TBP 239 :: Dr. Tyler Nelson on Training Finger Endurance

Date: August 23rd, 2023

Dr. Tyler Nelson on Training Finger Endurance with a Hangboard or a Tindeq

In this episode, Dr. Tyler Nelson talks about how we can increase our finger endurance without putting ourselves in a giant recovery hole from the session. Tyler uses a strain gauge (in this case a Tindeq Progressor) for this kind of workout (as he does for a lot of his training).

The Tindeq Progressor

I actually ended up being so convinced by this episode that I finally got a Tindeq for myself! He has a code you can use for $10 off, which I used. It’s “C4HP” at this site. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for them and I have no affiliation with the company, but after hearing Tyler talk about this thing for literally years, I needed to have one. I’m about to start doing these endurance workouts this week.

So in this episode, Tyler goes into a lot of detail about what your workouts should look like to get the most out of an endurance finger training session, why what we’ve been doing traditionally doesn’t make quite as much sense as what he’s recommending, and how it’s helped his athletes with their route training.

Here are some videos from his Instagram that we mention in the episode:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tyler Nelson DC, MS, CSCS (@c4hp)

About Tyler

Tyler owns and operates Camp 4 Human Performance, a chiropractic sports medicine clinic and strength & conditioning business in Salt Lake City. While earning his doctoral degree, he completed a dual program Master’s degree in exercise science at the University Of Missouri. While in graduate school he worked with the University of Missouri athletics department and currently is employed through two colleges in Utah.

He is certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and spends any extra time in his life with his wife and 4 kids or trad climbing or bouldering.

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

Other Episodes with Tyler

Episode Links

Personal website: camp4humanperformance.com
Take an online class with Tyler: camp4humanperformance.com/store
Do a consultation with Tyler
Instagram: @c4hp
Facebook: @camp4chiropractic

Learn More from Tyler: If you want to work with Dr. Tyler Nelson on an individual basis for injuries or strength training, he offers remote consultations to people all over the world. He also teaches online classes on strength training and injuries. Learn more.

Training Programs from TrainingBeta

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…

Transcript

Neely (00:00):

If you are looking for route climbing advice and you don’t feel like trying to make your own training program and you don’t feel like hiring a coach for a considerable amount of money to give you a personalized training plan, we have something in the middle for you. We have a subscription program. It’s our performance route climbing training program where you pay $18 a month and you’ll get three levels of training for routes on your dashboard. And it’s beautifully laid out. You have at least 50 days per level, which is between three and six months of training, depending on how many days a week you train. And in there you’ll get detailed descriptions of how to warm up, what drills to do on routes and on boulders, what to do for your route or bouldering session, whether that is doubles or triples or performance, trying to do hard routes for you in three to four tries or something like that.

(01:09):

Or if you’re bouldering and there is bouldering in this route training program because it’ll make you stronger and you might be limit bouldering, you might be doing on the minute boulders. So all of that is really laid out for you. And then there’s also strength training in there, whether that’s doing deadlifts or squats or whatever it is in the weight room, and also finger strength training all laid out for you, minute by minute exercise rep set all of it. You can find that at training beta.com/route-training. We’re really excited about this. It’s new as of August to 2023. It’s created by coach Matt Pincus, who’s had many years of experience training, not only himself but his hundreds of clients over the years to get better at route training. So again, you can find it@trainingbeta.com slash routes training, and we’d love to see you in there.

(02:25):

This is the Training Beta podcast and I’m your host, Neely Quinn. Thanks for joining me for another episode, all about training for climbing and all things climbing. Today I have one of my favorite guests on the show. Again, I don’t know how many times I’ve had him on, I think it’s over 10 now. And his name is Dr. Tyler Nelson. He’s a friend and he lives in Salt Lake City or near Salt Lake City. He lives in Salt Lake and he’s a physician. He is a chiropractor, but he’s also got many degrees in sports science, et cetera. I’m actually going to read his bio for you from his website, which is camp for human performance.com because he says it best. So Tyler’s a second generation physician whose father was a leader in the sports chiropractic profession for his career in graduate school. He completed a dual doctorate slash master’s degree in exercise science with an emphasis on tendon loading and rehabilitation.

(03:30):

He completed his master’s degree at the University of Missouri and was a physician for the athletics department for four years out of college. He currently is the owner of Camp for Human Performance where he treats clients from around the world via telehealth and in his office in Utah. He’s also a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the N S C A and teaches conferences worldwide on a host of topics. So you can find him at camp for human performance and you can do consultations with him there. So he does consultations on both rehab, so injury rehab stuff, and he makes programs, training programs for climbers. And he will also just educate you if you listen to this and you just love listening to him and you want to just learn more, you can just make an appointment with him and he will educate you on whatever you want to be educated on.

(04:25):

So he speaks in big words, prepare yourself if you’ve never listened to him before. Sometimes I don’t even understand what he’s talking about, and so I try to ask as many clarifying questions as I can, but I know that there are a lot of smarter people out there than me who really geek out about this stuff. And so I love having him on just to really talk about this stuff in a super educated, scientific way. He does a lot of extracurricular research and education for himself so that he can bring all that wisdom back to us as the climbing community, and I really appreciate him for that. It’s always cutting edge. So what we’re going to talk about today is finger endurance training. I’m not going to say too much more about it. He’s going to explain it. But basically he’s going to tell you the most efficient ways of training, endurance, muscular endurance for your fingers, for route climbing, and maybe long boulders. Okay, so here is Tyler. Enjoy and I’ll talk to you on the other side. Alright, welcome back to the show. Tyler. How’s it going?

