Training for dyno when pumped

First off, Hank's advice to HTFU is pretty spot on.

Second, it seems the whole thread has moved to power development, which seems off target to me. Sure, developing power will help help the OP make a bigger dyno, but I am fairly confident that's not his problem. His problem is that he gets to the dyno fatigued.

Any sort of power movement is going to be made significantly more difficult by the degree of fatigue. Therefore I'd say the OP will get more benefit training for power-endurance and slower strength (1-2minutes of output, opposed to 5-30seconds). This type of training will prevent the fatigue from setting in on the lower section, and give the OP a greater chance to hit the move. If he can get there fresh, and still can't make the dyno, then I'd prescribe power development.

For developing that 1-2minute window, try a workout starting with a strength component and ending with a "cardio" sprint. For instance, 80% of your max pullups, followed by 20 burpee pullups as fast as possible. Rest 2-6minutes, and repeat 6-8 times.

I have a lot of respect for the other posters and would be interested in their thoughts, but I thought it was necessary to point out that the discussion has been dominated by power development, which probably isn't the best prescription given the OP's situation (though it is totally rad and fun to talk about).

Since we're already slightly OT, and it's related to speed/power this seems like as good of a place as any...

I found this article pretty interesting, an assertion that campusing doesn't achieve the effects we think of in plyometric training due to the time being too slow to effectively use the stretch shortening cycle. Basically they claim you lose the accumulated energy before the concentric fires.

marvinclimbing.com/english/…

from the description of the boulder problem, it sounds like it should be 20 seconds or less. i wouldn't categorize this as PE. while fatigue buildup could be an issue, i don't think that PE type workouts are going to help much.

Will S wrote:Since we're already slightly OT, and it's related to speed/power this seems like as good of a place as any... I found this article pretty interesting, an assertion that campusing doesn't achieve the effects we think of in plyometric training due to the time being too slow to effectively use the stretch shortening cycle. Basically they claim you lose the accumulated energy before the concentric fires. marvinclimbing.com/english/…

sounds like climbing is, indeed, pretty slow..... anybody who has belayed me could tell you that much.

Are we going to get a photo or what?

Aerili wrote: Tissues do suffer creep (deformation from stress),

That's not really what creep is. Creep is deformation over time under constant stress.

Aerili wrote: like any material,

Many materials don't experience creep.

Aerili wrote: and when the mechanical stress applied to them becomes too high (without enough recovery to allow tissue restoration), you get injured.

Are you implying that 'tissue restoration' occurs instantaneously, or within the time frame of a climbing session?

Thanks, Tom, for the corrections. I was going for the KISS principle but it was probably a bad idea. Although mechanical properties of soft tissues are really interesting to me (and I am currently in an academic department that houses what is probably the best/foremost lab in the world for studying such things), I have a much better background in macro human mechanics...so I should probably stick to what I know better.

That said, soft tissues do suffer creep (and exhibit viscoelastic behaviors as such).

Tom Mulholland wrote:Are you implying that 'tissue restoration' occurs instantaneously, or within the time frame of a climbing session?

No. Actually, there are probably loads to tissue nonlinear elasticity and viscoelasticity behavior of which I really know nothing (and no one posting on here knows, no matter what they say) and therefore should probably leave alone. But what I can tell you from my sports medicine background (more clinical), is that recovery for a tendon or ligament or muscle depends on a lot of factors, including how much load was applied and for how long, the direction of the load, the state of the connective tissue prior to loading, the individual's genetic make-up wrt the tissue, and so forth.

Dana wrote:He may be right. Aren't there specific requirements for plyometric exercises that must be in place for them to be plyometric, e.g., the amount of time of each phase, the time between the phases of the movement, the length that the muscle is stretched, the load applied, etc.?

Yes. I've read Will S's link before (about how campusing is not plyometric). Plyometrics are great for power development but keep in mind that something doesn't have to be purely plyometric to be powerful. For instance, one of the lab tests used for lower body anaerobic power is the Wingate cycling test. It lasts 30 seconds and there's nothing plyometric about it. I've done one.... and it is insanely difficult.

Robert D wrote:Second, it seems the whole thread has moved to power development, which seems off target to me. Sure, developing power will help help the OP make a bigger dyno, but I am fairly confident that's not his problem. His problem is that he gets to the dyno fatigued.

I think this could be a great insight. I was sort of hinting around at this earlier when I stated that he may not have the proper strength base for the power execution.

Aerili wrote: That said, soft tissues do suffer creep (and exhibit viscoelastic behaviors as such).

That's actually really interesting. Hadn't really thought about that before. Sorry for being a smartass. As a plastics engineer, I get a little feisty when people use the term 'creep.'

Aerili wrote:Plyometrics are great for power development but keep in mind that something doesn't have to be purely plyometric to be powerful. For instance, one of the lab tests used for lower body anaerobic power is the Wingate cycling test. It lasts 30 seconds and there's nothing plyometric about it. I've done one.... and it is insanely difficult.

