About Tyler Nelson

In this interview, Tyler explains how we should be training our fingers for endurance climbing. Normally, we’re training strength or strength endurance on the hangboard by hanging with bodyweight, a pulley system, or weight attached to our bodies. However, Tyler talks about how we can just pull on the hangboard, without our feet leaving the ground, and increase our reps in order to train for long, endurance climbs.

Tyler recently wrote an article on this topic for TrainingBeta, called To Pull or Hang, and this interview is a supplement to that article. If you haven’t read it yet, and you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend that you give it a read before or after listening to this interview.

Tyler Nelson has a lot of qualifications, so I’m going to let his website sum those up for you:

Tyler is a second generation chiropractor whose father was a leader in chiropractic sports medicine for many years. In graduate school he did a dual doctorate and masters degree program in exercise science with an emphasis on tendon loading. He completed his masters degree at BYU and was a physician for the athletics department for 4 years out of school. He currently is the owner of Camp4 Human Performance where he treats clients through his license as a chiropractic physician. He also is an instructor for the Performance Climbing Coach seminar series and a certified instructor for gobstrong. When he’s not working he’s climbing or hiking outside with his family.  

You can find Tyler in Salt Lake City at his clinic, Camp 4 Human Performance, where he tests athletes, creates training programs, and treats all kinds of athletes for injuries.

I met Tyler at Steve Bechtel’s first Performance Climbing Coach Seminar in Lander in May of 2017, where we were both instructors. Since then I’ve done 4 more seminars and 7 other podcast episodes with him. You could say he’s a bit of a staple around here. He is well-spoken and a wealth of knowledge about how the human body responds to climbing and training.

Other Episodes with Tyler

• TBP 155: Dr. Tyler Nelson on High Volume Power Training
• TBP 149: The Different Roles of Stretching for Climbing
• TBP 133: The Simplest Finger Training Protocol with Dr. Tyler Nelson
• TBP 084: Injury Rehab and Blood Flow Restriction Training
• TBP 098: Isometric Movements to Prime and Test Your Body
• TBP 108: Bood Flow Restriction for Injury Healing and Performance
• TBP 118: Latest Technology for Finger Training and Performance Testing
• TBP 128: Surprising Methods for Healing Tendon Injuries

Tyler Nelson Interview Details

• How to change finger training to focus on endurance
• Concentric pulling rather than hanging
• Results he’s seeing with clients
• Whether this method creates more injury
• When to do this during training/performance cycles
• Nerdy parts of the research on this
• Why people shake when they’re trying hard
• Finger curls vs finger rolls
• Protocol for intermediate climber

Tyler Nelson Links

• Article by Tyler about training fingers for endurance
• Personal website: camp4humanperformance.com
• Take an online class with Tyler: camp4humanperformance.com/store
• Do a consultation with Tyler
• Instagram: @c4hp
• Facebook: @camp4chiropractic

Training Programs for You

Do you want a well-laid-out, easy-to-follow training program that will get you stronger quickly? Here’s what we have to offer on TrainingBeta. Something for everyone…

• At-Home Training Program: trainingbeta.com/covid
• Personal Training Online:  www.trainingbeta.com/mercedes
• For Boulderers: Bouldering Training Program for boulderers of all abilities
• For Route Climbers: Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities
• Finger Strength : www.trainingbeta.com/fingers
• All of our training programs: Training Programs Page

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Transcript

Neely Quinn 

Welcome to the training beta podcast where I talked with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn. And I want to remind you that the podcast is actually an offshoot of a website, I created trainingbeta.com. So over there, you’ll find all kinds of resources dedicated to training for rock climbing. We have programs for boulders and route climbers. We have online personal training with Matt Pincus and Alex Stiger. I do nutrition consulting. And we have tons of blog posts. So if you want to learn about training for climbing, go to trainingbeta.com.

So it’s 2021. Happy New Year, as happy as it can possibly be. I had a crazy year, just like everybody else. I started this year, thinking I was going to be training for the best year of rock climbing of my life, which I think we all always think in January is what the plan is going to be. And rarely does it work out for me. It’s only worked out for me that way a few times in my whole life. But obviously there was a pandemic, and still is. So I started training in my basement when the gyms closed and promptly injured myself, as you all know, and tore a ligament and tendon in my wrist doing handstands. And so then since April when I did that, I’ve been learning the art of patience, and occupying myself with things other than climbing and training, like Scrabble, and trying to write music and watching tons of TV, going on walks, I do these mad fit workouts on YouTube, if you haven’t tried mad fit, I highly recommend her and just kind of chilling. But in the meantime, I’ve also been working really hard on Training Beta, and we added Alex Stiger as a trainer to the mix here. I’ve been working really hard with some developers and a designer to create a new training platform, which will be released in a few weeks. I just released it to beta testers yesterday. We, Matt Pincus and I, have been working on this for years really. And so it’s really amazing to see it come to fruition. We created an at home training program for people during COVID. And we did an anti racism workshop with Sia Blackstock. 

In November, I had surgery and I just had another surgery last week to get my pins out. And now I can sort of move my wrist, which is great. I sort of typed a little bit today for the first time with my left hand, and I finally am starting to dream a little bit about climbing again, and hoping that it’ll happen soon. And that, I don’t know, maybe I can go outside climbing again this year. I used to be super busy. And I know that a lot of you can relate with that, you know, like Monday nights, was rest nights. Tuesday was climbing night, Wednesday was friend get together night, Thursday was climbing night, Friday was friends get together night. Saturday, climbing during the day hanging out at night, you know, it was always really, really busy. And this year has given me the opportunity to be like: nope I don’t have anything to do, I can just relax and, and actually letting myself enjoy that. For the first time in a really long time. I think since I was a kid, really. And I think it’s been a good experience for me. And I really hope to take that with me into the future, even when we’re not locked down. I also understand that it is a — 100% a privilege that I get to do that, that I feel like I can relax and that I haven’t lost my job and that my husband hasn’t lost his job and that we still have a home. And all of those things. I don’t take that for granted, ever really. So it’s been quite an opportunity for me to feel like that.

