CLIMB STRON STRONG G LOG OGIC ICAL AL PROG PROGR R E SS SSIO ION N Using Nonlinear Periodization for Year ear-Round -Round Climbing Performance
By Steve Bechtel
CLIMB STRONG | LOGICAL PROGRESSION Using Nonlinear Periodization for Year Y ear-Round -Round Climbing Performance
By Steve Bechtel
COPY RIGHTS CLIMB STRONG LOGICAL PROGRESSION Using Nonlinear Periodization for Year-Round Climbing Performance
Text © Steve Bechtel Illustrations and Layout © Kian Stewart All Rights Reserved Printed in USA Cover Photo © Kyle Duba
Climb Strong 134 Lincoln St Lander WY 82520 www.climbstrong.com The author and Climb Strong assume no liability for accidents or injuries related to climbing or the training activities described in this book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS PHIL LOSOPHY OF TRAIN TRAINING ING 1 01 | PHI PERIOD RIODIZA IZATION TION AND PLANN PLANNING ING 17 02 | PE
03 | THE CLIMB STRONG NONLINEAR PROGRAMS 35 TRAINING NG 45 04 | METHODS OF TRAINI PERFOR RFORMA MANCE NCE ON THE ROCK 77 05 | PE
06 | DETAILED PROGRAM DESIGN 85 07 | EXERCISES 95 08 | FINAL THOUGHTS 113 APPENDIX DIX – IN DEFE DE FENSE NSE OF PRACT PRACTICE ICE 119 09 | APPEN
INTRODUCTION You started out climbing and you got better almost every time you went out. Occasionally you would surprise yourself by jumping two whole grades from the last time you went to the cli. Over time, you learned that giving a climb a few eorts led to even better results, and your grades pushed higher and higher. But one weekend, you felt at. The next, you went out and still were no better. A month on, and you started to doubt yourself and the sport. Clearly, something something needed to change, and that thing was probably your preparation, or training. Training works. If you have spent any time running down the road, picking weights up, or hanging from your ngertips, you know what I mean. In just a few short weeks you can see the results of your work, and you can see that a little eort goes a long way way.. Over time, our bodies adapt to the stress of training and the only way to make them get better again is to increase the intensity or duration of our eorts. Eventually, Eventually, our stresses become so great that it might take many days to recover from a session. At the same time, we become so well-adapted to a given stress that it might take months to see a measurable improvement. improvement. At this point, organized organized training is the only only way to get better. better. Most climbers get to a point after a few years that just “working out” in the climbing gym no longer leads to improvement. Many of us face a constant up-and-down battle between being in shape and falling out of it. Yet at the same time we see other climbers continue to push up through the grades and we can’t gure out why. The why is appropriate overload. If you overload too much, you get hurt or overtrained. If you overload too little you never get stronger.. Appropriate overload manifests in seeing small improvements session-to-session stronger or week-to-week over long periods. We achieve this when we build and follow a good plan. Training only works when you can follow the plan. There are many good training plans out there, but I feel that most of them have one fatal aw: inexibility. If the program is too rigid, the natural randomness of life inevitably conicts with it. For years, I tried to build eective seasonal training programs based on what I had learned from coaches in other sports. I tried to build an o-season strength plan that I could somehow still integrate with occasional winter climbing days. I tried to nd the right balance
of eective in-season training and recovery. Sometimes, the results were brilliant, sometimes the plan sucked. Eventually, Eventually, I learned about the concept of periodization - dividing training into discrete phases to focus the body’s body’s eorts on developing one primary skill at a time. It worked. It worked until I tweaked a nger and had to take two weeks o. When it was time to come back, I didn’t know where to start. Where I had stopped? Back at the beginning? Move on to the next phase? Twenty years later, I still don’t know the answer. That’s That’ s why I decided to look at the question dierently: instead of asking how I could make a rigid system work for climbing, I asked if there were a exible system that would produce adequate results, even if they were slightly less than ideal. It turns out, there is such a system. By shortening the cycle length of your training, you can eectively rest any time you need, restart any time you like, and perform at top levels within just a few weeks of eort. The system is called nonlinear periodization. I believe that this system is the future of eective training for the majority of climbers due to its exibility exibility,, eectiveness, and the fact that it helps you maintain several facets of tness at once. Climbing is a skill sport, not an endurance sport and not a strength sport. Blindly pulling training habits from cycling, or running, or powerlifting will be of dubious value. We need to train only insomuch as it helps improve our ability to move, to generate force, or to handle hard work. Beyond that, your “training” should actually be practice. Basketball players practice. Badminton players practice. Golfers practice. Yet at the very top end of each of these sports, the athletes train and train hard. Climbing is more like these sports than it is heavy weightlifting or cycling or skiing. It is a hybrid activity that pulls from several energy systems all at once, and requires that we master an innite number of dierent movements and positions. There is no season of the year that we isolate our activity to just one set of movements or to just one energy system. Even a climber who cycles between a bouldering focus and a route focus still draws from max strength, and power, and endurance throughout the year. Many coaches, myself included, have tried to closely couple strength and conditioning with climbing. At rst, the idea of exactly simulating the demands of the sport in the gym seems the right thing to do. We erroneously think that more climbing-like activity will make us better at climbing. Moving from the climbing-as-training framework, we simply substituted the indoor climbing gym when we couldn’t get to the crag. It worked pretty well. The climbs and climbers of today are dierent. The 5.13 grade that was the limit in the early years of the sport is now achievable by many climbers in just a few short seasons of practice. The result is that the physical demands of the average climber are much greater than they were twenty years ago. Climbing with no training to help develop the supporting movements and musculature can lead to injury or plateaued progress in short order.
With all of this in mind, I suggest we rethink how we look at training. Instead of a parallel substitution for climbing when climbing is not available, we should see training as developing discrete qualities that support development “in the background.” Much like the training a basketball player might do, our training should progress independently of our practice. Our training should focus on improving individual qualities of the climber’s physiology, not attempt to improve the whole sport performance. This is the role of practice. Most important of all is that climbing should be viewed in the long-term…an eye for the upcoming week, by the mind looking at next season and the next. --“Logical Progression” refers to the simple progression we make in a nonlinear plan. By training strength, then power, and then endurance in sequence, you’ll see that you truly can develop all of these facets of your tness at the same time, and perform better year-round. year-round. With this book as your guide, I hope that you’ll embrace a dierent way of looking at training, and performing, in climbing.
PHII LOSO OSOPHY PHY OF TRAIN TRAINII NG 01 | PH
PRINCIPLES PRINCI PLES OF TRAINING “As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Training is about teaching your body to perform better in an athletic environment. Humans are remarkably adaptable; you can get extremely exible, extremely strong, or create extreme stamina, all based on what you ask your body to do in training. How do you ask? By following the rules. Sports science has identied several principles of training which are the rules by which training occurs. Put simply, the principles are as follows:
OVERLOAD You’ve got to ask your body to do more than it’s currently capable of in order to stimulate improvements. improvement s. I frequently use the analogy of learning lear ning to read; unless you challenge yourself with harder and harder books, you’ll never get past Green Eggs and Ham. Overload is the most basic of our training principles. This principle simply shows us that in order to adapt, we must subject ourselves to more. This can be in the form of overcoming very heavy resistance (strength), long duration under submaximal load (endurance), or any other facet of training.
SPECIFICITY Our bodies adapt to exercise very specically. If you want to get better at running, run. If you want to get better at jumping, jump. Although there is a great deal of crossover between certain sports and exercises, you’re going to be most successful if you simulate your goal activity in your training. For our purposes, we will be training for climbing with an eye toward specic goals. These should be relative to your life, your sport, and your ambitions. I tend to spend a lot of time discussing specicity, as it is easily misunderstood and
poorly applied. Specicity can be movement-specic, metabolically-specic, or both. There is a time to apply each of these in training. For example, indoor bouldering is very close to real rock climbing in its motor and metabolic demands, so we’d consider it a highly specic training mode. Riding a dual-action bike could be very close to climbing’ climbing’s s metabolic demand, but would not be considered motor-specic. Indoor route climbing might be considered the closest simulation to real rock climbing there is, and would thus be considered very sport-specic. As important as specic training is, let me underscore that not all training can be, nor should be, an exact mimic of the sport. There is a time and place for non-specic modes of training, especially in a skill-oriented endeavor like climbing. Due to the taxing nature of the sport (neurologically, logistically, and physically) optimum training requires that we include non-specic modes in order to optimize volume and intensity of eort.
PROGRESSION At my home crag, the trail from the parking lot leads right to the steepest, tallest part of the cli. Once you’ve reached the wall, you can choose to walk right to a shorter wall that features several 5.6 to 5.10 routes, walk left to a group of 5.11 climbs, or drop your pack right where you stand - at the bottom of several 5.12 and 5.13 routes. Over the years, it has become apparent to me that each climber’s decision on where to climb on a given day determines where they can climb. Those who continually take a right get very good at climbing short 5.9s. Those who climb on the steep wall above the trail tend to fall o a lot at rst, but eventually get better because they are reaching outside their current abilities. To continue to adapt, you must continue to increase the stress on your body. Related to the overload principle, a body will adapt to most training stresses after a short time, and thus must be regularly challenged by greater loads/durations/speeds. Where overload can be seen as a discreet feature of every facet of tness from reps, to sets, to cycles, Progression is viewed on a season-by-season basis.
INDIVIDUALITY Your training should be your own, not a side-eect of your friends’ training. Group programming is where you make money in the tness industry. Fill a room with warm bodies, have one instructor take the group through a hard session, and you have the roots of a protable system. Protable for the facility, but not optimal for the students. Even in a session that is designed to be “scaled” to several tness levels, you’ll see individuals that are under-stressed by the workout, and others that are so overworked that they can’t possibly recover by the next session. Although motivation might be high, adaptation is sacriced for most individuals. We each adapt to stresses dierently. When two friends start an exercise program at
the same time, it’s inevitable that one will progress more quickly. Failure to adjust your training to your own abilities will slow your progress. You’ve got to be willing to adapt a program to yourself.
REVERSIBILITY Use it or lose it. The athlete’s body is an expensive machine to maintain. Every pound of muscle you have takes many calories a day to keep warm, recovered, and ready to work. The sorts of adaptations we make in training, such as building muscle mass or maintaining an articially low level of body fat, are specialized adaptations that your body won’t maintain unless it is continually reminded to do so. Like the tan on your back or the calluses on your hands, the changes your body makes will stick around as long as you keep up the constant exposure to the overload that built them in the rst place. The body reverses the adaptation process for the sake of eciency. This is reversibility.
STRENGTH IS FUNDAMENTAL The tness quality known as strength is the basis for all of the facets of tness that we rely on in climbing. The programs outlined in this book rely heavily on building a strong base. In 2014 I released the book “Strength: Foundational Training Training for Rock Climbing” to explain the reasons for building strength rst in a program. Constantly improving your maximum strength will benet any goal you are trying to achieve in rock climbing. There are many qualities one can develop, such as power, strength, or stamina. Each of these has a rate of decay that indicates how quickly it begins to detrain after you have “topped it o.” The bright side of this decay is that the qualities that decay quickly can be gained back quickly. quickly. The ones that decay slowly tend to be hard to develop. This is known as adaptation persistence. Strength and power are among the most persistent qualities you can develop. For this reason, strength and power training must be present year-round for your entire climbing career.
HYPERTROPHY - STRENGTH - POWER - FLEXIBILITY MUSCULAR END. - ANAEROBIC END. - AEROBIC END.
More Persistent
Less Persistent
We train strength so that skills are easier to acquire. We train strength so that you can recover more quickly from intense bouts of climbing. We train strength so that every move you make on the rock and every step you take with a loaded pack are just that much easier.
Some athletes like strength training so much that it becomes a second passion for them. Although there is nothing wrong with this path, my recommend recommendations ations will not waiver waiver.. The amount of supplemental training you do should always take a back seat to the practice of the sport. I highlighted this idea in Strength:
“We look to strength training in climbers not as a direct means to improvement, but as an adjunct to eective practice in the sport. This supplemental training can occasionally include weight training in a gym. However, one of the biggest misconceptions about weight training is the belief that it can directly improve your sport performance. Resistance training among top-level athletes in every sport is almost universal. However, its use and applicability decline with highly skilloriented sports. Climbing is just such a sport. The popularity of “elite tness” programs, program s, and even high-int hi gh-intensi ensity ty resistanc resi stance e programs progra ms aimed ai med directly dir ectly at climbers cli mbers only proves this point. If a general weight training program makes you better at climbing, you suck at climbing.”
KEEPING TRAINING IN PERSPECTIVE We are rock climbers, not runners, or weightlifters, or hangboarders. As I said before, it’s easy to get swept up in the training, and before long your rationalizations start to take over: “If I just get a bit stronger, stronger, I’ll be ready to start climbing again.” “My conditioning isn’t good enough for climbing right now now...I’ll ...I’ll start again next month.” Climbing is an activity to be practiced. In fact, the technical component is so high that one can attain advanced levels of the sport while being relatively weak and poorly conditioned. You cannot, however, attain high levels of the sport with massive strength and poor skills. With this in mind, I want to give you two reminders that will help keep training in perspective. First is the 75/25 rule. Seventy-ve percent percent of your “training” should actually be practicing the sport. Yes, I want you to hangboard and deadlift and campus, but you can never lose sight of the goal, which is to climb better. Much of your “training” will be bouldering in a gym, doing toprope laps or traverses, or redpointing mid-level routes, which are all to be seen as practice. Then, about 25% of the time, all year, year, you’ll train. This includes time on the training boards, in the weight room, and getting more mobile. A good rule of thumb: you’ll spend 25% of the time training without your climbing shoes on, and 75% wearing them. The categorization is helpful; when you’re practicing you are trying to get better, when you’re training you’re trying to build the tness qualities that support better practice.
CLIMBING VS TRAINING
CLIMBING (Things you wear climbing shoes for) Movement, Skills, Bouldering, Intervals
NOT CLIMBING (Things you don’t wear climbing shoes for) Hangboard, Resistance Training, Campus
Second, when in doubt, opt for more climbing. One of the great mistakes we can make is to drift away from climbing in favor of something where progress is more tangible than when climbing hard. Moving toward a focus on campusing, to weight training, or even to such things as mountain running, are all paths I’ve seen good climbers take when getting better at climbing got hard. There is no substitute for putting your head down and doing the work. There is no shortcut, no workaround. Understand that a plateau is a golden opportunity in your career to look a little deeper, to learn some better method for doing the sport. Relish it. Training is what we do so that we can perform at a higher level in the sport of climbing. It must always be done with the question: “How is this going to help my performance?” in mind.
THE LON LONG G VIEW VIE W OF STRENGTH “There is no amount of work you could do today that will oset the progress you could have made in a properly structured week.” week.” - Christopher Christophe r Sommer
A lot of getting getting better better in climbing is simply simply making making sure sure you’ve you’ve covered covered the the bases physically: getting strong enough that you can have the opportunity to do high levels of practicing. When you’ve got a good physiological base, you can spend a lot of time trying hard moves. More than how far you can bury yourself in one session, it’s how long you can stay strong each season that determines progress.
TYPES OF STRENGTH Depending on whose book you read, there are dozens of dierent “kinds” of strength. Perhaps the greatest treatment of the types of strength comes in Mel Si’s seminal book Supertraining. Si does a wonderful job of categorizing and explaining the myriad subtleties of strength. For climbing training purposes, we are interested in what he calls relative strength, static (isometric) strength, strength-endurance, strength-endurance, and rate of force production.
Relative Strength Strength is one’s strength-to-weight ratio. Developing greater relative strength is critical to performance in sports such as gymnastics, wrestling, and climbing. Fighters also benet greatly from increasing this facet of strength. This number can be manipulated by either gaining strength or by losing mass. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds and can do just a single pull-up, your pulling relative strength is 1:1. If you gained strength and lost weight, this would change. Let’s say you dropped to 180 and could then do a pull-up with 40 pounds on your waist (180+40), your relative strength would be 11:9, a signicant leap. Isometric Strength is Strength is the ability to hold the muscles at a xed length against force. This is especially useful in weightlifting, many strongman exercises, and is the Holy Grail of training for climbing. Almost all real-world applications of forearm strength heavily rely on isometric strength. In climbing we frequently combine high-load isometrics (holding on) with high load concentrics (moving) in adjacent muscle groups. Because of this, we need to pay special attention to integrating isometric and concentric strength in our programs. Strength-Endurance is the ability to maintain a high level of force for extended periods. This is further subdivided into static strength endurance and dynamic strength endurance, as I mentioned above. If you simply held a large edge on a hangboard until you failed, this would be a measure of static strength endurance. Dynamic strength endurance would be displayed by repeating a movement pattern over and over again, as in high-rep pull-ups. Static strength-endurance (isometric endurance) is the far more common type in climbing, as we rarely fatigue the muscles responsible for dynamic movement more than we fatigue the forearms. Rate of Force Production (RFP) (RFP) In climbing training, this can be dened as training for maximum strength in minimum time. Climbers call this “contact strength”, or the ability to utilize a handhold as soon as the ngers touch it. Think of it as how fast your grip can go from “zero to sixty.” More and more climbers are leaving the terminology contact strength and calling this facet “nger power” (because of the dynamic nature of the movement) instead. Either term works, as long as you’re clear that they are synonymous.