Tyler (05:33):

Pretty good. Doing well, thanks Yourself?

Neely (05:36):

Yeah, I’m doing great. Doing well. Just climbing in the gym a lot, getting ready to get psyched to climb outside again.

Tyler (05:44):

Outdoor for you is back to Vegas or are you staying in Colorado this fall?

Neely (05:47):

We’ll actually stay, so we’re going to rifle in September for three weeks, and then we’re actually going to Greece from November 17th to December 15th. Very cool. I got to get psyched by then.

Tyler (06:02):

Yeah, yeah. Cool. What’s the style there?

Neely (06:06):

Some is vert, a lot is overhanging long sport going to be awesome?

Tyler (06:11):

Yeah. Cool. Rifle’s probably. Okay. Training ground for that I would imagine.

Neely (06:16):

Yeah, that’s true. It is. I could just think of it like that.

Tyler (06:19):

Maybe not as steep. Right. Rifle’s pretty, I’ve never climbed that. Rifle’s pretty steep.

Neely (06:23):

Yeah, I think they’re both pretty similar, A lot of different varied, varied angles. So yeah, I’m excited about that. Have you been climbing much?

Tyler (06:33):

I have not been climbing outside a ton. Been training in the gym a ton just in prep. I went to Squamish for 10 days last week to present at a conference and did some climbing there and then just same thing, kind of prepping for the fall.

Neely (06:50):

Yeah. Do you have projects?

Tyler (06:52):

Probably some things in Joe’s that I want to do and some here locally, but I think for me I’ve just kind of, for the last 10 years I’ve been working a lot and need to get reacquainted with going out and just climbing more often and not being too worried about going and trying at my limit. Right. I’ve been going out even just the last couple of weeks and climbing on grades that I should be able to flash pretty easily and getting reacquainted with just climbing outside more often, I just don’t do that enough. It’s like I’ve kind of fallen into the trap of only trying to perform at my limit all the time outside, which doesn’t really give me as much exposure to practicing climbing on rail rock. So I’ve been trying to focus on that. So I’m going to try and this fall just kind of knock down all the V five to sixes in the canyon here locally, which would be pretty damn hard. I try to V four yesterday I couldn’t do it really

Neely (07:52):

Just because it was a particularly hard before or you’re just not?

Tyler (07:56):

Yeah, I mean it’s all relative. Particularly hard for me is heel hooks and scrunchie feet. My body just like the flexibility is not great in the lower extremity. So those boulders are always really hard for me, but trying to stretch and do the things to prepare for those is not even close to as helpful as just going and doing those. But doing it at a lower grade is actually pretty helpful because then you are likely more successful and you actually get to expose yourself to that kind of stress. So it’s all just relative. There’s one V two in the canyon that I cannot do that boulder. It’s hot right now and it’s not good, but it is just one of those weird things where maybe it’s worth doing, maybe not. But yeah, just trying to explore more rock climbing.

Neely (08:43):

Yeah. So it sounds like you have more time to be doing that. Are you working less or tell me about your work life right now.

Tyler (08:51):

I definitely don’t have more time. It’s more just like a priority thing. It’s easy to fall into the trap of just going to the gym in the springtime in prep for my trip to Squamish, I have a couple hour block and if I want to go outside and try something really hard, I have to wait until the weather’s really good and warm up and then be very precise with my time. But if I go out and I climb easy stuff, I can make the time to go out and do a bunch of easy stuff and get the practice in and then come back and then I need to do training in addition to that. But that’s easy to do throughout my day because it doesn’t take a lot of time. So it’s not that I have more time, it’s just like I’m allocating the time to doing that at least a couple times per week, which I think I’ve kind of forgotten to do, which is on me, et cetera. But I went to Squamish and felt really strong and I was climbing hard on the tension board and I did not perform very well. And it’s really not like a strength problem. My problem is never a strength problem, but it’s really just like I hadn’t been outside climbing on rock in months and it’s just not the same climbing in a gym or on a board. So trying to make that more of a focus,

Neely (10:05):

I mean it’s a good lesson for all of us even though you focus so much on strength and like you said, strength is not your problem. Climbing outside is just a different game.

Tyler (10:15):

And I miss when I was in college when I would just do that even when the temperature wasn’t good to go outside and go climb and it’s always harder and not as good of an outcome, but it’s still a good time to work on footwork and for me work on mobility stuff and do all the easy stuff that you haven’t done. I think some good value in that that I’ve kind of forgotten about over the years just because of my schedule and letting that drive me go into the gym a lot.

Neely (10:43):

Yeah, totally. One last thought on that, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, how over the years I’ve made my box pretty narrow, pretty small for when I’ll go outside and what the conditions need to be and exactly what the temperature can’t be above or below. And then I was walking, I was taking a hike the other day and I saw Bobby Binman on a hundred percent humidity day. It was like 95 degrees out and she was walking up to climb her hardest project and she was like, well, whatever. It’s fine, I’ll just try some moves. I’ll get better on the moves and then when it’s cooler it’ll feel better. And I was like, this is the attitude and maybe I need to remember a little bit. Little

Tyler (11:25):

Bit. Yeah, I think that’s a good job,

Neely (11:26):

Bobby.