So anyway, thank you for humoring me and listening to my recap of my 2020. And thank you so much for sticking with me this year. If you’re new to the podcast this year, I really appreciate you giving me a chance. And I know that there are tons of podcasts out there, even within the climbing community. And for my longtime listeners, I’m so grateful for you. And sometimes I still can’t believe that you guys listen to me. So, having said that, I’m going to move on to this episode and this interview. And I’m not really going to say much about it, because what Tyler Nelson talks about in this, in this episode is pretty scientific. But at the same time, it’s, it’s really simple. And basically what he’s talking about is how to train our fingers for endurance climbing, rather than strength. And he doesn’t say that you should do one or the other. He’s just trying to tell you how to incorporate this kind of training into your finger training cycles. So he also wrote an article for us called to pull or hang so you can check that out on trainingbeta.com. I’ve also put a link to it in the show notes for this episode. You can find Tyler on Instagram, he’s super active over there @C4HP. That’s C and then the number four and then HP and he’s been on the podcast seven other times. He’s definitely a staple on Training Beta. We really appreciate his research into new training methods and his passion for the topic. So here’s Tyler Nelson, and I’ll talk to you on the other side. Enjoy. 

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Neely Quinn

Alright, welcome back to the show. Tyler. Thanks for talking to me again today.

 Tyler Nelson 

Great happy to be here. It’s always fun.

 Neely Quinn 

Yeah, what have you been up to recently?

Tyler Nelson 

Um, I have been preparing my kids for Christmas. We — my wife and I gave our Elf on the Shelf the Coronavirus so it just came out yesterday of quarantine. It was quarantined for two weeks, which was great. So I’ve been just you know, managing my family through all this crazy stuff and trying to have fun and enjoy the season as much as I can with my kids.

Neely Quinn 

Wait, did you say you gave your Elf on the Shelf coronavirus? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, well, I mean, we told the kids right that — I don’t know where whose idea it was, it wasn’t mine. My wife said she saw it on social media somewhere that some parents were saying our Elf on the Shelf has  Coronavirus. So we have to put it away for two extra weeks.

So my wife put in like a Tupperware in our kitchen like locked ups and I had the Coronavirus I’ll be back in two weeks. Which is great, because that thing is like kind of it’s not stressful, but it’s like annoying for parents to wake up and move that thing around. Because it’s supposed to be hidden every night. Like the story goes it like, you know, watches kids, and it’s kind of creepy really in a lot of ways. But it watches the kid and then it reports to Santa Claus about whether they’ve been good or bad. And then it shows up in a different place. So the kids like wake up and look for you know, another way to give your kids anxiety, I guess. But, but anyways, it was it’s kind of a pain in the ass because we have to try and find a place for it every morning. So we just locked him up for two extra weeks.

Neely Quinn 

Oh my goodness,

Tyler Nelson 

which is great. So — 

Neely Quinn 

That´s so funny. Yeah, when you said all of those words, in the beginning, it was like a foreign language to me, I had no idea what you’re talking about. 

Tyler Nelson 

It’s just this little elf this this little, you know, a little foam elf.

 

Neely Quinn 

Got it. Alright, so you’ve been busy with Alice and — 

Tyler Nelson 

Alice been teaching a lot. Now that it’s winter here, I haven’t I haven’t been climbing outside. So now I’m gonna start doing more interesting things for like trying new ideas that I’ve been playing with for on myself and my athletes and doing more testing and you know, but lots of that kind of stuff. I’ve been doing the last, you know, month or so. Which is fun, which kind of spurs The topic for today, which is something that we’ve talked about a little bit before, but it’s going to be kind of a, maybe a deeper understanding on some, you know, research that’s come out to talk about different ways that we can think about finger training.

Neely Quinn 

Cool. Yeah. So describe the topic today. And for people who are uninitiated, Tyler has been on the show, like, I don’t know how many times now, six? And those will all be in the show notes. So you can link to all those. But Tyler is always full of new ideas. So yeah, tell us all about this new topic. 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, so it’s kind of like things that we talked about before, like I mentioned. And for people that listen to the podcast on the simplest finger training program, or have read that article on your website, it falls in line with some of those topics, but it’s kind of more of an application for endurance training. And so there’s a couple — there’s not a ton of research on different types of isometrics or, you know, differentiating those isometrics. And what are the differences but there is some evidence and some of the evidence supports that one particular type of isometric produces greater endurance than a different type of isometric. So certainly that makes sense for rock climbers too. Maybe use both or prioritize one over the other depending on the individual athlete. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay, and again, For the uninitiated it Can you can you define isometric please? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yes, of course. So, like a dynamic movement. So any dynamic movement that you do would be a full range of motion would be considered an isotonic, which is includes three different things, which is a lengthening of your muscle, like opening your hand, opening your elbow, which would be considered an eccentric, stopping the stopping point where you’re reversing that force initially, that’s the isometric, and then shortening, which is a concentric. So that full thing is called an isotonic, or a dynamic movement versus an isometric, which is kind of the bridge between two parts of that, but an isometric, is it just a static position. And for people that are listening, that are not familiar with those terms, hanging on a fingerboard is an isometric. And that’s what most people associate with isometrics that are climbers, you know, you can say hanging on a fingerboard. And they say: Oh okay, I understand what, what an isometric is. But what we’re going to talk about today, is that actually hanging on a fingerboard, versus pulling on a fingerboard, they’re different. And that’s the real kind of unique thing, I think that we can pull out of some of this research and start playing with it, because it makes a lot of sense. From like, a sports performance perspective, and there’s some research to support, you know why we would do that. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay. And a couple of things, I want to back up a little bit to. So first of all, when when we think of hang boarding and finger training, what we’re mostly trying to do is strengthen, right? 

