[Serpico]

Some random thoughts about endurance and power endurance, some are backed by SCIENCE, some are just from personal experience.

From being unfit I see significant endurance gains in ~ 12 sessions (but I gain endurance quickly), after that it's little gains over a long time.
The sessions have to be close together - usually consecutive days and no more than 48hrs apart.
Each session has to have a minimum 4 proper fighting pumps that are sustained for at least a few minutes each (more endurance than PE).
For PE train at the intensity you want to climb at, not the distance - so if you're training for a 12m project where every move is UK6a you're better doing reps of 8m (or whatever you can manage) of UK6a than reps of 12m of UK5c.
Take big rest intervals, incomplete rest just compromises the quality and intensity of the work you can do.

[Paul B]

Slide 7 perhaps?

[Nibile]

in my 3 weeks plan i did 3 pe sessions and one power session a week. the pe was done twice on the Beast and once or twice on rock as i showed in the vids. the power session on the Beast, max dead hangs and assisted one armers. the Beast pe sessions were either based on the 15 consecutive hangs and pull ups for 6 sets with 20 mins rests, or 1 minute hangs until failure.

[douglas]

I agree one month is not alot. I could only imagine this would be enough time to reach a level that your body was been capable of but not really conditioned to. More like 4 -5 months is needed if you want to make an effort to get fitter. It's hard work though and you really need to recovery properly or it'll wear you down.

I understand that power endurance is Anaerobic Capacity and Anaerobic Potential. Anaerobic capacity is the total amount of energy you can get without oxygen. Anaerobic potential is more lactic acid tolerance- how big is your lactic acid reservoir. Both matter. Anaerobic capacity is best trained in 4 -5 months then potential in 4 -5 weeks (I think that's what it says in Paul B's slides). Apparently capacity is more about volume, potential is more about intensity, but other than that training is v similar.

Personally I think training power endurance by replicating the length of your project is a bit of a red herring. Unless you're a complete animal, 40 moves can never be pure power endurance. It's PE plus stamina ie. Anaerobic plus aerobic. Isn't it better / more effective to train these two energy systems separately? Power endurance for me is 10, 15 maybe 20 moves. For me, PE is such that each move is hard, holding a position with one hand to chalk is as hard as the next move, clipping is as hard as the next move, shaking is impossible.

So to train power endurance I do something like this: 10 move circuit, rest 1 minute, 10 move circuit, rest 1 minute, 10 move circuit. Rest 5 minutes. Repeat 6 times. So, 6 x (3 x 10M), 1mR, 5mR. You will be heaving! Also 3 x (4 x 15M), 90sR, 5mR. These are from Paul B's linked slides.

For the stamina side of things I tend to do some of this AeroCap stuff that been mentioned alot. Hard traversing. Get pumped and stay pumped for 15, 20, 30 minutes. Pure stamina training has a positive effect on your PE. You can pull harder percentage moves before oxygen cannot reach the muscles and anaerobic energy is needed.

A few years ago Chris when I was just starting out, I saw one of your videos about power endurance training and in it you stated that 'power endurance is the essence of hard sport climbing'. I wasn't climbing 7a at the time but that quote has really stuck with me and it's the style of climbing I'm most psyched about.

[petejh]

Chris - I think you're going to regret asking for training advice on here, so many different views! Hope I wasn't the one who said about muscle breakdown, if so I didn't mean that, I meant pretty much exactly what Serpico said - The reason why people can get weaker whilst doing a lot of endurance training is partly because endurance training contrasts to a degree with strength training, but mostly because all the time they spend training endurance is not spent training strength.

My biggest weakness is PE, I was kind of aware of this before I had a coaching sesh last year - in that I saw other climbers at the same level not getting pumped on routes where I'd be fighting a pump -  but Ste Mac really brought it home to me how weak I am in this department, here's part of his feedback to me -

....Footwork good, and a real feeling for where your body was positioned and where you needed to put your feet to make a move. Good tension also right down to toes. For someone who is onsighting around 7b max I think your footwork and body tension are good. However you are way let down by PE, this really is a massive obstacle. Even power routes are too long. So this needs lots of work. Circuits or foot on campusing are great at your facility, routes at other walls, but make sure the intensity is way up there, it has to hurt! I'd go for a block of around 5 weeks with 2 sessions per week where PE is one of the main things. Don't get too focussed on bouldering as you are already OK at this. PE stuff like foot on campus can be done at the end of a session as an extra and it really works. If outdoors, throw in as many additional pumpy traverses in as you can for that extra burn. See what difference 5 weeks makes. But again, this is a real no pain no gain.