I googled it & we are talking about ~10 watts/kg of body mass if you are good. A top TDF sprinter like Mark Cavendish can put down ~1,500 watts on the power meter (not for 30 secs though), or ~22 watts/kg. However, this pales in comparison to peak power output during a vertical leap (close to 100 watts/kg on a 3 foot vertical), which would more closely resemble a dyno. So yeah, we can both talk about power, but it's comparing apples & oranges here.

shumin, add a psd diagram for us blue collar types, will ya?

shuminW wrote: I googled it & we are talking about ~10 watts/kg of body mass if you are good. A top TDF sprinter like Mark Cavendish can put down ~1,500 watts on the power meter (not for 30 secs though), or ~22 watts/kg. However, this pales in comparison to peak power output during a vertical leap (close to 100 watts/kg on a 3 foot vertical), which would more closely resemble a dyno. So yeah, we can both talk about power, but it's comparing apples & oranges here.

It's not comparing apples to oranges. Wingate is used to measure both peak power output and mean power output. (Btw, I'm not sure the usefulness of throwing in some of the highest peak power numbers generated by pro cyclists and comparing them to percentile norms.)

There are other tests for measuring anaerobic power, mostly field tests involving sprints, vertical jumps, broad jumps, shuttle runs, etc. But guess what? They relate them back to the Wingate for validity. And actually, most of them correlate quite well with the Wingate performance, especially vertical jump and 30+/- meter single sprint tests (although less so for repeated sprint tests). The key here is not to compare pure W/kg up against one another between tests: it's a correlation between performance outcomes.

Two studies I checked out examined the validity of other anaerobic power tests, and they stated:

"As a laboratory measure, the Wingate anaerobic cycle ergometer power test is considered the most valid and reliable instrument to assess peak power and anaerobic capacity." (this was for a vertical jump study)

"Most research studies that have studied criterion validity of the repeated-sprint tests have used the Wingate anaerobic test (WAT) because it is generally considered as the most popular and reliable test for determining anaerobic performance capabilities of multisprint sports athletes in a laboratory setting." (this was for a new agility test used to measure anaerobic and explosive power)

I can link both the studies cited here and the studies they cited if you want.

Anyway, my only point before was that eliciting a stretch-shortening response in a tendon (a la plyometrics) is not the only thing that defines or confers power training...

juancho after reading all of the posts I hope you have had your question answered. I train people for strength/power/ and endurance but lots of my training is for quadriplegics and spinal cord injury.

When dealing with people who have spinal cord injuries often the best way to train to stay functional in their home is to do the activity that they need to do to be functional. Building a simulation just isn't always possible. I think that is your problem here and my advice is to just crank this boulder problem every week for a session (then move to something else and have fun) until you have the muscle memory, strength and stamina to fire it.

I think the risk of injury is to great to spend a lot of time with the training methods suggested in most of these posts. I also think you will get bored logging all this stuff. I've found the way to stay consistent for most people is to keep it simple and fun. Getting to complex, and tedious leads to burnout.

Good Luck

Aerili wrote: It's not comparing apples to oranges. Wingate is used to measure both peak power output and mean power output.

Except the peak power in that test is still much lower than the power of the anaerobic jump test (if we are talking about the studies on youth basketball players), and the numbers did not correlate that well (yes there's a strong positive correlation, that doesn't mean you can plot the curve of an increasing function and have most of the data points sit close to it).

We aren't even talking about what happens when you train for the wingate test, will that still correlate well with vertical jump? I bet Mark Cavendish or even the TDF climbing specialists will crush this test but they may be quite horrible at sprints off the bike or vertical jumps, relative to a track & field athlete.

Aerili wrote:Anyway, my only point before was that eliciting a stretch-shortening response in a tendon (a la plyometrics) is not the only thing that defines or confers power training

My skepticism comes from the fact that the mechanism is just so different, we are talking about very short interval (repeated for sprinting) but high peak power verses much longer interval but lower peak power (the crank position changes the power output, usually lowest when dead vertical). Correlation between the 2 for athletes that specializes the former does not mean you can perform power training in the latter and have it translate back.

shuminW wrote: Except the peak power in that test is still much lower than the power of the anaerobic jump test (if we are talking about the studies on youth basketball players), and the numbers did not correlate that well (yes there's a strong positive correlation, that doesn't mean you can plot the curve of an increasing function and have most of the data points sit close to it).

I don't think the actual peak power outputs matter. What matters is that there is a statistically significant correlation between Wingate performance and other power-oriented sports performance, whether it is jumping, sprinting, etc. Some studies show moderate correlation, some show very high correlations, but most conclude they are significant and I would imagine that is why they continue using the Wingate for precise and reproducible analysis which gives good predictions.

shumin wrote:We aren't even talking about what happens when you train for the wingate test, will that still correlate well with vertical jump? I bet Mark Cavendish or even the TDF climbing specialists will crush this test but they may be quite horrible at sprints off the bike or vertical jumps, relative to a track & field athlete.

