Four Weeks of Finger Grip Training Increases the Rate of Force Development and the Maximal Force in Elite and Top World-Ranking Climbers

Abstract

The goal of this study was to assess the impact of a specific four-week training program on finger grip in climbers; specifically, on the maximal force and the rate of force development (RFD) of finger muscles in isometric contraction. The participants were 14 French male rock climbers who took part in national and international bouldering competitions (at world-ranking and elite levels). They were divided into two samples. The experimental group performed a specific four-week training program that included such exercises as suspensions on small holds at the rate of three times a week. The control group performed climbing exercises only. The maximal force and the RFD were recorded using a specific dynamometer in three different holding conditions (slope crimp, half crimp and full crimp). Results reveal a significant gain of force for the slope crimp (+ 8 %) and a high increase of the RFD in the first 200ms of the force-time slope (between 27.5 % and 32 % for averaged conditions), suggesting a neural gain rather a change in muscle-tendon structure. These results reveals that a four-week training program is enough to improve the level of maximum force and rate of force development in elite climbers. Bearing in mind that climbing will make its appearance in a future Olympic Games in the form of a combined competition, i.e., bouldering, speed climbing and lead climbing, it will be crucial for each athlete to develop both a high level of force and RFD to be competitive.

Brief Review: Effects of Isometric Strength Training on Strength and Dynamic Performance

“…The benefits of IST also extended to Muay Thai strike and bouldering grip performances [38,39]. Lee and McGill [38] compare the effects of IST and dynamic strength training for the core muscle on Muay Thai strikes performance and found that IST led to greater improvement in strike impact as compared to dynamic core muscle exercises.…”

“…Lee and McGill [38] compare the effects of IST and dynamic strength training for the core muscle on Muay Thai strikes performance and found that IST led to greater improvement in strike impact as compared to dynamic core muscle exercises. In a study on bouldering performance, Levernier and Laffaye [39] found that 4 weeks of IST for the fingers resulted in increased maximum force and RFD while gripping different crimps.…”

“…Despite this believe, IST has been shown to be effective in improving isometric force production at the joint angle that the muscles were trained at [30,66], as well as joint angles that were not included in the training intervention [8,50]. Additionally, studies on IST have also shown positive effects on dyna mic strength [8,13,19,31,63,69], jump performances [10,11,21,33,36], various sports related dynamic performances including running [2,18], cycling [73], soccer related skills [10], Muay Thai strike [38] and bouldering grip [39], injury and pain management [17,22,42] and tendon properties [12,32,35,36].…”

Post-activation Potentiation Response of Climbers Performing the Upper Body Power Exercise

“…However, less is known about sports climbers' training, including the effects of various exercise protocols, the effectiveness of training modes and methods. Whenever undertaken, such studies have mainly concerned finger strength training on hangboards (Levernier and Laffaye, 2019;López-Rivera and González-Badillo, 2019) and, less often, other aspects of preparation (Philippe et al, 2019). It stands in contradiction to increasing demands of extreme rock-climbing and competition climbing.…”

“…The former is an amount of force exerted in a unit of time (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer, 2006) while the latter is a measure of how fast an athlete can develop force and is considered a "mechanism behind the expression of power in sport" (Taber et al, 2016, p. 38). Although few researchers have addressed the problem in the context of climbing, the results obtained so far seem important in all climbing disciplines (Fanchini et al, 2013;Levernier and Laffaye, 2019). Not surprisingly, every climber is inclined to include power exercises into their practice regimen.…”