MUSCULAR MUSC ULAR FACT FACTORS ORS RELAT R ELATED ED TO STRENGTH There are several factors related to an athlete’s ability to create a strong body. These factors are present independent of the training type selected. I discuss training factors here as a background to understand what’s happening as you get stronger.
HYPERTROPHY Muscle ber cross-sectional area is proportional to the ability to generate force. Athletes with highly developed muscles in the forearm will have an easier time increasing their grip strength. Increasing size in the forearms is dicult due to the high concentration of slowtwitch bers typically found in these muscles. Hypertrophy comes at a cost: the more you develop the muscle mass in the forearm, the less capillary density and mitochondrial density you’ll have, and thus you can see a decrease in endurance. endurance.
FIBER TYPES The human muscle is made up of a group of bers. There are three primary types of muscle bers: • Slow Twitch Twitch (ST), which are very endurance-oriented endurance-orient ed but comparatively weak • Fast Twitch Twitch Oxidative (FOG), which are powerful powerful,, yet have some degree of endurance • Fast Twitch Twitch Glycolytic (FG) which are extrememly powerful, but have very little endurance. If you’re one of the lucky few to have more than average fast-twitch bers in your forearms, chances are you’ll get strong fast. Otherwise, be ready for plenty of hard work. In most athletes, we’ll see predominantly slow-twitch muscle in all bers of the forearm. The big muscles of the body usually tell a dierent story. The lats, pecs, and quads are predominantly predominant ly fast-twitch power muscles, and thus lack the endurance capacity of muscles such as the abdominals, calf muscles, and muscles of the forearm.
CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM INNERVATION The wiring of your muscle bers is as important as ber type. The better your innervation and the ability of the motor units to re in the most ecient sequence, the stronger the muscle becomes. Most of your nger strength gains will come from improved innervation and ring. Vladimir Zatsiorsky details three main modes of increasing force generation: 1. Recruitment: the gradation of total muscle force by the activation and deactivation of individual motor units. 2. Rate Coding: the change in ring rate of motor units
3. Synchronizatio Synchronization: n: the activation of motor units in a more or less synchronized way. way. All three three are are improved improved by increasing increasing load or intensity intensity.. Endurance Endurance (long, moderate) moderate) sets or sessions have minimal eect on force generation.
ADAPTAATION TO OVER ADAPT OV ERLOAD LOAD Believe it or not, there are people out there who do not adapt to the stresses of training. The vast majority of us react to an overload by becoming ever-so-slightly stronger after a workout, and we can repeat the overload over and over until we reach ideal strength. The rate of adaptation varies from person to person, and is primarily determined by your genetics. Don’t worry – non-responders are very rare! The take home is that some of your partners might get strong faster than you do, and your primary improvements will come from better technique, power, and tactics.
BIOMECHANICS A huge part of how strong you can become is how you’re you’re built. Short ngers, short tendon tendon insertions, and thick bones all contribute to an elevated ability to develop force. Shorter climbers can generate force more quickly. quickly. Be sure to avoid using your body type as an excuse, but recognize that there might be certain facets of the sport that take longer to develop.
KEEPING KEEPIN G TRACK TRACK OF TRAININ TRAINING G When I rst sit down with a new athlete, the rst thing I ask the athlete is where they want to go. The question usually goes like this: “In six months, what do you want to have accomplished?” That part is easy for most of us - the dreaming is not hard to do. The next thing I want to know is how far the athlete has come in the last year. How many max-level redpoints? How many goal sends? How much has the athlete improved in the gym? How has his bodyweight been? It’s during this point in the interview that I get the blank stare. Most climbers can recall their hardest send in the last year, but they don’t really know why it happened. A training log or journal is probably the most useful tool a climber can use in his training. By keeping a good log, you can precisely identify training patterns that worked and those that didn’t. It’s It’s a little inconvenient to make notes during a workout, and it might make you feel a little uncool, but the value is worth it. Training requires overload within the framework of both the session and the training cycle. If you don’t carefully plan overload session to session, you probably won’t see the progress you could. As I’ve stated before, just getting tired in the gym isn’t the answer. Pushing the loads the right amount higher and recovering correctly is how you really get better. The only way you can eectively do this is to reference what happened last time, and the time before, and the time before. Most of us just can’t remember that much.
PHOTO COURTESY: ZACH SN AVELY
What makes a good training log? Rule number one is to have one at all. Start with a calendar and write down the days you trained, what kind of training you did, and the total
duration. That should take about ve seconds a day. At the end of each month, you can compare total training time and intensity week-to-week and see if you’re progressing things enough. You can include more information each training session, and by doing so, gain more insight into what’s really going on. The more information you gather, the better. In a weight training session, you’d keep track of exercises, sets, repetitions, load, and rest. Additionally, you could track tempo of movement, rest between exercises, and perceived exertion. With weights, it’s it’s easy to gure out how to progress - usually you just try to lift more. In a climbing or bouldering session quantifying work is more dicult. Not all V3 problems are created equal! With this in mind, you’ll want to pay attention to a few more details. In addition to writing the grade of each problem, I suggest tracking total problems / routes climbed, angle of the route, type of moves / holds, and type of problem (i.e. techy, powerful, continuous, etc.). You’ll also need to track performance. Did you ash it? Take three tries? Have you worked a problem for a few days? Without too much number crunching, you’ll get a pretty clear picture of where you’re strongest and how t you currently are. Without good record keeping, this isn’t possible. Once you’ve created the habit of logging your daily sessions, it’s time to add another layer to your record keeping. First, you’ll want to track adherence to your plan. I talk a lot about this with climbers who are unhappy with their current plan. The line usually goes “I have been doing x training plan for 2 months and it’s not working.” My rst question is, “How much of the plan did you do?” Again, the blank stare...The crazy thing is that most of us don’t even consider that changing this session and shortening that exercise will eventually erode the plan. A good way to track adherence is to detail all of your planned sessions on the calendar for 4 weeks, then match up the actual training with the calendar as you progress. If you’re continually coming up short, it’s clearly an issue of planning. You’re setting yourself up to fail each and every cycle, which plays havoc with your drive. Another critical tool is to assess just how much training you’re getting each cycle. We’ll We’ll look at the logs every 4 weeks and write down training hours per week, the total time spent in any given intensity level, signicant sends or personal records in the gym, average bodyweight, girth measurements, and any testing data collected that month. Sound like a lot? It is. It’s a lot of useful information that only takes minutes to record. If you’re not logging your training, you have everything to gain by writing a few things down. With a few weeks of dedicated practice, you’ll start to see patterns in your training.
As you move through the exercises recommen recommended ded later in the book, you’re going to refer back to your log frequently. This is not an optional aside to your training, but rather a guide. A few seasons into your training career, career, and it will be the most valuable piece of gear you own. The log itself might not matter to you. There are many versions of training logs available online, and a simple spiral notebook could do the job. I personally like the gridded notebooks from Moleskine or Leuchtturm1917. These high-quality books will easily put up with a season of being tossed into a pack, and make writing columns or charts simple.
PER R IOD IODIZA IZATIO TION N AND AN D PLANNI PLANN I NG 02 | PE
The older I get the less convinced I am of the superiority of any one training method. I used to be religious about structuring my season. I used to record my bodyweight before hangboard workouts so as to adjust the load specically with the half-pound weights I bought for the job. I would hardline it on the phases, at out refusing to climb cruxy routes of any description during an endurance phase. Eventually I started paying attention to what other people were doing in practice, not just what should happen in theory theory.. I also started looking at how closely I truly adhered to my training. Both exercises were enlightening. The more people I talked to, the more I understood a couple of things. First: climbing is more interesting than training and this is probably a clue as to why we all picked the sport to begin with. Second: these people are not dumb. Most of the climbers that I end up talking to on the phone have read several books on climbing training and training in general, and still do not adhere to those plans exactly. exactly. Despite this, I was talking to high performers. So instead of looking for why they didn’t follow the recommended programs or looking for the aws in their training (based on my vast book-based knowledge on how I thought they should be training), I began to look for what was right about what they were doing. Most of them started easy and made things harder over a few months’ time. Most of them were aimed at one or two particular goals. Most had one training focus leading up to performance time. All of them climbed a lot. At the same time, I compared my training log to my plan. This is a fascinating thing to do. It’s very easy for me to lay out a fantastic-looking spreadsheet, but the day-to-day gets much harder. As Morpheus said in the Matrix, “There is a dierence between knowing the path and walking the path.” I was lucky to hit 50% of my planned training. Whether it was bad coaching or a bad athlete, I don’t know...but something had to be done. All of these things helped me to question my assumptions...which sucks. My assumptions help keep my ego warm. The problem with learning from all of these climbers, of course, is that no one had the same plan. In fact, no one seemed to have the same plan season to season themselves! I decided to start by ltering out any common traits and starting there. The last piece of the puzzle was guring out just what kind of activity rock climbing really was. See, most of us read a book on running or weight lifting and can tease out parallel tracks. We can imagine
how this or that technique might apply to our sport, how if runners build endurance using “x” mode, we could morph it to climbing. We then make a fatal jump in assuming climbing is exactly like said sport. Weightlifting is a strength sport. Five seconds (or less) and you rest. Running and cycling and swimming are all “cyclic aerobic modalities”, which are very energy-system based. Climbing is neither a strength sport nor a cyclic endurance activity. Climbing is a multielement skill sport that requires a high level of strength, anaerobic capacity, and aerobic power. This causes a couple of problems. One, you have to train and perform in multiple energy systems. This means you might need explosive strength after fteen minutes of easy aerobic activity. It means you might depend on the lactic energy system heavily for one pitch, followed by primarily alactic energy the next. The second problem is skill. Climbing is all about execution of highly coordinated skills, and your skill is simply supported by your strength and conditioning. This means that not only do you have to train across multiple energy systems, but you have to do it “behind” your technique training. This is one complicated mess. My original periodized plans clearly didn’t work. From the ages of 16 to 18 my climbing improved by one number grade per year, then hit the brakes big time. Later, during college and the couple of years thereafter, thereafter, I kept getting into and out of shape for the same grade. In my thirties, I crept another letter grade, but still only hit one or two hard redpoints a year. year. Structured training or not, I probably would have had about the same result. Eventually, I started looking for programs that would provide longer Eventually, longer-lasting -lasting adaptations, with the end goal of keep strong through a whole cycle. I also started looking for a program that I might follow through with. This search led me to the original writings on periodization from the Eastern Bloc coaches, and to the world of training for other skill-based performers from gymnasts to wrestlers to golfers...and even to musicians. I learned about block periodization, where you train all qualities at all times, but focus on only one or two during any given phase. I learned about alternating alter nating linear training where one simply switched between two major foci for a protracted period, such as a month of strength followed by a month of power followed by a month of strength, and so on. I also studied what’s what’s called nonlinear periodization where one switches training foci on a weekly or session-to-session basis. I believe that for a sport such as climbing, these “non-traditional” types of planning are more appropriate than the traditional modes of classical periodization. I am not all that convinced that there is any program that is better than any other. It might be as simple as hitting your strength and power a couple of days a week and slowly ramp up your redpoint level over a couple of months. I have realized that any program that produces improvements in your climbing is probably a good one, and you should stick
with it. Conversely, Conversely, if you are staying at the same level season after season, there is clearly something wrong. If there is one thing that we are learning about our sport as it develops, it’s it’ s that you can get better and better for a long time.
THE WHY AND HOW OF PROGRAM DESIGN Based on what you read above, you might think that just throwing in the towel and forgetting about program design might be a good idea. For a rst-time climber, that is probably not a bad choice. Yet as we develop tness qualities, our rate of improvement declines. Think about how it felt to gure out how to hold slopers, how to drop-knee, or how it was when you learned how to de-pump on a route. These are huge advances in your climbing, and they probably happened in the rst year or two of your climbing career. Over time, we all reach a place along the improvement curve where progress slows so much it seems to have stopped. At this point many climbers simply cycle between being “in shape” and “out of shape” - sometimes for years. This is the point at which structured training becomes important. But don’t get ahead of yourself. Structure can be very simple. Progress can be regained simply by assuring you increase the diculty of your training for a few weeks. You can see huge gains in nger strength by simply hangboarding, at all, regardless of the workout, a couple of times a week. This is where everyone should start. Sure, the promise of a conning year-long program that has produced V14 climbers seems attractive, but your program need not be that restrictive, yet. We can categorize climbers based on training age. These categories are independent of ability,, but are based on how much actual training the climber has done. The simplest plans ability work very well for the rst couple of training years, and we call these Level I plans. The Level II plans are more involved, and feature smaller steps in progress. Finally, Finally, the Level III plans are restrictive and produce small results over long cycles. The Level III plans are appropriate only for athletes who have trained for several years and have ceased to progress. It is not uncommon for an experienced climber to see huge benet from the simple Level I programs, and the vast majority of veteran climbers are happiest with the Level II programs. It is critical to understand that the higher level, more complex programs are not somehow better - they are more focused on the minutiae. These programs are restrictive and produce results slowly. These programs aim to improve small facets of performance, and are thus inferior for the majority of climbers. I encourage all readers to start with shorter and simpler programs and work up the chain as progress slows. Completing a simple 4-week plan is better than half-assing a complex 12-week cycle, and you’ll be happier with the results.
PERIODIZATION At rst, the training principles outlined above are pretty easy to follow follow.. First-time athletes and young adults can often reap big benets from a very basic overload program. Such a program would maintain roughly the same schedule week-to-week and might produce results for six to eight months without changing the schedule. The longer you stick to a program, the more you’ll see your performance start to level o. This is where the entire concept of periodized training comes in. Periodization, in its simplest form is just changing the primary type of training you are doing from time to time. We naturally tend toward some degree of periodization - whether it’s simple “on” and “o” seasons, or a complex week-toweek detailed calendar. calendar. Any athlete that performs at a high level will notice ebbs and ows in their abilities and motivation. Periodization is simply planning to make the most of these ebbs and ows. Knowing that most athletes can only adapt to a given training stimulus for 6 to 8 weeks before levelling out, coaches have successfully developed program cycles to prevent plateauing. Such programs are all designed to improve athleticism and performance by: • Limiting decline of skills between training cycles • Allowing the athlete athlete to adapt to one skill at at a time • Controlling the inevitable build-up of fatigue that comes with progressive training The history of periodized training goes back to the dawn of athletics in ancient Greece, when there were times of hardening for events and times of rest. In the hundreds of years that followed, athletes and soldiers the world over followed similar cycles. It wasn’t until the last century that anyone really passed much detailed information down. The recent history of periodization is an interesting one, and was heavily dependent on people stealing each others’ ideas. A short version, from Practical Programming by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore is this: “As early as 1933, Mark Berry was using weekly periodization for his bodybuilders and weightlifters, and wrote about it in several publications. In the 1950s, Lazlo Nadori, Nador i, a sports scientist scie ntist and coach in Hungary, developed a model of periodization periodizatio n for his athlet athletes. es. The development of this parti particular cular model was unique to Hungary and was separate from the evolution of Soviet Bloc periodization, since no translations were done. In the 1960s, Russian weightlifting coach Leonid Matveyev developed his concepts of periodization, and his 1971 book provides several dierent models.
The one of these that is now known as “classical” periodization was intended for beginne beginners. rs. Late Laterr in the 70s, Matveyev’s book was transla translated ted into Ger German man and English. Having written the rst periodization book in the West, he became known as the father of periodization pe riodization by default. Also in the 1960s, Matveyev’s hated rival, rival , Yuri Yuri Verkhoshansky developed de veloped his system of conjugated loading, openly stating that periodization was crap. But since his conjugated loading system was also periodized, it must be assumed that that he really just jus t thought Matveyev’s approach approac h to periodizati pe riodization on was crap. c rap. In 1982, an east ea st German sports scientist, Dr. Dietrich Harre, edited principles of sports training, which is essentially a fusion of the works of Nadori and Matveyev. A couple of years later, Frank Dick, head of British Briti sh track and eld, “liberally “ liberally recreated” recreated” Harre’s Harre’s book in English. Tudor Bompa, author of the famous text Periodization, was trained in the East German system, and his rst and subsequent texts are essentially reiteration reite rationss and adaptat adaptations ions of Harre’s adaptat adaptation ion of Nadori and Matveyev. And here we are today with no new thoughts, no new systems, s ystems, and no real explanations of periodization since the last century. What we do have is a large misunderstanding of periodization and how to use it.”
For those unfamiliar with the basic structure of classical periodization, here is the tensecond version: Training is broken up into several mesocycles, which are typically about a month long. The athlete focuses on one tness quality for this cycle, progressing it as far as possible before switching to the next cycle. Traditional Traditional modes either progress from long to short or from short to long. What this means is you move from one end of the volume/intensity spectrum to the other as the cycle progresses. The most popular linear climbing cycles presently are built short to long. We do short, high intensity sessions early in the phase, followed by sessions that are slightly lower intensity, but with higher durations, then nally we move to relatively low intensity, high volume work as we start to redpoint. Others argue the opposite approach, and such an approach has been used successfully by top redpoint climbers and boulderers for years. In a long to short plan, you simply start with high volume training and add intensity as the cycles progress, ending the training phase with focused maximum strength work and lower total training volume.
