Hangboard Training Program – Daniele

Daniele is a powerful all-round climber who specializes in bouldering but is also successful in sport climbing. He’s had a great summer so far, and he managed to set personal bests in both bouldering and lead climbing. His most spectacular achievement in 2020 was climbing Souvenir 8A in Chironico, which was set by Fred Nicole [1]. Below you can see an example ascent video.  

Video 1: Example ascent video of Souvenir 8A.

Another success for Daniele this year was that he improved his personal best in sport climbing to 8a+ in August. Daniele prefers short and bouldery routes. When we look at his progress table, we can see that his Critical Force is currently 34% of his MVC-7, which is typical for boulderers. Still, because Daniele is very strong, his CF relative to bodyweight is 66%, which is definitely sufficient to send hard lead climbs. 

Focusing on improving his endurance would probably let Daniele reach 8b+ fairly quickly. However, since he has a preference for bouldering, we are emphasizing his finger strength development and working on his endurance as a secondary goal.

Here's what Daniele says about the Program:

''I guess every climber that wants to improve follows - or wants to follow - a training schedule. And I bet that every climber - at least once - has searched online for the best recipe, the magic potion that transforms you into a Beast (well, at least in my naivety, I'm still a little dreamy boy who's looking for that :). So one day, thirsty for new plans and exercises, I bumped into strengthclimbing.com. I started to read the articles, to feed the online tools with my data to discover MY GRADE (and I stop here, because this topic is an encyclopedia apart 🙂 and, when I reached the contact details...'I know this guy!'. I met Jędrzej back in 2009 in Gent, Belgium. I was there as a visiting student at the university. He was working on his PhD. We met at the local bouldering gym (''where else'', I would add :). Besides the regular climbing sessions, we enjoyed student life as well. After that year spent together, we somehow lost contact. But 1 minute after discovering his website, I wrote him a message, and we started to exchange opinions (mainly coming from him, due to his deep knowledge of the topic - while myself just random bits of it, mainly ''stealing'' :).Then I agreed - or probably I begged him, I don't remember - to be one of the 'guinea pigs' for the validation of his methods: really excited and curious to see if this new recipe was a real elixir. Well, after a few months, I climbed my highest bouldering AND sport climbing grades! I'm still following the training (which is not the same but fine-tuned by him from time to time), and I can't wait to see what it will bring! Anyway, when we first met, I immediately had a very good impression of him, mainly his scientific and detail-oriented mindset. So, I'm not surprised to see the quality of the results: a combination of the most efficient training methods out there, synthesized into specific training plans for your personal goal. All thanks to his dedication, based on accurate studies and researches moved by passion for the topic. I hope I have found my magic cocktail (too many ''unwanted'' references to drinking in these lines..anyway, I can't wait to crack open a beer with him again :)"
Daniele (V11/8A, 5.13c/8a+)
Boulderer and Sport Climber (Belgium)
5/5

Table 1: Hangboard Training Program progress.

Beginning (05.2020)
Completed cycleStrength
MVC-7 (20 mm) [kg]128
Body weight [kg]67
MVC-7 (20 mm) [%BW]191%
CF [%MVC-7]34%
CF [%BW]66%
CF [kg]44
Score1383
Bouldering level predictionV11 (8A)
Current bouldering levelV11 (8A)
Lead level prediction5.13c (8a+)
Current lead level5.13c (8a+)

Figure 1: Critical Force as percentage of MVC-7 – progress plots.

Figure 2: Critical Force as percentage of bodyweight – progress plots.

References

  1. Fred Nicole, Wikipedia. (link)↩
…