Rice Buckets are a GREAT Tool for Climbers | Climbing Myths
Hooper’s Beta Ep. 105
INTRODUCTION
Rice bucket exercises are commonly used by athletes and occupational therapists for working the hand, wrist, and forearm tissues, so it seems like a relevant tool for climbers. Despite that, I’ve never personally recommended them to any of my patients. (And no, it’s not just because I don’t like having a big bucket of rice lying around.) But before I explain my reasoning and the pros and cons of rice bucket exercises, I wanted to find out what you all actually think about it. We took a poll and here’s what you said:
And there were of course many other gems sprinkled in the mix. [Amanda Lee: “My mom will kill me.”]
With such a wide range of opinions, we clearly need to do some investigating to uncover the truth about these exercises. Also, am I just an ignorant noob who’s been missing out on a great rehab tool this whole time? Maybe, but let’s find out!
THE RESEARCH
Anyway, as always, we’ll first look at the research for answers. Or at least, we would, if there was any. Unfortunately searches for rice bucket research and the more general “fluidotherapy” leave us empty-handed. While this is not an immediate declaration of failure for me, it is significant, because research is what helps guide our decision-making on this channel. Instead, we’ll have to rely on our knowledge of biomechanics, some expert opinion, and research in other relevant fields to help us make an assessment.
FOR WARMING UP
The most commonly reported use of rice bucket exercises was for warming up or prehab, so let’s start with that.
To warm up for climbing we want to introduce our muscles, connective tissue, and nervous system to the stresses we want it to cope with on the wall or rock. By performing this process slowly, we give our bodies time to make the physiological adjustments that allow us to reach peak performance while reducing risk of injury.
Since climbing relies heavily on the strength of the pulleys in our fingers, our wrist and finger flexors, and other structures like lumbricals and extensors to a lesser extent, those are our obvious candidates for warming up.
So, does working your hand in a rice bucket accomplish this? Kinda, sorta, not really.
The resistance of a rice bucket will engage your wrist flexors and extensors, pronator teres, and extensor digitorum, but it will not provide enough stimulus to the pulleys or finger flexors to properly warm them up.
Compare that to something like recruitment pulls, which will engage those all-important pulleys and flexors while also enhancing nervous system activity specific to the demands of climbing, and it becomes pretty obvious which one is the better warm-up if you plan on, you know, holding onto small holds.
Now, to be fair, not all warm-up activities are going to target every single thing you need for climbing, so sometimes climbers do a few exercises for different purposes. Like, no one is berating pullups for not warming your legs. In that case, I think rice buckets can be a nice “starter” warm-up. They’re quite safe and intuitive to use, and if you just like doing them as part of your routine, then, great!
But mainly, it’s important to realize that rice bucket exercises are an incomplete warm-up for your average climber. And personally, I prefer a more targeted, efficient activity like recruitment pulls or mobile board rows, since I don’t want to spend a ton of time warming up with a bunch of different exercises.
I think most people share that sentiment, so I won’t be recommending rice bucket exercises for warming up any time soon.
FOR REHAB
Next, let’s move on to rehab. Nobody wants to be sidelined by an injury, so maybe rice buckets are the solution.
Because rice buckets are so safe, you’re unlikely to overdo it and make your injury worse, which is an important consideration for some patients. It can be comforting to have a rehab tool at your disposal that’s not intimidating; there’s no real “right” or “wrong” way to use it because it’s so open-ended. For approachability and safety, rice bucket rehab is a win. But, I still have a few big issues with that.
First, let’s talk about objectivity. A central pillar of rehabilitation is having the ability to determine if your rehab activities are working and, if so, to increase the stimulus over time to achieve continued adaptation, aka healing. You can do this most effectively by measuring and tracking your progress objectively while making the needed stimulus adjustments.
With rice bucket exercises, what can you measure? Perhaps the number of reps of a particular movement you can do before feeling pain, or the amount of time spent using the rice bucket before feeling pumped? On top of that, how do you progress? Just keep increasing reps or session time indefinitely? Switch to a denser medium like sand? While not inconceivable, from a practicality standpoint those are deal-breakers for me, especially when compared to other exercises, like farmer crimps or mobile board rows, which allow for intuitive tracking and progression with weights.
Second, and this is where some research is going to come into play, rice bucket exercises are concentric only -- there is no eccentric contraction. This is a problem for me, because multiple studies have indicated eccentric-only or eccentric-plus-concentric exercises are more effective for healing than concentric-only exercises.
For example, this 2016 study [1] with 120 subjects showed that eccentrics reduced pain and increased muscle strength more effectively than concentric exercises. To be clear, this doesn’t mean concentrics are “bad.” It just means the eccentric component appears to be more helpful, and that’s clearly lacking from rice bucket exercises.
Third, my final issue with rice buckets for rehab is specificity, or rather, the lack thereof. While you could argue it’s a “pro” that rice buckets “target all the little muscles we miss with traditional training,” that’s not necessarily helpful for rehab. Highly targeted exercises can actually be great for healing a specific injury rather than just throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
So, to summarize this rehab section, while I think it’s great that rice buckets provide an approachable way for people to get involved in their rehab, the trained professional in me would likely never recommend them over other exercises with straightforward progressions, eccentric contractions, and higher specificity.
