Shadowing Practice: Hangboarding Twice Per Day For 2 Years | ft. Emil Abrahamsson - Learn English Speaking with Video
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this hangboard protocol that we talked about in the last podcast, like two years ago, is kind of my recruitment protocol nowadays.
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So I do that six weeks in advance and it quite quickly, for anybody listening, I guess I could clarify what I meant by that.
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The no hang protocol is a protocol that I do two times per day, where I just gently load my fingers.
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So I'm not pushing them as you would do on like a max hang session or anything like that.
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I'm just kind of tugging a bit on holds for 10 minutes.
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and what it's definitely done for me is helped recruit a lot of my my muscle fibers
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and just get my body more like ready to climb i guess
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and when i was when i was doing
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that in preparation for the trip it was pretty apparent
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that as soon as i started that my body got used to the new weight
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i like to climb with that new weight well that's that's fascinating
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because you're doing that protocol with your feet on the ground right
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and you're just taking like a percentage of your your weight
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so that's yeah that's really interesting that doing
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that allowed you to adjust to the new weight
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so you just it sounds like periodically you still come back to that protocol
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and you'll just do it for 30 days yeah exactly i
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do it for about six weeks before any form of like performance type thing
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so if it's a competition or some some climb
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that i want to do outdoors or so i i always try
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and plan for like six weeks of
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that yeah okay um yeah do you feel like you've gotten long-term gains from doing
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that or is it just like a shorter term kind of tune-up like what do you think is happening there
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so i think um it's definitely a short-term tune-up like you
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can't have i don't think you can have really progressive overload of any sort with
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that like you can't get much stronger fingers.
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But I think for people who can't like when you can't climb very, very often.
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So for me, for instance, I'm editing a lot.
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So I'm in front of the computer for like 10 hours a day.
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And I try and squeeze in as much.
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Like I have a pretty flexible schedule so I can climb quite regularly as I want.
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But when I'm sitting still so much, I think this protocol helps me just kind of rewire my body.
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So like every six hours, it's good for it to get used to movement of some sort.
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And I think the finger part of that movement is the most important to the climbing.
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so that's why I think it works so well for me for instance
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and I don't think it's I think it's good to do
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it for like 46 weeks that's definitely what I believe my
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brother's kept on doing it for two years straight now
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and he's just like he's just feeling healthy in his fingers from it
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which is his benefits and I do still feel that benefit but
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if I'm doing it like as a person I have a hard time like just doing it for healthy fingers
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if my fingers aren't or if they're already healthy
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so i i have more of like a goal with it
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which is like i want to get slightly stronger fingers i want to get them working again
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but every time that i do it my finger strength definitely goes back up again
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and i feel much more comfortable hanging on a hangboard and just climbing on the wall
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to pull harder yeah yeah have you heard of greasing the groove are you familiar with that Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I think that's what it is.
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Does that make sense to you?
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I feel like, I feel like it's this grease in the groove thing where you're just, this is like a phrase from weightlifting where, um, rather than training heavy.
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Um, I think, I think I learned this from Pavel Tzatzulin, the Russian kettlebell guy, but he'll just do like, you know, a little bit of volume throughout the day,
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kind of every day and just kind of recruit, just get that, Just get that wiring between your brain and those muscles like super,
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super, I guess, dialed in or coded or whatever for the movement that you're doing.
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Yeah, kinda.
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Yeah, I definitely, I think so too.
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I think that's kind of where it all comes from.
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It's just reminding your body what you're doing kind of.
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Yeah.
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That's fascinating.
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That's something you still do and you do it for four to six weeks is
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that like right before like the last thing you do before a performance phase yeah you could say
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so yeah yeah i mean it's like i was doing it
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from early november until we left in the middle of december
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so those six weeks when i was still training pretty intensely
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but kind of like okay now i'm gonna start getting to
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the peak of the training phase of like trying to build all of this
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and trying to become stronger
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and then i just kept going with the same intensity of the no hangs for the entire duration
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but at the end of
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that cycle just before we left i was doing much shorter sessions on the on the kilter board
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and the spray wall i'm curious about your fingers
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so you know story of two worlds um obviously it's it's hard enough
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that it has a very fingery element to it
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because everything v15 you know in that range is very fingery or demands a high degree of finger strength.