I did 4x4's, progressing to 6x4's,  and it worked wonders, it got me from never having climbed harder than 7b to 8a in a season, but then I let it drop-off again (that was before I went on the coaching day). This year I added foot-on campusing. I've found training PE using foot-on campusing to be really simple and very effective - you just need to stick religiously to the stopwatch, when it beeps it's time to get back on no matter how completely fucked you are from the previous set, and once started you keep going until it says stop. What sequence you do on the board depends how fit you already are but for me it was simply hand over hand up (4 rungs - you need to be able to keep your foot on a chair or whatever) and hand over hand down again, up/down for 3 minutes, then 3 minutes rest. Repeat 4 times, as soon as you can do it 4 times either do it five times/reduce the amount of rest time, or increase the amount time on the campus board. If you're not failing on the last 2 sets you're not doing it properly - it's not a workout to do in a busy climbing wall because you look an idiot (you do anyway I've seen you in the indi  )

For 4x4's/6x4's/6x8's it's the same deal - you just have to stick to the stopwatch no matter how fucked-up you're feeling, it's the timing that gives the training it's intensity through not allowing full recovery; the problems should all be easily doable in isolation once you know the moves. I was able to do V6's in indi at the time so I dropped to doing V3's and V4's for the 4x4 sessions. 4 problems back to back, 2.30 minutes rest between the 4 problems. As soon as I could complete 4 sets of 4 problems without failing I'd reduce the rest time by 30 seconds, or add a 5th problem to each set. You have to be failing on the last problems of the last couple of sets or it's not working you hard enough. For you it might mean doing 4x V5's, 2 mins rest, 4 times;  or something closer to mine, you'll have to spend 1 or 2 sessions finding the level where you're just failing on the last ones.

Important to get carbs down immediately on ending the session to speed recovery for the next one.
You're well strong enough already for that proj, if you nail the PE hard you'll nail the proj.

BTW my PE is shit again now (it drops off just as quickly as it takes to get it), time to start training it again soon! And Ste Mac's coaching days are great, well worth it!

[Paul B]

can I cheekily ask for a definition of 4x4's?

[petejh]

can I cheekily ask for a definition of 4x4's?

If the hardest you can boulder in whatever facility you go to is V6, then you'd drop 2-3 grades and do 4 problems of that grade back-to-back with no rest between problems. Then have a timed rest - as a guide to start with the time to rest will be similar to the total time for the 4 problems, about 3 minutes. Do this 4 times. You should be fighting like a bastard just to get up the last 4 problems, and failing to complete the final one. If you can complete them all you're not training properly. It makes you look a bit of a twat at the wall so do it when there's no-one there.

I saw it in a book - The Self Coached Climber, and got quite into it. Works well for me.

[Paul B]

ah so the Doylo-dropoff technique. Cheers for clarifying that.

[ghisino]

in the same "repeated boulder" category: "minute repeaters".
stopwatch, boulder problem @similar intensity as for 4x4, or slightly harder. The problem takes 30-40 secs to be completed.
one repeat per minute until failure : @0:00, 1:00, 2:00 etc...


no clue what it really trains though

[slackline]

no clue what it really trains though

Your ability to use a stop-watch? 

[Doylo]

Lots of different stuff to wade through, wish it wasn't so complicated! No it wasn't you Pete i was referring to, it was Neil Mawson. In retrospect i'm not sure i should be following a PE plan off someone with so much natural fitness.  I'm the other end of the scale so logically will need to work a lot harder to get fit. I agree 40 moves is getting into stamina territory but for the project i'm gonna be trying i don't really get chance to shake out properly so it feels like power endurance.  I just watched a vid of me on it and its about 3 minutes to the redpoint crux where i always fall so will be about 3.20 to the top. I'm inclined to go for a circuit on the board like John thats a few grades easier and takes me 3 minutes and run laps on it.  I think clinging on without a decent rest for this long is one of the problems i've had over the last two years.Its just been too much for me.  Also if you've got the time (which i have) its possible to do a bit of everything, circuits, 4 by 4s,foot on campussing etc... I think if the intensitys there and starting from a low base hopefully i'll reap the rewards. If anyone wants to give me a further critique on what they think i should be doing here is the route:
 
Theres six more moves after that move i fall on. Cheers y'all, i should have this training malarkey wired by now, too much homming around!

[ducko]

project looks beast, alot of people i know in general do a day on then a day off,i found this worked well when i used too train for trials comps makes sense too me, good luck.

[grimer]

What a great looking climb.