THE FLAWS OF LINEAR PLANNING PLANN ING IN SKILL SPORTS I have read no fewer than eight books by three dierent men that were supposed to have “invented” periodized training. It doesn’t matter who the father of modern periodization
is; the whole idea - cycling training according to a sports season to enhance results in performance - is great. The problem is that it’s not ideal for rock climbing. I’ll be the rst to admit it’s attractive...the attractive...the smooth transition between foci, planning for peak performances during certain times of the year, the forced periods of layo. Unfortunately, there are four big problems with such planning. First, the whole model was built around peaking for power sports which have a clear and very limited competition schedule. Athletes needed to be very t for a competition, and such planning worked pretty well to get them there. But with over 50 years of programming, coaches are still unable to accurately plan for personal best performances. Yes, we can get you pretty t, but no, we can’t guarantee you’ll be the best you can be. The problem is magnied when your sport requires multiple periods of high performance...like we hope for in climbing. A sad commentary on planning is shown by the fact that only about 20% of Olympic athletes turn in their best performances at the games. Think about it: one out of 5 get it right for the single most important event of their athletic career. career. Second, rock climbing is not an “acyclic power sport,” as Matveyev describes in his original research. It is a skill sport, supported by strength and endurance. Skills must be constantly and continuously trained and developed, using a high level of volume throughout the year. In sports like lik e climbing, physical physi cal readiness is not even half of the story stor y. This works out well for climbers, though. The protracted periods required to develop skill allow us to extend the number of great climbing days each season, provided we build the program correctly. Third, biological organisms don’t adapt according to plan. Trying to force a strength adaptation in 4 weeks, followed by power, then by power endurance might very well work for some, but what if you adapt more slowly? What if you have a bad week, or a bad month? A too-rigid plan leads almost almost inevitably to failure. failure. The more more exible your planning, planning, the more likely you are to hit performance peaks. Finally, and most importantly, periodized plans slowly cycle through the energy systems as the plan progresses, all with the goal of elevating a single facet of tness, such as power. power. This works pretty well, but in climbing we’ve got a problem: the sport requires high levels of strength, of endurance, of anaerobic capacity, and power. It is hugely challenging to get this done over a prolonged season with long training cycles. Because of the varying levels of adaptation persistence of the various facets of training, we cannot simply stop training any facet of the sport for very long.
The continuity of the training process is critical. The lack of this continuity is the primary argument that critics of periodized planning put forth. Charlie Francis, the greatest track coach of all time, found that a typical plan for sprinters called for many weeks at a time of base training or overdistance training - which he felt was detrimental to his runners’ speed. At the same time, the ramp-up to the sprinting phase was too steep and would create an injury risk. Yes, we hit plateaus in training after 4-6 weeks, but completely changing your training focus is the easy way out. It tricks you into thinking you’re making progress because of the novelty of the new program, which can leave you tired and sore during the rst weeks of change. A typical rock climbing program might suggest the same: A month of hangboard, a month on the campus board, a few weeks of 4x4s...which might mean three months away from high-level climbing, and many weeks away from critical skill-building stimuli. And once you’re climbing, where does that hard-earned strength go? Imagine a golfer, a gure skater, a trials rider...spending rider...spending three months partitioning their training in such a way that they don’t actually do their sport...these athletes would never let that happen. We simply cannot ever stop working on movement, on strength, or on endurance.
ADAPTATION ADAPTA TION PERSISTENC PER SISTENCEE All this leads us to the idea of adaptation persistence persistence,, which is simply how long a given facet of training takes to build and how long it takes to go away. Certain qualities develop fairly quickly, such as cardiovascular endurance. Others, such as muscular hypertrophy or strength take a long time to develop. This is true on the downhill end, too. Each of the primary tness qualities detrains similarly to how long it takes to train. Hypertrophy, once gained, sticks around a long time. Cardiovascular endurance, as endurance athletes know, know, begins detraining in as little as 48 hours...thus the need to run or ride or ski almost daily to maintain tness. Add to to this this the the fact that climbing requires several skills to to be developed at once to assure assure high performance, and you can see why letting any of the facets degrade too far can result in poor performance. There have been many attempts at rectifying performance decay in training, but most of them have common features. In 2014, Greg Nickols and Mike Israetel wrote a great article called There Is Only One Type of Periodization. In it, they explain that all programming comes down to manipulating three variables: 1. Linearity. Your program can progress in a linear fashion, simply overloading the same system over and over, either with increases in volume or load or both. You can also choose not to do this, but rather progress multiple factors at the same time. All programs that are not linear, are (surprise!) called nonlinear. These programs can change loading parameters on a set-by-set scale, a workout-byworkout scale, or even a week-by-week scale.
2. Undulation. Related to linearity linearity,, undulating your training involves changing loads within workouts or weeks. By subjecting the athlete to contrasts in load, the system continually adapts to several levels of intensity. intensity. 3. Conjugation. This is the regular changing of training stressors, either by type of load (strength versus explosiveness) or type of movement (campusing versus bouldering). Again, this factor can change on many scales, from daily to monthly monthly.. This allows that several training programs might work well for any given climber, climber, and the plan should be chosen carefully. I can’t emphasize enough the critical aspect of choosing your program based on what you are doing, or have done, instead of what you hope you could do. It is innitely better to run through a 4-week basic program and add complexity to it than to start a 16-week advanced plan and try to dumb it down. No program is appropriate all the time for any athlete. Most accomplished climbers have tried several programs, taken the gems from them and created a personalized program that works for them. This should be the end-goal for every athlete.
A HIERARCHY OF TRAINING MODES If you were to look at the various training modes suggested over the years, you’d see a simple hierarchy hierarchy start to appear. appear. The programs at the bottom of the pyramid would would be the simplest and most eective, with each subsequent level getting more complex, more restrictive, and less eective. The simple reality of this sequence is that the better you get, the harder it is to get better. better. As always, start with the simplest intervention rst.
HIERARCHY HIE RARCHY OR TRAINING TRAINING MODES MOD ES LINEAR AND BLOCK PROGRAMS NONLINEAR PERIODI PERIODIZA ZATION TION ALTER AL TERNA NATIN TING-LI G-LINE NEAR AR CYCLES CYCLE S LINEAR PROGRESSI PROGRESSION ON
At the very bottom would be simple linear progression. You’d You’d have a xed workout week, and slowly progress the load in each workout as you got better. As I said above, a novice trainee might advance for several months on such a program. The next layer up would be what’s called an alternating linear cycle. You’d do a simple linear progression for a month or 6 weeks, then switch to another linear progression that focuses on dierent training factors. This surprisingly small change in programming could be used for years without a loss in eectiveness. Further up the pyramid, we’d move into cyclic programs. These are the nonlinear programs, and would feature switching switching between session types on a daily or weekly basis. It is my belief that the great majority of active climbers in the world would see the most progress on this type of plan, and this is the basis for the training plans in this book. At the very advanced advance d level, we have the most restrict rest rictive ive plans, plans , which are bloc block k programs. program s. This type of plan asks that you dedicate most of your time in any given cycle to improving one facet of tness while continuing to maintain the others with the bare minimum of work. These are plans appropriate for very advanced trainees, and I have discussed them at length elsewhere. In the end, we understand that the best training programs are the ones you’ll follow to completion. Hope in your abilities to get disciplined or motivated does not lead to good training. Kicking the hell out of a simple plan is a much better bet.
WHAT ABOUT CHANGING THE FREQUENCY OF THE CYCLE? Nonlinear programs can feature not only sessionto-session cycling, such as the kind I suggest in this book, but also cycling within sessions or week-toweek. Although both variants show some promise, I warn against them. First, varying the loading in a session happens naturally in climbing anyway. Adding more variation, such as combining a hangboard section, bouldering section, and an endurance section will allow you to perform extended sessions that tax the muscles in a variety of ways. The problem is that such sessions can easily overtax the structure of the hands. Additionally, there is compelling evidence that shows us that combining strength and endurance in a single session diminishes the development of either value. Longer cycles, such as week-to-week variation, show more promise. There is ample evidence that athletes see improvement in all tness qualities on a 2 or 3 focus cycle. The limitation we face here is that a week of the strength or power training that a climber typically does is very intense, and would most certainly diminish his ability to climb through the cycle. I see variants of this idea as a possible source of future research, and the prospects are exciting. For now, though, the simple session-tosession variants are the clearest path.
NONLINEAR PROGRAMMING (PROS AND CONS) Afte r year After years s of not gett getting ing what I wante wanted d out of line linear ar progr programs, ams, I star started ted searching searc hing out other programming structures. I had four criteria in mind that governed how I looked all the programs: 1. The program had to be simple to implement on a normal athlete’s schedule. The vast majority of climbers I consulted were 9-to-5 workers who trained on a restricted schedule and climbed on weekends. 2. The program had to allow for longer periods of performance than traditional models. Linear programs bring you to a high peak of tness a couple of times a year. I wanted a program that got a climber to a sustainable level of tness that would last for several weeks at a time, several times a year. By necessity, such a program would not result in as high a peak in conditioning, but this is not a problem since climbing is only partly dependent on your conditioning...wha conditioning...whatt really matters is being able to be strong enough to execute skill maximally. maximally. 3. The program had to be exible enough that a week o here or a slight injury there didn’t derail the whole season. 4. The program had to develop all of the relevant tness qualities qualities needed for climbing, and keep them from degrading as the season progresses. There were many programs that t most of the criteria above, but the best t was a nonlinear or undulating cycle of training. What What I liked most about the nonlinear cycles were were their exibility and the fact that the research behind them was solid. As I said above, I didn’t really care if we sacriced peak tness for a longer season or a more exible schedule, but it turns out, there may be little to sacrice. As Fleck and Kraemer put it in Optimizin Optimizing g Strength Training Training, “Nonlinear periodization is more exible in how and when a peak in performance is created, depending on the goals of that particular mesocycle. It also allows for more frequent exposure to dierent loading stimuli within a weekly workout prole.” They go on to note that several studies compare this type of program favorably against a traditional model in overall gains in strength and tness. Of particular interest to climbers is Silvestre’s (et al 2006) study where it was shown that competitive soccer players could maintain or even increase strength in-season on a nonlinear resistance training plan. Rhea (et al 2002) showed that session-by-session
changes in training loads could increase pure strength by greater than 50% more than a traditional program. Artur Montiero and colleagues compared nonlinear nonlinear,, linear, linear, and nonperiodized modes of training in a group of experienced strength athletes. athletes. That the linear and nonlinear programs outperformed the nonperiodized group was of no surprise. What was interestin interesting g is that the nonlinear group showed strength gains throughout the 12 week cycle (testing at weeks 4, 8, and 12), where the linear group only showed gains at the end of week 8. The overall strength gains of the nonlinear group were signicantly greater overall. Continual gains in strength throughout nonlinear cycles have been shown time and again in research, including Kraemer’s landmark study (2000) of female Division I tennis players, and the 2001 study by Marx, et al. In 2006 Silvestre showed that strength and power could be maintained or even increased in-season on a nonlinear strength program. Not as big an issue for climbers, but a signicant nding nonetheless: many of these studies clearly demonstrated greater changes in body composition or maintenan maintenance ce of ideal bodyweight in the participants. For many climbers I have consulted, the bodyweight gain in o-season has become a real struggle, and is one that does not diminish with age. Add this to the great training results and you have a winning program. I have seen similar good results with climbers. Additionally, climbers nd the nonlinear program more appealing for the same few reasons: 1. The program is “less boring” than one in which several sessions in a row are similar or the same. 2. It allows the climbers to more easily start up again after illness or injury. 3. It allows for more variety in workout sequence and in the facility used. 4. The program is adaptable to various schedule constraints such as limited workout time or crowded gym times. 5. Climbers get longer rest periods for certain tissues and muscles due to the varied loading throughout the week.
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THE CLI CLI MB STRONG STRONG NONLINEAR NONLIN EAR PROG PROGRAMS RAMS
You can use a linear (also called a serial ) plan in designing your calendar calendar,, or you can use a nonlinear parallel ( ) plan. I feel that a nonlinear development of abilities in climbing is more eective for most climbers. In these programs, we simply cycle between three or four workout structures, each focusing on a dierent training stimulus. The beauty of such a plan is it ts well within a normal person’s life structure and allows for almost unlimited variability. Performance phases are governed simply by ramping up the volume of training during certain times of year, and backing o during others, all the while allowing you to maintain the same simple cycle of training. I want your training to support your performance in the sport. What most of us need from training is a basic structure of athleticism and mobility that allows us to practice our climbing skills at the highest level. Training simply develops performance potential - realizing that potential is another matter. matter. This is why you must not let training overrun your practice. If you constantly look to drive your improvement at the crag, and keep training on a supporting role, you will see improvements year-after-year. I have put together three training programs that use the nonlinear programming model. As I wrote earlier, earlier, the Level I program is the best choice for those new to training or who have been climbing only a few years. The Level II program alternates between two dierent plan structures every four weeks. The Level III program alternates between three.
WHATT IF I GET OUT OF SEQUE WHA SEQ UENCE? NCE? One of the most common concerns climbers have about nonlinear cycles is messing up the order of the training. Although we see the sequences presented in the programs in this book as ideal, it’s important to understand that each session positively aects the others, and the sequencing is not as important as making sure you hit each of the session types regularly. regularly. Getting o sequence can happen for many reasons, the most common of which seems to be coordinating training facilities or partners. If you have a strength session planned for Saturday and your spouse wants to boulder, ipping the two sessions is ne. It is best to avoid too much alteration of the
schedule, though. It seems like when we start altering the plan we trend toward doing more of our favorite sessions and not having time for the sessions we don’t like.
LEVEL I - 3 SESSION SESS IONS, S, 1 CYCLE The Level I Nonlinear Program is a beautifully simple training cycle, where you simply switch between three dierent dierent workouts. The normal recommend recommendation ation is to do one of each session each week, but during peak training phases you might go as high as ve sessions. You You might drop as low as two sessions during recovery phases. I recommend shorter, more frequent training sessions, because that gives you the most opportunity for high-quality training. The program consists of three session formats: Strength, Bouldering, and Intensive Endurance. A normal week might look like this: MONDAY
TUESDAY TUE SDAY
Strength
WED NE NESDAY SDAY THU THURS RSDA DAY Y
Bouldering
FRIDAY FR IDAY
SATU R DAY
S U N DAY
Intensive Endurance
The beauty of the nonlinear programs, however, is that they can be adjusted to almost any schedule, with little penalty for the changes. Over time, you’ll come to know how many days you need between given sessions. A two week period might look like this: MONDAY
TUESDAY TUE SDAY
WED NE NESDAY SDAY THU THURS RSDA DAY Y
Strength
Bouldering
Strength
Intensive Endruance
Intensive Endruance
FRIDAY
SATU R DAY
S U N DAY
Intensive Endurance
Bouldering
Strength
...or even like this: MONDAY
TUESDAY TUE SDAY
Strength
Bouldering
Strength
WEDNESDAY THU THURS RSDA DAY Y
Intensive Endruance Intensive Endruance
Strength
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
Bouldering
Strength
Bouldering
Intensive Endruance
When putting your program together, I recommend keeping things as exible as possible for as long as possible. Start restricting your program only when a more relaxed program ceases to yield improvemen improvements. ts. This program can be integrated with your climbing or uncoupled from it. Both methods have worked well in the eld. An integrated method would be one in which your outside climbing days were part of the training plan. On such a plan you might train strength in the gym, followed by an outdoor bouldering session, followed by an outdoor endurance session. An uncoupled plan is easier to manage for most. On this style of plan, you’d keep the normal three session training format, then simply climb when at the crag. I recommend some sort of structure to your climbing days, but I’ll cover that in detail later. later. By training on a nonlinear cycle and following some simple guidelines at the crag, you can have a very “normal” program that cycles naturally throughout the year. year. A one month program set up in this way might look like this: M O N DAY
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
S UNDAY
Climb Volume
WEEK 1
Strength
Boulder eriing
Intensive Endurance
Climb Redpoint
WEEK 2
Stength St
Bouldering
Climb Redpoint
WEEK 3
Intensive Endurance
Stength
Bouldering
WEEK 4
Strength
Boulder eriing
Intensive Endurance
Intensive Endurance
Climb Redpoint
Climb Redpoint
Climb Volume
Specics on the Strength, Bouldering and Intensive Endurance sessions are covered in the Methods of Training section.
LEVEL II - 3 SESSIONS, SESSI ONS, 2 CYCLES CYCLES When the Level I program ceases to provide results, you can take your training one step further by adopting and alternating cycle. In the Level II plan, we follow the same 3-session
structure, and cycle them the same as we do in Level I. The dierence is that every four weeks we switch the primary focus of the cycle. Where Level I is adjusted by simply manipulating volume or intensity, the Level II plan lets you focus a little more on a given energy system each month in order to maximally develop specic qualities. This type of plan is especially useful for climbers who like to perform across multiple disciplines. For four weeks, your three workout cycle will focus on developing more power and strength, and the second four weeks leans toward more anaerobic and aerobic conditioning. The workout structure is as follows: P H AS E 1
P HA S E 2
Session 1
Bouldering
Intensive Endurance
Session 2
Strength Endurance
Bouldering
Session 3
Strength
Strength Endurance
Although there is signicant overlap in the two phases, Phase 1 leans toward getting you stronger, and Phase 2 tends to focus more on endurance. When planning performance phases around these cycles, you can expect your highest performances during the last week of a phase or the beginning of the next one. This means that if you are looking for a bouldering peak, it might come the rst week of Phase 2, and a redpoint peak might come in the rst week of Phase 1. It is helpful to plan your seasons with this in mind. Just like the Level I program, you can integrate this with your climbing training or you can progress the two separately.