Tyler (11:27):

Yeah, good job for sure. Well, when I was in Squamish, I climbed with Jesse and his wife the weekend before and then during the conference we went out after the conference with a lot of participants and they had pads and we went to the grand wall and just climbed a bunch of easy boulders and it was so fun. I forgot how fun it is to just climb on things that you should be able to climb and just not really care about the grades or trying at your limit, whatever. And then I went to Squamish with my wife and we went to Pemberton Boulders, which is north of Whistler and I had no pads and someone told me where to go to this flat area where the boulderings easy and it was like these really pretty boulders on flat landings and they were all pretty moderate and easy and I had so much fun, I was like, I need to do this more often. I don’t ever do this anymore, which is a huge mistake. You go out and you train and you get warmed up and then you try something at your limit and then you leave and that’s what you have to do to do things at your new limit. But I kind of want to stop doing that so much just for my own enjoyment of going climbing more

Neely (12:34):

What are we talking about today?

Tyler (12:37):

So not bouldering, we’re going to talk about finger endurance training or specifically muscular endurance training and give people maybe some specifics on different outcomes with different types of muscular endurance training and how they could, as they get closer to their season, they obviously want to spend more time outside climbing on their projects or in a gym trying to match the demand of an outside project that would be wall angle and hold size and distance, et cetera. But for muscular endurance training, different options for doing that. Ones that are maybe less fatiguing, ones that are going to be easier to recover from, ones that are going to give you more back with your training, et cetera.

Neely (13:22):

Okay. And why did you want to talk about this?

Tyler (13:25):

It’s kind of a continuation of what I’ve been talking about over the last maybe six months to eight months regarding the different types of muscle contractions we use when we’re training our fingers where, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast, but when you’re hanging on a fingerboard, you’re doing an eccentric like type of muscle contraction where you’re loading a lot of the connective tissues compared to where you’re curling your fingers and you’re trying to isolate your finger flexors, you’re getting less connective tissue involvement. So it’s kind of a continuation of that conversation, but in the application of endurance training.

Neely (14:03):

Okay, and when you say endurance training, who are you talking to?

Tyler (14:06):

So I would say endurance training or capacity could be another term for it is thinking more sport climbers, but certainly some bouldering athletes have long bullet problems and they might need more capacity training, but technically a muscular endurance training exercise in most contexts is fatiguing to the muscles themselves. So essentially what that means is if you’re doing deadlifts for reps or you’re doing pull-ups for reps, the repetitions are limited by the muscles becoming fatigued very quickly or to the individual’s capacity. But doing it on a fingerboard is not as much a direct reflection of the muscles becoming fatigued as it is because you’re getting all the connective tissue load. So as climbers using a fingerboard as the sole mechanism to increase muscular endurance, we’re probably not stressing the muscle as much as we could if we were doing it in the other fashion, which would probably give us a slightly different outcome.

Neely (15:11):

Okay. So you’re saying that on the hang board we’re using all of our connective tissue and we’re not necessarily fatiguing the muscles as much as we should be for endurance training for our finger?

Tyler (15:23):

Yes, exactly. So if you did a critical force test on a fingerboard or a max hang test and you found out 60% of your load, most people would say use 60% because a pretty good number for endurance and then do repeaters to failure. So because of the type of muscle contraction, each individual fiber is 50% stronger in that position. So if I drop my intensity to 60% and then I do repeaters to failure, I’m not really stressing the actual motor units as much as I could be if I was reducing all that passive tension and just curling my fingers to get the muscles fatigued more intentionally than if I’m just hanging on my fingers.

Neely (16:09):

Okay. So what do you suggest then

Tyler (16:14):

The other option would be to use an isolation method, and that could be sitting and curling your fingers vertically down. It could be a standing method where you’re standing and curling your fingers vertically upwards, or it could be horizontal, probably doesn’t really matter the position in my opinion, but you would need to have some sort of measuring device and what we’ve been using lately, the tend deck progressor, and you can actually measure your forces every repetition, which would be a five to seven second effort, and you can actually watch when your force goes down. So one of the things that’s really hard to understand on a fingerboard is you’re going to prescribe some sort of repeater protocol, maybe seven three repeaters to 10 repetitions or something, or to some sort of grip position loss. When I’ve tested that in my clinic in the past, it’s really hard to detect a grip position loss. And even if you detect a grip position loss, that doesn’t mean that the muscles really fatigued because most people when they get a grip loss, they could still do more hangs. So it’s really hard to use the fingerboard as a measure of when a set should end compared to a measuring device. It’s very obvious when a set should end.

Neely (17:35):

Okay, let’s talk about the measuring device. It’s the 10 deck, what?

Tyler (17:39):

The tin deck Progressor is the name of it. So a company can’t exactly remember where they’re from, not in the states,

Neely (17:48):

But the tin deck is spelled T I N D E Q T

Tyler (17:51):

I A N D E Q.

Neely (17:53):

Okay.

Tyler (17:54):

Yeah, and they’ve really stepped up their game with their app and how it looks. And there’s another one out right now, the force board, which is another one, which I think is now in production. I’m not sure if they’ve actually shipped units yet, but there’s a couple tools that are quite useful in this context.

Neely (18:09):

And how much do these things cost?

Tyler (18:11):

They’re not that expensive. The 10 deck, I think the 300 kg one is $150 US and I think the force board’s similar price point.

Neely (18:20):

Okay.

Tyler (18:21):

So they’re not that expensive.

Neely (18:22):

All right, so run me through an endurance workout with one of these things for your fingers.

