More HYP/Campusing Questions

I'm almost done with a 4-week HYP phase and moving into MaxR after doing a full 6 week dedicated ARC phase. I have a few specific questions I'm hoping I can get some help with. For reference, I redpoint mid 5.12 and V5.

My hangboard routine is directly off the Anderson Bros. Making of a Rock Prodigy. I use 6 different holds and do 6 10 second hangs on each hold with 5 seconds rest in between hangs and 2 minutes rest between sets. I've noticed a few things. In order to do this, the holds I use are fairly friendly but because of the nature of repeaters have a pretty good pump going by my 3rd or 4th set. I don't add any weight and usually cannot make it through the entire work out successfully and have to drop off some of the smaller holds. That being said, I have seen gains as since I began, as I can successfully complete more sets than I could when I started. While I see how this translates to PE, I'd rather work MaxR at this point and I've read that you should not be pumped training MaxR.

Would "max-style" hangs either with weight added, less reps and on smaller holds be a better way to train MaxR? I also chose the repeaters on friendlier holds since this was my first true dedicated training session and I was focused on injury avoidance. For my next cycle I would like to lean more toward MaxR, what are some suggestions to do that?

For MaxR, even though my HYP phase doesn't end until this Friday, I began tooling around the campus board this week just to see where I might be at as I have never worked a campus board before. I can successfully ladder on the largest rungs up about 12 rungs, alternating hands. I can make long reaches between rungs, usually between 3 and 4 rungs. I can move up and down which I'm trying to incorporate because I've read significant gains can occur from training extension which happens in a downward campus.

I have exercises on the campus board that I like, but my main source of confusion is the freshness factor. What I mean by this is when my power is sapped, I have to drop off the ladder. However, with minimal rest (5-10 seconds) I can do another ladder. However, the literature seems to indicate power is only trained when you are completely fresh. Does that mean I should be giving one lap and the resting fully, or get fully worked out (a few different exercises until failure) and then resting completely?

I also run for 10 minutes between each different workout and do a 30 minute core work out each session. (Run -> Campus -> Run -> Core -> Run) My final question is that my HYP/MaxR workouts are likely only going to take between 30-45 minutes. What kind of climbing can I do? Again, I've read both HYP and MaxR workouts should be done fresh, and that any kind of endurance training following those workouts can be detrimental. Am I just supposed to shelve climbing for the time being?

Hi Birdman-

Although I'm not an expert on training like some folks on this board, I will try to answer some of your questions as I have asked the very same questions in the past and received good input from the gurus and through my own research. I myself just got done with a Rockprodigy hangboard phase and climb at a similar grade as you.

It seems like the way you are going through your hangboarding is really starting to hit on Strength Endurance as opposed to hypertrophy. Your hang times are certainly a bit long. For reference I was doing 7-on 3-off hangs for 6 different grips while adding/subtracting weight and if I hit the workout right I never felt much of a pumped feeling like my forearms were going to explode while going through the workout. Try shortening your hang times to 7-3 or even 5-5 and play with adding and subtracting weight so that your grip fails on the last rep of each set.

"Max-style" hangs I believe are much better suited to building pure strength. I'm playing with going into a mixed Strength/Strength Endurance phase now that my HYP phase is done. I've put in the work to increasing muscle fiber size so now I'm focusing on making them as strong as possible! For pure strength max hangs of 5-8 seconds with at least 90 second rest between each hang seems to be the best method. Pick 3 grips and do 4-5 max hangs with each grip.

Maximum Recruitment is best suited for training on the campus board. The idea here is that you want to engage as many fibers in your forearms as you can. Just hanging from a hangboard may not do that; you need the added stress of moving to and latching a hold. Ladders are a good way to start; be careful going down the rungs as it's very stressful on your tendons. For now going up should be enough. Again, this isn't the time to feel pumped; if you're getting pumped you're not training MaxR, you're training endurance.

As for the running throughout your climbing workouts I would recommend against that and do your running workouts on days that you don't train for climbing. The reason I say this is that there are studies that show that doing a strength workout followed directly by endurance work will really dilute the gains from the strength workout that you did. Have 1 focus for each workout; it's ok (and recommended) to separate high-intensity days (strength, power) from low intensity days (running, ARC).

Hope this helps you get on the right track for your training!

Since the Anderson Bros are writing a book, you can wait & see the details of their training plans. But my impression is their workouts are actually much longer/more frequent than people believe they are. Both of their hangboard/campus sessions, when factoring in the warmup/cool down are much closer to 2 hours long than 1 hour. They also do what would be considered endurance training/maintenance during their HYP/MaxR phases. If your campus session is only 30-45 mins, then I don't see anything wrong w/ climbing for another hour afterwards. But be smart about it: don't project a route, don't do something too fingery. But working on certain techniques & lapping on routes below your OS should be beneficial.