Tyler Nelson 

For the most part, yeah, you’re you’re trying to overload the finger flexors, you know, in specific grip positions, to make them get stronger in those positions. 

Neely Quinn 

And I don’t know, if you, you probably get this question a lot as we do. Like, how to train endurance for your fingers. And it’s not been something that’s like in training programs, really. And that’s why this topic is, is interesting to me, at least because, and I think it’s sort of a semantics thing. And I’d like to talk about that a little bit, too. But like, how is this training different than normal finger training? And then what else do we need to know about it? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, it’s gonna, the cool thing is, it’s going to look a whole lot like your finger training already that people do, we’re just going to either add more time under tension, or we’re gonna add more repetitions, or we’re gonna add more sets, or instead of hanging, we’re gonna pull. And so like, when people think about strength training, or they think about hanging on a fingerboard, you absolutely can train endurance on a fingerboard. And finger endurance can be used synonymously with capacity. So for example, if someone’s doing a repeater type of protocol, they’re the most common one that you hear that people will use is seven seconds hanging three seconds break, times a certain number of repetitions. So in that context, all the individual is doing is they’re building capacity, at a given intensity could be their body weight. could be their body weight plus added weight to their body, for a given number of repetitions, that’s the duration. So to improve endurance in that context, all I have to do is increase the duration. And if they can continue to do repetitions, for a longer duration, they are increasing their capacity, ie they’re increasing their endurance. 

Neely Quinn 

So instead of seconds, seven seconds, that’s how many seconds?  

Tyler Nelson 

Well, no, they could still do seven seconds, but they would do more repetitions in a set. So instead of seven, on three off times five, they could get to where they are doing seven on three off times 15. Right. And so that absolutely would equate to better endurance on the climbing wall, when what they’re doing is grabbing on and holding and then releasing and repeating that.

Neely Quinn

Okay.

Tyler Nelson

Same thing, and that’s kind of the typical way to do it hanging. And so something that’s, that is new for people to think about is when you’re hanging on your fingers, that unless you have another question, I can go more into that you have another question. follow up on that?

Neely Quinn

No, go ahead.

Tyler Nelson

Okay. So if you’re if you’re hanging like we do on a fingerboard, we are we are like yielding to the load, which means and people can envision putting their fingers on a fingerboard at 90 degrees, like in a half cramp position. What you’re doing in that context is your resisting your fingers from opening up. Right. So if you think about if my fingers were to open up, which we commonly would be, which we would consider failure of a finger training set or rep, right, that’s more eccentric, like that looks like an eccentric muscle contraction. If we think about that same exact finger position, where you’re actually pulling instead of hanging on your fingers, that looks more and that responds more like a concentric muscle contraction. So that’s a real interesting thing that I figured people would really enjoy. You know, I’ve mentioned this a bunch of my account, and people are interested and I’ve done this on my clients now for, you know, probably maybe four to six months, and people have had a pretty good response to it. And it’s really simple to apply is one of the reasons that I really like it. And so that’s why I figured we could talk about it.

Neely Quinn 

Yeah. So what have you been doing? Like, how have you been changing your clients programs to, to put this into it. 

Tyler Nelson 

So one of the things that like there’s there’s very unique, metabolic, which is your you know, how our muscles use energy and get rid of waste between different types of muscle contractions. There’s also different like neural, what are called neural control strategies, which are how your brain send information down your spinal cord and out to your muscles with different types of muscle contractions. And so the research paper that I get some of this information from there’s, you know, some back and forth on the research like there is with every research, but there’s been a couple papers specifically, that show that overcoming or pulling types of isometrics, which are more concentric, like muscle contractions, they produce, like the one paper was done on the elbow flexors, 50% greater endurance than the group that did a yielding isometric, which is more eccentric, like, right, so if you could do so you could do the exact same program, athletes could, but instead of hanging on their fingers with a given load, they could just pull up to a percentage of their intensity, for the exact same workout that they’re doing and add more repetitions more quickly and use less energy.

Neely Quinn 

Okay, and obviously, the pulling concept is very well detailed in your simplest finger training program. But I don’t know that everybody knows the difference. Can you describe that, please? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, for sure. And there, and I’m not sure if you guys have put it up yet, but I did send your your crew the new article too. So though, there will also be an article on this as well, which also refers back to the simplest finger training program. So the difference is, you know, in overcoming versus a yielding isometric. Where an overcoming isometric if we’re just pulling on our fingers on a fingerboard, we’re trying to overcome the resistance, but we’re not going to actually move the resistance because it’s too much resistance. A yielding isometric is just holding a static position. So if people watch like — and right now, there’s a bunch of great videos on about the donut lock off, because we’re giving away a free like hang board that has like granite on it. So it’s doing the donut lock off as an example with one arm. That’s a yielding isometric. So essentially, an individual is holding on to a bar at 90 degrees consuming their doughnut, why they are trying to resist their joint from opening up and falling down. That’s a yielding isometric. If I was going to stand on a box with my elbow at 90 degrees, and I had a weight in my other hand to where I couldn’t move my body. And I was pulling as hard as I can. That’s an overcoming type of isometric. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay. All right. So what kinds of results have you seen with your clients? What’s happening with them?

