Adam Ondra's #1 Rule for Training | ft. Neil Gresham

About The Guest:

Neil Gresham is a British climber and coach who has been at the cutting edge for over two decades.

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[kevedwards]

Neil is a living legend, I am currently following one his training plans with some nutritional advice he gave me and I am feeling the strongest, healthiest and most robust I’ve ever been in my life and all this after hitting my 40’s last year.

[jpswaddle]

Eat right.
Sleep right.
Train right.
Intensity matters.
Be consistent.
Trust in the process.

Climbing less + lifting more = Quicker gains.

I was a 30 year old that had never climbed before recovering opiate addict that couldn't do a push up now I'm 34 clean and bouldering 7c consistently.

Depression can be your best friend when it comes to physical self-improvement. That dark place it takes you, that self loathing and sickness is like nothing else when it comes to giving you the ability to suffer and if we are training right and training hard, then we should be suffering.

Get after it.

[parkerbrown]

RE: 3:47
Wrist extensor strength improves overall finger strength in flexion because of the mechanical advantage it provides.

Increasing the angle of the wrist in extension preloads the flexor tendons so less muscle contraction is required to exert the same amount of force. Try making a fist with a fully flexed wrist.

This is why climbers 'wing' their elbows when they are fatigued. What is usually happening is that the wrist extensors are burned out and cannot support the wrist shape, so in order to maintain the same mechanical advantage, we will use the shoulder to move the elbow. This however causes the angle of attack for the fingers against the hold to move away from 90 degrees which becomes a positive feedback loop for fatigue!

I think I picked this up in that One Move Too Many book.

[thomaspinches]

Hi Steven, I love your podcast, and what you've produced here is an incredible resource of climbing nuggets. There's so much value in the long form content of your podcasts but these bitesize videos are gold. Keep them up my friend.

[zacharylaschober]

Likeliest reasoning, as someone who uses the bands infrequently but generally does pinch block work for this purpose, for the apparent increase in climbing finger strength is not about imbalances in the body exactly but where strain through the elbow and wrist caused by a significantly weaker extensor digitorum causes the golgi tendon organs there to limit finger strength to prevent injury. You could get your fds and fdp muscles to be obscenely strong, but you’ll always be limited if the elbows and shoulders sense risk which comes from strength training around those as well as gradual exposure.

Course, Neil is stating something which in application means the same thing, and I always appreciate Neil and his willingness to self test and adopt new strategies despite having this deep experience, even here when there is an unknown but he simply knows this works.

[craigjerrells]

Love your podcast and am really enjoying these short nuggets your putting up 😊

[DylanMatto]

Amazing channel, amazing content! Please don't stop! Keep doing more nugget climbing :)

[AR_]

Even very little antagonist training for my shoulders eliminated all the problems I had in that area.

[LuLzezRoflcopter]

Yup those bands help my fingers feel a little better if I’m climbing a lot

[kevedwards]

By the way, we really need the Gresh follow up 🤞🏻

[ajstang]

I think it's more likely that the body won't *neurologically* allow a contraction with more force than the corresponding antagonist muscles can handle, or at least more than it believes they can handle.

The golgi apparatus and spindle fibers are special organs in your muscles which detect the speed and distance covered of a contraction and help the brain control the level of exertion. Without training, some research suggests they cap force production at around 80% of the actual maximum for safe contraction. If you don't train all the muscles involved to at least similar degrees of fitness, perhaps you are neurologically capped before you are physically capped.

The answer is the same either way: train your antagonists. Just interesting to think about, and could perhaps inform the way you go about doing so

[ashhodson]

Hanging weight from the back two (pinky and wedding) is a game changer for me personally! I've found my contact strength, pinch strength and also general grip endurance have gone through the roof. And longer hangs on fingerboard (longer contact time trains endurance quicker than flying through moves quickly on a circuit. Also sorry Jerry Moffat but foot on campus boarding is massively underrated!

[jakesweet]

could i get the same results my gripping my fingers and pushing out on my hand?

[robbieelsbury]

I’m sold. Anyone have any good recommendations for finger resistance bands?

[Stewartthorp]

Finger extensor is also stopping my dupuytren's contracture from getting worse

[spacescienceguy]

Is this episode out yet? I can’t find it!

[ejl]

This is pure gold! Now it’s time to dig that rubber hand thing out of my junk drawer 😂

[HealingMushroom]

just ordered some of amazon.. let's see :D

[Nicoclimbs]

So what brand of finger extensor is best?

[dcl]

Adam Ondra's #1 Rule for Training - reactivate Holocoste&Gaswagen flashbacks