FOR STRENGTH TRAINING
Finally, let’s talk about rice bucket exercises for grip and antagonist training. This one shares some similarities to the rehab section in that it’s a low risk, simple way of working some of your hand and forearm tissues. But for me that’s where the positives end.
If you want a stronger grip, there are other more specific ways of training that actually have research and strong climbers to support them, like hangboarding. A rice bucket, on the other hand, simply does not provide enough specific stimulus to a climber’s hand to increase grip performance on the wall.
If you want to train antagonists, a rice bucket might have some effect, but it’s unclear if the ones a rice bucket targets would actually be helpful for climbers to train. The wrist extensors are certainly helpful for climbers, but the extensor digitorum is not well researched in how it would benefit us.
Research does show that climbers have a larger-than-average discrepancy between the strength of our extensor digitorum and flexor digitorum, but we currently have no reason to believe that’s a problem.
With all that in mind, I personally won’t be recommending rice bucket exercises for strength training any time soon, unless some enlightening new research surfaces. But before you click away thinking that “old doc hooper hates rice buckets exercises,” hold your horses there partner!
OUTRO / CONCLUSIONS
Even though I have some big issues with rice bucket exercises, I believe the choice still comes down to the individual. That is to say, whether or not you choose to do them depends on you!
Maybe you believe rice bucket exercises are helping you. Maybe you want to try them out because you’re curious and like how approachable they are. Maybe they just make you happy!
I don’t have a problem with any of that, and I’ll only mock you a tiny bit ;).
In the meantime, I’m going to stick with more specific, complete, research-backed activities and I’m going to recommend anyone that asks to do the same.
Until next time: Train with a rice bucket if you need a safe, gentle exercise. Climb a bunch of additional warm up routes because you won’t be totally warmed up yet. Send them because they are just V0. Repeat until you feel warm enough to work on that mega proj.
Research
[1] Title
Citation
Peterson M, Butler S, Eriksson M, Svärdsudd K. A randomized controlled trial of eccentric vs. concentric graded exercise in chronic tennis elbow (lateral elbow tendinopathy). Clin Rehabil. 2014 Sep;28(9):862-72. doi: 10.1177/0269215514527595. Epub 2014 Mar 14. PMID: 24634444.
Key Takeaways
Eccentric graded exercise reduced pain and increased muscle strength in chronic tennis elbow more effectively than concentric graded exercise.
120 subjects
[2] Title
Citation
Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn DI, Vigotsky AD, Franchi MV, Krieger JW. Hypertrophic Effects of Concentric vs. Eccentric Muscle Actions: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res. 2017 Sep;31(9):2599-2608. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001983. PMID: 28486337.
Key Takeaways
Results showed that eccentric muscle actions resulted in a greater effect size (ES) compared with concentric actions, but results did not reach statistical significance
the mean percent change in muscle growth across studies favored eccentric compared with concentric actions (10.0% vs. 6.8, respectively).
The findings indicate the importance of including eccentric and concentric actions in a hypertrophy-oriented RT program, as both have shown to be effective in increasing muscle hypertrophy.
[3] Title
Citation
Mjølsnes R, Arnason A, Østhagen T, Raastad T, Bahr R. A 10-week randomized trial comparing eccentric vs. concentric hamstring strength training in well-trained soccer players. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2004 Oct;14(5):311-7. doi: 10.1046/j.1600-0838.2003.367.x. PMID: 15387805.
[4] Title
Citation
Franchi MV, Reeves ND, Narici MV. Skeletal Muscle Remodeling in Response to Eccentric vs. Concentric Loading: Morphological, Molecular, and Metabolic Adaptations. Front Physiol. 2017 Jul 4;8:447. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2017.00447. PMID: 28725197; PMCID: PMC5495834.
Key Takeaways
Although, ECC RT has been usually associated to greater increases in muscle mass compared to CON RT, the present review clearly illustrated that the findings presented in the literature are too varied to clearly affirm which training mode leads to greater long-term muscle growth. Furthermore, when both exercises paradigms are matched for either maximum load or work, the hypertrophic responses are very similar. What appears to be different is how this increase in muscle size is reached, as distinct contraction-specific adaptations in muscle architecture are found. In addition, different molecular and myogenic mechanisms have found distinctly activated after ECC vs. CON exercise bouts, suggesting that these responses could be underlying the structural remodeling patterns previously described: further investigations are needed to establish the strength of such potential micro-to-macro connections. At present time, the aforementioned scenarios are clearly described for a young population, whereas this is yet to be fully elucidated in older individuals and in clinical settings.
[5]Title
Citation
Macías-Hernández SI, García-Morales JR, Hernández-Díaz C, Tapia-Ferrusco I, Velez-Gutiérrez OB, Nava-Bringas TI. Tolerance and effectiveness of eccentric vs. concentric muscle strengthening in rotator cuff partial tears and moderate to severe shoulder pain. A randomized pilot study. J Clin Orthop Trauma. 2020 Aug 3;14:106-112. doi: 10.1016/j.jcot.2020.07.031. PMID: 33680816; PMCID: PMC7919957.
Disclaimer:
As always, exercises are to be performed assuming your own risk and should not be done if you feel you are at risk for injury. See a medical professional if you have concerns before starting new exercises.
Written and Presented by Jason Hooper, PT, DPT, OCS, SCS, CAFS
IG: @hoopersbetaofficial
Filming and Editing by Emile Modesitt
www.emilemodesitt.com
IG: @emile166
