Time flies by and I've nearly completed my power phase. Campus training has been the name of the game for nearly a month and having no significant prior experience with it, the gains were big and extremely motivating. In fact the workouts were so much fun to do, I feel a bit sorry to progress to power endurance training. That's a sharp contrast with the extremely demanding fingerboard session from the previous phase, which I haven't missed for a second yet.
Much like hangboarding, campussing is very quantifiable, so my inner geek went berserk again and I've analyzed the campus trainings a bit. Trainings consistently comprised a few warmup ladders (after roughly an hour of full body work and bouldering), followed by 'max ladder' attempts: three moves between three rungs as far apart as possible, out of which the second move obviously is the hardest. Because the ladders really boil down to this one move, they are asymmetrical: starting out with the left hand ('leading left') is different from starting out with the right hand ('leading right'). The first graph below shows the hardest max ladders I've completed per workout, differentiating between leading left and leading right. As I've stated before, I had no significant experience in campussing before starting this phase. This explains the fast progress to harder max ladders that the graph displays. I don't expect anything similar in the next season: I'd be very happy to get to 1-4-7 then.
The second graph shows the volume per workout (in red) and the average distance covered per hand move for each workout (in blue). In my opinion, the combination of these two reflects the performance during a training a bit better than just the best performed max ladders. Volume is calculated as the total distance covered multiplied by my body weight. Note the difference with the definition of volume I used for the
strength trainings, in which I multiplied mass and time. Due to the static nature of deadhangs, no distance is covered. It's all about the T.U.T. (Time Under Tension). Now, with the dynamic campus exercises, covering distances is what counts. Most readers won't be very interested in these details, but it's important to point out that the quantitative values of volume from hangboard workouts cannot be compared to those of campus workouts. Throughout the phase a steady rise in volume and average distance per hand movement can be seen, which - obviously - makes me very content with the results of this power phase. Now it's time to shift my focus to power endurance!
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| Hardest max ladder performed per workout, differentiating between leading left (left hand first) and leading right (right hand first). On the vertical axis are the progressively harder max ladders. 1-3-5 for example means both hands start at rung 1, one hand moves up to rung 3, the other to rung 5 and finally both hands match on rung 5. Rungs are at Moon spacing (22 cm), half numbers (like 5.5) indicate rungs at half Moon spacing. More board specs here. |
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| Average distance per hand movement and volume for each workout. Together they give a good indication of the intensity of a workout: a workout with many, many small hand movements could still have a very high volume, but has a very low average distance per move. |
Some interesting things I've noticed or learned during this power phase:
- Already after a few campus trainings, I noticed an increase in contact strength on dynamic moves while bouldering.
- Performing a fully maximal explosive movement requires extremely high arousal. Taking time to concentrate on getting all fired up prior to starting the exercise really helps to explode up and makes the difference between not even coming close and sticking a movement easily. This is a bit different from the power breathing approach that worked so well for deadhangs, although power breathing can help induce high arousal.
- Campus training is addictive and it requires discipline to end the workout before performance drops and the risk of injuries increases dramatically.
- Focussing on the lower hand (to push down) rather than the higher hand (to pull up) is extremely helpful. I figured out how to do this during workout 4. See for the results yourself in the upper graph.
- I'm considerably better at max ladders starting out with left. As in this case the left hand does the pulling during the hardest move, this isn't really surprising for a left-handed guy...