Tyler (18:30):

So let’s give the finger boarding protocol example as the first and then we’ll maybe compare that. So let’s assume that an athlete does their maximum hang test on some fixed edge size, a 20 mil edge size, and that’s another maybe thing we can highlight here is when we talked about strength training protocols, I would make the argument that the edge size doesn’t really matter. The bigger the edge, the more recruitment totally. Okay. But when it comes to endurance training, the edge size probably matters more, especially if we’re using a fingerboard because we’re trying to stress a muscle in a grip position on a particular edge size because that’s the capacity we need. So in this case, let’s say we’re using a 20 mil edge and we test the athlete’s maximum and we drop their intensity with two arms to 60%. We’re going to prescribe maybe based on how quickly they climb or how slow they climb, either a five second or a seven second repeater protocol, and we’re going to have them do a set to failure or a grip loss. So we’re going to try and watch the half grip position as soon as they maybe fall out of that or they can’t hold it anymore, that’s the end of that set. Then they would rest maybe 10 minutes, do that again, track the number of repetitions. They do maybe do three sets of that a couple times a week, right? They’re

Neely (19:54):

Tracking the number of repetitions and when you say five or seven repeaters, you’re saying five seconds on how many seconds off?

Tyler (20:02):

Maybe a couple seconds off, like five seconds on, two seconds off, three seconds off. That’s the typical number. And let’s assume they did 10 reps the first set, the second set, they shouldn’t do more than 10 reps, they should be more tired, that’s normal. Maybe they’ll do eight reps. The third set, maybe they do six reps and that’s the end of their session. The downside of that is it’s really hard to know if they’re fatigued going into that session because even when you’re a little fatigued, you could still do a really heavy finger boarding protocol because of all that extra passive tension. So a lot of times climbers will do their muscular endurance training on a fingerboard under fatigue just because it’s hard to detect. The other thing that’s hard to know is maybe 10 repetitions was not enough, maybe 10 repetitions was too much. It’s really hard to know when it comes to a grip loss. It’s such a subjective thing or going to literal failure I think is not as precise as it would be if we were using a measuring device. So conversely, if I was isolating my finger flexors, I could do, I like the standing position because I think it’s the easiest to set up. So they’re standing on a platform, they have a bolt underneath them, they hook the tin deck to the bolt, they have a chain or a sling, the tension block is hooked to the sling and they’re curling their fingers and isolating the finger flexors. You have that visual in your head.

(21:38):

So they would test their maximum like that, test the right arm, test the left arm, but they would do these single arm, not double arm, and then I would just find 60% or 65% of their maximum. And I would try and target that load for that sustained either five or seven seconds every rep.

(22:01):

So now the goal is not to hang on the fingers, but the goal is to curl the fingers actively get more muscle activity because I’m not loading the connective tissues as much, and I’m going to try and sustain that for as many repetitions as I can. Same work tour, rest ratio, same end goal, but now I’m going to give myself a better understanding of whether I’m tired before that session. If I’m tired, I won’t be able to hit that 60% very easily and it’s going to give me a cutoff for every set per arm and I’m going to get way more muscle stress from it.

Neely (22:39):

Just so I’m clear, and I know people can rewind this, but you’re curling up into a half crimp or a full crimp?

Tyler (22:50):

So I would probably stay, I usually would say the joint angle, you’d start at like one 20 and you would flex into the finger and you’re not really literally going to curl into a half crimp. You’re going to attempt to curl into a half crimp.

Neely (23:04):

Okay.

Tyler (23:05):

So because it’s a fixed load and it’s an isometric, it’s a style of isometric that doesn’t use as much passive tension, doesn’t use as many ends of the muscle fiber, connective tissue pieces. So

Neely (23:19):

I’m going to have the tin deck, I’m going to have my fingerboard, whatever, I’m going to just try, but when I’m figuring out my max though, that’s when you are actually going into a half crimp.

Tyler (23:34):

Well then you would do the same thing for the max test. You would just curl as hard as you possibly can.

Neely (23:40):

Yeah. Okay. But

Tyler (23:41):

For the repeater test, you’re just trying to hit 60% of that maximum every single session. So what you could do, what the athletes could do a couple times per week, they could before that session, they could test their max and then hit 60% of that max on that day for their repeater protocol. And people could do that with a fingerboard too. And I’m not sure that people usually do, but it makes the most sense to test your maximum every day that you do a repeater protocol because your maximum is going to change. It’s going to fluctuate day to day.

Neely (24:19):

Okay, got it.

Tyler (24:20):

If the maximum is way off, then you probably want to maybe not do it that day because you’re fatigued. If the maximum is a little bit off, probably not that big of a deal, that’s just normal variation.

Neely (24:32):

But either way you’re watching the tin deck to see that you’re hitting your 60% each time.

Tyler (24:38):

For sure. And so I usually have people with the setup, you want to use a tripod or something that’s in front of you because I’ve done this a bunch with clients where if you put it on the ground and you look down, that actually compresses your ribcage. So it’s not as strong of a posture for breathing mechanics where standing upright vertically would be really a good idea for athletes when they’re doing this because you want to make sure you’re getting as much respiration as possible during the exercise.