Alvaro Arnal wrote:Hi Birdman- Although I'm not an expert on training like some folks on this board, I will try to answer some of your questions as I have asked the very same questions in the past and received good input from the gurus and through my own research. I myself just got done with a Rockprodigy hangboard phase and climb at a similar grade as you. It seems like the way you are going through your hangboarding is really starting to hit on Strength Endurance as opposed to hypertrophy. Your hang times are certainly a bit long. For reference I was doing 7-on 3-off hangs for 6 different grips while adding/subtracting weight and if I hit the workout right I never felt much of a pumped feeling like my forearms were going to explode while going through the workout. Try shortening your hang times to 7-3 or even 5-5 and play with adding and subtracting weight so that your grip fails on the last rep of each set. "Max-style" hangs I believe are much better suited to building pure strength. I'm playing with going into a mixed Strength/Strength Endurance phase now that my HYP phase is done. I've put in the work to increasing muscle fiber size so now I'm focusing on making them as strong as possible! For pure strength max hangs of 5-8 seconds with at least 90 second rest between each hang seems to be the best method. Pick 3 grips and do 4-5 max hangs with each grip. Maximum Recruitment is best suited for training on the campus board. The idea here is that you want to engage as many fibers in your forearms as you can. Just hanging from a hangboard may not do that; you need the added stress of moving to and latching a hold. Ladders are a good way to start; be careful going down the rungs as it's very stressful on your tendons. For now going up should be enough. Again, this isn't the time to feel pumped; if you're getting pumped you're not training MaxR, you're training endurance. As for the running throughout your climbing workouts I would recommend against that and do your running workouts on days that you don't train for climbing. The reason I say this is that there are studies that show that doing a strength workout followed directly by endurance work will really dilute the gains from the strength workout that you did. Have 1 focus for each workout; it's ok (and recommended) to separate high-intensity days (strength, power) from low intensity days (running, ARC). Hope this helps you get on the right track for your training!

I don't have much to add to the excellent advice above, except to point out that the studies about the impact of endurance training on strength training are not overly persuasive. I agree that running between campus sets seems like it would be counterproductive. But running afterwards MAY not be an issue. The studies that showed an effect were typically squats followed by runs, or the like. Following upper body strength work with upper body endurance training had limited impact. I would think upper body followed by lower body would show even less influence. There was a study directed towards rowers that suggested avoiding certain types of runs (eg tempo) with certain types of strength training, but I don't remember the details and don't have the study handy. Perhaps Shumin can comment on this.

i would do the running/core stuff on another night. like reboot said, a full HB workout with a good warmup is going to take about 2 hours. after my HB workout i IMMEDIATELY start recovery - i think running twice plus a core workout is going to hurt your recovery.

also like alvaro said, i think your hang times are a bit on the long side for HYP training. i go 5 on, 5 off, 6 reps (total of a minute, and also really easy in terms of watching the clock, 5 secs is just enough to grab a chalk). i think this is better in terms of strength training. you shouldn't really be getting pumped, it should be too difficult to get a pump, if you know what i mean - your hands will just open up but your forearms aren't feeling like they are ready to explode.

Thanks for all the response so far. While some of this has gotten clearer, some of it has gotten cloudier.

For example, Slim and reboot state that a hangboard workout should take roughly 2 hours with a proper warm up and cool down. I was under the impression that the hangboard should only be approached when fresh. My hangboard workout takes roughly 20 minutes, with 6 sets at roughly 1:30 each with 2:00 in between each set. Including a warm up that doesn't pump me out, I'm at about 45 minutes total. Am I missing something here? I understand the Anderson Bros. more advanced hangboard plan has three repetitions of the workout whereas I am a beginner and only doing one. Is that the discrepancy?

To clarify about the running; I sprint for 10 minutes at a very high rate of speed on a treadmill. It's a trick I learned from a woman at Rifle, that sprinting can help reduce the pump. My theory has been get a little pumped from the warm-up, run and de-pump, hangboard, run and depump, core, run and cool down.

It seems that the consensus is my hang times are too long and holds that are too friendly. If I'm understanding correctly, more MaxR/Max Power can be obtained by lesser hang times on smaller holds with additional weight whereas I'm doing more of PE workout...

Is the response to the campus board question basically to take one burn and then rest for until fully recovered? Like I said, I usually recover sufficiently to do another lap after only 5-10 seconds and can do this probably between 6-8 times before I start feeling worked. My plan was to do about 6-8 different exercises (laddering, reaches, up and downs) until I was worked, then fully rest, and run through it again. Would more be gained with simply one "lap" because I'm the freshest at that point?