Maybe you could skip some clips in an Ondra-style rush of blood to the head. There looks to be a lot of them? Unless you're like me in which case the thought of any fall over a metre causes my brainstem to go into shutdown.

[Doylo]

I only skip two clips, the top runout is a little daunting but i haven't got there yet. Not a runout by Ondras standards, i wouldn't skip any more tho. I wish that was all it needed!

[Fultonius]

Would it be worth making up a 15 move circuit with a bad rest in the middle and do 3 laps per "circuit"? It looks like you get a couple of poor shake outs and getting the most back on them is going to help too, no?

How hard is the proj? I've seen cassidy doing that type of thing at the wall and he's not short of PE...

[ghisino]

When did u take that vid? (how many laps on the route at the time?)

if it was me in the vid the first things i'd think would be :
-it doesn't yest "flow" as i'd like, looks like there are still some small hesitations/unecessary foor moves/etc to be filed off here and there.
-regardless of such "imperfections" i'd like to be more aggressive.

but then :
-i have no vids of myself on sport climbs and might well be slower than that
-the vid doesn't tell anything about how the holds and feet feel like, your fitness and the route's conditions that day, etc...
-i might have watched too many ondra vids. 

[Doylo]

That's from last summer.I can't climb it better than that its just a fitness thing.i think i do need to factor in a poor rest into the circuit as if I could recover before the last sequence I could be quids in.I got about 3 good gos last year per sesh.about 8b.alternatively I could just sell my soul to the devil for 3 minutes of ondra form (but then it would only take one).cheers

[grimer]

Have you ever had a coaching session Doylo? Stu's thing about having a session with Tommy sounded interesting and as someone said in a post above you will get so many variations from people here based on their own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe forking out for a Steve mac (does he do them?) or dave Macleod, or a Tommy would give you someone whose thought about it a lot telling you what you need to do. I'm not saying you do, but it's easy to keep doing what you do because that's what you do. If I had two pieces of advice and one cost me a load of money and one was free I'd pay attention to the one that cost me money.

[Doylo]

Ye i probably should really.I'm poor tho 

[Tommy]

A friend told me recently that 2 sessions a week starting a month beforehand should be sufficient PE training for a project. He said that any more and you'll get weak as the muscles get broke down.  I do believe him but was wondering what other peoples experiences are and what routines people have found good. I was thinking of getting stuck into 4 by 4's and some circuits on the board but its hard to make a specific circuit as the board is quite hard. ta

Hey up Chris. Saw this the other day but didn't have time to write something... I hope this is for that Diamond Proj? Looks well good.

In my experience 4 weeks will definitely not be enough to gain peak P/E fitness unless you have been working a long term system of block periodisation (not many people do this). The speed at which you can reach your potential is very much related to you personally as a climber and it can be as little as perhaps 4 weeks (if you've done this for the last 10-15 years), but is normally around 8 weeks and can even be as high as 10-12 weeks in some circumstances. Often it's a case of try it for one season and make a gauge of how you personally respond to the training.

The main things to consider are the level of endurance (volume) and strength (volume with intensity) that you've done in preparation for this project. After all - power endurance is a function of those capabilities. If you've done neither or both, then it's a simple case of doing the P/E work. If however, you've done mainly one of the above then the situation gets a little more sticky! :-)

Don't worry too much about losing strength during the P/E work - it can be maintained fairly effectively with explosive bouldering sessions once or twice a week (think short and sharp). Many of the international comp climbers do this to try and peak their (relative) power at the same as power endurance. The longer you try to maintain your peak though - the more this will suffer.

If you want to know more, there's quite a bit on the net (if you have time to trawl through it!) on swimming periodisation models and how they peak for comps. Many of the European climbing training models have been based on this stuff.

Good luck!

[Doylo]

Cheers Tom, the past two years i haven't done much specific training and still was quite close so hopefully intense training now will be all it takes.

[ghisino]

If you want to know more, there's quite a bit on the net (if you have time to trawl through it!) on swimming periodisation models and how they peak for comps. Many of the European climbing training models have been based on this stuff.

Good luck!

err...may i ask for a link or two?

[Tommy]

This is pretty useful - there are many out there, you've got to get down and dirty with google... ;-)

http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/17809/1/jhse_Vol_VI_N_II_233-246.pdf

[BB]

alternatively I could just sell my soul to the devil for 3 minutes of ondra form (but then it would only take one).cheers

Have you tried using Partian shot dust? I hear it's the shit.

On a more serious note, I have a definite PE weakness, so will watch this thread with interest.

One questio though. When using sustained routes indoors to improve PE, what sort of grade should you be attempting? 2-3 below maximum, something like that or would it is it better to just go at your max?