Mind-Blowing Finger Strength Study with Emil Abrahamsson and Dr. Keith Baar

[@jedrzejbanaszczyk354]

I think in many ways this is similar to what's known as Tyler Nelson's Density Hangs. It's low intensity, long duration, causing tendon fibers to slide and get a hypertrophy signal. The advantage is that with no hangs it's easier to stay on the low intensity side and you don't need to calculate anything, or use counterweight.

[@namelastname2449]

Sorry but it’s the first time I hear about this from my cave. Is no hangs like with the feet on the floor but long duration or are we talking about loading weight on a wooden hold and lifting it?

[@thestruggleclimbingshow]

Yes, I believe Tyler based his density hangs on the original paper published by Dr. Baar that we reference in this conversation

[@thestruggleclimbingshow]

Feet on the floor, loading fingers on a hang board, but at 40% of max or less. Check Emil’s original video on the protocol, in description.

[@zacharylaschober]

These operate on extremely different mechanisms, with density hangs causing this slow eccentric action to disrupt chemical bonds between collagen fibrils which may have been formed irregularly during the erratic loading of sport, allowing those to be repaired more regularly in parallel which is how the tissue is strongest. Due to the viscoelastic nature of connective tissue, repeated, shorter duration loads will not have the same influence even if the total time under tension are similar. Density could be done with feet on the floor, sans any calculation or counterweight, provided the intensity is appropriate enough to cause such disruption, and the intensity is in the rep duration which is 30-45 seconds. The modality is irrelevant.

[@zacharylaschober]

@@thestruggleclimbingshow to my knowledge, the original paper talks about frequency of nutrient absorption, not about remodeling of connective tissue, and long duration isometrics for connective tissue health predates.

[@thomassearle3753]

Great talk! So cool that Emil has continued to work on this stuff. No hangs have been a life-saver for me. Never saw crazy strength gains from it but have used it to rehab multiple minor strains and in general my fingers are healthier than theyve ever been

[@namelastname2449]

What’s a no hang?

[@jedrzejbanaszczyk354]

​It's like hanging on a hangboard, but your feet lightly touch the ground to reduce the load.​@@namelastname2449

[@FlamingKnives100]

​@@namelastname2449 When you use a fingerboard where your feet are on the ground still

[@doggyinthewindow]

@@namelastname2449 keep feet on ground

[@SelcraigClimbs]

@@namelastname2449 feet on floor pulling on a hangboard

[@drunkmonkey1337]

This is awesome. So exciting to see the theoretical becoming reality in such a quick manner. Thank you for helping to share this news!

[@matthewsevers5862]

I would be curious if there’s a difference between 10, 20, and 30 second hangs. It was noted that longer duration (30 sec) stimulus was found to be effective for tendon recovery and rebuilding. Should we consider longer hangs in the “Abrahang” protocol?

[@jeffpagnutti]

So if I understand correctly, my max hang needs to first exceed 20% of my body weight.... I guess Dr. Max Abrahangs is my prescription.. joking aside, great discussion and really nice work Emil, Dr. Baar, and all other researchers and subjects! Pretty cool that something like crimpd can also provide very valuable retro-data!

[@moluper1635]

Is there news to the study, where can i find it?

[@HiShark8]

Great Insight! I’m wondering How would the repeater (for example: 6/10) + Abra-hang ;) & max hang + abrahang compared? Any guess or hypothesis on it?

[@esbenandersen2168]

This video would benefit massively from a short explanation of what a no-hang protocol is. What does "light loading" mean? How is it performed?

[@thestruggleclimbingshow]

Just linked to it in the description, it was a video Emil put out a few years ago, which sparked this whole thing.

[@mangiari]

I have the feeling that in the video people confused 40% of max hangs vs. 40% of body weight. Of course, the latter can be totally max for some people or totally peanuts. But when using 40% of max hang, what are we talking about? Same duration? 10 seconds? I typically train and measure max hangs more in the 4 to 6 second range, which is of course a massive difference. Especially when you start to even enlarge the hang times to also benefit from that tissue reorganization some others talked about in the comments, it is very important to actually specify 40% (or also 20%) of what. On the other hand, I guess if you feel tweaky after doing the Abrahangs with no warmup, it’s too much and if you feel no benefit/change at all after doing it for weeks, it might be a bit too light.

[@thestruggleclimbingshow]

I got the sense that the % wasn't all that important (although they plan to test various % loads in future studies). Dr Baar recommended a light tension on the fingers / forearms. Err to the side of going lighter. These aren't intended to be hangs for recruitment or strength, but just to stimulate the tissue. I basically just sag onto the hold, feet on ground but bend my knees so there's a bit of load going through the fingers and arms.

[@Buffalo93]

Maybe I missed it (listened to 40 minutes), but responding to arguments from Hooper's Beta video (second one) would be very interesting. Then, self-reported data from app users is rather low quality data, as there is much noise in there. Not only people are terrible at tracking themselves, but also there is no universal understanding on how to perform various tests and exercises or even in what "just climbing" means. I'd be nice to see a study on maybe 50 people, but where it is actually made sure that there is common understating on what to do, with possibly gathering additional data in order to better explain the mechanism.

[@cch0223]

What about ARCing? It's long duration easy climbing. Would it have similar effect as abrahang?

[@danielwest8628]

Arcing is about the worst possible thing you could do for a finger injury. Very high volume just irritates it and prevents it from healing. They are suggesting very low volume - 10 minutes

[@denislejeune9218]

20min so far. A question I have and may be answered later is: did the improvement in finger strength equate with improvement in climbing?

[@dennis1802]

It sure will help a lot

[@denislejeune9218]

6-8 hours of wait before climbing or training again, ok, but is it also the case in reverse: how long after a session can you no-hang for full effect?

[@dennis1802]

My fysio says one day musclepain is healthy and then you can load more, if the strain is two days keep it easy

[@matankedar7050]

Somebody pleaseeeee explain to me what I am missing here, cause I don’t freaking get it. They make it sound like doing no-hangs will see you having the same improvement as doing max hangs. If I recall in Emil’s video they were talking about 2-4 percent. But 2-4 percent from what exactly? Emil is already a beast of a climber, and he got his baseline finger strength before starting doing the no-hangs BY DOING MAX HANGS FOR YEARS AND YEARS. That’s not a 2-4 percent improvement. That’s thousands of percents of improvement - from not being able to hang at bodyweight, to being able to hang for 10 second with 70kg or whatever weight he can hang with. Am I wrong here? Cause great, no-hangs can improve your ALREADY CRAZY STRENGTH by even more. But is anybody suggests here that you can get to that finger strength by only doing no-hangs? Sounds a bit misleading to me unless (well I am) a complete idiot. Help. Please haha

[@KarstenThoughts]

Can anyone actually timestamp me to just the results?

[@wesseldewilde]

35:00

[@boogaloo4640]

Maybe not the best timing. Doesn't Emil have a pulley injury at the moment?

[@FlamingKnives100]

where did you hear that from

[@boogaloo4640]

@@FlamingKnives100 His IG story, a couple of days ago

[@boogaloo4640]

@@FlamingKnives100 Looks like my reply was deleted. He posted about it elsewhere, a couple of days ago

[@danielparsons2859]

Anything to do with the human body must be considered in the context of the individual. Everyone has a unique body and they need to train in a manner that works for that body. Not everyone will get the same results doing the same protocol. Further studies are needed I believe.

[@cwtag]

Further studies are needed to determine if further studies are needed