RRC Archives

Core training is important. I advocate doing all core training while hanging from a bar or something, to better simulate climbing movement.

Also, I firmly believe that learning to recover is the key to 5.12. If you can FULLY recover from a jug at any angle, then you can climb nearly any 12 at the Red.

512OW wrote:Core training is important. I advocate doing all core training while hanging from a bar or something, to better simulate climbing movement.

Also, I firmly believe that learning to recover is the key to 5.12. If you can FULLY recover from a jug at any angle, then you can climb nearly any 12 at the Red.

For some reason standing core exercises really worked for me too. I did a lot of hanging leg lift stuff too.

I agree with you 100% on the recovery thing. Once I believed it was possible and learn some of the tricks to recovering, then I broke into the 5.12 range at the Red. You obviously need some endurance to recover and this is where cardio fitness comes into play. If you're fit you will more fully recover at those rests. Then 5.12's at the red starts to become short V2/3 boulder problems back to back up an 80 foot cliff. At least that is how I approach it.

be forewarned- this is an exceedingly long post and any credibility I have for making any seemingly informed sounding opinions is questionable at best. I am a rockclimber and view the world through that lens. You may very well be wasting your time to proceed further-

An epiphany that I have had over the years of climbing, training, thinking about climbing, thinking about training, etc... is that the basics of strength training really do lend themselves very well to climbing (what a revelation that reproducible science actually is correct- wow!)
I am like everyone else in that I beat my head against the wall for years, but with gaining some insight to the biological sciences/ sports medicine, I have learned a few truisms for all muscle.
1. the platform that all physical/muscle powered activity - be it low intesity (not much resistance) and highly repetitious or high intensity( much resistance) and few repititions - is built on is cardiovascular fitness. That means that the first muscle that must be trained and ultimately is the limiting factor in improving performance of all other muscles is the heart.
Think of it as a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is your cardiovascular fitness. The size/ height of your pyramid is limited on the size of your base. What does cardiovascualr fitness mean? Basically the strength and size of your left ventricle and how much blood it can pump per contraction to oxygenate that blood and how long it can maintain a given heart rate, and how quickly it can recover (think of Lance Armstrong). It also means the efficiency of the working muscles to extract that oxygen and that working muscle fiber being big enough in cross section and contracting in a concerted way with all other muscle fibers to ultimately not need so much oxygen and thereby have a higher threshold for going into anerobic metabolism and producing lactate (lactic acid).

What is the best way get said fitness?
Pick your poison, but I think that doing something that gets your heart to 60-70% of max heart rate and keeping it there for 30min with 2-3 xs per week with the once per week workout at 80-90% of max is best, and best case for climbing is choosing something where you don't hypertrophy your leg muscles- so like a treadmill, elliptical, or best- rowing machine (which is cardio but uses the biceps, triceps, back as well as the legs) or jumping rope. I challenge anyone who wants to climb harder to do this for two months. If you are not climbing routes that were hard for you significantly easier, I will buy you a beer.

2. Having established a good cardio base, do the standard strength training approach. Be able to do a repetition40-50 times before adding resistance. Quantify the number of moves you can do on a given sized hold at a given angled wall. If you can do more than 40-50, add weight. Not to say you should always train with a weight belt on, but again having a broad base of work outs where you do long problems on biggish finger buckets of 40 -50 moves and then once a week add a power (high intenisty lower rep) workout. All of this on a steepish wall (20-30 deg past vert) and not on slopes, but on finger buckets with the occ slope.

I have always told patients that muscle is like a good dog- it just wants to make you happy and do what is expected of it. The only way to give input to muscle is to put a load across it. Muscle knows that you (its master) wants it to move the extremity regardless of the force it is working against. So, it hypertrophies (gets bigger is cross sectional diameter, gets all of the muscle fibers to contract together efficiently, and over comes ultimately.
All of that said, the question here is about adding weight. Training with weight is the spice. It doesn't take much. The base, the staple of the training diet should be cardio for the heart, low intensity high repitition for the forearms, arms, and back, and like 512OW said, core strength, because it is the frame that everything else is attached to.
And it must be stated that the one facet of training that takes more discipline than any other is rest. There should be two days of rest minimun after a hard high intensity (high resistance) work out. The only thing that should be done after those days is what Shannon Stuart Smith calls active resting- light cardio, preferably on a rowing machine or jump rope that uses the resting muscles in a very light way.