 Tyler Nelson 

So, so the the kind of like the question that I asked people in the article that I wrote, is, what do we do more likely? What is the more specific way of using isometrics when we climb? You know, that’s the important question. It’s not really like, what I think is best or what another coach thinks is best. It’s more, what do we do when we’re climbing. And so I outlined in the article, and would argue that we probably use both types of isometrics in the same route or on the same problem. I would argue that people that are climbing on like steep terrain, like in Maple Canyon, they’re doing a lot of yielding isometrics because they’re hanging a lot because the terrain is very steep. But if you’re doing really hard bouldering you’re probably doing a lot of overcoming isometrics where you’re pulling, trying to overcome the force through your finger flexors. So we really want to think about using both types of isometrics with finger training for climbers in general. And then it’s kind of the job, the creative job of the coach or the athlete to maybe think about how they would apply it to best fit their profile. You know, because If we can, if we can get the same amount of volume done. And let’s say we’re doing the same exact finger training program for two individuals, seven on three off times 10, you know, we’re doing 10 sets of that or something, and I have one athlete doing the exact same load, and let’s assume they have the exact same finger strength. For the sake of simplicity, they have the exact same finger strength, they’re doing the exact same program. One individual is pulling on their fingers, the other one is hanging on their fingers. The individual, it could be argued that the individual that’s pulling on their fingers is using less energy, therefore, they can do more volume of their training. Right, so there’s that added benefit as well, there’s the potential for doing the same thing that you would have done, but using less energy to do that thing. So you can do more of it. Maybe more in a session more in a cycle more in a day.

 Neely Quinn 

Yeah —

 Tyler Nelson 

So there’s lots of ways you could, like, you know, use it.

 Neely Quinn 

Yeah. Is this create any more possibility for injury or overuse injury?

 Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, I would, I would say that that has not been studied. So I can’t say for sure. But I would say no, it’s very, it’s less likely. Because like we talked about in other podcasts, you know, the difference between hanging and pulling is simply auto regulated by how recovered an athlete is before a training session. Right. So if an athlete is pulling, and they’re tired on that day, unless they’re measuring every effort, which some people can do, then they have no, like, they’re just pulling to tolerance, they’re likely pulling with less force, because they’re tired. But if an athlete is hanging and using a fixed load, they they are making the assumption that with that effort, they are rested adequately to actually hit that much intensity. So I would say the same principle would apply here. And I would not also suggest that people, if they’re doing a fixed, like, work to rest ratio, set rep scheme, like immediately do this with a lot of extra volume, because I don’t think that’s a good idea, either, even though I’m suggesting that they should be able to do more endurance like that. But it’s really the the concepts and people understanding conceptually, why we would use different types of isometrics, and how they apply to the sport and then, you know, putting them into their program. And so for — in like the article, I outlined that, maybe using an al–, it’s not like one is better than the other, it’s just that they’re different. So I would, I suggest in the article that eccentric types of contractions, so the yielding isometrics, which would be hanging on our fingers might be better, like in the beginning phases of a training cycle were doing essentrics is what a lot of people will do in those phases, because building muscle is productive, you know, getting lots of connective tissue strain is productive, but getting some delayed onset muscle soreness is also expected. And then as an athlete moves towards, like a performance season, then they could do something very similar in terms of their finger training. However, instead of hanging on their fingers, now they can transition to pulling on their fingers instead of hanging on their fingers. Because they’re going to save more energy for the rock. And they’re also going to like, you know, have less recovery time as a consequence.

 Neely Quinn 

Got it. Okay, so that’s really good information to know when to put it into training cycles and all that. And you’ve mentioned a couple different scenarios where this would be helpful. But can you can you describe what kind of climber this would be best for?

 Tyler Nelson 

I think, I think like, I’m a big fan of people that are even relatively new to the sport, I think they’re okay to train their fingers. And we’ve talked about that in other podcasts. But I would say like, regardless of the discipline, or the, you know, climbing level, I think pulling on your fingers is going to be safer than adding load and hanging on your fingers. You know, for the, for the reasons I’ve already outlined, you know, making sure that the athlete is, you know — and and one thing that I can mention that it’s been pretty interesting that I’ve tested on myself and Alex and a couple other athletes here locally, you know, trying to have them hit their perceived intensity, because that’s a lot of questions I will get about, you know, the pulling isometrics you know, because I will put on people’s programs I’ll say, between 75 to 85%, pulling isometric and we call these, like I call these Pima and that’s not my term that’s out of this research paper, p i m a, which was referred to pulling or pushing isometric contraction, which is an overcoming, and people will question well, how do I know that I’m at that intensity, so I’ve tested this a bunch on maybe a couple dozen athletes and it’s actually not that hard to find that range. You know, it’s try hard ish, but not straining to the max where you’re screaming intensity, you know, and so as long as an athlete can find that intensity where they’re trying hard, that’s plenty of stimulus for your muscles to gain recruitment. It’s plenty of stimulus for your connective tissues to get that important signal. Right? And that would absolutely make someone’s finger stronger and, you know, potentially reduce injury risk in the long term.

 Neely Quinn 

All right, that’s good to know. What else do people need to know about this, like about the research about it in practice all of it?

 Tyler Nelson 

Well, I mean, there’s some really cool, like nerdy things about the research that I was excited to tell people about that I guess, we can talk about. And the reason that they see, it’s really about the metabolic like, accumulation, like and people will maybe know that, like, when you hold onto a hold about, it only takes like 5 to 30% intensity, to restrict the blood flow to the muscle. So if I squeeze my muscles, I create intramuscular, like, ischemia because I compress the blood vessels. And so new blood can’t come in. If new blood can’t come in new blood or wasted blood, or leftover blood can’t leave either. And so the difference where they see that one of the theories behind why they think you can get better endurance with pulling is because of the oscillations in your muscles. So if you’ve watched people or people have seen, you know, videos on my Instagram account of people pulling really hard and they’re shaking, that shaking mechanism is all in the muscle, because the motor units are like turning on off on off on us the whole time. And that shaking phenomenon has been theorized to clear out some of the metabolic products, so the athlete can extend or the you know, the participant can extend that duration longer than if you’re just holding and doing a yielding isometric.

Because when we do an eccentric, or a yielding isometric, you load the connective tissues really quickly. So those put a lot of strain on the tendon immediately. But when you’re pulling, it’s really, really dependent on the muscle being able to pull on the tendon without much force. So that’s one of the most like, well, like, accepted theories as to why we can get better muscle endurance with a pulling versus a holding type of isometric, which is really cool. That’s something totally new to me. And I’m way interested in isometrics. So I was pretty excited about that. 