Well, first of all, you don't train for the Wingate. You just do it (and it sucks, ha ha). As for your other statement, it would be interesting to make a TDF cyclist run and jump (actually, I would love to do that!) and see what happens, but I think you are forgetting that Wingate values are not JUST based on elite level athletes but rather values for a normal population...so, they may do better than you think when compared to "everyone". Will they jump as high as even an amateur high jumper? Skill of jumping aside, no, but that's not the point of measuring general anaerobic power outputs. You take the measurements and apply it to the individual's given sport relative to others they are competing/playing with-- either so you know what position suits them or what element they need to train more for.

shumin wrote:My skepticism comes from the fact that the mechanism is just so different, we are talking about very short interval (repeated for sprinting) but high peak power verses much longer interval but lower peak power (the crank position changes the power output, usually lowest when dead vertical).

Well, the Wingate spits out a peak power value for whatever 5 second interval had the highest power output. Most sprints last longer than 5 seconds.

Anyway, the point is not to train two different power athletes the same way and think it'll transfer back. The point of the test is to get a general feeling for their peak and mean power outputs-- and the Wingate test is reliable, reproducible, accurate, and predicts well across power sports by all scientific accounts. Also, it is important to remember that regardless of "what" the athlete does kinematically, the fuel substrates for 5 second peak power and 30 second mean power are the same no matter what, so it can be generalized across athletic endeavors in that regard too.

Apparently there is also a running Wingate version, although I am not familiar. Of course any good coach also uses a multitude of field tests to test and evaluate athletes. Most won't even have access to Wingate. But it's still the gold standard and is used as the test to compare against when checking validity of all others, especially from a research pov.

Aerili wrote: I don't think the actual peak power outputs matter. What matters is that there is a statistically significant correlation between Wingate performance and other power-oriented sports performance, whether it is jumping, sprinting, etc.

It's not hard to believe that somebody who does better @ Wingate will be better at another power sport, especially compared to people with very similar sports background. So yes, you have statistical significance of positive correlation. But that is a far cry from being able to build a high quality regression model so that you can take the Wingate test results and predict how well a person will do on a particular power sport. I'm sure there's a highly statistically significant positive correlation of how well someone climbs routes and how well he/she boulders, but there are also plenty of climbers closer to either ends of the spectrum. And that's my criticism of reading too much into these studies: they picked subjects that are likely to guarantee statistical significance. They were small samples and they certainly weren't random: they picked people from similar background. If you really want to prove a strong point with a small sample size you don't just pick random, you pick outliers: It would have proven the efficacy of the test had they picked some cyclists and compared them to sprinters.

Aerili wrote:Well, the Wingate spits out a peak power value for whatever 5 second interval had the highest power output. Most sprints last longer than 5 seconds.

That's not what I meant: during sprinting you are putting down high peak power when your foot is in contact with the ground, which is very brief, so is vertical jump or Olympic style weight lifting, whether you do reps or not. But in cycling, you have a much more continuous power stroke for the entire duration of the test. I mean, you can still try cranking during just a short turn of the crank, but any good cyclist will leave you in the dust.

shuminW wrote: But that is a far cry from being able to build a high quality regression model so that you can take the Wingate test results and predict how well a person will do on a particular power sport.

I don't even know the true extent of the Wingate's ability to predict. Do you? I do know it has been revised and improved over a 70 year period so it must have some decent capabilities for analysis.

shumin wrote:And that's my criticism of reading too much into these studies: they picked subjects that are likely to guarantee statistical significance.

Well several I read included groups of untrained individuals. And two I looked at stated the test was more predictive (more correlative? can't remember) for younger, less well-trained athletes than more elite athletes. This does not seem to guarantee statistical success if those are the people you typically pick to study.

shumin wrote:It would have proven the efficacy of the test had they picked some cyclists and compared them to sprinters.

I think if you are really assured of your ideas, you should honestly think of writing to some of these authors and telling them what you think and see what they respond. And if they do, please pm me and let me know as I would be interested.

P.S. I agree that most sample sizes are small, but unfortunately this kind of testing is pretty onerous and I think it could be lengthy and costly to do with large groups. I don't know what the funding situ is like for such endeavors right now?

mountainlion wrote:When dealing with people who have spinal cord injuries often the best way to train to stay functional in their home is to do the activity that they need to do to be functional. Building a simulation just isn't always possible. I think that is your problem here and my advice is to just crank this boulder problem every week for a session (then move to something else and have fun) until you have the muscle memory, strength and stamina to fire it.

This. Everything else is just........... jabberwocky.