Neely (25:13):

And then the same thing you would be doing like the three sets to failure with this,

Tyler (25:18):

You would just do it to a force loss. So in the context of the example with the TY deck, you’re not going to go to failure really as much as you’re going to go to a percentage force loss. And so if you can’t sustain 60% for five seconds and it goes to 40%, then that’s a good kind of cutoff for that session. And then you’re going to rest long, do it again, another set rest long, do it again, and then just kind of track your ability to repeat that same number of repetitions. And what that’s going to do is in that context, you’re not stretching the muscle fibers as much, so the type of fatigue that you’re getting is not going to carry over as much into the following days. Where when I do an eccentric and I stretch the muscles a lot, the calcium ions get left over in the muscle. They tend to carry over 24, 48 hours until they go away.

Neely (26:13):

So you’re saying that the first workout that you talked about on the hang board is more fatiguing than the one with the tin deck?

Tyler (26:20):

Yeah, I would predict that one to be harder to recover from. And so the important part here I guess is as athletes get closer to the season, the muscular endurance training that you’re doing that’s in your program, however you’re organizing it, it should be as little fatigue as possible. And when I stress the muscle and the motors, I demand essentially more oxygen. I have to use more energy because I’m not using as much connective tissue, so I’m going to get more of a mitochondrial uptick in terms of my efficiency of muscles. So it’s going to be better overall increase in your capillary increase in the mitochondrial function. All the things that we try to get out of the endurance stuff, we should get better if we actually target the muscle more intentionally.

Neely (27:11):

Okay. You do these workouts, when do you recommend doing them? When relative to climbing per se?

Tyler (27:20):

So it depends on the climbing session for the athlete, I’m not a huge fan of doing a ton of capacity building inside. I think a lot of times climbers could do hard bouldering sessions and then they could train muscular endurance even on the same day later in the day. And then if they’re climbing outside, because a lot of people are still climbing outside a couple days per week, so their indoor sessions shouldn’t really be lots of continuous rope climbing and fatiguing stuff. It should be more power output focused stuff that’s easy to recover from. And then later in the day, they could do some muscular endurance training. But if I’m doing too much of the same thing all the time, it’s really hard for athletes to track how tired they’re getting with the workouts and then the actual quality of the workouts is not that great, that’s less productive for actually sending something.

Neely (28:19):

Okay. So basically you want to do these after, or I’m assuming before a power climbing session?

Tyler (28:26):

I would probably not do them before. I would probably do them after power session would be fine. They could also be done after a strength training session if the athlete’s doing it, if they’re incorporating some sort of high intensity strength training right before the season. But once you get into the season and you’re doing a lot of performance climbing outside, that’s the focus then I would discontinue doing any sort of additional muscular endurance training. That’s where I would just do some very small amount of strength training in the same position. But different work trust ratios of course, but leading up to let’s say a couple weeks to a month before the sport climbing season, doing this two or three times per week should be quite productive for an athlete’s ability to get all of the necessary physiologic adaptations in their finger flexors for climbing, but they don’t have to do all that on the wall getting exhausted. That has implications for the elbows and shoulders and other body parts too. We just tend to do too much stuff is an easy way of saying it.

Neely (29:27):

Yeah. Did you say three or four weeks before the season or two or three?

Tyler (29:33):

It depends on the athlete, but three to four for most people should be fine. And all they have to do really is just track the progress. You don’t have to do anything different other than keep the workout the same and you’ll naturally just do more repetitions. You’ll naturally do more reps per set. You’ll naturally be able to do more sets and you should adapt and recover from it pretty quickly within 24 hours that you could not really negatively influence your climbing as much.

Neely (30:03):

Okay. So another technical question because in my gym we don’t have the bolted to the floor thing. I don’t think there’s anything like that where you’re pulling up on. And so what do you do in that situation?

Tyler (30:22):

You can put a sling around a plate, like a 45 pound plate and stand on it.

Neely (30:30):

Oh, stand

Tyler (30:30):

On it. That works pretty easily. Stand on the plate. You can also hook a sling around a squat rack, the bottom of a squat rack that’s bolted to the floor. That would also work with the isolated curls. The load is not that great. So I’ve done this a lot on myself. I think my max number’s like 120 pounds, so 60%, maybe 70 pounds, 65 pounds. So it’s not that much load you’re putting into the finger flexors. So it doesn’t need to be anything that’s really overly stable to the floor but not against your foot. I think it’s annoying to do that pulling against your feet just because it pulls up into the arch of the shoe and it’s just uncomfortable. You definitely want something solid to stand on to isolate the finger flexors

(31:20):

Even one step further, I would say the grip position stuff, if you’re trying to train muscular endurance, I would say we could also use an edge size. That’s because this is not rock climbing. One thing that I spent my presentation in Canada recently was about understanding the differences between these types of muscle contractions. And the one thing that we could maybe do a little better as climbers with muscular endurance training is actually include the index in the pinky more than we do. And so using an edge that’s not flat also makes a lot of sense because when you do the isolated curl method, it really does feel like a middle two finger load. You’re not really getting the pinky on. And a lot of female climbers certainly are dragging a lot. And so if I’m trying to get my muscles more stressed to adapt for climbing and I’m not climbing, I’m not doing my sport, it makes the most sense to get as many fingers involved as I can so I can get more muscular activity and then doing my sport that should transfer to my sport as long as I’m still doing my sport more.

Neely (32:31):

If people don’t know what he’s talking about with the uneven edge or what do you call it? The unlevel edge,

Tyler (32:38):

Just the unlevel. And there’s a couple whole bunch of people that are making products now and tension made a Noh hang device for me and they’ll be producing some periodically.