LEVEL III - 4 SESSIONS, 3 CYCLES The most advanced program is Level III. This program is designed for elite-level athletes and is the most prescriptive one in this text. This program is designed to elicit adaptations over longer cycles, but will still provide several periods of high performance each year. year. The plan that follows is designed specically for gaining tness for hard redpointing, and would have to be modied in order to see performance gains in bouldering. This plan starts to bridge the gap between nonlinear programming programming and block periodization. In this plan, you switch between three dierent phases of training, each of them 4 weeks
in length. These can loosely be described as strength, power, power, and endurance. endurance. Just like the Level I and Level II plans, you alternate between several dierent sessions each phase, but in Level III, you cycle between four sessions rather than three. The structure looks like this: PHAS E 1 (STR E N GTH)
P H A S E 2 (P O W E R)
PHAS E 3 (E N D U RANC E)
Session 1
Bouldering
Bouldering
Intensive Endruance
Session 2
Strength
Intensive Endurance
Bouldering
Session 3
Intensive Endurance
Bouldering
Intensive Endurance
Session 4
Strength
Strength
Strength Endurance
For most climbers, the four sessions will not t within a week. This is an important consideration, so you’ve got to be willing to let go of the mentality that your training must constantly line-up with the calendar. Most climbers have xed days each week that they can train. There is no reason to always do a specic session on specic days. Allowing a bit of variability is OK, and might be a game changer. A normal month might might look like this: PHASE 1 M O N DAY WEEK 1
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY Bouldering
Strength
Strength
WEEK 2
Stength
Bouldering
WEEK 3
B ouldering Bo
WEEK 4
Strength
FRIDAY
S UNDAY
Intensive Endurance
Intensive Endurance
Strength
Bouldering
SATURDAY
Strength
Intensive Endurance
Strength
It is important to remember at this point that the training is something that happens in the background of your continued development as a rock climber. Although our programming forces a focus rst on strength, then on power and nally on energy system work, your rst priority is always quality of movement and improvement improvement of technical skills. In the Level III plan, your highest performance capability will again be at the end of a given cycle or the rst week of the next. After Phase 1, your nger strength will be highest, after Phase 2, your explosiveness and short strength endurance endurance will be primed, and after Phase 3, you’ll have the highest pure endurance. You should adjust your redpointing schedule accordingly.
METHODS S OF TRAI TRAI N I NG 04 | METHOD
When it comes time to train, there are a lot of ways to do it. As long as your chosen sessions follow the principles of training outlined above, almost any method will do. When we are training, we can train movements and we can train energy systems. For example, bouldering and route climbing are done using the same movements, but the energy system demands dier. A one hour bike ride and a one-hour walk both tax the aerobic energy system, but are clearly very dierent movements. Although it is possible to train multiple energy systems and movements in the same session, research shows that focusing on fewer demands in each session will produce better results. With this in mind, I have divided the work in the recommended sessions into four major categories:
STRENGTH
B O U LD E R I N G
STRENGTH ENDURANCE
INTENSIVE ENDURANCE
Although there is a degree of crossover between each of these categories, I feel the designations are important to recovery and advancement. I will go into great detail in the following section on the specics of these sessions, but the general goals are as follows:
STRENGTH Development of nger strength, general strength, and mobility. BOULDERING Application of strength, development of explosiveness and tension. STRENGTH ENDURANCE Improvements in anaerobic power and lactate clearing. INTENSIVE ENDURANCE Increases in aerobic capacity and improved energy delivery.
COMPARISON COMPARIS ON OF RELATIVE RELATIVE INTENSITIES AND DURATIONS DURATIONS OF ABOVE SE SSION SSIONS S SE SSI O N TYPE
D URATI O N
INTE N S ITY
Strength
45-75 min
High
Bouldering
75-120 min
High
Strength Endurance
45-75 min
Medium
Intensive Endurance
45-75 min
Medium
STREN ST RENGT GTH H TRAINING TRAININ G Strength is the foundation of all movement. We depend on developing high levels of force during each and every move of a climb, and the stronger the whole system, the less likely we are to have problems. I am no fan of seasonal strength training. To fully develop this quality, it must be trained year-round and for your entire career. Although this sounds overwhelming, especially to someone who might do no strength training currently, currently, great results can be seen from just a couple of short sessions each week. As climbers, the need need for stronger stronger ngers is obvious. We easily recognize that if we were were just able to hold on a little harder things would get easier in a hurry. hurry. We We also recognize that developing the ability to pull is of signicant advantage. Between these two factors, you’ve covered most of the bases, and many of us stop there. I encourage you to go one step further, though, and add a few more movements to fully develop their athleticism. By adding in some “non-specic” strength movements and some mobility mobilit y drills, we can achieve achiev e much more than we can with pull-ups and edge hangs. First, we reduce the chance of injury by balancing strength across key joints. Second, we allow full development of pulling strength by reducing inhibition associated with a strength imbalance, and third, we re-learn full joint mobility, to regain normal movement in the key joints.
GENERAL STRENGT STRENGTH H As I said above, general strength needs to be developed developed at all times. Don’t get me wrong climbers are very strong - but stronger is better. better. Creating a balanced strength is even better than that. It is easy to get sucked into too much strength training. The movements feel good, and there is always another exercise to try. More than once, I’ve seen climbers get drawn away from the sport in favor of training in the weight room. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but we need to remember that we are climbers who lift, not lifters who climb. In this program, we limit the general strength training to four major movement patterns, plus some specic midsection training. The major patterns cover all the bases when it comes to developing general strength, and can be done eectively during a relatively short session. The movements are as follows: Upper Body Pressing: This movement, which includes such exercises as the Military Press, Push-Up, and Bench Press, is important for development of the chest, shoulders, and triceps. These groups are generally antagonists to our “climbing muscles”, and we train them to help reduce injury to the shoulders and to allow full strength development in our pulling muscles. If your antagonists are weak, your body will put the brakes on strength development in the prime movers.
We e train Pull-Ups Pull-Up s and Rows. When we do the pulls in this program, prog ram, Upper Body Pulling: W we are interested in cleaning up weak parts of our movements and improving unilateral (single arm) strength. We We work a lot on static strength in this pattern, as it is underdeve underdeveloped loped in many climbers. Hip Hinge: This is where we develop the most ability to hold tension in the hips and core. Hip hinge exercises include Deadlifts and Kettlebell Swings. These exercises are great for injury-proong the back and hamstrings, yet must be done correctly at all times. The big loads associated with the deadlift are great for building strength and cross over to many applications. Squat: The squat exercise patterns help us fully utilize the very strong muscles of our lower body for more ecient climbing. By doing Front Squats, Pistol Squats, or Lunges, we improve the strength in the quads and glutes necessary for high steps, slab moves, and rockovers. Midsection Training: Climbers have very strong abs. We also have incredible abdominal endurance. We aren’t going to waste time on high-rep crunches or minutes-long planks. Training your midsection should be very hard work for very brief periods. We use exercises such as levers and hanging leg raises to maximize strength here. And that fat on top... working your abs to exhaustion won’t make it go away.
FINGER STRENGT STRENGTH H Finger strength is taxed with every move you make. Likewise, it is improved with most of the climbing you do. Yes, you can develop strong ngers by just climbing, but we now know that focused nger strength training can lead to even greater gains on the rock. In climbing, attaining and using a hold is a dynamic eort of “contact strength,” isometric strength, and sometimes concentric strength. The development of eective strength in the ngers, though, can be most quickly developed using static hangs on the hangboard. Climbers have strong ngers, whether they are boulderers or trads or sport climbers. Our main goal in training on the hangboard is to increase strength, but right behind that goal is to decrease injuries to the ngers. For this reason, I encourage you to look at the hangboard as a tool not to be maximized for rapid strength gains, but rather one to be used at a moderate level year-round. Finger strength comes slowly, and the stronger you get, the slower it comes. Finger strength is highly dependent on increasing the neurological factors associated with muscle as well as pure tendon and ligament strength. The tendons and ligaments, which we’ll call connective tissue increase in strength primarily by getting thicker. This is a slow process, and patience is the key. I often use the analogy of farming when we develop nger strength: you need to do the work every day, but you can’t hurry it. Extra water, extra sun, and fertilizer only go so far. At some point, you have to let time do its job. Finger strength is no dierent.
VOLUME OVER OVE R INTENSITY INTENSITY The research on gaining strength is fascinating. Yes, Yes, working close to your max is one way to get very strong, but it’s not the only way. This is particularly true in isometric training. Isometrics sort of “burst onto the scene in 1953 when two German scientists reported 5% gains in strength per week with only one daily 6 second action at 66% of maximum. This almost incredible increase in strength gained a lot of attention and many follow-up studies. The result of the follow-ups was basically this: Yes, Yes, the overall strength gains are substantial, but they are only applicable within a very small range (joint angle variance). This limited the usefulness of isometrics for most sports, but it is just great for climbing. Subsequent research research shows that many of set/rep combinations can yield eective results. Most interestingly, Davies and Young (1983) showed that seven daily 1-minute actions at 30% of max resulted in around a 30% gain in strength in just six weeks. Multiple studies done at varying percentages of maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) show similar results. Coupled with the relatively weak structure of the ngers, these ndings tend to support using lower loads for isometric strength gains.
Several studies show us two other important factors. First, longer-duration actions can build greater strength than short actions. This counter-intuitive information might suggest that holding positions for ten or even 20 seconds might cause greater gains than loading heavy for ve. Second, the total volume of load (duration x contraction) is more important than the degree of load. I’ll rephrase, because I had a hard time believing it: the time you spend under load in a given position is more important than how heavy the load is. This is good news for climbers, as it means that we can work at lower intensities and still get stronger, which is just what our aching ngers needed to hear. Where a traditional strength athlete needs to work frequently in the 85%+ of maximum strength range, the fragile structures in our forearms, hands and ngers can’t take the strain. The 5 to 10 second hang range seems to work best, but at higher volumes (more sets) which leads to great gains in strength without as great a risk of injury. By simply keeping a relatively high volume of training in the 65 to 75% range (a 8-12 second max) you’re going to see comparable levels in strength gain and you’ll be able to train more often. What’s better, it’s work you can do year-round without burning out.
LONG TERM PLANNIN PLANNING G Think long-term when it comes to strength. Science shows that with very intense training, strength can increase rapidly, yet it decreases almost as quickly once you back o. Similarly, if you slowly add strength over cycles and seasons, your numbers will stay strong for a long time. My friend Todd Skinner trained his one and two nger pocket strength for years before he ever started climbing on pockets regularly, regularly, claiming that he was “training for the routes of the future.” Your strength training should not be done with this season’s goals in mind, but rather the goal routes of next season and the season ve years from now. now.
YEAR-ROUND YEAR -ROUND TRAINING TRAININ G In the nonlinear plans outlined in this book, you might focus on nger strength training only once every week or ten days. If you’re in a low-volume phase, you might be on the hangboard no more than twice a month. With training this infrequent, it’s easy to conceive of carrying out your focused nger work all year. Keep in mind that we are usually working on the long-haul here, and that your seasonal ebbs and ows will (and should) be governed by uctuations in your “real” climbing, while training cooks slowly along on the back burner bur ner..
MY TWO FAVORITE HANGBOARD HANGB OARD PROTOCOLS There are many good hangboard nger strength programs out there, and I encourage you to try many dierent plans throughout your climbing career. The two programs I selected for this book are the ones that I have seen as the most eective for a variety of athletes. I pick them not because I am unaware of the popular “repeater” method or Eva
Lopez’s excellent program, but because I think they are superior for building strength in a long-term framework.
LADDERS In many of the strength programs at our gym, we’ve abandoned the classic 3x3 or 5x5 approach, and have settled in at training our athletes at lighter loads. The benets are many, many, including better execution, less fatigue, reduced injury, and less stress. If you give me a program that doesn’t smoke the athlete, but shows increases increases in strength, I’ll try it. If it works every time, I’ll buy it. Over the past few years, we’ve come to regard the simple Ladder program as the safest, most eective strength protocol we’ve ever tried. If you’ve never tried progressing volume instead of load in your training, you’ll likely see notable results in any exercise you choose. The same basic principles that apply to strength training in the gym apply to the hangboard. Climbers frequently sustain injury on the hangboard. To To keep making our climbers stronger with less risk of injury, we made adjustments: more time under tension and lighter loads. If I can see great strength gains without having to use a weight belt, risk injury, or buy a specialized hangboard, that’s that’s the program I’ll pick. In the search for simplicity, I looked for a way to build a plan that would meet all the criteria of a great program: • Simple to implement • No need for for specialized specialized boards • Building strength at lower loads over a variety of hang times • Repeatable over Repeatable over long training periods • Very low risk of injury In my mind, one of the best plans that ts these criteria is the Hangboard Ladder Program, or 3-6-9 as it’s popularly known. It goes like this: Select 3-4 hold types or positions. You’ll stick with these for a month or two, so pick well. I suggest full crimp, half crimp, and open hand. Again you could conceivably come up with several dozen hold types and combinations...but don’t. You have very little adaptive capacity, so don’t waste it. These three hold positions will get you where you need to be unless you have a specic project or common hold type at your local crag that you need to train. Start with very easy holds that are reasonable for a 9 second hang. You can always intensify this later in the cycle, but you want to avoid going too deep, too early early..
After 4 weeks, or about 4-6 4-6 sessions sessions depending depending on your progress, you can add weight… weight… but don’t get too wrapped up in micro-adjust micro-adjusting. ing. Strap 5-10 more pounds on or move to a smaller hold. Look for simplicity. Remember that your added weight or hold selection should stay xed for an entire 4-week cycle. You can elect to add load for one position and change the load for the next, but keep simplicity in mind. It is usually easier to adjust hold size than to keep pulling the weight belt on and o. Most importantly, importantly, you should never fail to complete a 9-second hang. This would indicate your loads are too high. Don’t get too crazy about holding to a strict plan. You can approach it much more organically, increasing loads as you see t, or even add more “waviness”...adding in sharp increases and decreases in volume as the weeks go by. Top strength coaches all agree that loading must be varied and progressed, and the linear progression we’re used to isn’t always the best way to get stronger.
WEBB-PARSONS’ PLAN Australian powerhouse Chris Webb-Parsons put a very dierent spin on hangboardin hangboarding. g. Instead of changing hold types or nger positions, he suggested holding everything in the half crimp position. The reasoning? The joint angle variance in isometrics is around 20 degrees, and half crimp is the middle ground between all the angles at which we hold the ngers. This might not be exactly true, and the plan eliminates pinching and pocket-specic hangs, but its simplicity is a very good thing. Chris makes two other good suggestions: rst, you hang one arm at a time, with the assist of a piece of webbing or rope held with the other hand (we like an etrier or loop). Second, you vary the joint angle at the elbow throughout the session. Both of these variants to traditional hangs make this workout a very good, very dierent, session than anything anyone else has oered up. The general structure of the sessions is to do a ve or ten second hang on each arm with as little assist as possible from the other. In our program, which diers slightly from Chris’ original suggestion, you do three sets each side with a straight arm, then three sets with the elbow about 90 degrees, and then three close to a full lock o. He suggests a full 12 week program for this workout, and recommends two to three days per week. Again, in our plan, we’ll stick to 4-8 weeks of the cycle before making changes. Chris did a nice, short video of the whole program, available here: https://vimeo.com/61430224 I nd that this is a great companion to more traditional programs such as my Ladders. This is especially good for climbers whose upper body strength is a little behind. I found
over the last couple of years, though, that every hangboard strength program worked better when it was integrated with resistance training and stretching, which might just be the magic bullet for big jumps in nger strength.
INTEGRATED STRENGTH In my mind, combining nger strength training, mobility work, and resistance training is the best of all worlds. If you’re like me, you want to spend as little time as possible gaining strength, and as much time as possible using it. By using combination sessions, you get a whole host of benets: • Fewer total training sessions dedicated to strength means more time climbing. • By adding hangboarding hangboarding to your your resistance training, training, you are creating longer longer and more eective rest periods, so you don’t end up under-resting between heavy sets. This equals greater strength gains and a lower chance of injury. • By sticking a resistance set and some some stretching stretching between each of your hangs, you reduce injury potential in the ngers and give yourself time to recover between hard sets. • By integrating integrating your mobility mobility within the session, you’ll actually actually do it. • Finally, Finally, and most important, important, you’ll get stronger stronger ngers with this program program than by training ngers alone. I’ll explain below. We get strong because of a couple of factors. Strength comes primarily from improvement in neural factors, as noted above, and increases in strength due to hormonal changes that take place with hard training. Unfortunately, simply training the ngers and forearms in a normal hangboard session is not enough of an overload to your system to cause a signicant hormonal change. When we add even a few squats or presses or other heavy strength movements into the nger strength workout, we get not only the neural stimulus local to the forearm, but we get a global stimulus in the form of a big release of anabolic hormones. I suspect you could do a heavy strength session, followed by some nger work and get good results. But there is an even better way for the two exercises to complement each other. I call this integrated this integrated strength strength.. The Integrated Strength workout format is as follows:
3 sets of each group, done circuit-style: A1: Hangboard position position 1 A2: Deadlift or Front Squat, 2-5 reps reps A3: Hip Mobility, Mobility, 60 seconds
B1: Hangboard position 2 B2: Push-Up Variation or Overhead Press, 4-6 reps B3: Shoulder Mobility, 60 seconds C1: Hangboard position 3 C2: Hanging Straight Leg Raise, Ab Wheel, or Levers, 4-6 reps C3: Splits or Frog, 60 seconds (Each group takes about 15 minutes to execute.) We can use the same integrated strength stren gth format with any of the three hangboard protocols prot ocols listed above. Over the course of a training season, I suggest you alternate between at least two of the protocols. You should stick to one protocol, and one set of resistance exercises for six workouts before switching. For most climbers this is 4-6 weeks’ time. A favorite pair of workouts is as follows: Sessions 1-6 (Ladders) 3 sets of each group, done circuit-style:
A1: Half Crimp x3-6-9 (Rest as needed between between hangs.) A2: Deadlift x3 A3: Fire Log Stretch, Stretch, 60 seconds B1: Open Hand x3-6-9 (Rest as needed between hangs.) B2: 1-arm, 1-leg Push-Up x3+3 B3: Kettlebell Arm Bar, 30 seconds each side C1: Full Crimp x3-6-9 (Rest as needed between hangs.) C2: Hanging Straight Leg Raise x6 C3: Splits, 60 seconds Sessions 7-12 (Webb-Parsons) 3 sets of each group, done circuit-style:
A1: Hang, Straight Arm x10+10 x10+10 seconds A2: Front Squat x5 A3: Frog Stretch, Stretch, 60 seconds B1: Hang, Bent Arm x10+10 seconds B2: 1-Arm Overhead Press x5+5 B3: Doorway Shoulder Opener, 60 seconds C1: Hang, Lock O x10+10 seconds C2: Levers x3 C3: Splits, 60 seconds
The Integrated Strength template is the one I recommend you use during your Strength days on each cycle. Although it is possible to split these sessions into separate hangboard hangboard and weight training workouts, I don’t suggest it. Remember to keep the intensity high on the weights: low load, low rep training doesn’t get you very far!
