Charts

There was some confusion about the chart from the last post.  I'll split it up into several charts here and discuss.  

So as seen above training short power(1-4 move boulder problems) has a little carryover into resistance and decreases endurance.  Long power(4-12 move boulder problems) is widely helpful. 

Short resistance(12-30 moves) has good carryover into all climbing strengths, while long resistance(30-60 moves) does little to help power of any kind.

As seen above training endurance is a real killer.  There are cases that could be made for training endurance as active recovery, or for building one's "base" fitness.

Discussion

The charts above come from my personal experience with training each of the facets of climbing.  The interplay of climbing strengths is probably fairly unique for each individual.  Depending on the time of the year or my projects I will train different mixes of power, resistance, and endurance.  This can be broken into a 5-tuple with the sum of the entries 100.  So (20, 20, 20, 20, 20) would mean an even split between training short power, long power, short resistance, long resistance and endurance(20% of training time for each).  Now that we have notation, I'll list a few scenarios below.

Bouldering:  For bouldering around the northeast, where problems tend to be short I find training (60,30,10,0,0) to be useful.  For bouldering elsewhere and as a general prep for sport climbing I find (40,40,20,0,0) to be a good mix.

Sport Climbing:  For climbing at Rumney (33,33,33,0,0) seems good.  Any other sport climbing location needs a shift toward the endurance end: (10,20,30,30,10) for onsite climbing, and (10,20,40,30,0) for redpointing.

Types of Training

By far the best book on climbing training I have "read" is Planificacion del Entrenamiento en Escalada Deportiva by David Macia.  I say "read" because I don't speak Spanish but I was able to sift through the book pretty well.  Macia has trained some very successful climbers such as Ramon Julian, Yuji Hirayama, and Edu Marin.  Throughout the book the word resistance is used for power endurance and he has a good way of organizing the different facets of physical training for climbing.

1.  Short Power:  This is 1-4 move power.  Best trained with short boulder problems, the campus board, and single hangs.

2.  Long Power:  This is 5-12 move power.  Best trained with longer boulder problems, short bouldery sport routes, the campus board, and maximum repeaters.

3.  Short Resistance:  This is 12-30 move power endurance.  Best trained with boulder problem intervals, short sustained sport routes, campus board power endurance, and repeaters.

4. Long Resistance:  This is 30-60 move power endurance.  Best trained with timed intervals on a climbing wall, longer sport routes, and super repeaters.

5.  Endurance:   This is 60+ move endurance.  This type of endurance is not that useful because rarely are there climbs with more than 60 hard moves in a row.  The biggest reason to train this type of endurance is learning how to rest on a jug.  Once you know how to rest, "Long Resistance" will get you between the jugs.  I have trained this in the past with intervals of 8 minutes of continuous climbing separated by 1/2 mile runs.  This type of training is probably good once every week or two if you climb long routes, any more and you will throw out any power you've ever had.

Carryover


There will be carryover from one category to another, but this is probably different for each person.  My experience is reflected in the following graph(the numbers don't really mean anything other than scaling):

So if you read the chart you see training endurance gives you a "-50" in power and "+25" in long resistance and etc.  In my experience training endurance helps your long term power endurance a little but hurts everything else.  This analysis is most applicable to systematic training and falls apart in the case of someone climbing for skill acquisition.

For the early spring Rumney seasonI have had good success training short power, long power, and short resistance and letting carryover take care of the rest.  For my upcoming trip to the Red I've been training everything except endurance with less focus on short power than normal.

Bonus Training

First off, I added a page to the blog containing all of the workouts that have been thus far discussed.  The weather around here has been great for climbing when I am busy and lousy when I'm free(Friday and Saturday).  Combining this with my injury, which is a lot better, has given me time to experiment with my training protocol a bit, with good results.  I'll write it all up later.

The point of this post is to describe how to add unplanned, unstructured exercises to your routine. Bonus training can help your strength, flexibility, or endurance, sometimes it won't really do anything for your fitness other than burn a few extra calories.  I'll group bonus training into three main groups, with examples.

Bonus training that serves an another purpose.

1.  Riding a bicycle to work/school/for errands.

2.  Walking the dog.

3.  Doing yard work.

Bonus training that can be done while watching TV or a movie or reading.

1.  Floor calisthenics.

2.  Stretching. 

Bonus training that can be fit between daily activities.