Neely (32:48):

We did an episode on it, I think you wrote an article on it,

Tyler (32:52):

All kinds, done some articles on it. I made my own people made their own. I’ve had people shave down their rounded fingerboard jugs. I think good reason to make the argument that that’s a more productive way to get more muscles involved with a strength training activity. And in this case muscular endurance training activity. Because the big mistake maybe that we’ve made with climbing as we’ve tried to make the training look too much like the sport, but it’s not the sport hanging on a flat edge is pretty easy. Climbing is way harder. And so we shouldn’t really think that that’s the only way we can build muscular endurance because that doesn’t target the muscle as well as it would with this other version. And I’ve done this a bunch with my clients recently in the recent past and have seen awesome results.

Neely (33:42):

Really? How so?

Tyler (33:44):

It’s been great. Just like their production on the wall, their performance, they’re less fatigued when they go and they train, they’re seeing progress with their loads because it’s hard to progress a repeater protocol on a fingerboard. Usually it’s like just do more reps to failure. But the hardest thing to understand is how tired you are before those sessions. So a lot of the sessions, if we do too much of them, the fatigue will carry over to the climbing sessions. So if my training fatigue carries over to my climbing sessions, my climbing quality is low, but then I have to try harder. So my perception of effort goes up, my recruitment goes down even more. I lose more strength that way. Where this method, we can actually visualize what’s happening in real time with every session and you can just auto-regulate it way better. People can back off, they can do more. It’s a more clean picture of what’s going on at the muscle.

Neely (34:43):

So in the beginning of this talk, we were discussing the amount of fatigue that might be happening in different kinds of muscle endurance workouts. And I’m just curious, how many days do you think it will take for people to recover from a tin deck workout?

Tyler (35:03):

I mean, it depends on how much climbing they’re doing. If they’re just a normal average, let’s say climber that’s climbing three or four days in the week and they’re rope climbing and bouldering, 24 hours should be plenty of time.

Neely (35:18):

Really?

Tyler (35:18):

Yeah. Should be plenty of time. If they’re not familiar with that type of contraction. If it’s totally a new thing, they might a couple days, they might take a couple sessions to get more familiar with it, but once they do, it’s like, and with the strength training, what I talked about last week, that’s how I strength train my fingers now. I just do it every day that I climb. I was outside climbing yesterday and I was doing easier things that weren’t very fingery. So I warmed up in this method, not with repeaters but with max strength, but between efforts, I was just doing high intensity max effort recruitment on my fingers,

Neely (35:54):

High intensity max

Tyler (35:56):

Effort. So just the same position, but pulling, lifting as hard as I can.

Neely (36:00):

Oh, okay. Right. You mean with the

Tyler (36:04):

10 deck and the context and endurance, we’ll do it lower percentage, but if it’s something that you do all the time just becomes easy. It’s very easy to recover from.

Neely (36:13):

Okay. Fingers strength training is so complicated. There’s so many options. There’s so many. It’s just complicated.

Tyler (36:23):

It’s just something that hasn’t been challenged a lot. I think it is. Any strength training transfer is really the complicated part. Doing the strength training and seeing gains with the strength training, that’s pretty easy, but that doesn’t really matter because using a fingerboard protocol, it’s easy to see your numbers go up and that’s great, but how does that influence your climbing? That’s the really hard part that we’re trying to get out here. Seeing your reps go up on a repeater protocol on a fingerboard is pretty easy, but transferring to your rock climbing is really what we care about. And so trying to use the most up-to-date science from the exercise science world in other sports, not necessarily climbing science and applying it to how we use the finger flexors for climbing. And hopefully after the last weekend with quite a few contacts I made what we’re going to do some more research on this in this realm with challenging some of these kind of traditional ideas for finger training,

Neely (37:30):

Which I’m

Tyler (37:30):

Pretty psyched

Neely (37:31):

About. I mean, I think a lot of people listening, we all see athletes on Instagram or whatever doing these max hangs with 50 pounds on them or a hundred pounds or whatever. And so we think that that is the way to train fingers. And so how is this kind of thing different from that and how is it actually going to help us in a way that we didn’t think it would?

Tyler (37:59):

You mean adding the 50 pounds for a strength protocol or an endurance protocol?

Neely (38:05):

Either. I mean, sometimes people do repeaters with lots of weight on them,

Tyler (38:09):

And so I’m not as familiar with people doing repeaters with lots of weight on them. I would say that’s probably a pretty bad practice for either strength or capacity. Not necessary in a lot of ways, but 50 pounds is not that much weight. Most people that are really strong can probably hang out with one arm almost right, I think is like 90 pounds with one arm. So it’s outrageous like a load. But ultimately those loads, and we talked about this in the previous podcast, those loads shouldn’t really transfer to our sport because when we use those really big loads on our fingers because of the muscle contraction type, our muscles only respond like that with that big load. But as soon as that load goes away, your muscles will not respond that it’s just that simple doing a really heavy one arm hang. And this was a really good visual for me this last weekend.

(39:04):

I can still do a 20 mil hang with 20 pounds in my other hand, but there was holds that I could not grab onto and Squamish that were 20 mil edges. But it’s not that I’m not strong enough to grab onto ’em. My hips couldn’t get me into the position where I was actually getting underneath them. I couldn’t actually coordinate the movement Well, and that was not a strength thing. That was absolutely a body positioning thing. And so what we need to do is we need to be less obsessed with these gains on a fingerboard and more thoughtful about how we can actually use any sort of strength gain to actually apply that to rock climbing. And so the actual outcomes that we get on the fingerboard are not that good of a reflection of what’s going to happen on a climbing wall and people will fight to the death with this. And that’s pretty typical when people get overly zealous about a thing means they probably don’t understand the thing very much. Never that simple with any strength training thing or any training thing.

