DOMS and Approaches to training

I've read both David Macleod's '9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes' and Mike Anderson's Rock Prodigy book. To me they have differing philosophies on periodization. Macleod's philosophy is to use the principles of exercise science and to mainly learn to 'listen to your body' in terms of what is working and rest vs more intensity. While Anderson is more on the side of being scientific and allotting rest days and periodization a month in advance.

I just started hang boarding largely based off of Mike Anderson's routine and have been happy with my results (went from 11d RP to 12 b/c RP in 2 month's) But I don't think periodization is for me, at least right now. So I have a few questions:

Is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) a good gauge for intensity? i.e. if I wake up and my arms/fingers aren't tender or sore should I hit the hangboard/climb/increase intensity more? (More of MacLeod's Intuitive Approach?) Is DOMS a gauge for super compensation?

Also has anyone experimented with both approaches and have any feedback about either approach?

FYI:

MacLeod on Intuitive approach to training::
rockandice.com/lates-news/t…

Anderson on The Making of a Rock Prodigy, a more scientific approach
rockclimbing.com/Articles/T…

Grant Gerhard wrote:I've read both David Macleod's '9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes' and Mike Anderson's Rock Prodigy book. To me they have differing philosophies on periodization. Macleod's philosophy is to use the principles of exercise science and to mainly learn to 'listen to your body' in terms of what is working and rest vs more intensity. While Anderson is more on the side of being scientific and allotting rest days and periodization a month in advance. I just started hang boarding largely based off of Mike Anderson's routine and have been happy with my results (went from 11d RP to 12 b/c RP in 2 month's) But I don't think periodization is for me, at least right now. So I have a few questions: Is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) a good gauge for intensity? i.e. if I wake up and my arms/fingers aren't tender or sore should I hit the hangboard/climb/increase intensity more? (More of MacLeod's Intuitive Approach?) Is DOMS a gauge for super compensation? Also has anyone experimented with both approaches and have any feedback about either approach? FYI: MacLeod on Intuitive approach to training:: rockandice.com/lates-news/t… Anderson on The Making of a Rock Prodigy, a more scientific approach rockclimbing.com/Articles/T…

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is usually associated with new and novel movements. After an athlete becomes accustomed to the movement, the intensity of DOMS tends to reduce over time. As the DOMS effect subsides, you can still be having an intense workout that is making you stronger with lessened soreness the next 24-72 hours. So DOMS isn't a good gauge for exercise intensity. It's a good gauge of noting that you're doing something that your body isn't used to.

A better gauge is a notebook/journal/spreadsheet where you note what training exercises and climbing exercises you've done and then pay close attention to if your actions are having the results you want.

I think you are confusing the philosophies of the Rock Prodigy plan and Dave Macleod's advice. Both strongly follow principles of sports science, i.e. progressive overload, specificity, reversibility, variety, and individuality. The difference between the two comes down to program structure and exercise content. The Rock Prodigy plan strongly suggests when to focus on which performance aspect(raw strength, contact strength, power, power-endurance,...). While Dave Macleod suggests a less linear approach but puts the program structure on the athlete to determine, while suggesting similar exercises to achieve improvements in the same performance aspects.

If anything, the Rock Prodigy plan might be better to follow for a few seasons if you've never done any specific training for sport before. It tells you what exercises to do, how to do them, roughly how long you should stick with them, and more importantly what the volume/intensity and work/rest ratios should roughly look like. Doing this would teach you how to listen to your body. After you have this base of skills and knowledge about how your body reacts, then you could switch to a Dave Macleod style structure of intuitively following your body.

So if you want finger strength then hangboard. If you want power then limit boulder/campus. If you want power-endurance then link boulder problems. If you want endurance then link more boulder problems.

Grant Gerhard wrote:Is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) a good gauge for intensity? i.e. if I wake up and my arms/fingers aren't tender or sore should I hit the hangboard/climb/increase intensity more? (More of MacLeod's Intuitive Approach?) Is DOMS a gauge for super compensation?

Delayed onset muscle soreness can occur for anyone, regardless of how trained they may be, if the intensity and volume are high enough. So in that sense, yes, it can vaguely tell you how intensely you trained in terms of stress to the muscle tissue. DOMS will lessen given repetition of the same load over time because of changes in the nervous system and increases in the muscle's contractile proteins. But if you increase the load or volume, you will experience DOMS again. The exercise does not need to be novel for this to happen.

Depending on the goal of the training session, I would say DOMS could be considered a sign of overtraining. Just because you aren't sore doesn't mean you need to increase the intensity or volume necessarily. For instance, if your training session is focused on skilled movements, I would certainly avoid complete fatigue and/or a lot of DOMS. If you are training non-skilled exercises, it is more acceptable but if it interferes with your ability to train again on the next desired day, you are also overdoing it.

Experiencing consistent DOMS during training sessions indicates to me that you are not doing a good job of manipulating your variables (i.e. frequency, intensity, duration).

And to reiterate, the research field of exercise science is based on the scientific method. ;-)

Grant Gerhard wrote:s Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) a good gauge for intensity? i.e. if I wake up and my arms/fingers aren't tender or sore should I hit the hangboard/climb/increase intensity more?