Neely Quinn 

Yeah, it’s really cool. And —

 Tyler Nelson 

It just seems like really good applications for rock climbers, you know, because we don’t do one or the other. We do both types of isometrics. But if we look at like the history of finger training for climbers, we only do one, which is the hanging in the yielding type, right, which, to me doesn’t make any sense. We should certainly, and it’s simply that just people don’t know about this. But that’s a really good, you know, use for athletes, like climbers that train with a lot of isometrics on their fingers.

 Neely Quinn 

Is this something that like european teams are doing at all? Do you know of anybody who’s using this? 

Tyler Nelson 

I have no idea. Maybe I’m sure that people that are climbers know about this. I’ve never met anyone that really knows about this. And I know lots of people from the UK and lots of people that take my courses that, like are pretty excited about the idea that have never heard about it. So I’m not really sure. If people do you know, yeah, I don’t know.

 Neely Quinn 

And then you said that there were a few things about the literature, the research on this, that you wanted to share? Was there anything else? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, the energy expense is cool. Well, the other the other theory as to you know, why different types of muscle isometrics can produce different, like, endurance capabilities. The other one is that it takes — it’s like a really big neural control strategy to do eccentrics. And everyone knows that if you do eccentrics, what you don’t want to do before, like you’re going out and performing is a bunch of heavy essentrics, heavy essentrics will make you really strong, because you can produce lots of force. But there’s a lot of synchronization of the muscle fibers when you do eccentrics. And so we get lots of tissue breakdown and lots of metabolic fatigue, and we get a lot of soreness associated. So any coach that knows, you know, about strength conditioning, you know, would not prescribe their athletes doing a bunch of eccentric exercise in proximity to their outdoor, you know, project or competitive season. So that’s another thing that’s really cool. It’s like, you know, in order to train athletes optimally for climbing and not get them injured. In my opinion, what we need to do is get athletes away from just hanging on their fingers. Because just hanging on your fingers is only one way to train your fingers. And it’s it’s been the only op — it’s been the optimal way up until now because that’s all people do.

Whereas if we can, you know, you know, get a better understanding of how we can train the fingers in this other manner. I would assume that we should see injuries on the fingers go down. And you know, people don’t need like, Hi tech tools like I measure people like myself, and Alex and my clients here, with the G strength, and we can actually measure how much force you can produce and for how long but you don’t need that, like, all the fancy tools are really fun. They’re fun to be good demonstrations, you know, for me when I teach, but like, you can totally do this on your own with just a fingerboard. You don’t need any complicated equipment, it’s really the idea behind, you know why you’re doing it have a little bit of a better understanding of why people are doing it.

 Neely Quinn 

Okay, I want to go back and have you translate something into english for us all. You use these words all the time, but a lot of people don’t. And so we, it’s hard to imagine what you’re talking about. So you had said that a good coach would know that you wouldn’t want to have an athlete to eccentric, a bunch of eccentric exercises in proximity to their competition, season or competition. Can you can you give me an example of what that would look like for a climber what not to do? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, I think the easiest example would be like if an athlete like a climber or not. If they’re going, let’s say a youth kid before a bouldering competition, and they haven’t been doing a lot of jumping type of exercises, like the one that’s the most obvious that people will maybe connect with immediately is doing a bunch of drop jumps, where you’re jumping off something landing, and then jumping again, that’s a really high eccentric load to the quads. And if you take an athlete that’s never done that type of exercise, they are not going to be able to walk two days after they’ll be so sore in their legs, because of all the essential exercise that their performance will decline substantially because of that soreness. So and maybe an upper extremity example would be like, I mean, people, the heavy essentrics, that climbers do, probably for the upper extremities, like a down campus routine. So if you’re on a campus board, and you’re dropping a couple rungs, let’s say two or three rounds, and you’re catching yourself, and you’re absorbing that force, you do a bunch of those in proximity to a climbing season, you’re gonna waste your, you’re gonna waste your day, because you’re going to be too sore, unless you’re really used to those types of exercises, right. But I would still argue that in that closer proximity, the only way you could get get away with doing that is if you do a really, really low volume. But that would take someone with a good training age to be able to tolerate that, like the Olympic athletes, they could tolerate that. But the everyday climber, that’s way too much stress. And so the same thing applies to like the yielding isometrics. When we’re hanging on our fingers, if I have a climbing trip coming up, and I want to train my fingers still, you know, it could be — it could be argued maybe that’s a good idea. And maybe that’s just anxiety. But I think that’s an okay idea. But now, and for the maybe the last six months, I’ve had my climbers exclusively use polling isometric muscle actions, instead of hanging, because we’re gonna use less energy by pulling versus hanging, I’m going to save energy for them to be able to go out and compete. And I’m going to get a very similar outcome in terms of the mechanical load on their muscles and their connective tissue.

Neely Quinn 

Okay, and when you say in proximity to their competition season, what does that mean?

 Tyler Nelson 

Like how close it is, right? Like —

Neely Quinn 

Yeah, like, what would be bad? 

Tyler Nelson 

To do, like, I would say, like, two days before, like two days before you could get away with doing like, some max hangs, probably as long as the volume is really low, even the day before; the day of a climbing, like competition or red point, like burn outside. But you certainly wouldn’t want to do a bunch of heavy repeaters before that, because you’ll get too much fatigue. And so your performance will be compromised, and you’re going to get some delayed onset muscle soreness, and people that have done repeaters know this, you’ll like, if you if you get off the fingerboard and you’re like, get this like burning pumping sensation in your forearms, then that’s metabolic fatigue, the more times you do that in a session, the more deficit you’re creating, and the longer you need to recover from. And that’s hard for, like, that’s very individual for everyone. You know, based on how long they’ve been training, what they’re doing, etc. But as a general principle, you know, the more fatigued and when you leave the gym wasted, the more time you need to recover from that session.