INTEGRATED STRENGTH, THE TWO QUESTIONS WE ALWAYS GET Two questions seem s eem to come up each time a climber climbe r rst reads the Integrated Strength workout. First, they ask “Why no pulling exercises?” The answer is, of course, that we do a whole lot of pulling in all of our other climbing and we rarely see the strength of the back as a limiter in climbers’ ability. ability. I am not opposed to pull-ups, but I am opposed to inecient use of one’s time. The second question occurs to climbers that don’t have a facility that would support a weight/ hangboard workout in a combined format. “How am I supposed to do this workout if my hangboard and my weight room are in dierent parts of town?” Although such a situation is not ideal (and should be rectied ASAP) you can still get a lot of the benet of the combined format if you simply do the hangboard and heavy resistance portions of the session within about an hour of each other. Separating the sessions ends up taking longer overall, but you can still see good results.
BOULDERING Bouldering is the essence of improving your climbing. It is the perfect way to maximize your training time: work bouts are short and intensely technical, so you develop good strength and skills at the same time. Bouldering teaches tension, precision, and commitment to new ways of looking at movement. If you could only do one type of training for rock climbing, this would be the best choice. We do several general types of bouldering sessions in our programs, but the most eective and important is called Limit Bouldering. In the nonlinear cycles, this is the one you’re going to use. This delivers the most bang for the buck, and addresses the critical element of “practice” that doesn’t really get addressed elsewhere elsewhere in this program.
LIMIT BOULDERING Limit Bouldering is aimed at forcing you to work challenging movements on a variety of terrain. Most people’s “normal” bouldering sessions tend to lead this direction, with a group of friends typically working toward doing harder problems and sequences, motivating each other to both try harder and to try new things. It is important to keep the goal in mind. Your desired outcome from a Limit session is to get better and get stronger. This requires a fair amount of discipline and analysis. Ultimately, you’d like to set your own limit problems if climbing indoors. The problems should be somewhat specic to the terrain you plan to climb on outside, mimicking the wall angle, hold size, and footwork. Many gym routes feature big moves on big features with a very limited set of holds. A well-set limit problem would feature feature smaller holds, many options for feet, and a couple of very hard moves rather than just one crux. On the ip side, you want to avoid making a problem too consistent, as this tends to not force you to try too hard, and would be better as a strength-endurance trainer. The problems should be at (you guessed it…) your limit, though I do recommend having one or two problems a grade or two easier to use as “perfection” trainers in the session. When we talk limit, we mean hard. If you can send these problems in the rst few sessions, they are probably too easy. A Limit problem may take several weeks or months to send, which makes bouldering in a commercial gym somewhat challenging, especially if they regularly re-set the walls. Features of a Limit Boulder problem:
• Very hard problem that can’t be done in just a few sessions • 2 or 3 hard moves moves out of a total of no more more than 10 moves
• Wall angle and hold types similar to goal routes • Poor footholds, but several options • Explosive/powerful movement In short, your Limit session should be the hardest you ever work in climbing. It should continually force you into the “growth” zone. As one of our athletes put it, “9 out of 10 sessions, you leave the gym thinking you suck.”
QUANTIFYING BOULDERING SESSIONS One of the greatest things about climbing, and I think one of the things that attracts many of us to the sport, is that no two moves are ever the same. Even the very same climbs can be executed dierently dierently each time you do them. This is endlessly entertaining for the mind, but creates a challenge for the body. The fact that there are so many facets to the execution of a boulder problem or climb give the climber many avenues of progress. This opens success to more than just the very strong, very exible, etc. As great as this variability is for enjoyment of the sport, it is a hurdle when it comes to training.. Training training Training is about ab out overload overlo ad and recovery. At the top end of one’s ability, ability, overload overloa d has to happen along a razor’s edge - too much and you get hurt, too little and you stay stuck. The diculty in quantifying climbing can easily drive our interest to do more measurable, less eective, training modes. If I can do more pull-ups this week than last week, I’ll believe my training “worked”...whether it actually made me better at the sport or not. In climbing, climbing is everything. It doesn’t matter how good you are at the parts of the sport if you can’t send. I’ve seen fabulously exible climbers fail miserably at stemming because of bad footwork, strong climbers fail because they couldn’t get the balance right, and some of the most bold climbers come peeling o long before they needed to be brave. Yes, strength training and hangboarding and campusing can help you, but you still have to move. That’s That’s why there is no better training mode than bouldering. So, how do we make sure that our bouldering is advancing? How can we come up with a way of measuring the sessions so that we force progress or recovery when it’s needed? The rst step is to take a pencil to the gym with you. In order to assess what you did, you’ll need to keep track of a few numbers for each session: • The total duration of the session, and the duration of the “work sets” after warmup. In general, your warm-ups will drift toward a standard format and length, and will not be as important a factor in calculating what you did in training. • The grade and nature of the problems you do. I recommen recommend d noting the angle of the problem, length, and type (i.e. crimpy, crimpy, technical, slopers, explosive, etc.) The grade will be the only quantiable part of this, but noting that you spend all your
time jughauling on the steep walls should raise a red ag and explain why you can’t seem to climb anything outdoors. • Your general feeling of how you performed on each problem. A simple 1-5 scale of crappy to awesome is useful. This shouldn’t be tied to whether you send or not, but rather the quality of your eort. • Whether you sent or not. In general, if we fall low on a problem, we call it a scratch and start over. over. Likewise, an almost-send gets counted. This is because we are tracking what kind of work we are doing in the session, not whether you made it to some arbitrary stopping point. Naturally, you can detail the actual results of each try, try, which give you better perspective on the data.
Like I said above, the only thing you can quantify is the grade. These are all over the place and can be somewhat inconsistent. If a grade is way o, don’t worry what others think. Note the grade you think the problem is. Using the data you recorded above, the following numbers can be noted for each training session. 1. Total number of problems. Keep track only of problems after warm-up. The warm-up will vary in duration and intensity and should be recognized as a separate part of the session. 2. The “V Sum”. This is all the grades of the climbs you did that session, all added together. For example, if you did V1-V2-V4-V4-V3-V4-V2-V3-V4, the V Sum would be 27. V0 should be counted as V1...you actually did some climbing, so we can’t have it count for zero. The V Sum is a volume measurement. 3. The “Average V”. This is your V Sum divided by the number of problems. In our example above, that would be 27 divided by 9, resulting in an Average V (AV) of V3. If you were to do an extra V3, your V Sum would kick up to 30, but your average V would remain the same. Tracking Tracking this to one decimal place (i.e. V3.1) is useful. Average V is an intensity measurement. 4. The Session Density. To calculate this overall indicator of session load, you take the V Sum and divide it by the duration of the session. Therefore a 1- hour session where your V Sum is 60 would have a density of 1, where a day where your V Sum is 80 in the same time would have a density of 1.34...a huge change in load.
Using these numbers, you can get some good information on your sessions, the most important being whether you are progressing at all. A higher Density, V Sum, or Average V will indicate higher loads than the previous session. Depending on which of the above is increasing, you should see a positive trend in your general ability, work capacity, or strength endurance.
APPLICATION So what do these numbers mean? • When trying to to increase power power or strength, strength, the most important important number number to track is Average V. This gives you an indication of session intensity - the number one measure of how hard how hard you you worked. • When trying to to increase work work capacity or all-day all-day endurance, endurance, you will want to pay closest attention to the V Sum. This give you a picture of how much overall work you did, and is easy to add to. In an eight-week program, program, you might have to complete a dozen dierent sessions, and can “increase” your volume by simply adding a few easy problems at the end of a day. This is easy at rst...when it gets less easy is when you know you are making progress. • When trying to increase increase long power power or strength endurance, Session Session Density is the measure to watch. This is where endurance route climbers can really tune up their tness. Like I said before - it’s a challenge to quantify training in this way, but these simple measures can be used quickly and eectively. The biggest error we see in climbers is nonprogression. This is not because they can’t move forward, it’s simply that they don’t know how. All of our training sessions are “hard.” In order to progress, more has to be added somewhere - whether it’s volume, intensity or frequency. A huge key to success in a nonlinear program like this one is making sure you progress between like sessions. By having solid numbers in the weight room, on the training boards, and in the bouldering gym, this becomes a relatively simple task. Since you’ll be doing limit-level problems in this program, there are a few additional considerations: First, you want to make sure your warm-up is consistent and thorough. If you keep to the same workout structure, there will be no need to record the details of this part of your session. Second, you want to record details of each attempt, since you’ll rarely send a problem in these sessions. These details might include a general impression of the problem, an analysis on why you failed, and how you felt your performance was. (See the log sheet image on the next page.)
PHOTO: ZACH SNAVE LY
LIMIT BOULDERING BOULDERING SESSION DESIGN DESI GN Now that you know what Limit Bouldering is and how to keep track of the variables, we’ll look at session design. In this training program, the place you are most likely to push too hard or to get injured is bouldering. For this reason, the warm-up should be considered as important as the session itself. 1. General Warm-Up. This is important in many ways, and is the most undervalued part of the session. When we visit crags or boulders this is a natural part of getting going - you have to walk to the rock. Many crags require a half hour or more hiking with a load on your back...way more than enough to get the blood owing. For our purposes, I like to recommend 5 minutes of rowing, Airdyne, walking, or easy jogging to get going. In an area like Rie, a short morning walk up the road or a couple of very easy pitches might be needed to get the general warm-up covered. 2. Movement M ovement Preparation Preparati on and Mobility. We We do 5-8 minutes of full-range move ment in a variety of movement planes. This phase of the workout can include foam rolling and stretching, as well. Our favorite movement prep sequence features 45 to 60 seconds of the following exercises: • Arm Swings • Floor Slides • Prying Squats • Inchworm to Shoulder Opener
• Inverted Hamstring • Side Lunge (Exercises are described later, in the cleverly-named Exercises section.) 3. Specic Warm-Up. Warm-Up. This is where you start climbing. I like to split this up in a simple and fun series, which is longer and more intense for more advanced climbers. Using various boulder problems on as many angles and hold types as possible: • Do as many many easy V1/V2 problems problems as it it takes to to add up to your limit limit grade. For example, if you are climbing V9 for your limit problem, you might do V2, V1, V1, V2, V2, V1. Rest and stretch for a couple of minutes, then: • Do three problems in a row with with little rest, rest, which also add up to your your limit grade. In our example, this might be V2, V3, V4. Rest a few minutes, then: • Do two problems that that add to the limit grade, so maybe V4, V5 in our example. example. • Finish with some some specic hold positions on the hangboard if necessary, necessary, depending on the nature of your work problems. 4. The Session. The limit bouldering session is all about intensity, intensity, not about getting tired. We spend the rst 20 minutes of the session proper working 2-3 “hard” boulder problems, 1-2 grades above your onsight level. This “super-warm-up” makes sure all systems are ready to re. Next, you’ll move on to working your limit problems, which are so hard you might not succeed on them for several sessions. Alternating between two or three problems, work each one as best you can, resting plenty in between. You should not ever get pumped or sweaty...just keep trying hard moves. The duration of the latter part of this session should be 40-45 minutes, making the whole work session about an hour. hour. If your power starts to drop signicantly before that time, pack it in and call it a day. Note the session details carefully. carefully. In general, you’ll see pretty much the same total load in these sessions over time, but sends and signicant events of the session should be noted for future reference.
EXAMPLE LIMIT BOULDERING BOULDERIN G SESSION General Warm-up (20min): • 100 calories Treadmill walk/run • 3 x 20 calories calories Rower Rower w/ equal rest • 10 min movement preparation and mobility Specic Warm-up (15min): • V1, V2, V2, V2, V1 • V3, V3, V3 • V4, V4 • Hangboard, 2x 10 sec each each 2,3 pocket and and small crimp Training (70 min): • Work V7 cave, V6 vertical vertical,, and V7 30 degree wall in sequence, 20 minutes. • Rest 10 10 minutes. minutes. Stretch + easy easy hangs hangs • 40 minutes minutes of working cave cave V8 and 30 degree V9
STRENGTH ENDURANCE The greatest area for many of us to improve is in the very specic realm of Strength Endurance. This is the realm between pure power and easy mileage...this is the realm where most of us nd ourselves in panic mode on redpoints. This is a metabolically dicult zone, and training strength endurance will allow us to better deal with being anaerobic for extended periods. Strength Endurance (SE) can be referred to as “power endurance” - your terminology doesn’t really matter. matter. I know that these qualities are dened dierently by physiologists, but we apply them the same in climbing cl imbing training. trai ning. Technically, Technically, we use both power endurance endur ance and strength endurance at the same time, but this is a discussion for another time. What I am referring to is the ability to repeatedly handle working in the glycolytic (30-45 seconds) zone throughout a session or several times in a climbing day. Some climbers have a tremendous power ability, ability, but will blow up after just one or two hard attempts. By developing this facet of your training, you are eectively buying yourself more quality attempts at boulder problems or cruxes per day. I like two dierent workouts for developing strength endurance: Short Intervals and Rhythm Intervals. I recommend picking one of the two and using this method for an entire training cycle of 4-8 weeks. This allows you better to target your improvements and to gauge whether your endurance is going up.
SHORT INTERVALS In these sessions, we will use a series of boulder problems that are 10-15 moves long. If the problems on your wall are not long enough, extend them by traversing in to the start of the problem or linking two shorter problems (no more than about 60 seconds per set). Select 6 dierent problems that are close to your onsight level, preferably continuous in nature and on a variety of wall angles and holds. On a 3 minute repeating clock, work your way through each of the problems. This means you’d do problem 1, which might take 40 seconds, followed by 2 minutes and 20 seconds rest. You’d You’d follow this with problem 2, problem 3, and so on, starting the next one every 3 minutes. One series will take about 16 minutes. Rest 5-10 minutes after problem 6, then repeat the series two more times. In total, you’ll do 18 problems per session. To increase your SE, try adding one harder problem per series each week. In these sessions, you won’t feel pumped as much as “getting weak” or losing power...you power ...you might feel like you just can’t make the moves. If you fall from a problem, simply rest the remainder of the 3 minutes, and continue with the circuit. Over time these sessions will allow you to handle more hard eorts per day, which is a facet of tness that you can’t develop with just bouldering or just adding volume. These are oddly tiring sessions, and you’ll want to eat well and get a good night’s sleep after. after.
EXAMPLE OF A SHORT INTERVAL SESSION Warm-up: 10-15 minutes of Movement Preparation, basic bodyweight exercises, and some bouldering up to your onsight level. On a 3 minute clock: 0:00 Problem 1, then rest 3:00 Problem 2, then rest 6:00 Problem 3, then rest 9:00 Problem 4, then rest 12:00 Problem 5, then rest 15:00 Problem 6, then rest 5-10 minutes. Repeat this series two more times.
RHYTHM INTERVALS We started doing Rhythm Intervals maybe 20 years ago, not because we believed in their eectiveness, but because the wall we had to train on was tiny and it was the only way to train sub-max endurance. Over the course of several years, we rened the workout into the well-known 4 minute block. 30 seconds of steady controlled up-and-down moves on small holds, followed by 30 seconds of shaking out (active rest) on a jug, repeated four times. We use these as a maximum lactic load exercise because you don’t have to do anything except move the arms as the pump grows. To To perform Rhythm Intervals, you’ll simply pick a series of four matched edges (about a pad-sized edge is best) and set them up at shoulder width, 20-24” between the bottom pair and upper pair. In the middle, you’ll place a jug on which you can recover actively. actively. This will need to be a very good hold for most climbers. Depending on your goals or the nature of the climbing in your area, you might modify the hold selection. For Smith climbers, you might use small crimps as the work holds, and a large at edge as the rest. Maple Canyon climbers might want rounded holds and a big open hand jug. The key consideration is to train the same set of grips for a whole cycle rather than trying to insert too much variety in this exercise. These can be done easily on a System Wall, and can be completed on a Campus Board, as long as there is a big recovery jug nearby.