Good question.
I have not heard that DOMS has been shown to be just one "thing". It might be a common set of symptoms which results from different causes for different people in different situations.

I'll guess that getting results in the true scientific sense -- of a well-controlled comparison of two randomly-selected groups one with substantial (or more) DOMS, and the other with none (or less) DOMS -- is not likely to emerge soon.

No doubt trying some new exercise can cause DOMS for lots of people.

But I've been doing similar campus-board exercises for lots of months, and I frequently feel soreness from them still on the second day afterward ... sometimes yes, but sometimes not. I bet weightlifters sometimes have DOMS even doing the same lifts they've done lots before.

Is a certain level of DOMS "optimal" for building strength or power? I don't know how you'd prove that scientifically.

Would I achieve faster gains if I stopped my workouts a little earlier or lighter, resulting in less DOMS intensity or frequency? (since it's hard for me to imagine that I could take on more DOMS)
I'd love to know.

I'll guess that if you almost never feel DOMS after any of your intense workouts, then likely you should try increasing the intensity.

Ken

P.S. I don't think that determining your workout type and intensity three weeks (or seventeen weeks) in advance is more "scientific". There are no well-controlled scientific studies demonstrating that a 3 week "period" is better than a 5 week "period" for climbing strength. The Anderson book has a page later which fully acknowledges that lots of climbers do just fine training with a "non-linear" strategy (which sounds a lot like MacLeod's approach).

I don't think the Anderson book sees the "science" much differently from other modern English-language climbing training books. The genius of the Anderson book is in recognizing that lots of climbers want to be told what to do very specifically and with great assurance that they are doing it the "right" way. And that sprinkling around footnotes and lots of talk about taking a scientific approach helps give that important assurance to lots of climbers. So the Anderson book delivers it.

Grant Gerhard wrote:Macleod's philosophy is to use the principles of exercise science and to mainly learn to 'listen to your body' in terms of what is working and rest vs more intensity.

Actually now that I read the MacLeod article more closely, there's almost nothing about using perceived soreness as a guide to training. Later in the article he gives a specific case where he criticizes that as an "amateur" approach.

Seems that MacLeod is more saying to record and measure what your body's long-term response is to various combinations of intensity and volume of different kinds of training.

(surprise: that's a key part of what the Anderson book means by "scientific" training)

Seems like his key points versus the Anderson book are:

• long-term Periodization is tricky with multiple dimensions (e.g. "concentrated" versus "complex").
• each climber needs to work out their own Periodization program (based on careful self-measuring and general exercise principles).

He also points out that serious athletes + coaches in most other sports allow only one or at most two peaking seasons during a year - (unlike three 17 week cycles).

Again the genius of the Anderson book in recognizing that those points are not what lots of climbers want to hear -- then being careful to consistently "stay on message" to deliver something different.

DOMS is a bad gauge for intensity, if you are training to the point where your body is completely wrecked for 3 or 4 days you are over-training in that session (waking up a little tender or sore doesn't really sound like DOMS to me, though I guess there are different levels of it)

Your body will not get stronger by consistently hammering it into mush several times a week, my favourite graph ever is the one in the RCTM where the wavy line dips down every time you train, but just barely squeeks back above where it started by the time you start the next one, that's what training should be like.

Also from personal experience and talking to alot of people, proper nutrition, stretching, massage etc will really help with your recovery. I went from barely being able to sleep after training sessions in the gym (obviously overdoing it btw!) feeling absolutely fine after the same level of intensity sessions by:

• Stretching before * after, especially forearm extensors/flexors
• protein/instant oat shake immediately after finishing climbing
• proper meal with lots of veg asap after climbing

* gnarly tissue massage with lacrosse ball and spiky foam roller <-----------can't emphasise this one enough. If you've never tried ironing out your forearms after a climb, go get one on ebay for a few $$ and try it. Miracle worker!

• doing a warmdown (some super easy climbs at the end of the session)

Even though Macleod may not make a super big deal of periodization like the andersons do, you can bet your ass he has a plan of what he is doing in the year. The point of periodization is to make training easier/safer than just doing it 'by feel'

happy training :)

I found both books to actually be complimentary. The RCTM went into much more detail and laid out a formal training approach. 9 out of 10 echos many of the same principles with not quite as much detail. 9 out of 10 also covers a number of mental aspects not covered in the RCTM.

In the RCTM, the authors do mention that you'll feel like you're resting a lot. But I'd argue that if you went from 11d to 12b/c in 2 months, something was working. I've been training with the RCTM for a year now, and it's been really good. The initial two seasons there was much tweaking. Actually, there's still tweaking, but many can vouch for its effectiveness.

SO I've been doing my first hangboard sessions while following the Rock Prodigy methods, and I have had barely any DOMS between hangboard days (every third day). Yet, in 4 sets, I've gained 35lb of increase on almost every hold. So, its definitely working, with almost no muscle soreness. I was thinking for the first few that it wasn't working, because I'm used to major muscle soreness after a hard workout that produced results. So I was skeptical at first, but the numbers are speaking for themselves... So soreness is not a good indicator in my short experience.

Also important to note that Dave M. has built his approach to climbing around doing so at a high level in many disciplines based on season, so in his case strict periodization maybe makes less sense, as he probably needs to focus on very different things depending on season.