Effects of Different Recovery Methods on Hangboard Performance in Rock Climbers: A Pilot Study

The purpose of this study was to determine whether static stretching, dynamic shakes, or repeated contractions would promote the greatest retention in performance in hangboard training within a given period of time. Five volunteer intermediate climbers from the Liberty University rock climbing team were instructed to suspend themselves from a 20mm ledge on a hangboard until voluntary failure while time was recorded. After failure, subjects performed one of three different recovery methods and a control in randomized order for two minutes in alternating fifteen-second intervals. Upon finishing recovery, subjects would hang from the same ledge and have their time recorded again. All subjects performed all recovery methods over the course of the semester. A multi variant repeated-measures ANOVA and one-way ANOVA compared total time of hang before and after between groups and hang time Δ between groups respectively. Unfortunately, statistical power was too weak to find any significant differences between groups (p=1). Significant differences were found between pre and post-hang times (p\u3c0.001) with subjects hanging 5.2 seconds longer on average during the first hang. The study should be repeated with modifications to the study population, these being: open the study to climbers outside the team and its staff, increase the amount of experience needed, and have a pre-test to ensure climbers can hang for at least twenty seconds