Neely (40:09):

Yeah.

Tyler (40:10):

Okay. And I don’t know if that really answered your question. I may be rambled a little bit. Sorry if I rambled.

Neely (40:17):

That’s why you get paid the big bucks.

Tyler (40:20):

I don’t know if rambling is always a good thing, but ultimately the finger boarding protocols that are really heavy when it comes to capacity building, if I’m testing in that way and I’m dropping the weight, I’m still doing the same type of muscle contraction, so I’m probably getting less muscle activity. No other sport or no other exercise that athletes do to muscular failure isn’t eccentric, just is not. So if you did box jumps to failure, if you did pull-ups to failure, if you did rope pulling to failure, all of those failures are concentric muscle contraction failures, which is a direct reflection of muscle fatigue. But climbing, we use this other type of muscle contraction that’s not as much a direct reflection of the muscle fatigue as it is the connective tissue load. So it’s just really hard to detect essentially how fatigued we really are and how much we’re getting out of it is really the easiest way maybe to explain it, but it’s not easy kind of technical.

Neely (41:29):

Do you have any videos of you doing this or anybody doing this?

Tyler (41:33):

I have quite a few videos of me differentiating the types of muscle contractions on the fingerboard on my Instagram account and my website. I have some videos that I took of clients from mine for the P C C conference that was supposed to be done in June, which I have not done. Sorry everyone. Sorry Steve and Amanda, which I don’t even have that presentation made, but I have some videos of clients doing that for sure. So I have some videos

Neely (42:02):

So if I link to things, people will get a better understanding of what this workout will look like.

Tyler (42:08):

Yeah, I can do some of that for you and shoot some videos for sure.

Neely (42:12):

That’d be great. Yeah,

Tyler (42:13):

I think there’s actually some from, and actually just have some on my Instagram from maybe the springtime, winter springtime area that I can get you.

Neely (42:25):

And last question for you, unless you have anything to add after this, when you said that you’ve been having some clients do this and been seeing some great results, can you talk about that?

Tyler (42:37):

Yeah, so essentially it’s just like the results there are being able to track and quantify the number of repetitions they can do and also noting that they’re not as fatigued from those workouts. And so obviously people sending routes and getting new high points and new progress outside is the main goal. But those are really hard to equate to particular training intervention because it’s obviously climbing is more complicated than that, but ultimately it’s their recovery, their ability to do more hard moves over and over and over and getting less fatigued with the workouts is the number one thing that we’re noticing. And I’ll be more technical with the videos when clients come into my office. I’ll use the force from the tin deck, but I’ll also use SM O two monitors and actually measure real-time muscle activity at the same time. And so I didn’t get into that obviously because a bit more complicated for people to think about, but that also is a really good visual to demonstrate that athletes are doing more repetitions, but they’re actually recovering better and they’re being able to tolerate more stress.

Neely (43:53):

Yeah, that’s really cool. I’m actually going to ask you one more very selfish question. So I said I’m going to Greece. Obviously that’s going to be an endurance best for the most part. These are long routes with a lot of TFAs, but a lot of cramping and whatever. So do you think that this would be the best kind of sessions for me to do or what do you think?

Tyler (44:21):

So those would be good sessions to do as a supplement of your training. But again, the training has a very intentional outcome because the adaptations from the training are the things that can be very specific. So to build your muscular endurance and your capillary and your mitochondrial function, that would be a really good idea. But you still have to obviously climb in the gym on hard routes for you because that is our sport, is the actual climbing hard things. But what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to do double routes necessarily unless the routes are that long. But a lot of times we will try and build endurance by building more fatigue, but if we’re doing that on the climbing wall, that kind of changes the efficiency of our movement when we’re actually climbing it at our limit. Does that make sense? And so I’m not that big of a fan of people. Let’s say the gym that you are climbing at, let’s say that that’s the same length as the routes where you’re going to be on your trip. Maybe it is, maybe there isn’t. We’ll assume that it is. It’s not building more endurance is those routes are longer, right?

Neely (45:31):

Yeah.

Tyler (45:32):

So you wouldn’t do two in a row. That probably makes sense.

Neely (45:35):

No, no. The routes, my gym is 35 feet routes and leonia are going to be like 80 to a hundred.

Tyler (45:42):

So you’re going to have to do multiples, and that’s a good use of that tool. I’ll talk to a lot of people in Utah where they’ll climb an American fork. The routes are pretty short and they’re pretty bouldery, but in order to build their endurance, they’ll do doubles at a little bit lower of an intensity that doesn’t make any sense. They would be better training, muscular endurance off the wall, and then when they’re climbing on a rope, either inside or outside, it should be at the level that they’re climbing at outside. So not like sacrifice the efficiency and the technical stuff to do more volume. That usually gets us into an energy deficit and usually gets people more fatigued and harder to recover from. That doesn’t work very well.

Neely (46:25):

So projecting on routes and on boulders, I’m assuming?