Notation is as follows: 2x 4x30:30 means two rounds of 4 sets, with 30 seconds movement and 30 seconds active rest. Recovery between the rounds should be 4-6 minutes. 12 Session Rhythm Board Progression A six-week (12 session) session) progression might look like this: Day 1: 2x 4x20:40, rest 6 min between rounds. Day 2: 2x 4x30:30, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 3: 2x 4x30:30, rest 4 min between rounds. Day 4: 2x 4x35:25, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 5: 2x 4x40:20, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 6: 2x 4x40:20, rest 4 min between rounds. Day 7: 2x 5x30:30, rest 6 min between rounds. Day 8: 2x 5x30:30, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 9: 2x 5x35:25, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 10: 2x 5x35:25, rest 4 min between rounds. Day 11: 2x 5x40:20, rest 5 min between rounds. Day 12: 2x 5x40:20, rest 4 min between rounds.
ADVANCING INTERVALS The bulk of your energy system work will be in the form of interval training. Intervals simply allow you to amass more quality hard work than would, say, a long, steady-state eort. Since climbing itself is broken into separate periods of hard eort separated by longer rests, it makes even more sense to train in such a way. Most people, whether they are training boulder problems, 4x4s, ARC, or anything else, work within the realm of some kind of interval. The problem for most of us is we don’t know what the session is actually doing for us, or how to keep getting better. The rst time you do a set of 4x4s, you’re probably going to be sore and fatigued for a few days. Repeat the eort and your soreness and fatigue will be less. A few more sessions, and you’ve fully adapted: now your body is capable of that kind of work. You can imagine there are many ways to again make it hard for yourself, but the tness you gain can be greatly diverse, depending on the method you choose. There are four ways to advance intervals. As I said before, it doesn’t really matter what kind of intervals you’re doing...they all advance the same way. The progressions are as follows: 1. Increasing the diculty of the climbing. Over a series of sessions, if you are focused on increasing the diculty of the climbing in each set, you will slowly increase your power output. This factor is most apparent at the ground-level: achieving harder boulder problems in a bouldering session than you could before means you are a better boulderer! Keeping this mindset as you move to longer problems or to links will continually allow you to develop the ability to do very hard moves under varying states of fatigue. Harder sets don’t directly lead to higher work capacities or to more low-end endurance, though. To improve these factors, you’ll want to manipulate other variables while holding your problem diculty around the same level.
For long-term performance, this is the most important factor to manipulate. Strength and power trickle down eventually, and an interval program built around intensity creates more sustainable tness. 2. Increasing distance or duration of intervals. If you make the intervals longer you begin to develop more aerobic power. power. This is a good practice if your desired outcome is more steady, low-power endurance. You’ll get better at recovering on the y, and will improve your ability to do multiple semi-hard moves in a row. Improving in this realm doesn’t translate well to doing hard cruxes while redlining, but is clearly the way to get better at sustained redpoints or traversing boulders.
Remember that short intervals tend to lean more toward power development, and long ones toward single-eort endurance. As the intervals get longer, the
body switches primary energy systems, so you’ll see drops in power as you transition to the lower power aerobic system. The power drop is not linear: somewhere around the 90 seconds to 2 minute mark, you’ll feel a massive decline in your “snap.” It’s not a great idea to increase interval durations more than about 10% per workout. We love to stick to the nice, round, easy-to-count numbers, such as going from 30 to 45 seconds, but this tends to play out in fatiguing too quickly. This can eectively shorten the whole training cycle because of too steep an improvement curve. In truth, we do very little increasing of interval durations in our programs, as I prefer spending whole cycles focused on one duration. If you were to move from a 60 second interval early in the cycle to a 90 second interval later, you might completely switch systems...which could mean undertraining both systems. Even though I don’t favor progressing duration, this type of increase is appropriate for people new to endurance training or for boulderers looking to make the switch to route climbing. Total Total session load must be considered, so as you add time per set, you may have to drop some sets to avoid overreaching. A progression might look something like this: INTERVAL INTERV AL DURATION DURATION PROGR ESSIO NS SESSION 1
SESSION 2
SESSION 3
SESSION 4*
SESSION 5
SESSION 6
6 x 30 sec
6 x 33 sec
6 x 36 sec
6 x 40 sec
5 x 45 sec
5 x 50 sec
3. Duration and type of rest period. By decreasing rest or changing it to an “active” mode, you improve your ability to recover on-route. It’s pretty clear that when you’re on a route that even the rests aren’t all that “resty.” Short of a full-on sit down rest ledge, you’re working harder than most of the people you see at the average gym just to hang out on the jugs. This skill involves improving improving your threshold threshold levels levels so that even an engaged position allows you to get something back. Eectively, Eectively, you’ll be recruiting less muscle and have an increased anaerobic threshold.
In the mid 1990s, I had the privilege of attending a training talk with Jerry Moat, who explained how he trained for hard route redpoints on boulders. He explained that he’d pick a traverse that he had fairly wired, then climb it using the natural rests. Once he could do it several times, he’d then move to resting on a “crap” hold, and once he’d mastered that one, he’d up the ante again. After a few weeks, he’d feel ready for anything.
Changing rest will have a positive eect on aerobic power, but can negatively aect top-end strength endurance and power. power. By topping out your ability to deal with the highly acidic game of resting on-route, you naturally detrain your top-end values. It is a tough compromise, but one that there is no way around. 4. Number of repetitions. Increasing the number of reps of a given interval will increase the energy system capacity. This is valuable for improving the number of hard tries you’ll put forth per session or climbing day. To start, you should simply try to add one repetition per session. For example, if you decided to increase your 4x4 volume, you might go only to 3x4 and 1x5 rather than leaping to a full 4x5. This would represent a move from 16 to 17 problems (about a 6% increase) rather than a jump from 16 to 20 (a 25% increase).
Over the course of a whole training phase, you might work up as follows: 4x4 3x4 + 1x5 2x4 + 2x5 1x4 + 3x5 4x5
INTENSIVE INT ENSIVE ENDURANCE ENDURAN CE Intensive Endurance (IE) training is done to both improve your low-end endurance and to improve your ability to recover from anaerobic training modes by improving your aerobic capacity. Increasing aerobic capacity means increasing the level at which you can sustain work without the onset of fatigue. It means you can climb at a higher grade before getting pumped. The closer you get to pumped, the closer you get to training Aerobic Power, which you’ll address in Strength Endurance sessions. Intensive Endurance is trained by climbing at medium-low intensity. You should be at just above conversational intensity, intensity, and should be moving steadily for the majority of the
session. The diculty goes up by increasing volume (duration) of climbing in a given set or session rather than trying to climb more dicult moves. Climbing with good technique on established routes or problems is best. We most like to train IE by doing easy boulder problem links or route laps. Linked problem sets are the best choice for a bouldering gym. To start, you’ll set a timer for 5 x 2 minute intervals, then start by climbing up an easy problem. Downclimb on the same holds or open holds if you prefer, attempting to get in position to start another problem at the beginning of the next two minute period. Feel free to traverse around a bit between problems, using the opportunity to address some basic movement skills. A good place to start is by doing 5 “sets” of this climbing - 5 problems with requisite downclimbing and traversing between, or 10 minutes total work. Rest 5 minutes, then repeat. A suggested progression is as follows: NUMBER OF ROUNDS
NUMBER OF PROBLEMS
I NTE RVAL
R E ST BETWEEN ROUNDS
TOTAL WORK TOTAL TIME
4
5
2:00
5:00
40 minutes
4
6
2:00
5:00
48 minutes
6
4
2:00
5:00
48 minutes
8
4
1:30
5:00
48 minutes
6
6
1:30
5:00
56 minutes
8
5
1:30
5:00
60 minutes
These sessions should reach your threshold level - you’ll start to get tired, then recover, recover, then get tired… Ultimately, you’d go back and forth toward the line several times per set. The big challenge is knowing where that line is...I’d like to give you an easy answer, but it’s really a matter of feel. My best advice is to aim low for the rst few sessions until you get a feel for it. You’ll want to avoid being thrashed by the end of any given set or you’ll never make it through the whole session. Once you’re up to 4 sets of 10 minutes, you’re probably going to need 10 or more minutes between eorts, which is ne - you want to make sure to start each set from as fresh a place as possible.
At the crag, you can do laps on a route or two that are are continuous, continuous, not too fatiguing, fatiguing, and take you 5-10 minutes to climb. These should be 3-4 letter grades below your onsight level, and you’ll want to do 4-6 repeats with twice as much rest as it took you to climb them. Don’t get thrashed! If you are starting to ail, up your rest periods.
PER R FORMAN FORMANCE CE ON THE ROCK 05 | PE
Rock climbing is what we love, and climbing well just gives us more to love. When you are strong and t, climbing gives a sense of condence and freedom that is unmatched. Although you can integrate your climbing outside into these programs with some success, I have found that trying to match the planned demands of a training day out on the rock is hard for most people. Many of us do not have the varying diculties, lengths, and types of moves at our crag that are needed for steady progress in training. We enjoy climbing routes for their aesthetics more than for their physical demands, and we almost always share climbing days with friends. Our friends might not want or need to do the same type of training day we do. I rmly believe that you can have an eective program where the climbing somewhat follows the training, but is not integrated directly into it. There is a time and a place for concentrated training, such as mid-winter, or during the hottest months, but I want this program to work for you year-round, year-round, and I want you to feel like you can “train” even during peak climbing times. As I wrote earlier, the nonlinear method works best simply by increasing the volume of your training as you ramp up to times you want to perform. With increased attention to training, your technique, strength, and endurance naturally improve. But during these training increases, what do we do when we get to the crag? How best to match training with performance? Progress in climbing best occurs by climbing more or harder or both. What we want to do is to lay the foundations of progress through training and then get better at climbing by climbing. In order for this to happen, you’re going to want to be as focused and driven at the crag as you are at the gym. You’re going to have to build some structure in each and every climbing day. If you go to the crag with nothing planned, it’s more than likely that “nothing” will happen.
GOAL SETTING I have always liked the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” In climbing, our motivation for the sport comes largely from the routes that inspire us. Some of these routes appeal to us because of their aesthetics, some because of location, but most because of what they represent to us in terms of diculty. It’s hard not to be inspired by the idea of climbing Midnight Lightning or free climbing a big wall. It’s the image of completing something we could just barely do that makes redpointing so attractive to so many of us. With this in mind, I suggest approaching your climbing with two levels of goals in mind. The rst are process goals, the step-by-step progress routes which we tend to pick as projects. The second are stretch goals - dream routes that inspire you through the arduous days of training and visits to your local crag. There are downfalls to each type of goal setting, and a heavy bias toward one or the other can derail your progress. For example, if you get over over-interested -interested in training and building up your base, you risk halting progress. If you rigidly adhere to a redpoint pyramid or are a project-only climber, climber, you can spend season after season stuck reaching, losing, and getting back to the same level. On the other hand, if you spend entire seasons working a project that is too far outside your abilities, you might not get anywhere. We all know that you need to try hard routes to climb hard routes, but if you reach too far far,, your ability to bridge the gap between your current level and your dream routes will be limited. Moreover, Moreover, you risk detraining (hanging on every bolt, every time is bad for tness) and injury (moves too hard too soon can beat you up). This is where a combination of two kinds of goals is magic. By setting several goals for this year that are hard but achievable, you can set yourself up for success on the big goal in a few years. The big goal can’t just be a dream, though. You You will want to actively engage in getting there by climbing on the route itself or similar routes, by developing the strength, power, or endurance necessary for the route, and by building mental models of what the dream route is going to take.
PYRAMIDS The redpoint pyramid is a great tool for visualizing your climbing progress. Many versions of this have been suggested over the years, but I recommend a very simple version here. The pyramid can be a good motivator motivator,, but can also work against you if you try to use it too often. The basic idea is to draw out a pyramid of several boxes, with a single box at the top, then several layers of boxes below, as seen in the gure below. BONUS REDPOINT REDPOI NTS S
GOAL ROUTE
GOAL -1
GOAL -2
GOAL -3
The pyramid is structured to help climbers in two ways: to help assure that they are developing enough base tness for goal routes, and to make sure they are pushing their goals forward. Additionally, by adhering to the rule of logging only redpoint (and onsight/ ash) ascents, it helps less experienced or fearful climbers get used to leading and the process of sending. I like a simple 4-3-2-1 pyramid when training on a nonlinear program. Since the training is not built in long phases, the redpointing progresses separately from the training and
shorter cycles work better. In a traditional periodized plan, you might climb 5.10s in the base phase, 5.11a and b routes in the power phase, and then work on redpointing a 5.11d or two in the peak phase. In this program, your progressions can be smoother and more “organic” - if you’re still feeling great after you redpoint your goal route on the pyramid, I suggest doing another. You’re going to be able to hold peak tness for 3-5 weeks, and you might as well make the most of it if you send your goal route in week one! That’s That’s where the dashed boxes at the top come in. Frequently, we see a climber send two or three routes at the top of a peak, and I don’t want to make an arbitrary rule to keep that from happening.
PROJECTING Project climbing is the magical realm of redpointing. It’s where you push yourself not only physically,, but emotionally and mentally as well. Projects are what drive our motivation, and physically they are the routes by which we mark our seasons. In the end, these are the routes that will dene your career as a redpoint climber. These climbs should be selected on two levels. You should have projects that t with the climbing season and with the crags where you plan to climb. These should push you slightly, and should continue to increase in diculty through your career. You should also have dream routes that you visit occasionally. These routes are the ones that get you up in the morning and keep you up at night. They are the ones you’d quit work for. They are the ones by which you might dene whole periods of your life. I am adamant that seasonal projects fall quickly. The entire point of the redpoint pyramid is to prepare you mentally and physically to send these routes fast. When you pick a season project, your early focus should still be climbing routes on lower tiers of the pyramid. Every 6 or 7 climbing days, it’s it’s good to visit the season project to check your tness, learn moves, and keep the goal in mind. A good season of projecting would then look like this: 3 out of 5 climbing days: Redpointing routes on your current redpoint pyramid. 1 out of 5 climbing days: A less-focused, fun day of volume climbing. 1 out of 7 climbing days: Checking out the top tier projects.
THE MAGICAL SECOND TIER There is a magical zone along the redpoint pyramid that we call the “second tier.” These are simply the routes that fall one tier below your current highest project project level. These are climbs that are hard enough to really push you, but are ones you can send in a few tries. In short, they are in the “sweet-spot” for accelerated learning. Unfortunately, these are the very routes we overlook. The majority of us know when we Unfortunately, are in top form. This usually occurs right about the time you hit the second tier, tier, and many of us decide to go right r ight to projecting. A quick perusal of the bottom-end of the 8a.nu rankings will show you the result: one or two hard redpoints at a climber’s top grade folllowed by single sends or no sends in the 2-3 grades below. below. Look higher up the rankings, and you start to see the reality: elite climbers do not ignore their base. If your goal is to get better, not just “have climbed 12a,” you should focus hard on the routes that will get you there.
VOLUM VO LUMEE CLIMB CLI MBIN ING G Volume climbing is simply a lower-intensity day on the rock, where you work to do more mileage than on a typical redpoint day. We use these days to help groove good movement patterns and to maintain a decent level of tness. On a redpoint-only plan, climbers tend to climb themselves out-of-shape by limiting the amount of climbing they do in order to top out performance. By keeping volume in the mix just once every couple of weeks, you can eectively extend peak tness - sometimes doubling the number of weeks you are sending hard.
06 | DETAILED PROGRAM DESIGN
As I wrote earlier earlier,, the program must be exible. Research shows us that athletes who continually fail to hit performance goals, such as sticking to a too-rigid plan, lose motivation. What I want most for you is to have a successful training season, and then come back for more. In this section, I want to review the program, and give you a detailed look at how this will work in the real world. The important thing to remember is that there is no particular magic in the sessions I have outlined in the book - they are simply formats I’ve used successfully in my own climbing and in the programs of my athletes. The critical aspect of the programs is that you cycle between energy system and loading demands as the weeks progress. If you prefer more campusing and less bouldering, go for it. If you would rather r ather stay away from the weights and just use the hangboard, hangboard, great. This program will work as long as you follow the principles regardless of your chosen methods. If the program were more rigid, this chapter would have to be extensive. As it is, the nonlinear plans are so exible that they need little detail. The biggest issue I’ve met with such programs is that some athletes feel the need for more restrictions! Let me put forth a couple of examples to show you how the programs work.