Tyler Nelson

Mm hmm. 

Neely Quinn

Yeah, and the same thing would apply for your fingers. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay. So you would have people do these isometric muscle contractions in proximity to something like that, or would you not? 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, that’d be, that’d be okay. That would be fine. I mean, I, I use a fingerboard to warm up for climbing as most people do, and I will do some really high level efforts. Like, you know, the easiest way people could maybe think about doing a pima repeater would be what they do on a flashboard when they’re warming up, outside sitting down. You know, it’s so common now and so great because it’s such a good intervention, to sit down for the flashboard around a rock or your feet and just pull horizontally with your fingers. You know, people just do some curls, do some pulls, and then they’ll do some repeaters like that. That’s exactly the type of intervention that I’m talking about except probably a little bit more intensity, right. But when climbers, especially boulders that are getting ready to do a hard boulder outside, they’ll do maybe five sets of a repeater, where they’re pulling really hard. That is that, in essence, like the the training intervention, but really, I think, and I think people use it, like: Oh, this is my warmup, but this isn’t my training. Like, absolutely, that can be your training, right. And there’s good science to support that, that can be your training as well. And so we want to understand why that is valuable in the context of, you know, a whole season of training for a climber on their — with their fingers.

Neely Quinn

Okay.

Tyler Nelson

The other thing that I’ve been playing with it, people have been talking about social media, which people are really interested in is like finger curls, versus finger rolls. You know, and I’m assuming you’ve done finger rolls before, like, it’s super popular right? To do this, at least it was back in the day, 

Neely Quinn 

Can you describe what it is? 

Tyler Nelson 

They’ll use a barbell, like a heavy bar, like a, you know, deadlift bar, and they will curl their fingers up and into their palm. standing with both arms, curling fingers up, right, you’ve likely done that. And so people can, you can curl quite a bit of weight like that. And so the other day I was — and I always do finger curls, like, you know, because if you hit a hold open handed, and then you pull it into position, if you’re pulling it into a half, or full crimp, that’s a concentric muscle contraction, right, I think there’s some real value in training that particular movement. But the thing that was interesting, and I shot a slow mo video for my account, where is if you’re doing a finger curl, standing in the same position with like a flashboard, on a 20 millimeter edge, it’s all about wrist extension, where if you do a finger curl with a bar, it’s all about wrist flexion, which is a completely different movement. And so because people will argue, and rightly so that doing finger curls, it probably is healthy for your connective tissue. But it’s probably not that specific for your performance. And there’s been some research to show that grip strength and finger curling like that isn’t conducive, or doesn’t show to be, you know, helpful for finger strength performance. But I would say that’s because we’re doing it like with this rolling type of motion. Whereas if we’re standing and doing a finger curl, that’s all extension at the wrist and flexion at the fingers. So I’ve tested myself on this recently, and I would consider my fingers to be kind of strong, not super strong. But like, at one point, my, I think my strength to weight ratio was like two, which is pretty good. But I cannot for the life of me, like curl my fingers, if I’m hanging on a fingerboard, like, and when I tested myself, my, my percentage of my maximum was like 32% of my maximum, I could do curling my fingers, which was terrible. Right? So that’s another thing maybe that, you know, we could think about the climbers could think about, you know, as an intervention for training their fingers as part of their training program. And a lot of people assume that just doing the finger rolls is the same thing, which it certainly is not.

Neely Quinn

Okay.

Tyler Nelson

Have you ever done those or had people talk about those? Doing finger curls?

Neely Quinn 

Yeah, I mean, I’ve done them as sort of wrist therapy, physical therapy with a dumbbell. But — 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, I would say for wrist, that makes total sense, because it’s mostly the muscles, the flexors that attach to the carpal bones that flex your wrist. But if we’re talking about specifically like concentrically, pulling the fingers into position, and it goes really good with the pulling isometric muscle contractions, because people could, you know, stand under a fingerboard with one arm on like a 25 mil edge, and they could curl their fingers into a half crimp position with just like, you know, their feet on the ground, and then they could hold it there for five to seven seconds. And that would be a really good and a new way of training the fingers that, you know, would create a very specific type of adaptation that we’re not getting with just hanging on our fingers. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay. Can you — I know that the article is going to do this, and by the time this podcast episode comes out, the article will also be up on the site. But I think that some people may be having a hard time understanding or visualizing what they should do with this information. And so if I was an intermediate climber, who had done some finger training, and maybe climb like 5.11 or something, V4, V5, what like, what, what should this person do? How should they make a protocol out of this? And I know everybody’s gonna be different, but — 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think I mean, I think in general, what people want to consider is their finger training needs to have some sort of progression. You know, if we do the same thing, even if it’s a good thing too much, it increases our injury risk. Right. So there’s lots of good things that we can do. In fact, there is no bad things, right, it’s just the dosage of what you do that can make something maybe helpful or less helpful. But it’s really about a progression. So let’s assume that someone has training maximum strength. And they want to do a 10 second weighted hang program, and they’re doing the 10 second weighted hang. So they could do their 10 second weighted hang for four to five weeks, whatever they have prescribed. And then after that, instead of you know, they needed maybe take a deload week, instead of doing this same exact thing, they could do the same number of the same volume that they’re doing. And instead of adding load to their body for 10 seconds, they could literally just stand and pull on their fingers as hard as they can for 10 seconds. And so that’s just a different type of stress to the tissue, physiologically, that’s a different stimulus. And it has a different neural control strategy as well. So if that same athlete wanted to now do more of a capacity based program, they wanted to do repeaters. So they’re going to do a seven, three times, you know, five repetition repeater, and they’re going to do five reps in a set, they could do that as well, at a given percentage of their intensity 75 to 85%, for four to five weeks, then after that they could transition to where they’re just pulling with the same set rep scheme, or they could add more repetitions.

