Plyometrics with campus drops?

In the past I have always been a diehard hangboard aficionado when it comes to training. I enjoyed the simplicity and consistency, along with the level of control for a hangboard sesh. I adopted the Eva Lopez weighted hang method (3 set, 1 rep max) and have seen continuous improvement over the past year on crimp strength. I could easily do this training after several hours of bouldering (unless it was very crimpy bouldering). I have never been one for strict periodization, and simply proceeded with the same training supplement, until I noticed a plateau or drop in psyche. Switching between 5 sec max weight for 3 weeks and 10 sec max weight for 3 weeks kept the psyche fueled for a while. I would also take 2 days off from training (not climbing) between sessions and take a week+ off from training at the slightest sign of a tweak.

Recently, I noticed a definite plateau with the weighted hangs and finally ventured back to the wild and crazy world of campusing. The first session I probably did over 15 sets of types of campusing on different rung sizes. This was obviously wayy too much volume, so I wanted to cut it down to one type of campusing. I am currently happy with my lock off strength and focused more on explosive power and finger strength. It seems that everything points towards plyometrics for that aspect of training. My understanding is that you turn your tendons into springs, where after making a drop you explode instantly back with the reverse momentum.

breakingmuscle.com/strength…

After experimenting with the double bump/dynos on the large/medium rungs, they seem to be a bit too harsh and haphazard in terms of improvement, unless you execute them perfectly. By that I mean catching the rungs with bent arms and exploding up two rungs within a 1/4 sec of dropping down one rung.

For that reason, I started to look more into the one arm lock-off & drops (or touches) technique, but applying the plyometric principles. I would switch arms every lockoff and after the drop, I would instantly explode back up with the other arm. I could increase the difficulty by increasing reps, distance, or size of the rungs. I applied the Eva Lopez principle, that I would stop before experiencing failure, to see actual gains. It seems that the problem with traditional campusing is that everything goes to failure. This seemed dramatically more controlled and I figured I could maintain it to 3-4 sets per session and see gains.

I was wondering if anyone else explored this technique in a plyometric fashion, as it seems to be a more beneficial technique to the double bumps.

You mean something similar to mark 0:18 here?

youtube.com/watch?v=LFSsTw0…

Still no real evidence that any "plyometric" campusing is actually plyometric. I think the amortization phase is probably too long to actually induce stretch shortening cycle.

this is an interesting topic as to how it may be incorporated into improved climbing performance, here is another link on this pertaining to weight lifting

deansomerset.com/neural-tun…

At the moment my experimentation has been on trying to find a suitable pre-simulation exercise to improve the maximum reach on the campus board, as opposed to incorporating it directly into the campus exercises. Similar to Dean Somerset's quick foot stomps (see link), I am exploring quick/snap arm raises immediately before doing maximum reaches and have been able to take my maximum reach from B1 to R5 (Moon spacing) whereas without the "pre-simulation" I was only reaching about R4 or slightly above. I have limited testing so far, with only one campus session, but will continue to experiment to see what develops.

I posted an article a long while back that looked at campusing as a plyometric exercise and concluded that it wasn't really plyometric due to time of force development and related aspects (stretch shortening etc).

Here's most of the relevant part:

"Inside the conclusions of this study we can see that the times of force development until the arms take off in the campus jump are 691 + - 10,5 ms; keeping in mind that after 450 ms the nervous system can regulate the movement by the intervention of the antagonistic muscles, and the myotatic reflex, impeding the development of the increased power involved in plyometric activities. Due to that duration of the force expression, the campus jump cannot be considered a dynamic expression as a jump. "

and

"Plyometrics implies an eccentric (stretching) contraction immediately followed by a concentric contraction, in other words stretch the muscle before contracting so that the accumulated energy during the eccentric contraction is released during the concentric contraction producing a more powerful movement. But the main characteristic is the duration of the impulse phase (concentric contraction). This is denominated Stretch Shortening Cycle.
Actions that overcome 350 ms lose that whole accumulated energy, so they are not plyometric exercises."

EDIT to add link:
marvinclimbing.com/english/…

The exercise is shown here at 2:17

youtube.com/watch?v=jRyjzL1…

I did the exercise again today and tried to move as quickly as I possibly could. The second I dropped and established on the lower rung, I was already pulling up. I still think that I most likely overcame 350 ms, although it was definitely close.

Will, the article that you posted says " If we use both arms from complete extension as it outlines the previous study without a doubt the times of force development will be excessive, but if we limit joint range, the action have the capacity to be plyometric. "

Although campus may not be textbook plyometrics, it seems that the closer you get to the definition, the greater the benefits.

Do you think that there might be a greater effect if you go up with the same hand that dropped instead of alternating sides? Or does the requirement for speed make it easier to go up opposite hand?

Jon,

Think about what that quote means by saying "if you limit the extension."