LEVEL 1 NONLINEAR PROGRAM 4-WEEK 4WEEK - GENERA GE NERALL (EXAMPLE 1) In this program, we’ll follow the Level I plan of 3 session types per cycle. This is by far the most useful program for most climbers. In this example, we look at a climber who is climbing on a regular weekend-only schedule: M O N DAY WEEK 1
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
S UNDAY
Boul Bo ulde derrin ing g
Intensive Endurance
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
WEEK 2
Strength
Bouldering
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
Climb Outside Volume
WEEK 3
Intensive Endurance
Strength
Climb Outside Top Teir
Intensive Endurance
Strength
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
WEEK 4
Str tren engt gth h
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
Bouldering
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
Note that the climber is simply cycling through the three training session types during his weekday training program. As is the case with most of us, this climber can only train on certain days of the week (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays). After a hard Sunday, a rest day is occasionally needed on Monday. Also, he takes a Friday rest day each week so that his training doesn’t negatively aect his performance on Saturday. For all intents and purposes, the training is held separate from the climbing. It is hard to tailor a climbing day to t the training plan, so we simply organize the “practice” and “performance” separately, as they do in the majority of other sports. Over the course of completing a redpoint pyramid, a climber will normally do a little less training volume during the week as the intensity of the performances increases. This is normal, and such a schedule for a 12a pyramid might look like this: M O N DAY WEEK 1
Strength
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
Sttrength S
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
S UNDAY
Boulder eriing
Intensive Endurance
RP RP Pyramid Pyramid (1x11b, (1x11c, 1st nal RP of RP of T3) T4)
Strength
Bouldering
RP Pyramid (2x11c, 2nd, 3rd RP or T3)
Intensive Endurance
RP Pyramid (1x11d, 1st RP of T2)
Bouldering
RP Pyramid (1x11d, 2nd RP of T2)
Volume Day 8 RP 10b-11a
RP Pyramid (2 good attempts at 12a)
Agai n, I’ll empha Again, emphasize size that the trai training ning progressi progr ession on shou should ld work sepa separate rately ly from, and in support of, the climbing cycle. We must not fall into the trap of “more is better.” Better is better.
The above discussion gives you a general look into what a cycle might look like. The next section will give a more detailed look at a training month, showing not only each day’s planned workouts, but the progressions of those workouts. By looking at what is going on more intimately, you can see why we naturally tend to train less frequently as we approach the peak of a pyramid.
LEVEL 1 NONLINEAR PROGRAM PROGRA M 6-WEEK - DETAILED (EXAMPLE 2) The example below is a 3-session nonlinear cycle, like the one above, but with session details. What I want to underscore here is that although the cycle naturally progresses toward fewer sessions each week, the intensity increases in each session. Early in the cycle, most climbers can train two days in a row, or at least every other day. As the training (and redpointing) gets harder, two days between training sessions becomes the norm. Despite fewer training days, tness does not decline. This example is an early-season plan, as you can see from the limited number of redpoint days at the crag. M O N DAY WEEK 1
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
Integrated Bouldering Strength (Limit, (Ladders, 90 min) 60 min)
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
Intensive Integrated Endurance Strength (60 min) (Ladders, 60 min)
Climb Outside Pyramid
WEEK 2
Bouldering Intensive (Limit, Endurance 90 min) (70 min)
Integrated Climb Strength Outside (Ladders, 60 min) RP Pyramid
WEEK 3
Bouldering Intensive (Limit, Endurance 90 min) (70 min)
Integrated Climb Strength Outside (Ladders, RP Pyramid 60 min)
WEEK 4
Bouldering (Limit, 90 min)
WEEK 5
Intensive Endurance (70 min)
Integrated Strength (Ladders, 60 min)
Bouldering (Limit, 90 min)
Intensive Endurance (90)
S UNDAY
Climb Outside Volume
Climb Outside RP Pyramid Pyramid
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
WEEK 6
Integrated Strength (Ladders, 60 min)
Bouldering (Limit, 90 min)
Climb Outside RP Pyramid
LEVEL 1 NONLINEAR PROGRAM 4-WEEK 4WEEK - IN-SEASON IN-SEASO N REDPOINT REDPO INT PHASE PHA SE (EXAMPLE 3) 3) Training in-season not only can enhance performance, it can extend the length of your performance phase. The big key is to make sure that your training remains in a supporting role. All of your hardest eorts must go into redpointing, and you will want to cease advancing the intensity of your sessions when you are at the peak of the pyramid. We avoid placing any training before climbing days, and only train the day after climbing if the athlete feels recovered and ready for a quality session.
WEEK 1
M O N DAY
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
Strength
RP Pyramid
(1x12c, Final RP of T2)
WEEK 2
Bouldering
FRIDAY
Intensive Endurance
SATURDAY
RP Pyramid
(1x12d, nal attempts of T1) Strength
RP Pyramid
RP Pyramid
(1x12d, Second attempts of T1)
(1x12d, First RP of T1)
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
Intensive Endurance
Bouldering
RP Pyramid
RP Pyramid
(1x12d, Second attempts of T1) Strength
S UNDAY
(1x12d, Second attempts of T1) Intensive Endurance
RP Pyramid
(1x12d, Third RP of T1)
LEVEL 2 NONLINEAR PROGRAM 4-WEEK 4WEEK - WINT WI NTER ER / OFF SEASO SE ASON N PHASE PHA SE (EXAMPLE 4) 4) The example below is a strict, training-only schedule for an athlete that can train 4 days per week. The cycle is followed in sequence, but the load on the climber varies based on where the training days fall in relation to rest days. There is no reason to adhere to a schedule this strict, and you’ll often see that even a planned program such as this will occasionally feature just three training training days on a 4-day training training week. Once again, the critical thing to watch is that the athlete is progressing in each of the sessions as the training cycle passes. If you are plateaued or feeling tired, it’s probably a factor of too much training. Part of the beauty of this program is you can adjust it at the snap of a nger, and often get right back on track. M O N DAY
TU E S DAY WEDNE SDAY THU RSDAY
FRIDAY
WEEK 1
Str tren engt gth h
Boul Bo ulde derrin ing g
Intensive Endruance
Strength
WEEK 2
Bouldering
Intensive Endurnace
Strength
Bou oulldering
WEEK 3
Intensive Endurance
Strength
Bouldering
Intensive Endurance
WEEK 4
Strength
Boulde derrin ing g
Intensive Endurance
Strength
SATURDAY
S UNDAY
07 | EXERCISES
ARM BAR The kettlebell arm bar is a shoulder mobility and stability drill. Lying on the oor, press a light kettlebell up to a straight arm position, keeping your grip tight and wrist straight. Place the opposite hand overhead, in line with your body. Rotate your body to the straight-arm (unloaded) side, maintaining a stable position with the kettlebell above you. Rotate your hips until your top-side knee comes down to the oor in front of you, then continue the rotation until you feel a signicant stretch across the front of the loaded shoulder. Both arms will be stretched in this position: the loaded arm’s pectoral muscle and the unloaded arm’s lat will both be elongated. Increase the lat stretch by crawling the ngers “backward” across the oor. Increase the loaded arm stretch by rotating the hips toward the oor. You don’t need to use a lot of weight here - a heavier bell won’t speed your progress. Start with around 30 seconds per side, working up to a minute as your shoulder stability increases.
ARM SWINGS Arm Swings are a basic shoulder and arm warm-up with a dual purpose: we use them to loosen up the shoulders and to force some blood into the hands. Standing upright, simply swing the arms in opposite directions front-to-back. On the back swing, make sure to pull the arm as high as possible to stretch the pec and deltoid muscles. Start with about 30 seconds, or ten swings on each side, then work up to a minute as you get used to the movement.
DEADLIFT The deadlift is the ultimate strength exercise. In this program, I recommend the standard deadlift, done with a barbell and a double-overhand grip. As climbers, we want to do this exercise without the aid of wrist straps or belts, as two of the major strengths we are trying to develop are the grip and the tension created by the midsection. The stance should be shoulder width apart or slightly narrower with your toes slightly kicked outward or neutral. The hips should be above your knees and your shoulders above your hips. The shins should be vertical and the barbell should be touching your shins. The grip is outside your stance, somewhere around shoulder width apart. The head, neck, and spine are neutral. Before you lift, take the “slack” out of the bar. This means tense your whole body like you’re going to lift the bar, but don’t. Have a proud chest, squeeze the barbell, ex your lats, and re your glutes. As you pull the barbell up your shins, the hips and shoulders rise simultaneously while keeping a neutral spine. At the top, completely lock out the deadlift by
squeezing your glutes and your quads. Reverse the movement and once the barbell gets past your knees you can drop it to the oor. If you don’t have experience with this lift, it is well worth opening your wallet to get some instruction.
DOORWAY DOORWA Y SHOULDER OPENER This is a simple and eective shoulder and chest stretch that you can do anywhere you’ve got a door. Simply stand in the doorway with a stagger step (this reduces your back arch), place a hand on each side of the doorway at elbow height, and press yourself into the stretch. Stay tall, and be gentle with your shoulders, a slow patient stretch of 30-45 seconds is better than quick reps.
FIRE LOG The re log is a great hip opener and in combination with the Frog Stretch, will improve turnout dramatically. To perform the re log, assume a seated position similar to sitting “criss-cross applesauce.” Once in position take the forward leg and stack it on top of the other leg. Your Your ankle, not your heel, should sit right on top of the knee. Maintain an upright posture, and hold the position until the hips relax into the stretch. Hold the position for 45-60 seconds each side.
FLOOR SLIDES Lying in a supine (back down) position on the oor, lay your arms straight out to the sides, then bend the elbows to 90 degrees, assuming a “hands up” position. With the ngers and elbows contacting the oor, slowly move the arms up above the head while trying to keep the lower back held in a natural arch. Your tendency will be to arch the back more as the arms move, don’t let this happen. Reach all the way above the head, then slowly slide the arms back down to the sides. 45-60 seconds is right for each set.
FROG STRETCH The frog drill is a hip-opener that will help not only with improving your squat form, but with your turn-out on the rock. The frog is performed prone, with the knees turned out to the sides, and placed on a mat. Most knees can’t handle this exercise on a hard oor. 1. Turn the feet out to the sides, and place the elbows on the ground directly below the shoulders, most of your weight should be on your arms. 2. Rock the hips back toward the heels, then move them slowly up toward the elbows. Once at the top position, try to move the knees out to the sides slightly, then repeat the motion. 3. Maintain the movement slowly for 45-60 seconds, trying each time to relax into the bottom position.
FRONT SQUAT The squat is a fundamental human movement and is the best exercise for developing leg strength. Beyond the legs, the front squat develops the ability to pressurize the core and build mobility in the hips. For this exercise we prefer the kettlebell or barbell...dumbbells don’t seem to sit right. The rst rule of squatting is to master the range r ange of motion. Squatting down “between your heels” and maintaining a neutral spine, you’ll want to dip to where your hip joint is below the knee. Your heels should remain planted to the oor at all times, and your knees should track the toes. On the return ascent, the hips and shoulders should ascend at the same rate. Stand tall with a proud chest and keep your spine vertical.
HANGBOARD - FULL CRIMP The full crimp position is the most dangerous position we train, but it’s it’s the one we revert to when the chips are down on a route or boulder. We train these conservatively, and progress slowly. This grip features a closed-handed position where the second knuckle (PIP) is held above the level of the hold.
HANGBOARD - HALF CRIMP The half crimp is the most common hold position, and is the safest grip for most climbers. In this position, the distal phalanges are held more-or-less at, with the PIP joint (second knuckle) kept at the same level as the ngertips.
HANGBOARD - OPEN HAND In the open hand position, the second joint (PIP) is held at a level below the ngertips. This is the position recommended for holding large holds and pockets in most cases, and is quite low-stress on the nger joints.
HANGBOARD - PINCH The pinch grip is a fundamental hold position for many climbs, yet is dicult to train in isolation. Today’ Today’s s hangboards fall short of eective in training this grip position, and most of us don’t have access to a good system wall on which to train pinches. For the hangboard pinch position, we have found that pinch blocks work best. These blocks, somewhere between 1.5” and 3” thick can be loaded with weight and deadlifted to train the pinch position.
HANG, STRAIGHT ARM The single-arm straight-arm hang is performed with the ngers held in a half-crimp position and the elbow locked straight. The most potentially dangerous single-arm position, it is critical that you keep your shoulder engaged during this exercise. Think about drawing your s houlder blade “down” and keeping your elbow facing forward. As with the other single arm exercises, you can use a piece of webbing held in the other hand to take some weight o as you adapt to this load. Once you can hold bodyweight, bodyweight, it’s it’s time to advance to a smaller edge and go back to assisted hangs. Start each set with the “strong” side, followed by the “stronger” side.
HANG, BENT ARM This single bent-arm hang is done holding the half-crimp position, with the elbow bent to about 90 degrees. Using a thin cord or loop of webbing, take weight o with the other hand until you can hold the position for the planned duration. Over time, you can progress to holding bodyweight for the duration. Once you can hold bodyweight, it’s time to advance to a smaller edge, and go back to assisted hangs. Start each set with the “strong” side, followed by the “stronger” side.
HANG, LOCK OFF The lock o one-arm hang is performed with as closed an elbow joint as you can manage. Fingers are maintained in the half-crimp position. Using a thin cord or loop of webbing, take weight o with the other hand until you can hold the position for the planned duration. Over time, you can progress to holding bodyweight for the duration. Once you can hold bodyweight, it’s time to advance to a smaller edge and go back to assisted hangs. Start each set with the “strong” side, followed by the “stronger” side.
HANGING HANGIN G STRAIGHT STRAIGHT LEG RAISE The hanging straight leg raise, or HSLR, is done by holding on to a pull-up bar that is high enough for your feet to swing freely below. With packed shoulders (elbows “forward”) move from a straight position to bring your legs up in front of you. Keep the knees locked straight and control the movement at all times. Try to bring the legs above horizontal, then return to the bottom with strict control. Each rep should take 3-5 seconds, with no swinging at the bottom.
INCHWORM TO SHOULDER OPENER The inchworm to shoulder opener is an almost perfect warm-up exercise for climbers. It is an advance on the classic inchworm exercise, and is great for hip mobility and thoracic rotation. Inchworm forward, but once you reach the “push-up” position, bring the left leg forward to rest just outside the left hand. Pick up the left hand and “open up” toward the ceiling with it, rotating the chest as far as possible. Return to the push-up position, then repeat on the other side. Finish the rep by walking the feet forward as in a normal inchworm.
INVERTED HAMSTRING Standing on one leg with arms wide to the sides, bend forward at the hip. the other leg should maintain alignment with the torso throughout the movement. Do 4-5 reps per side, looking for a good stretch at the end of each repetition.
LEVER The front lever is the top-end of core training. This movement requires good shoulder strength and stability, as well as a very strong midsection. Grasp a pull-up bar, then rotate your body to a horizontal position using your shoulder as a pivot point. Return to vertical to complete the rep. It is critical that you exercise full control throughout the movement. If you can’t complete the level with both legs held straight, try the move with one knee tucked to the chest, or even both tucked to the chest in a move that resembles “knees-to-elbows.” Our friend Steven Dimmitt likes a straight hip, bent knee variation as a learning position. This sits between the tucked knee and the straight leg in terms of diculty. diculty.
ONE ARM ONE LEG PUSH-UP This is the ultimate antagonist exercise for climbers. By elevating one arm and one leg, we run the intensity way up and we bring in a huge amount of core stabilization. Start with an incline to learn the balance and build a little strength. Be sure to keep the elbow pulled in tight against the ribs to prevent shoulder issues, and keep your abs braced.
ONE ARM OVERHEAD PRESS Although push-ups are climbers’ go-to antagonist exercise, the strict overhead press is what I consider the best bang for your buck. Pressing and holding weight overhead not only improves your shoulder stability and strength, but it is an excellent developer of core stability and strength. For this exercise, kettlebells are the superior tool. From the oor, oor, you’ll clean the kettlebell into rack position, then press the weight overhead in a smooth movement with no dip in the knees. Repeat the press from rack (it is not necessary to re-clean the weights each rep) for the prescribed reps. Climbers tend to have terrible overhead mobility, so an overhead press usually looks like a Nazi salute or an incline bench press with a huge arch in the low back. As much an exercise for mobility as for strength, there are some denite rules you should follow. 1. Keep your quads, glutes, and midsection tight or “exed”. This keeps your back safe and helps you practice total body integration. 2. Keep your wrists neutral and “crush” the handle of the weight. 3. Lock out the elbows at the top of each rep and pause briey in the top position. 4. Pause at the bottom for one or more seconds between each rep.
PRYING SQUATS One of our favorite hip mobility and squat preparation drills, this move rst requires that you can get into a squat position at all! Heels should be planted, the back should be upright, and you should sit as low as possible - hips between heels. Place the elbows between the knees, press your palms together, and gently pry out on the legs forcing the knees apart. Relax into the position, sway the hips slightly to help them move lower into the squat. Hold the position for several seconds.
SIDE LUNGE The side lunge is universally hated by our athletes - mostly because they are no good at moving laterally. laterally. From a standing position, take a big step to the side, and squat down low on the leading leg. Keep both feet pointing forward, and keep the knee of the trailing leg locked straight. As with the squat, keep the chest up and eyes forward. From the bottom of the squat, stand quickly and return to the start position. Repeat the move with the other leg.
SPLITS The splits, or more appropriately the active groin stretch, is a fundamenta fundamentall exibility drill for all climbers. Although you can train this best from a seated position, most climbers we’ve encountered encountere d need to start with an assisted standing split, with the hands placed on a chair or bench to start. Either way, the stretch is the same: assume your most “open” position, then hold and relax there. Take a few breaths, then contract your glutes and quads. Relax again, and move the feet further apart. Repeat this for 3 to 5 times.