So it’s really more about that. It’s not really — and the article says it’s not really a new type of finger training protocol. It’s just a different intent of the exercise that you’re doing. And certainly, there’s lots of argument to be had for, you know, finger training protocols and what to do out there. But with this, it’s more about like, changing the way we think about using the actual protocol that were prescribed, or we made for ourselves, you know, so it’s a form of variation, it’s a form of progression, and not in progression doesn’t always mean increase in intensity, which I think is kind of a misunderstanding that most climbers, you know, think that a progression is only adding more intensity or adding more stuff. Progression certainly can be just changing the stimulus to the system, and your body will respond accordingly. You know, so it’s really, you know, thinking about how we can use the finger training protocols that we know. And we can just do them differently. But the cool thing about this is if someone is at home right now, because a lot of gyms are closed, and it’s cold outside, and people maybe don’t have extra weight to put on their body, they can still hit 85% of their intensity on their fingers without adding weight, all they have to do is pull on their fingers, instead of add that extra weight. 

Neely Quinn 

Okay, well that´s useful right now. 

Tyler Nelson 

For sure people are like — I have a lot of people, you know, that are quarantined, that have no gym access, that are panicked about what they can do for their fingers, because they don’t have lots of equipment, you can do all of this, you can do everything you ever need for climbing, in my opinion, with a fingerboard, it’s certainly nice to have finger boards with multiple edge sizes, you know, because that’s a really good way to be specific and change the intensity. But it doesn’t need to be, you know, high tech with lots of equipment or counter pulley systems or anything like that, because the athlete is really good at knowing what their max is and what their range is.You know, it’s really quite amazing how good we are at estimating a range of our percent intensity.

You know, so if someone’s trying to do a big wall, and they’re trying to train to climb El Cap in the spring, and they don’t have any equipment, they can do way more volume in a session, but their intensity is going to be lower, they’re just going to be pulling on their fingers for you know, they could probably hang on their fingers for a period of time. But as they get closer, then they could just start pulling on their fingers. And they’re gonna get the same outcome.

It’s it’s just kind of weird, because climbers aren’t used to doing this. And in the fact that you’re not adding load to your body. It’s kind of trips people out that: Oh, how do I know I’m getting stronger? Like I’m not — I don’t see the numbers going up, right is one of the reasons that we get. So, you know, like, immersed in adding more load and using numbers, which I love too you know, but we don’t have to and you know, people totally respond — the body, the body doesn’t care, as long as the stimulus is kept on its frequency.

I mean, maybe the maybe the thing that people will ask about is like, how does this fit into something like the simplest finger training program, where like, you could you could consider it and i and i was you know, goofing off with all the names we could, you could consider this an addendum to the simplest finger training program. And this is the endurance component. Right because we have like a capacity component at the beginning, which would increase your endurance a little bit but really good for creating connective tissue stress and getting recruitment and good for injuries. Then we have a recruitment component which is the overcoming isometrics. Which are the recruitment polls just pull as hard as you possibly can for a couple seconds, then we have the velocity component, which is take the intensity down a little bit and load your fingers as quickly as you can. And this could be the endurance component where use a repeater type protocol and increase the repetitions that you’re doing. But pull to a perceived intensity. 

Neely Quinn 

Got it. Yeah. And that —

Tyler Nelson 

Could be a fourth part to the that article. So for people, and most of the people that are probably interested in this are people that have listened to those other podcasts and know that article, but for people that haven’t, then they certainly want to go back and read that article. And I would, that’s a really easy way to conceptualize how we could use this is, you know, considering it the endurance part of the training protocol. 

Neely Quinn 

Mm hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. And that’s really helpful. And that’s in our at home training program. And it’s all over. Tyler did a podcast episode on that, and there’s a big article about it. So yeah, that is useful, um, anything else that people should know?

Tyler Nelson 

That’s, that’s the bulk of it. You know, aside from getting like, even more nerdy with the oscillation stuff, I think that’s probably plenty of information for people, it was just really striking to me when I read this paper, you know that. And they were doing at the in this paper, they did 80% intensity. And they compared the, the two different types of isometrics. But when they were pulling against the resistance to 80%, they could do it for twice as long the force was maintained for twice as long as they were when they were just trying to resist it. Which like, is amazing in terms of like, the physiologic response, right?

And there’s these theories that will continue to get challenged, which is great, as people study this more, but it just, it really resonated with me as to why the hell don’t climbers, why don’t we do that more when we think about endurance training? You know, so I think that as with everything, the more people start trying these new things, and realizing that they’re helpful, you know, the more that we will get people interested in, you know, studying them and trying them on themselves, which is really what, like the the process is all about. So I’m pretty psyched about that.

Neely Quinn 

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s always cool to see how you take this new research and you apply it to climbers, because that’s not what research is typically done on. And —

Tyler Nelson

No, not at all.

Neely Quinn

Yeah. So one question I have is, if people do want to be more up on research like this, like, what, where should they go? And what resources should they use? 

Tyler Nelson 

There’s like the, like, I think the easiest way, maybe there’s a lot of like, people on social media that will talk about research papers. I know Natasha does this, there’s another Michael, at barbell medicine that does this, he’s all about posting about research papers, you know, in the climbing, you know, because there’s not a lot of climbing research. And that, that doesn’t mean that we can’t use research from other sports and, like, apply it to climbing because that’s what everyone does in the real world, right.

And the criticism with, like, all the research doesn’t support that it doesn’t support this is really because, you know, research is like really expensive. And there’s a whole shitload of like fallacies and flaws and research anyways, too, because it’s like it only only the good stuff gets published. And the things that say it didn’t have any effect don’t get published. So there’s all sorts of confounding reasons there. 

