21 December 2016

Orangutan training follow up

Climb like an orangutan and improve your endurance is the most credited article of 2016 when it comes to feedback through emails and facebook (including follow up questions). Even some trainers have given thumbs up. Some people said that they could feel the change in their technique after just a few sessions, and that it spreads quickly among their friends. Here are some follow up thoughts and answers: The whole Orangutan climbing exercise idea aims to make you climb more relaxed, using your muscle fibers less, which eventually will improve your blood circulation and endurance. Many climbers have a problem with over-gripping, meaning that you use more strength than needed and also that you do not let go of the tension in your forearm muscles as the hand moves between different holds. If you start practicing climbing with just one hand at a time, you will learn to automatically relax and let go of tension in the moving forearm, which will allow it to rest for a few seconds before grabbing the next hold. It won't take too many hours training with the Orangutan technique before you notice that you automatically try to let go of the lower hand and reduce the used contact strength as much as possible. By always focusing on letting go, you will also have the benefit of getting a micro-shake while moving the hand to the next hold, which will save energy for executing harder moves. In fact, looking at the World Cup climbers, you can see that their style normally is to lock off and to do as controlled moves as possible, in order to get a micro-shake. Further more, this style has also the advantage that instead of grabbing the next hold semi-dynamically with an uncontrolled exaggerated landing power, you grab the next hold smoothly and statically.
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