1.  Run around the block.

2.  Do a few pull ups every time you walk by your pull up bar/hangboard.

Here is a list of some of the bonus training I do:

1.  Ride my bicycle to school.

2.  Plank/Side plank/Hollow body holds.

3.  Handstand push ups and press handstands

4.  Planche Progressions

5.  Squeeze power putty.

6.  Stretching.

Training with an injury

It is often said that our fingers are not made to withstand the forces put on them during hard climbing.  I seem to collect pulley strains at a decreasing rate of one per year or so.  Early on this was from crimping all the time.  Now I have rules for myself of when I can crimp, but the forces of the universe conspire against me.  This time it started while trying the bottom of Parallel Universe at Rumney in the rain. If you've ever tried the route you already know on which hand the finger is, as well and the offending hold.  Luckily I was able to keep it under control for a good spring send, but now I'm looking out at beautiful climbing conditions getting myself ready for a hangboard session in my dark, wet basement.

There is good discussion of finger injuries on the web here and here.  I won't go deeply into how I treat my injuries, other than saying I try everything: contrast baths, cold water, heat pad, stretching, putty, etc.   The training described here is probably safe if you have a slight pulley injury, I can't speak for other injuries: collateral ligament, flexor tendon etc.

Okay, now down to business.  If you're going to train with an injury get used to the open handed grip.

photo: www.moonclimbing.com

My experience is that with a minor pulley injury one can pull as hard as you want as long as they don't close your hand more than the above picture.  This is difficult, but not impossible, if you are climbing outside.  The best tools, in order,  are the fingerboard, campus board, and a bouldering wall where special problems can be set.


1.  Fingerboard: Review the hangboard workouts on the workouts page of this blog.  Notice that only one set of each workout asks for a 1/2 crimp hang.  Either skip this hang or hang 3 finger open hand with the hand of the injured finger.

2.  Campus Board:  This is where I lose most people.  The campus board is thought to be a very dangerous training tool.  This is not deserved unless you campus with a full crimp.  With an injured pulley one can safely perform any campus workout if they stick to a 3 finger open hang grip.  This requires a fairly large degree of strength so its probably not best for everyone.  I have even experimented with two finger open handed campusing during an injury without aggravating my finger.

3.  Bouldering Wall:  This requires problems to be set so that the hold for the injured hand can be grabbed 3 finger open handed(see a trend?).  These problem can still be quite difficult, but care must be used to not close ones hand if the holds are poor.


Why is 3 finger open hand important?  This grip allows the fingers to be loaded while remaining nearly fully extended, thus there is very little load on the pulleys.  What about 4 finger open hand?  In order to engage your pinky the other fingers must bend.  This puts a nontrivial strain on the tendon pulleys.  The 4 finger open hand/ half crimp is very safe for training on non-injured fingers, but not so great for an injured finger.

The Away Game

I've just returned from a week trip to the Red River Gorge, and it has reminded me of what I consider to be my biggest weakness as a climber: the away game.  Climbing at my "home" crag of Rumney is conducive to projecting at or above your limit.  This is due to a number of circumstances:

 1. There is not a wealth of climbs at all grades.
 2.  The climbs tend to be technical and powerful requiring considerable rehearsal.
 3.  The harder the climb the more fun the climbing. (I believe this to be true everywhere not just rumney).

If you add the fact that I'm naturally more of a power climber than endurance climber, this all adds up to subpar performance on the road.

Since this blog is meant to be about training lets go over some "holes" in my training methods that make for my underachieving in the away game.

1.  I do zero pure endurance training.
          
I have done plenty of pure endurance training in the past without very good results.  While doing endurance training I watch my power and power endurance levels fall like a lead weight.  Hard sections of climbs that I should cruise past become so difficult I either fall or barely squeak through and never recover.  This is the weakest portion of my training program.

2.  My over-reliance on the fingerboard, campus-board, and problems I set on my home wall.

In order to be a good away game climber one needs to be subjected to a large volume of different climbing movements.  I've pointed out in an earlier post that my local gym does not consistently provide climbs in a good range for me.  If I were able to set there(which I am not) the situation would be slightly better, but really I need problems set by other people.

I am in the process of brainstorming some solutions to these problems.  Here is what I've come up with so far.

1.  I've never tried to add pure endurance training to the program in its current state.  My current training program (a version of this fitted to climbing at Rumney on friday and saturday) seems to be perfect for power and power endurance.  If I replace the maximum hangs with "super repeaters" (more on that later) I think I'll be able to hang on to most of my power endurance and only sacrifice a moderate about of power.  I have a few more ideas I'll outline later.

2.  Since there is no real hope of better plastic climbing around here any time soon I've made it a goal to get more mileage days climbing outside this spring/summer.

A good question to ask is: What is a good standard to achieve on roadtrips?  My goal is to be able to climb within 2 letter grades of my hardest redpoint in a few days and within 3 or 4 letter grades in a day. On my recent trip to the red I was 1 for 3 on the second goal which gives me a good starting place for improvements.