greater weights from themselves from a fingerboard – but this is only ONE part of the equation!! If you really want to dial in the greatest improvements, with the most consistency and lowest chance of injury you must add in variety to your finger strength work in the long term. Sure you can hammer it in just one grip, one protocol for a while, but this is likely to rob you of your real potential. Note in the video above @will_bosi is varying arm position, grip position AND load from a typical traditional single arm hang… but… it still has a strength stimulus. What he’s doing is absolutely desperate, so don’t be fooled by the relatively low deadlift weights!! ??? So what’s important for all you out there, right now? ??? 1. Vary your grip position across the annual training cycle. For example, we use B3F3 training with advanced athletes to progress them through performance plateaus in MVC. 2. Don’t ignore your thumb, your pinch or your ability to exert force in a range of positions in the MCP joint. This is especially important as you become more advanced. 3. Vary arm/shoulder loading. 2-arm, 1-arm, pick-ups, curls. This has become really essential in recent times with lots of fingerboard training. Don’t get too narrowly focused! Our Crimp and Pinch block is designed exactly for this purpose. 4. Vary contact point depth. 40mm, 20mm, 15mm, 10mm and smaller. It all has its place and approach use will massively impact your performance and injury reduction. #climbingtraining #moonboard #climbing_is_my_passion #tradclimbing #sportclimbing #bouldering #gritstone #ukclimbing #indoorclimbing #latticetraining #latticer #climbing_lovers #climbing_pictures_of_instagram #climbing_is_my_passion #klettern #escalade #klatre

A post shared by Lattice Training (@latticetraining) on May 9, 2020 at 4:42am 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.

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 25. 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 25: 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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??Pump up the sound. It's Friday night. Fingerboard dance time ?

A post shared by Pete Whittaker (@petewhittaker01) on May 1, 2020 at 1:43pm PDT

Featured photo by Kevin Takashi Smith of Jimmy Webb.