Tyler (46:30):

Yeah, keep your power up. Bouldering have one maybe two days at most of project route climbing where you’re actually matching the distance and the difficulty of what you want to climb on there. And then you could do, I have a lot of people do conditioning off the wall. You can build a lot of aerobic capacity and function just generally, and you don’t have to do it all on a climbing wall like climbers. We’re too obsessed with doing all of our training on the climbing wall, but all that does is hurt people’s elbows and fingers. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can do circuits off the wall in a weight training gym. You can do circuits off the wall on an Airdyne bike. I have most of my clients do the targeted training stuff off the wall, and that’s where the muscular endurance stuff that we’re talking about fits in. And then their sport is their sport. But don’t mess with the sport either boulder for your power or climb routes for your efficiency and your technique at the distance of the routes you’re actually training for.

Neely (47:30):

Okay. Does that make sense? Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. We have a few minutes. Do you have anything else you want to add?

Tyler (47:36):

No, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think that’s the bulk of what I wanted to maybe give an insight into for your listeners. I think that will be, and there’ll be questions, certainly you can send them my way. Maybe I do need to write an article about this. Maybe I’ll make an article about it as well. It’ll help my brain get ready for that other presentation that I haven’t made yet.

Neely (48:00):

And if people want to work with you, which so many people do, how can they do that?

Tyler (48:05):

They can just contact me. My website is the easiest way to get on my schedule on my Instagram account. There’s also a link to my scheduling, I guess my scheduler where they can schedule whatever they’re looking they need from me.

Neely (48:20):

Okay. And what is that? Where do they find you?

Tyler (48:23):

C four H P is my Instagram account.

Neely (48:27):

Right. And camp for human performance.com.

Tyler (48:29):

I think that’s the name of it. Yeah. Camp for horse com.

Neely (48:34):

The number four,

Tyler (48:35):

By the way. I’m tired. I’m tired with things. And like we talked about before, this 10 day trip out of town was fun, but it was actually really invigorating for me. I learned a ton from, it was mostly hand surgeons and physios and a wrist surgeon. Just really top minds in the world. So I actually learned a ton and doing that for three days and climbing after and staying up late, everyone wanted to hang out and being behind on work. I’m a bit fatigued right

Neely (49:07):

Now. Wow. To hear you say that you are fatigued. You must’ve been doing a lot. I’ve seen you at these things and you are capable of a lot.

Tyler (49:15):

Yeah, I’m a bit fatigued right now, but hopefully this helps. I think people will be psyched about being able to differentiate and it’s not that one, you have to do one in replace of the other all the time. It’s really, it’s like a timing thing where if people were doing finger boarding repeater stuff because it’s harder to recover from, that’s usually not close to your season kind of intervention where if you’re getting close to your season, you’re going on a trip switching to have a type of protocol, muscular endurance protocol that’s going to be less fatiguing is absolutely a good idea. Being able to visualize, it’s just really fun. It’s just another kind of way to keep you psyched about your training, honestly. Obviously beat everyone down.

Neely (49:58):

As soon as we get off. I’m buying a tin deck, so thank you for the inspiration.

Tyler (50:03):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, there’s a link. People can use that. There’s a link on my website and there’s a code C four HP too that people can use.

Neely (50:09):

Oh, cool. All right. I’ll put that in the show notes.

Tyler (50:12):

Yeah,

Neely (50:13):

When I use it.

Tyler (50:15):

It’s great. It’s awesome unit.

Neely (50:17):

I really appreciate it. Thank you as always for your wisdom and for your constant seeking of knowledge for us, and I hope you have a great day.

Tyler (50:26):

Yeah, yeah, you, thanks for having me.

Neely (50:29):

All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr. Tyler Nelson. He can be found on Instagram at c4, hp, like he said. And then again, you can find him at camp for human performance.com. You can make appointments with him there. Okay, so I said in the episode that I was going to purchase the tin deck right after we got off the phone, and I did do that, and he gave us a code in there. He said C four HP two, but it’s actually just C four HP and it gives you $10 off. So I’m really psyched to try doing exactly what he just said. I mean, I’ve talked to him so many times that my interest has always been peaked in using one of these devices, but now I will actually do it and I will tell you how it goes for me because I really want to go to Greece being super prepared, and I don’t want to waste a trip to Europe and just feel like I wasn’t prepared to have fun and try climb a lot of stuff.

(51:34):

So I think that’s it. Remember that we have our new subscription program, it’s our route climbing training program, and in it you get three levels of training for routes. It’s built by Matt Pincus and a lot of people have signed up and they seem to be really liking it. A lot of people comment on how beautiful and clean the design is and how easy it is to use and how much value you get because you get all of these workouts that are very clearly laid out, but you also get the logbook and you get your access to Matt every month in his office hours. And I actually just experimented with something where I put on the checkout page because I know that a lot of people don’t like subscriptions. I don’t even love signing up for yet another subscription because I have so many of them.

(52:28):

And when it’s worth it, I definitely will. But I know that a lot of people are averse to that. So I did put an option in there for an all access pass. And so if you want to just get the program, own it, have all the perks of it and not have to pay a membership every month, you can do that as well. There’s that. And then remember also I am still taking new life coaching clients if you’re interested in doing that with me, but you’re not totally sure you want to sign up. I do have 15 minute slots for just getting to know me, getting to know what it is that we will do in the coaching session to see if it’s right to work together. You can sign up for that and that can all be found@trainingbeta.com slash Neely coaching. So I think that is actually it, and I’m going to let you go. Thanks so much for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate it and I’ll talk to you next time.