08 | FINAL THOUGHTS
Climbing is the greatest of the sports, and climbing well is the best part of climbing. We suer through an endless quest for performance, and we too often get sucked down the path of more: more volume, more complexity, more exercises. I urge you to consider that this is not always the way. Your training structure can, and should, be simple. Whether you follow the exact prescriptions in this book or you elect to follow just the idea of a nonlinear structure, I hope you nd your way to higher grades and more consistent performance. As with everything I write, I consider this an exploration into an idea. I see it as a question to be asked, not a statement to be defended. As I learn, and as you, the reader reader,, learn, we can improve this training plan together together.. I encourage you to contact me with questions, with results, or with small details that might help others. My email is
[email protected] and I appreciate your help.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With every project I take on, my team at Elemental is also forced to take it on. Great thanks to my wife Ellen for steering the ship and to Charlie Manganiello for his tireless work in building and rebuilding Climb Strong. My job ends with this written as a word document on 8.5 x 11 sheets. Everything from there to the book you now hold is the work of Kian Stewart, who sacrices valuable sending time to help me out. An especially big thanks to my edit team. On nishing the rst draft of the book, I sent it out to a handful of climbers and coaches to try it out, tear it apart, and make it better. This was a big leap for me…it’s hard to ask for and digest so much feedback! Steven Dimmitt, Vanessa Tocatjian, Tyler Nelson, Kyle Dempster, Shanna Ryan, Oleg Horholyuk, Nicole Capella, Thomas Przewoznik, Mark Richardson, Mike Barcom, Joel Unema, Kevin Stricker,, Doug Bunce, Christina Presenti, Brian Pickard, Andrew Shanahan, Kathy Zawicki, Stricker and Adrian Das were instrumental in making this a good program. Thanks also to the athletes that trained on this program as we developed it: Ana Junker, Junker, Rob Jensen, Anne Peick, Anna Hagel, Ellen Bechtel, Heidi Gross, Corey Gargano, Doug McConnel, Ben Ventner, Kim McCallum, Jason Sloan, Liz Schmohl, Mandy Fabel, Alex Bridgewater,, and many more. Athlete feedback is everything…just because it looks good in Bridgewater Excel doesn’t mean it makes people climb harder! The photographers whose work appear in in these pages include Zach Snavely, Mei Ratz, Damien Largeron, Jeremiah Watt, Kyle Duba, and Nick Knoke. Their art makes our look good. Finally, a special thanks to Neely Quinn of Training Beta. A couple of conversations have made a world of dierence!
ABOUT ABO UT STEVE STEVE BECHTEL The founder of Elemental Performance + Fitness, Steve has been coaching strength and tness for nearly twenty years. He is a Certied Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and holds a degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Wyoming. Steve is an SFG II, USA Weightlifting Certied Coach, a USA Cycling Elite-level coach, and has been coaching triathlon tria thlon for over 15 years year s as a USAT USAT-certied coach. co ach. A world-renown world-renowned ed expert in the training of rock climbers, he coaches many top-level climbers and writes extensively on climbing training on the website Climb Strong. Steve is also a well-known adventure rock climber, having established new climbs on six continents. All told, he has done more than 300 rst ascents across his 30-year climbing career.
09 |
APPENDIX – IN DEFENSE OF PRACTICE
“You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.” - Michael Jordan
The term “training” is over-used. People refer to any and everything they do in climbing as training, yet training is a very specic act. It is repeated eorts at improving specic parameters of your tness. Imagine “training” a dog but just randomly giving it orders with no expectation of behaviors. Organized, progressive, repeated...these terms are how training must be dened. Yes, there is training for fo r climbing. It is done in the weightroom, weig htroom, on the hangboard, against ag ainst the clock. And although bouldering, climbing routes, and even system board work can be considered training, they are really practice. Training is how you get stronger. Practice is how you get better. The saying “practice makes perfect” is known to all of us, but the truth is that practice makes permanent. Simply doing something a lot doesn’t make you good at that thing. What we really need to do is practice correctly, correctly, do it a lot, and then reap the rewards. This is where my 75/25 rule comes back into play: 75% of your “training” time should really be practice time. Don’t go to the gym to get tired, go to get better.
GET BETTER BETTE R AT AT GETTING BETTER BETTE R “People often arrive at an ‘OK plateau,’ a point at which they stop improving at something despite the fact that they continue to do it regularly. The secret to improving at a skill is to retain some level of conscious control over it while practicing to force oneself to stay out of autopilot.” - Doug Lemov, Practice Perfect
When you rst start climbing everything is practice. You learn new skills and motor patterns so intensely that you improve with each and every session. Over time, you become adept at the frequently-used skills of climbing - they become automatic - and your progress slows. Occasionally, you’ll learn a more subtle skill, get a bit better conditioned, or make other small breakthroughs...but eventually, most of us end up with a xed skill set and simply alternate between tness and non-tness.
The more experienced we are, the longer we’ve been doing the same things, the more critical practice, and practicing right, becomes. I won’t lie: restarting the practice engine that you developed as a novice is hard to do. It’s a critical step, though. As Jonathan Harnum writes in The Practice of Practice, “There is no such thing as maintenance. If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.” There are three basic steps to building successful practice that transcend all disciplines. Once we master these steps, getting better gets easy. 1. Practice Success How many times have you seen it - someone at the gym or crag absolutely ailing and somehow convinced they are getting better? Sure, failure is an important part of progress, but too much failure will slow you down. A great way to look at this is the graphic of the Zones of Comfort. As explained by Noel Tichy: “We can never make progress in the comfort zone because those are the activities we can already do easily, while the panic zone activities are so hard we don’t even know how to approach them.”
PANIC ZONE
GROWTH ZONE
COMFORT ZONE
The sweet spot is the growth zone, where you might fail occasionally, but most of your attempts are successful. (As a side note, this is what we call “second tier” in redpoint climbing and bouldering; grades that push you to try very hard, but are achievable in one to three tries.) The vast majority of what you do in your practice and in training should allow you to complete the exercise successfully. successfully.
2. Stay Fresh Skills degrade with fatigue. Yes, you can train to a pump, to exhaustion, or to puking, but you’re not going to acquire strength or skill by doing so. If you’re going to practice eectively, eectively, you have to be fresh for every eort. With this in mind, you have to choose wisely when it comes time to practice. A strength session with plenty of rests between eorts might be a great time to practice, where an endurance session in which you are accumulati accumulating ng massive fatigue will not be. Focus your session sessi on around building skills rst, rst , then around strength, then energy system development tasks such as anaerobic capacity or endurance. If your session doesn’t call for one of these facets, it’s still a good idea to keep the same order order.. 3. Keep your Head in the Game In order to get better, you have to look for errors...not just climb. This is what we call active learning. The better you get, the more you’ll have to pay attention to what needs xing. In fact, most of your practice should be about exposing errors and weaknesses so that you can correct them. This doesn’t mean just working weaknesses, either. You’ll also want to hone in on ne tuning your strengths.
STRUCTURE OF A PRACTICE SESSION When we go to the gym, most of us follow a set pattern. A typical one is to shoe up, do some easy pitches or problems, slowly increase the intensity until we feel like we’re working, then stay at the same trajectory until fatigue stops the session. Imagine learning math this way, or practicing music, or kicking a soccer ball. Framed in a logical sense, many of our climbing training practices seem (and are) ridiculous. You have got to look at movement as a skill, then learn the skill. This is how eective technical practice takes place in sports. In the excellent book Practice Perfect, the authors suggest that a normal practice session often takes this sequence: 1. Practice 2. Feedback 3. Reect and discuss 4. Possibly do over
They suggest a more eective practice session would be structured like this: 1. Practice 2. Feedback 3. Do over (using the feedback) 4. Possibly do it multiple times 5. Reect The “Do over” step is absolutely critical. Research shows shows that if you do a skill right once and wrong once it is engrained in your neural circuitry equally. equally. This means that you may or may not have acquired the skill. Repeating the correct skill multiple times is the only way of engraining the correct pattern. Understanding this one concept could be a career career-changing -changing move for a rock climber if he’s in the habit of working sections of climbs too quickly. Once you gure it out, do it again before you move on.
FEEDBACK The feedback part of the above list can’t be ignored. This is where egos get roughedup. Take it from me...it’s hard for a 30-year veteran of the sport to take criticism well. The truth can hurt, but making breakthroughs is worth the pain. For eective feedback to take place, you’ll need a coach or qualied training partner to look specically at the skill you are practicing and provide feedback as it relates to that skill. The feedback should be brief, clear, and actionable within the session. “Try to keep your hips over your feet” is usable feedback, “You need better shoes” is not. A coach or training partner might be ideal, but you can’t always have your coach on hand. You do, however, always have your phone. Videoing yourself exercising or climbing is embarrassing and may be seen as weird or egotistical, but it’s educational. educational. One step better than straight video is an app such as Coach’s Eye where you can compare performances side by side. Either way, watching yourself perform can be some of the fastest learning and correction you can do.
SEPARATE PRACTICE FROM PERFORMANCE “One of the challenges I faced during practice was the distraction caused by a player’s natural instinct instin ct and desire to score baskets basket s or grab rebounds. Either urge is such a powerful siren song that it’s hard to make them pay attention and learn the ‘dull’’ fundamentals ‘dull fundame ntals that ensure success in scoring and rebounding - such things as pivoting, hand and an d arm moveme movement, nt, and routes of play.” play.” - John Wooden
You can’t learn and perform at the same time. This can be a problem. When we climb, we usually want to be out sending hard stu, but bringing your mind back to practice will get you good faster than just going climbing. This is the beauty of both working hard routes and climbing easier things - the former forces you to lear n and practice in earnest, while the latter gives you an opportunity to solidify your skills. The place you tend not to learn is during redpoints - when you’re sending it’s game on and there’s not a lot of time for reection and feedback. Since redpointing is the name of the game, you need to simply separate your foci. When you’re going for it on a climb, go. When you’re not sending, bring your mind into the process of learning. Even on the easiest terrain, there is always something to improve.
KEEP IT SHORT SHO RT AT AT FIRST Getting back into practicing is tough. When bringing a focus on practicing movement back into your training sessions, start with just a few minutes of focus on one simple skill. As the weeks progress, you’ll nd yourself able to practice longer and with more success. Eventually,, movement practice will nd its way into most of your sessions, and, once again, Eventually you’ll start creeping up through higher and higher grades...just like in the old days. It’s important to look at climbing as an amalgamation of discrete skills that, when combined with strength and conditioning, lead to good climbing. If our overall goal is to climb well, we can break “well” down into specic pieces - skills - that we can develop to improve our overall ability. There are many ideas on how complex or “big” a skill should be in order to eectively develop it. The simple truth is that you should continue to break it down into smaller and smaller parts until you can see noticeable improvements improvements over a xed period of time. A good place to start is to dedicate two weeks to developing one or two skills. These skills need to be addressed every climbing day. Give yourself two weeks, and if the skill hasn’t improved, simplify it. Remember that a beginner has the most to gain from practice. Luckily, the practice comes naturally, and there is no “autopilot” to fall back on. Everything he does is practice. More experienced climbers, let’s call them “Level II”, will see more progress from improving physical capacity than skills once they reach a passable level. Yet once a climber reaches close to his genetic potential for strength or endurance, skills once again become the most important factor in improvement improvement..
PRACTIVE VERSUS PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT OVER TIME
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PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
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STRUCTURING ST RUCTURING A PRACT PRACTICE ICE SESSION SE SSION When you’re practicing a skill, it’s critical to have your mind in the game. Therefore, we practice skills early in the session, when our minds and bodies are freshest. I like to keep the “Five S Formula” in mind when putting together a practice: • Simple - The skill needs needs to be something something you understand understand and can easily implement in your sessions. You You shouldn’t need specialized tools or set-ups...otherwise you risk not doing the practice. • Segmental - You should have a large-scale framework for improving an ability that you can progress through as you master smaller skills along the way. way. • Sequential - Introduce more advanced skills at the right time and in the right order. order. • Strategic - Address the biggest things that are preventing your overall progress. A training partner or coach will be helpful in deciding what this is. • Supported - You You will be more successful in practice if you have a training partner or coach to help you work through the process. Development of discrete skills in climbing has been explored from time to time in articles and in training books. The important thing is to realize that skill in climbing is complex and that learning complex skills requires simplifying the skill into learnable chunks. Let’s Let’s use the example of turning the hips on steep steep rock. When you rst address overhanging overhanging rock as a novice, this type of movement seems strange and counterintuitive. Over time, we realize that this is a fundamental skill used in the majority of moves you’ll make on overhangs. To address this skill, you might go through a process like this:
• Practice turning the hips on vertical terrain or on a system wall. • Set up a pair of footholds to practice backstepping with a reach move for the hands. • Using good holds on a 45 degree wall, wall, alternate between between driving left left side and right side of the hips toward the wall. • Climb out an overhanging wall on big holds, trying to drop knee on each each move. • Do the same same drill as above, above, but make the accentuated accentuated eort of driving the hips to the wall on each move. Daniel Coyle wrote the fantastic book The Talent Code, which explores talent hotbeds worldwide and attempts to break down why, exactly, certain schools or cities, or coaches turn out an inordinate number of talented individuals. He then followed this book with The Little Book of Talent, which highlights actual skill-building tactics he observed in his research for the Talent Code. There are a number of gems in this book, and a few of the insights he had are extra-useful for developing climbing skill. Here are some:
STARE AT WHO YOU WANT TO BECOME I’ve talked about the value of spending loads of time watching climbing videos before. Yes, Yes, they are entertaining, but watching (carefully and attentively) high-level climbers can be a way of imagining your future self, which is a critical mental aspect to high performance. Spending 10-20 minutes a day watching videos of hard climbing, before practice or before bed, can have a profound eect on the quality of your practice.
BE WILLING TO BE STUPID STUPI D Coyle wrote about how Wayne Gretzky would fall down when doing solo skating drills for hockey. Was Was it because he sucked? sucked ? No, it was because he was pushing pus hing his limits continually. c ontinually. It’s easy to let your ego come in when you’re climbing. Years ago, I remember climbing around a top-level female climber who at refused to get on any 5.12s - even though it was clearly the grade range she should have been climbing. She would warm-up and then spend the whole day working this or that 5.13...because it was “”OK to fail on the higher grade. The problem was that she would have probably seen better improvement on 5.12, which would have been her learning her learning zone. The opposite strategy is equally problematic - always climbing on routes you are comfortable with, or are in a range where you’re sure you won’t fail. The great learner is going to spend a lot of time ailing on rock types, moves, and holds where he’s weak “looking stupid” - until he masters those skills.
DON’T FALL FOR THE PRODIGY MYTH My friend BJ Tilden is a better climber than I am. He has a ton of natural talent...or does he? I’ve climbed with him for over twenty years, and for the rst one or two, I was the better climber. Looking at it objectively, I can see that he climbs more than I do, has consistently tried harder things, and has believed in his ability to do those things. Most importantly, when the chips are down, he gives it all where I usually say “take.” Which of those are God-given talents? None. Which ones can be learned and trained? All of them. Understanding that the best climber might just try harder than we do is a critical step in letting ourselves get better, too.
EACH DAY DAY, TRY TO TO BUI B UILD LD ONE PER P ERFECT FECT CHUNK CHU NK Coyle talks about building a “SAP” with each practice - a smallest achievable perfection. To do this, you’ve got to break your skill down to small chunks, and work on one thing only until you see a noticeable improvement. A drill such as a foot placement accuracy drill or slot deadpointing are good examples: you know what it takes to do the skill correctly, and you can detect small changes in your performance. It might seem silly to focus on such tiny changes, but that’s the way all of our skills are built, anyway. All you’re doing by focusing is deciding which skills your body picks up most quickly. quickly.
SLOW IT DOWN (EVEN SLOWER THAN YOU THINK) Speed, in learning new skills, leads to sloppiness. You’ve seen the teenage boys during their rst days at the rock gym - all power, no technique. Super-slow movement lets us avoid errors by giving us time to ingrain good patterns and feel bad ones. Working on moving slowly through steep terrain assures excellent positioning, where relying on dynamic movement might prevent it. Slow footwork teaches precision, fast footwork should be reserved for speed climbing. Try the speed-slow drills outlined in Gimme Kraft: do a problem at normal speed, then do it as fast as you can, then do it as slow as possible. What did you learn? In many ways, your mindset in developing skills needs to be the opposite of what it is when training strength. You need calm, not psych. You need to absorb rather than produce. You need to look for microscopic improvements instead of jumps in performance. I am not arguing that you need to abandon training, but rather that you need to accept that physical conditioning will only get you so far. To excel completely in climbing, regular, deliberate, and utterly boring practice is fundamenta fundamental. l. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
PRACTICE REFERENCES Talent is Overrated http://amzn.to/1ef6giC The Little Book of Talent http://amzn.to/1RMPNyY Practice Perfect http://amzn.to/1KpCPYZ The Practice of Practice http://amzn.to/1KpCW6O
LOG OGIC ICAL AL PROGRE PROGR E SS SSIO ION N Training for climbing can be fun, but sticking to a schedule can be desperately hard. Many climbers have seen the value of a carefully planned out, periodized training program. Clearly, such programs work, but many of us can’t stick to such a rigid schedule. What if there were a better way? w ay? What if there were a more exible way of planning that provided the same great results? And what if such a program allowed you to maintain high levels of climbing performance much longer than you could on a traditional program? For the climber that has limited time to train, there may be no better program than Logical Progression. For anyone who wants to get t and stay t for long trips tr ips and redpoint seasons, the program outlined in this book can give you a great advantage. Based on solid science and tested by hundreds of climbers, Logical Progression is a simple and very eective way of organizing your training, and making sure that progress keeps coming.