A technical point concerning adding weight to training is like Bill alluded to- it must be done carefully. What that means is always statically load joints. There should be no campusing, dynoing, or any movement that would dynamically load muscles or joints. And it doesn't take much weight- add 5-10 lbs. Small percentages.
And, always warm up with light cardio (7-10 min) - till the point that you start to sweat just a little. There are many other details about work outs (rest in between reps, how long to work out-<1hour I say, etc) that I didn't mention. There are a few idiosyncrosies of climbing that require special consideration when extrapolating to a more general discussion of strenght training (grip strength and flexor forearm muscle strenght).

I do disagree that adding weight is only for the hardcore. I think given a base of training and upper extremity fitness, anyone would benefit.

One final thing- I really like what I have seen ATC (athletic trainers- certified, who by the way are excellent people to work with, even if they know absolutely nothing about climbing- all they need to know is what muscles are to be strengthened) is the concept of work and quantifying it. Cyclist do it as well as ATC.
Definition of work is the movement of a mass over distance. This quantity essentially becomes a better marker of your effort than heart rate. It is difficlut to quantify when not on a bike with a watt meter, but it is a good concept to keep in mind when you are training. The more mass you are moving, the more work you are doing.

Another good one is Power. The definition of Power is work over time. I always thought that would be a good route name. WorkOverTime.
sorry for the long post. I enjoy thinking about this subject. I hope this hasn't been a complete waste of your time.
Check out Ben Moon's site and also the guy who did Lucifer (I forget his name) site. They have basically come to the same conclusions and discuss them more completely and credibly.

the lurkist wrote:Pick your poison, but I think that doing something that gets your heart to 60-70% of max heart rate and keeping it there for 30min with 2-3 xs per week with the once per week workout at 80-90% of max is best, and best case for climbing is choosing something where you don't hypertrophy your leg muscles- so like a treadmill, elliptical, or best- rowing machine (which is cardio but uses the biceps, triceps, back as well as the legs) or jumping rope. I challenge anyone who wants to climb harder to do this for two months. If you are not climbing routes that were hard for you significantly easier, I will buy you a beer.

Thanks for this, that's what I've been doing / preaching for quite some time. Staying at that 60-70% max heart rate for 30+ minutes really seems to maximize the benefits of the effort (if the desired benefit is cardiovascular fitness or weight loss).

the lurkist wrote:2. Having established a good cardio base, do the standard strength training approach. Be able to do a repetition40-50 times before adding resistance. Quantify the number of moves you can do on a given sized hold at a given angled wall. If you can do more than 40-50, add weight. Not to say you should always train with a weight belt on, but again having a broad base of work outs where you do long problems on biggish finger buckets of 40 -50 moves and then once a week add a power (high intenisty lower rep) workout. All of this on a steepish wall (20-30 deg past vert) and not on slopes, but on finger buckets with the occ slope.

This is basically what I have set up now. We set up a traverse on the home wall that has nothing but buckets and decent feet. We started by going as long as possible back and forth. This was nearing 100+ moves so the thought was to add weight to produce failure faster. So far we are approaching 60+ moves on the first burn and 20-30 each additional burn. So maybe taking more time off between reps would even out the results?

the lurkist wrote:also the guy who did Lucifer (I forget his name)

Mike Doyle, we downloaded his guide and are putting some of the information to use in our workouts.

Thanks man, awesome information!

so if I'm supposed to be doing lower weight and higher reps (which makes sense because that would strengthen without adding mass more or less) than climbing with weight would just mean that one had gotten strong to the point that their body weight wasn't enough weight so add more and keep doind the same number of reps?

That's right. Gus Alexandropolous cleared it up for me this way. If you can do to numerous to count moves, you are improving the fine coordination of the muscle but are not asking the muscle to do more work. The analogy of a good dog holds true in that muscle is also inherently lazy. It will hypertrophy to the point of effeciency, and then do no more than is necessary to get the job done. In fact, it will actually become more and more effecient at moving a certain weight and loose muscle mass.
So, you have to add weight to tell the muscle what is expected of it.

Mike Doyle, yeah, good dude. He is the coach of the Canadian Juniors Team.

i have a 20 pound vest that I sometimes wear while going up and down the underside of some stairs outside my apartment. It does wonders for my endurance. I need to get back to it.

couldn't you just eat and drink a lot before a workout, you know train on a full stomach.

rhunt wrote:couldn't you just eat and drink a lot before a workout, you know train on a full stomach.

I'm fat enough already.

When I put on the vest, I weigh about 240. Come get some

So if training on a treadwall lurkist should I be concentrating on doing as many difficult moves as possible as opposed to just climbing until I can't anymore because there is quite a difference in distance climbed. I love learning from the master of training.