So I would say like, the easiest way for people to search on a topic is looking at like systematic reviews, like on PubMed or Google Scholar, like if they have, you know, you can follow the people that do it, that would maybe kind of spark your interest to look a little bit further into a topic. But if you have an interest in a particular topic, go to Google and just type in systematic review, whatever the topic is, and that’s a good place to start. Because most systematic reviews, they’re designed for people to read, they want lots of people to read them, because it’s a, it’s a comprehensive analysis, some are better than others, and they’re not all like, you know, read this and start doing it. But it’s really the concepts that we want to pull out of these papers. But the systematic reviews kind of do all the homework for the individual, you know, they sit down, and they collect a bunch of papers, and they read them and they write a paper about what those papers say. So it gives us a better understanding on a topic, kind of the general consensus, and then it’s up to the individual to apply their own logic and apply, you know, that particular concept to something like rock climbing and then make use of it, you know, so, like, I I spend a lot of my time reading research papers, and it’s really cool, you know, and then there’s just try new things, right. And that’s exactly the, you know, like what we should be doing with research papers. But if things aren’t great, and they don’t work good, then great. That’s no big deal. We don’t want to get like too emotionally attached to these ideas, but we want to — it’s great to get ideas from papers like that.

 Neely Quinn 

Yeah, and that’s good to know, like, sort of where people can go and get their own information so that they can start thinking outside the box, too. 

Tyler Nelson 

Yeah, there’s some, there’s some really good, like, you know, UK researchers and like for people with the spine like, and the hip and the knee, like, there’s kind of some experts out there, and the ones that you really want to listen to are the ones that say, we don’t really know, as much as we think we know. You know, and like, that’s always a good kind of starting point. You know, and I talked about this a lot. When it comes like lower back pain, something I treat a lot is if if someone’s giving you the answer, and the diagnosis of what’s going on, that’s kind of a red flag, because there’s no way that we really have that good of an understanding.

And same thing with research papers, too. You know, if there’s like a one thing do this, that’s usually not the case. You know, and the more we, the more people know, the more they understand that we don’t really know, a lot of things. And so they want to be selective because you can find whatever the hell you’re looking for, in the research, too. If you want to find, you know, a topic and that supports your opinion, you’re going to be able to find one. And if you want to find the opposite, you’re going to be able to find that too. So the reviews are probably the best place for people to start. 

Neely Quinn 

Yeah. Well, where can people find you?

 Tyler Nelson 

People can find me easiest on Instagram, @C4HP. And then there is all my link to courses. And, you know, like we talked about before we started I’ve been, you know, I think I have like 12 courses right now that I’ve been teaching just kind of on and off, like what people are interested in. So I’ve been kind of like doing this rolling schedule where every Saturday morning, I’ve been teaching a course for either three or six hours, depending on the course. And so I’ve been doing a lot of that, which has been really fun. But that’s probably the easiest way to find me that people can, you know, look at those things on my website.

Neely Quinn 

Okay, yeah. And of course, I’ll have links to all of that up on the show notes as well. But if there’s nothing else, I think that I’ve picked your brain on this topic enough, unless you have anything else. 

Tyler Nelson 

No, I think that’s — that’s a good foundation for people and people can check out the article, they’ll maybe have more questions they can — I get lots of questions still about the simplest finger training program. So people can you know, it’s easier to contact with me on Instagram, just because you can talk to it. So I don’t have to type on my computer via email. So that’s a pretty easy way if people have questions to ask about it. But I think this is for people that are really interested in it’s simple enough to understand that there shouldn’t be too many questions about it, because it’s not like a new training protocol and why you should do it. It’s really just about, you know, different application of it. 

Neely Quinn 

Right? Yeah. Well, thank you, as always, for bringing your new ideas and knowledge and wisdom to the show. I really appreciate it. 

Tyler Nelson 

You bet. Yep. I’m gonna send — maybe I’ll send you an elf. Because it doesn’t sound like you have one for Christmas this year.  

Neely Quinn 

Yeah. Just what we need.

Tyler Nelson

Yeah. All right. Have a good day. 

Neely Quinn 

 Thanks, you too.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Dr. Tyler Nelson, if you have questions about what he was talking about, that article that I mentioned, to pull or hang is all about this topic, and that it’s linked in the show notes, you can also just go to trainingbeta.com and search to pull or hang or just search Tyler Nelson, and it will come up. And he’s also on Instagram talking about this kind of thing a lot right now at C4HP. If you want to work with him, I have links in the show notes as well to do that. You can find him on his website at camp4humanperformance.com.

So he obviously is a wealth of knowledge, I always enjoy my conversations with him. And I always come away learning a little bit of something. So hopefully you did, too. Coming up on the podcast, I will have Eric Hörst and a couple of guys who made their climbing performance improve just by being partners with each other. So it’s a different kind of interview than I’ve ever done before. But that’ll be coming up in the next couple of weeks – few weeks here. 

I’ve kind of been doing an every other weeks schedule with the podcast for a while now. And I think that that’s probably how it’ll keep going. So if you need any help with your training, remember that we have training programs over at trainingbeta.com. And those are for all kinds of levels of climber, whether you’re a boulderer or route climber, we have ebooks, we have subscription programs, whatever fits your preferences. And we also have just finger training programs, just power endurance programs, and all kinds of stuff over there. Injury protocols. So that’s all at trainingbeta.com and you can find us on Instagram, and Facebook @trainingbeta.

Lastly, I just wanted to take a couple moments to remember Darek Krol. He was a climber who very recently died in an avalanche. He was a really talented climber, but also a super friendly, lovely human, who was a friend of mine for many years because he was a mainstay in Rifle. And he, over the years became sort of like the keeper of Rifle, the climbing community. And he had the respect of a lot of people in the community. And he had the courage to keep us in line, make sure that ethics were being respected. Make sure that we were taking care of each other as a community, taking care of the land that we were climbing on. He was a developer of roots, and he, he was just a steward. And so I think I speak for all of us when I say that he will be missed. So that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end and I will talk to you in a couple weeks.