Beat your own best.
Overhang is an iPhone climbing log and strength tracker for climbers who train. This page is what I think about training, and how the app follows from it. Set a high bar. Then clear it.
Train on purpose
Better sessions, not more of them. Go into each one knowing what you’ll do: the sets, the attempts, how long you rest. Progress stacks when you decide that once and stick with it for months.
That’s why the app has routines, named protocols and sensible defaults: you pick a routine and start.
Prove it on the record
A new best usually takes a whole block of training. A plan followed for twelve weeks, deload weeks included, beats a better plan dropped after three.
Commitment is yours to make. Your log is where it shows. A month off breaks nothing; you just start logging again.
The plateau
The months where the grade doesn’t move, the training feels right, and nothing you can point to is getting better. The grade says nothing moved. Often it just isn’t measuring what changed.
It often goes like this. The grade stops. You go through everything you do, and it all looks right: you climb a lot, hangboard, lift, sleep enough. One thing is left that you haven’t changed, and it’s the only one you can measure every day, precisely and for free. Few climbers track finger strength, e1RM (estimated one-rep max) or edge depth over time, so bodyweight gets the blame by default, and losing weight is the one change left that can make you weaker.
Three things that are usually true
A plateau is a grade that stopped moving. It is not a body that stopped improving.
A grade depends on the setter, the holds and the day. It moves in big steps, and only when you send. When you feel stuck, three things are usually true.
- Unmeasured. You got stronger. You just can't see it.
- Unstructured. Sessions picked by mood.
- Uncommitted. What broke was consistency.
All three are fixable. The app helps with each: it charts the strength you can’t see, gives each session a routine to follow, and keeps every new best with its date.
The ladder
- Mindset. Trying hard, wanting the move, and staying curious about how to climb it better.
- Technique. Time on the wall, across styles, angles and moves.
- Hard training, tuned to you. Progressive overload on and off the wall, for your level and your frame. Finger strength out-predicts bodyweight.
- Fuel. Enough to train on. Under-fueling is not discipline.
- Recovery. Enough sleep to absorb the work.
- Durability. Mobility, antagonist work and prehab keep you training.
- Body composition. Last. Body measurements add almost nothing once training is accounted for. Strength-to-weight is a ratio, and strength is the half worth training.
At a plateau, a lot of climbers start with their weight, which is last on this list.
Overhang tracks your climbing and your training. The rest of the ladder matters just as much; it’s just not what the app is for.
Your frame
Train for your frame. Not someone else’s.
No body owns the sport. It’s easy to look at the climbers you admire and decide their body is the one you need. You don’t. Yours is the one you climb with. You’ll have weaknesses other climbers don’t, and strengths they don’t have. Stop wishing for a different body, and build a climber with the one you have.
Your log is how you find out which is which: per-grip strength, edge depth, e1RM and the grade pyramid show where you’re strong and where you’re behind, compared only with your own earlier numbers.
What Overhang will never do
- Set a weight goal. Bodyweight only shows up where the load math needs it: e1RM for weighted pull-ups and dips, and grip strength as a share of bodyweight. It has no targets and no chart of its own, because it isn't something to train.
- Count calories. Fueling guidance belongs to professionals. Overhang will never help anyone restrict.
- Compare you to anyone else. There's no feed or leaderboard. Your numbers are only ever compared with your own earlier ones.
- Enforce commitment. There are no streaks and no training reminders. A week off is sometimes the right call, and the app has no business telling you otherwise. What it keeps is every new best, with its date.
- Write your program. It ships named protocols and sensible defaults, but what to train is your call, or your coach's.
Beat your own best.