Hoopers Beta | Why Climbers Should Stop Icing Injuries | Viewer Questions @HoopersBeta | Uploaded January 2021 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
#icing #physicaltherapy #rockclimbing

// Timestamps //
Fun Fact of the Day: Pistol Shrimp (00:00)
How much strength do you actually lose when switching to endurance training? (00:56)
What is cross-training? (02:21)
Do you use external rotator exercises for strength or mobility/warm-up? (04:01)
How long will it take my A2 pulley injury to heal at 19 years old? (04:59)
Thoughts on icing fingers? (06:07)
Outro & Bloopers (08:24)

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Pistol shriiiiimp!!! What the heck?? These creatures are amazing!!

Viewer: Martin R
Question
My own experience is definitely that progress is relatively slow when you try to build strength, endurance and explosiveness at the same time, but I am always worried that if I decide to work endurance for a while (e.g. chasing unweighted reps rather than more added weight for pull-ups) my strength gains will diminish, after all, these are different energy systems I am working.
So, my question is this: do you know of any research or have personal experience how much strength (if any) you actually lose when switching to an endurance-oriented routine for, say, 6-8 weeks, and how much strength training one needs afterwards to return to the old level?

Answer
OK so to start, I’ll directly answer this by saying no, there isn’t any research that I know of about how much strength you actually lose when switching to an endurance-oriented routine. Personally, the drop off is not heavy, from my experience. Especially if you tailor your modifications in an appropriate way. But, I think this question is great and I want to add to the answer by giving a shift in perspectives. You're correct, it's quite hard to make improvement when you are working on 3 different systems. You will never become great at one, rather you’ll make slooooow progress in multiple realms. The perspective shift I want to introduce is this: think of the changes in training style as beneficial, and have it match your performance seasons. This is known as periodization of training. For example, do you have an "off season" for climbing where you live? This time could be your strength training period. You may not be projecting outdoors super hard, so you work on improving your overall strength. Then, when your outdoor climbing season begins... you go into a maintenance phase, which is where endurance training can be beneficial. Endurance training involves less force on the tissue, and rather promotes a ton of blood flow and vascularization of the tissue. Since you are trying super hard outdoors (creating lots of force), it's beneficial to have some endurance training as it is lower force and increased bloodflow which can help improve your healing. This would be better than doing strength training at that time as you may not be adequately healing in time to try hard outdoors again. You don't want to generate a ton of force with climbing, and a ton of force with training, necessarily. This is actually common in major sports. There is an offseason of recovery. A pre-season of strength, agility, motor skills, etc gains. And then a competitive season where they try to maintain their performance. They won't necessarily do as much strength training during the season because they want to maintain, not build at this time.
You can also look at your endurance slightly differently if you really want to prevent strength training loss. I mentioned earlier how you structure it makes a difference. So, this is anecdotal but this is a way that I prevent some of those losses. Say you can do 4 reps of a +70 pound pull up. This is definitely in the strength training realm as you are limited to those 4 repetitions. Now, say you are switching to endurance...

Ran out of room!! For the rest, please check out the show notes:
hoopersbeta.com/library/viewer-questions-ep-11

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