Repeaters and max hang analysis for strength and hypertrophy (ft. Power Company Podcast and Steve Maisch)

Cover image source

I’ve started going back over some old posts on reddit and re-analyzing them from a stronger climbing perspective including the recently updated 7.5 year self assessment of climbing, strength training, and hangboard.

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The Power Company Podcast with Steve Maisch came out a week or so ago (as of this article, ~5 years ago), and I wanted to write up something on it. Overall, this was a solid summary from nauticaljack:

Episode was a discussion with Steve Maisch about different hangboard protocols.

Steve floated an interesting idea about frequent plateauing w/ the Eva Lopez max hang protocol. He speculates that a 10″ max hang is more targeted at recruitment whereas low total set repeaters are more beneficial for strength building. We know that repeaters are better for hypertrophy, so that seems to make sense.

That said, I’m curious how common this max hang plateauing is — I’ve still been seeing improvement with max hangs cycle over cycle (which implies more than just temporary recruitment gains), but I still might be benefitting from some n00b gains.

Going to analyze this from a broader perspective now and hindsight!

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General scientific information

We do know that some muscles have greater proportion slow twitch fibers than others. Typically, ones like soleus and forearm muscles do while bigger, two-joint muscles might have slightly greater proportions of fast twitch. We do not know, however, if it makes any appreciable difference or not in terms of the way we should apply training. The most relevant evidence so far indicates probably not but perhaps not enough information yet.

Therefore, to default back to what we know about strength and hypertrophy:

• Strength = neurological adaptations * Muscle cross sectional area (hypertrophy). Generally, to maximize strength you want to train both strength and hypertrophy. It’s no surprise that most of the strongest climbers have high levels of strength (can one arm half crimp bodyweight + additional weight) and have massive forearm hypertrophy.
• One factor in maximizing strength is recruitment which is predicated generally working toward 1 RM, with maximal recruitment occurring around ~1-4ish RM.
• Hypertrophy is maximized by working in all repetitions ranges. The three mechanisms are (1) mechanical tension, usually in low repetition ranges and high intensities; (2) Damage induced satellite cell donation, through sufficient intensity ~70-90% with higher volumes which usually is about the 5-15ish rep range; (3) Metabolic Stress, which is done through working with high repetition ranges and/or drop sets and super sets type work.
• Some more on hypertrophy here anywhere up to 100+ repetitions and about any repetition ranges with high quality work.

All of these present a solid framework to analyze hangboard protocols.

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Hangboard protocols

• Repeaters — Most common type of repeater is probably the 3-5 sets of 6x(7 on / 3 off) protocol, used for any number of different grips.
• Max hangs — Most common form of max hangs is probably 3-5 sets of 7-10s holds, used for any number of different grips
• Updated — There are more out there now such as 5on / 5off and other variations of work:rest ratios, but these still seem to be the most prevalent, so we’ll stick with analyzing these for now.

Let’s look at one type of grip like say half crimp. The volume of work on the forearms is as follows:

• Repeaters — 3-5 sets of 6 clusters of 7s on. Each set of ‘repeater’ generates 6*7 or 42s of total time under tension in a minute. In total this would be 3-5 sets – zzzz
• Max hangs — 3-5 sets of 7-10s holds. Each set of max hangs generates 7-10s on the forearms.

Repeaters traditionally are not done with 3 different exercises (from what I am aware), so that can be taken with a grain of salt. However, someone training for increasing strength in their forearms with max hangs will often do anywhere from about 2-5 different types of hangs.

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General Analysis

Generally, the standard conversion ratio I’ve used for isometric holds to concentric exercises is about 2s isometric = 1 repetition in practice (and in Overcoming Gravity 2). For example, someone could crank out 1 pushup in under a second, but the tougher an exercise is the longer it will take especially when you fatigue throughout a set. I think it’s fair to say that 10 dips or 10 pullups would take about 20s or so for most people although some people can do it faster. It’s also worth noting that hypertrophy has also been correlated to not just volume but time under tension. Steve also mentions that that 7s is recruitment which would make some sense in that ~7s is a 3-4 RM type of hold if done with maximal weight.