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But it seems more squeezy, maybe body power, things like that.
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But then the fact that you went back to off the wagon,
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like we teased earlier, and that's a problem that you seem obsessed with and you had set simulators of it and stuff.
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And that one arm campus through move was something that was maybe doable, but hard for you.
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And you came back and it just seems like you just smashed it and it seemed easy.
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So that's a real testament to just pure raw finger strength gains.
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Yeah, like off the wagon was such a great experience.
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I'm so happy I went there
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because at the time I was like slightly obsessing of story of two worlds like I was gonna do it.
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And then there was this day where the conditions weren't great.
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So I was like, well, I don't want to spend too much energy here.
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Like I have a lot of other things
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that I want to try on this trip and I don't want to get too sucked in.
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So we moved over to off the wagon.
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And the thing is, this finger strength element is the thing that often in weight becomes the question, right?
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Like, oh, can you be heavy and have strong fingers?
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And that's where it became so apparent that, yes, you can.
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You can have strong fingers.
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I just hopped on the campus move and did it right away.
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It felt incredibly easy.
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I did it like four or five times in a row, just every single go.
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Which, relative to when I tried it the year before at 76, I was working on it for maybe two hours that session.
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and I like you could argue I got close
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but I never even like held a swing at all in the jug
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so the it was a shocking difference in strength on
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that older actually like there was like okay something's happened
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because it's it's hard to confirm like yes I set those benchmarks in November
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that I talked about earlier and I knew to a degree
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that I was stronger but like you're saying
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if it's i had never tried story of two worlds on a previous trip
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so it wasn't really i couldn't say like oh i've definitely gotten better
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because i couldn't really put it to the test on anything um
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but then on off the wagon
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that was kind of like my okay it's cemented like i'm
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gonna continue doing this type of training for the next season which i'm doing right now
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and like this works for me um that's awesome i think i think finger strength is
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when you're when you're that's the thing though i think
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when you're first gaining weight and you're trying to kind of bulk up
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if you're taking creatine or just eating more
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or whatever you do feel a slight decline
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and you think like oh dang i'm losing the most important aspect to my climbing
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because finger strength is the most important aspect to climbing in
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my from my perspective like there are of course elements to climbing
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when it's not the most important but generally speaking
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if you don't have the finger strength you can't apply any power
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or technique or anything else like you do need to be able to hold on to the holds to climb
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Speaking Goals for This Clip
This conversation is ideal for practicing natural conversational flow and topic expansion, key milestones for fluency. It targets the ability to explain personal routines, discuss benefits of activities, and engage in back-and-forth dialogue—skills critical for IELTS speaking practice and real-world interactions. By shadowing this clip, learners can master how to connect ideas smoothly, use filler phrases, and maintain a conversational pace, all while building confidence in expressing opinions.
Phrase Bank
- "kind of my recruitment protocol nowadays" – Useful for describing established routines.
- "it's definitely done for me is helped recruit" – A natural way to explain outcomes.
- "get my body more like ready to climb" – Casual phrasing to talk about preparation.
- "it was pretty apparent that" – To highlight clear observations.
- "I don't think you can have really progressive overload of any sort" – Expressing doubt about a concept.
- "rewire my body" – Creative phrasing for adjusting physical habits.
Fix Your Weak Spots
This video helps address pronunciation of connected speech and rhythm in extended explanations. The speakers use contractions ("I'm", "it's") and reduced forms ("kind of", "sort of") that are common in everyday English but tricky for learners. Practicing with a shadowing app can improve your ability to mimic these subtle sounds, making your speech sound more natural. Additionally, the dialogue includes long, thought-out sentences—listening and repeating them will help you master the rhythm of explaining complex ideas, a key area for improving English pronunciation and fluency. Whether you're using this for English speaking practice or learning English with YouTube, focusing on these elements will strengthen your ability to communicate clearly and confidently.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.