If you are able to do negatives (drops) on the board with very, very little extension, it could possibly become plyometric. "Possibly" being the key word. In the real world, it is not. Theory is not practice, and the experimental results show that it's not plyo.

It's also insanely hard on your body (regular campusing is risky enough!), to the point I'd argue any small plyo benefit you'd get isn't worth the injury risk.

In my experience, campusing is as much about coordination and timing as anything else. At my best, I could go 1-5-8 at 5'8" +2 ape index on the small Metolius rungs. I'd argue from my experience that campusing does little to nothing for fingers if you are climbing say, about V8 and higher. Anything I could reach, I could certainly hang. I view it as strictly a big muscle (lats/back/shoulders/biceps) coordination and explosiveness exercise.

Bear in mind, I am not arguing that there won't be performance benefits. Negatives that aren't plyo have been used for many decades and are felt to be more/harder stimulus than concentrics. We were training them in regular weightlifting movements in the 1980s, on things like bench press and it was around long before that. If you subscribe to the micro-trauma stimulus theory, you can envision what happens...lengethening the muscle under load induces more trauma/microtears than a heavy concentric would, and thus would be more stimulus.

EDIT: Dana may weigh in here, as he's very well read in this area, much better than I am, and supports the notion that it isn't and won't be plyo.

Jonathan Metzman wrote:The second I dropped and established on the lower rung, I was already pulling up. I still think that I most likely overcame 350 ms, although it was definitely close.

With all due respect, there is no way to tell qualitatively if you were even in the ballpark of 350 ms. There is a reason high speed video, force plates, and 3D motion capture exist.

Jonathan wrote:Will, the article that you posted says " If we use both arms from complete extension as it outlines the previous study without a doubt the times of force development will be excessive, but if we limit joint range, the action have the capacity to be plyometric. " Although campus may not be textbook plyometrics, it seems that the closer you get to the definition, the greater the benefits.

I agree with Will that what is theoretically possible doesn't mean it can actually occur in practice. The human body developed the ability to be plyometric in the lower extremities probably because we needed to run. Running is plyometric and if it wasn't we couldn't do it. Climbing motions tend to be mostly "slow" in comparison.

The whole >350ms makes it not plyometric explanation doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just because the entire concentric contraction takes more than 350ms does not imply you are not getting benefits in the first 350ms. You can do a weighted deep squat, push up, bench press, pull up, whatever, and that little bit of bounce/fast lowering does help. It's just that the longer the concentric contraction, the less overall effect plyometric has.

If the arm movement in campusing takes 650ms, the initial 350ms a very significant chunk. The closest I can think of to matching hand campusing is doing muscle-ups on a pullup bar. Linking muscle-ups (dropping down & immediately doing the next) is noticeably easier than doing each one individually.

Okay, I am convinced that under the strict definition, campusing or any upper body momentum exercise is never considered plyometric. Synthesizing on what Aerili stated, the synapses in our arms most likely did not evolve to react to stimuli within a 1/3 of a second.

As reboot says though, speed of concentric contraction is most likely important here. There's got to be research out there related to different regimes of reaction for a muscle contraction. Although "plyometric" is over at 350 ms, I would expect energy to still be stored after a forceful stretching Given any power move such as a dyno, the climber will always "pump" or first induce a eccentric contraction before a concentric contraction - to store energy into their arms before a movement. This, as you have proved it, cannot be plyometric. I would expect that a more forceful eccentric contraction would lead to a more forceful concentric contraction.

This more forceful reaction would seem to eventually result in training the muscles/tendons to optimize power/strength- hence the term recruitment.

Our upper extremities certainly can respond to stimuli in very short time frames. Reflexive movements exist in your arms - think about when you come into contact with something hot and pull back. That is a neural signal that goes only to the spinal cord and back with no brain involvement, i.e. a reflexive movement.

Anyhow, a stretch shortening cycle is a little different (I think). Wrt timing of phases: it's not the concentric contraction that has to be less 350 ms but rather the eccentric loading phase, i.e. the change in your direction should be 350 ms or less to reap the full benefits of the elastic energy generated in the stretching. If it is longer, then much of this energy dissipates, you lose some of the output boost it produces, and you do have to do more work for less force development. At least that is what I believe the action is.

Keep in mind that power development is a relative component of performance and based only on what you need. Not every athletic endeavor requires "maximal" power development. I am not sure climbers really need a true plyometric response in their upper body for most (all?) of the moves they do. So even if it appears we can't really train at this elusive acceleration...well maybe it doesn't really matter. (just theorizing, don't really know)

There is research on the things you ask about. They are not easy to understand imo unless you have a good background in the topic. I have found that it is one thing to assume you really understand a research article after reading it but a different thing when you actually have to undertake similar research. You find out you don't understand a lot of things without extensive mental sweat and help from those more educated than yourself. Just my personal experience.