Repeaters volume range

• 3 sets of 6x(7 on/3 off) is 126s or ~ 63 reps
• 5 sets of 6x(7 on/3 off) is 210s or ~ 105 reps
• 9 sets of 6x(7 on/3 off) is 378s or ~ 189 reps

Max hang volume range

• 3 sets of 7-10s hangs is 21-30s volume or ~ 10-15 reps
• 5 sets of 7-10s hangs is 35-50s volume or ~ 18-25 reps
• 9 sets of 7-10s hangs is 63-90s volume or ~ 32-45 reps

Looking at this, I have a some observations for the “time under tension” or “rep range”:

1. In general, the volume for max hangs is insufficient to generate good amounts of muscular hypertrophy even though it definitely challenges recruitment substantially like most strength work.
2. The repeaters volume looks similar to what you would see is effective for most hypertrophy repetition ranges volume.
3. The amount of meaningful hard climbing you do in a session definitely has some measurable impact on how a hangboard session turns out (before or after) the the volume needed for a strength or hypertrophy stimulus.
4. There are definitely people who have progressively improved with max hangs, but I would speculate that is because they also paired that work with hard(er) climbing sessions to generate sufficient stress onto the muscles to create both a strength and hypertrophy response.
5. On the other hand, those who do repeaters may not necessarily need extra stimulus from a climbing day to generate sufficient stress to force hypertrophy adaptations. The lower loads definitely do preferentially cause maximal neurological adaptations, but there likely some good strength gain from the hypertrophy and some of the neurological adaptations that it does force.

Now, the “hard” part about training with isometrics and lower hold times — or if you were lifting and were using lower reps and heavier weights — is that you generally have to massively increase the number of sets you do to get anywhere close to the needed volume for hypertrophy. This seems to the case here with max hangs. However, we are just looking at max hang versus repeater protocol in isolation. Indeed, you could generally modify both of these protocols to where you could have more rest between sets with longer hold times and potentially generate sufficient volume to force strength and hypertrophy adaptation. For example, one could break up repeaters such as 6 sets of 3x(7on/3off) which would be similar volume to 3 sets of 6x(7 on/3 off) to minimize the amount of metabolic stress and focus on increasing the weight instead.

There’s other factors you can look at such some type of concurrent periodization or conjugate periodization where you aim to maintain certain attributes and work on others at different times. This can apply for the strength equation where you may preferentially want to increase hypertrophy or neurological adaptations at particular times. This could be a topic for another post though.

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Conclusions

• Overall, by volume repeaters in the 3-5 set range are superior for both strength and hypertrophy compared to max hangs up to 9 sets in isolation. However, this may be offset depending on the amount of hard(er) climbing that one does.
• In general, there are some people who never hangboard and still improve. This is probably due to innate or learned autoregulatory function where they climb hard enough to force enough muscular and strength adaptations without leading to overuse injuries without specific training. Chris Sharma is probably the foremost example of this + being a genetic freak.
• Both the hard day climbing volume and the hangboard protocol volume should be taken into account when using a hangboard protocol in order to make sure you are getting solid gains in strength and hypertrophy.
• Speculatively, there may be some merit to altering protocols to achieve some sort of hybrid. For example, one could break up repeaters such as 6 sets of 3x(7on/3off) which would be similar volume to 3 sets of 6x(7 on/3 off) which would make it less metabolic but would be compensated by higher weights being able to be used. Time is always a factor though as not everyone has it.

To round things back out with the PCP and Steve Masich. I agree with Steve Maisch that max hangs seem to be better for strength recruitment (neurological adaptations) but not hypertrophy and not necessarily overall strength in the long term. Repeaters seem to be superior to max hangs for overall strength and hypertrophy when comparing those protocols in isolation.

Updated information in this post. Original post on /r/climbharder.