TheBirdman wrote:Thanks for all the response so far. While some of this has gotten clearer, some of it has gotten cloudier. For example, Slim and reboot state that a hangboard workout should take roughly 2 hours with a proper warm up and cool down. I was under the impression that the hangboard should only be approached when fresh. My hangboard workout takes roughly 20 minutes, with 6 sets at roughly 1:30 each with 2:00 in between each set. Including a warm up that doesn't pump me out, I'm at about 45 minutes total. Am I missing something here? I understand the Anderson Bros. more advanced hangboard plan has three repetitions of the workout whereas I am a beginner and only doing one. Is that the discrepancy? To clarify about the running; I sprint for 10 minutes at a very high rate of speed on a treadmill. It's a trick I learned from a woman at Rifle, that sprinting can help reduce the pump. My theory has been get a little pumped from the warm-up, run and de-pump, hangboard, run and depump, core, run and cool down. It seems that the consensus is my hang times are too long and holds that are too friendly. If I'm understanding correctly, more MaxR/Max Power can be obtained by lesser hang times on smaller holds with additional weight whereas I'm doing more of PE workout... Is the response to the campus board question basically to take one burn and then rest for until fully recovered? Like I said, I usually recover sufficiently to do another lap after only 5-10 seconds and can do this probably between 6-8 times before I start feeling worked. My plan was to do about 6-8 different exercises (laddering, reaches, up and downs) until I was worked, then fully rest, and run through it again. Would more be gained with simply one "lap" because I'm the freshest at that point?

Birdman-

About your hangboard workout the discrepancy is definitely the amount of time spent hangboarding. I'm doing the advanced hangboard workout that takes an hour on it's own. Combine that with warming up and then some supplemental exercises and cooldown at the end and my total session is right around 2-2.5 hours. If you're doing a shorter hangboard workout then adjust time accordingly.

As for sprinting for recovery, I would still avoid too much activity when you're supposed to be recovering for your next hard set/exercise/workout. Moving around a bit can help you de-pump by keeping the blood flowing but you can accomplish this just by walking around the gym and swinging your arms a bit. I think that sprinting is just going to eat into your energy stores that would be better spent on climbing-specific moves.

You are correct about wanting to be fully recovered between each lap on the campus board. As a matter of fact, at the end of your campus workout you shouldn't feel "spent" at all; you should still feel pretty good and like you could do more climbing. A good power workout shouldn't tax your glycogen stores; it should be a completely neurological workout. If you feel spent after a campus workout you messed up. That's why such long rest periods are prescribed between burns and it's also why campusing is so easy to get injured on. I also don't think that campusing is necessary or beneficial until you're climbing 5.13 and higher. I did a campus phase during last year's winter workouts. This year I didn't and I feel like I'm climbing better because of it since I can devote more time to actual climbing and working hard moves on boulder problems. At 5.12 and under you won't benefit anything from campusing that you wouldn't get from hard bouldering. Hard bouldering also has the benefit of working on actual climbing moves.

I think some of your confusion about the campus board and MaxR comes from what you are doing on it. Doing ladders is NOT MaxR especially if you are doing 12 movements or even 5-6. MaxR implies Maximum effort, you should be failing or just barely able to do the movement. If you can skip 3-4 rungs, see if you can skip 5 or start with one hand on 1 and the other on 2 and skip 3-4 (i.e.:R on 1, L on 2, then R to 6 or 7. Repeat for the other hand) Try 1-4-7 or 1-5-8. Once you are successful make the moves bigger.

Certainly, since campusing is a learned movement, to begin with it will seem easier with only a little rest, but once you perfect the movement and can execute it properly the first time you will start to see the benefits of resting 3-5 minutes between sets.

As Alvaro points out at the end of his last post it is likely that you will get greater benefit from limit bouldering than from campusing, it is however more difficult to track progress unless you have your own wall that you can set problems on and leave up through several training cycles until you can send them. Again, the idea being that you can only just barely do each individual move on its own or maybe only come close to doing the moves to begin with.

Realistically some combination of campusing and limit bouldering is probably idea as it will let you get the movement benefit but also give you something that you can track through your MaxR cycle and from season to season. If you are doing 2 days a week of MaxR, one of bouldering and one of campusing might be something to try.

i do 3 sets of each grip (7 grips). basically 1 minute for the set, 2 minutes rest between sets with an extra set between grip groups (to account for shuffling weights, moving stuff, writing notes, a swig of water, etc). this basically gives me about 70 minutes for my actual workout. i generally take at least 30 minutes for a warmup. add about 10 minutes for setting everything up, getting my playlist organized, etc. another 10 minutes at the end where i do some pullups and curls on jugs for a cool down. ends up being about 2 hours