[mctrials23]

Pretty simple question; how many of you follow a training plan most of the year. I'm sure that a lot of us will try and target some aspect of our climbing for a while to improve it but in my experience, its really hard to follow a regimented training plan.

I started a 8 week power endurance program and made it about 3 weeks in before I gave up. It was boring, didn't bring any real improvements (which I'm 99% sure is because I only made it 3 weeks in) and I couldn't resist the lure of the 100 or so new problems I could have been climbing instead of doing 4x4s and circuit board work.

I don't mind doing fingerboarding at home but its an hour to my nearest wall so travelling for 2 hours to do barely more than an hour of boring training is hard to stomach.

How do you guys make a plan and stick to it when its so hard. I guess if I had managed it in the past and seen big improvements I might find it easier to rationalise.

[galpinos]

I have just started due to the fact that life, work and family were getting in the way and my climbing seemed to be going backwards. I have limited free time so want to make sure it is used as well as possible so that when the opportunity to go outside appears, I can perform.

Time will tell whether I stick with it or not, I’m in week three! Ask me again in 12 months……..

[SA Chris]

My training plans normally end prematurely because I injury myself

[tomtom]

Try and climb or train 3 times a week... thats my plan.

[blamo]

I tend to follow fairly specific training plans with some success.  I usually do 3 to 6 week "cycles."  I will focus on training for a specific short term goal during the cycle (e.g. red point all the routes at my gym in a specific grade range, do the crux boulder of a long term project, or link a certain section of a long term project, etc.). 

I tend to tailor my training to the goal I am trying (e.g. hangboard on holds specific to your goal, climb on problems).  I tend to have similar results to what you are describing if I have a plan that just focuses on a general improvement area such as endurance or power. 

If I was in a position of wanting to improve endurance and having a large number of new problems to work I might pick a goal of something like try to link 4 or 5 boulder problems back to back within a certain number of weeks (project all the problems, start linking the problems back to back, and then start adding harder problems, or switching around the order once I could *red point* my first set of problems).

Hopefully the above will have some value.  Good luck.

[mctrials23]

Cheers for the replies guys, seems like most people just do what I do.

I don't necessarily feel like I have plateaued massively, I just want to improve as quickly as I can.

I know that one of the main things top climbers say is to work you're weaknesses so i am trying to address that at the moment but they don't usually explain why.

Is it to make you a better all round climber?

I understand that in bodybuilding you eventually compromise your gains if you don't target all areas of your body so is that the same in climbing?

I know that fixing weaknesses will ultimately enable you to climb a larger variety of stuff at a certain grade but wouldn't focussing on your strengths push your maximum grade more?

[Muenchener]

I have spells when I focus more - though not exclusively - on different aspects. For example a few weeks doing al ot of ARC in December-January, then bouldering / fingerboard in February-Marc,h then a few weeks of PE stuff, all leading up to a late spring / early summer sport climbing season. I suppose that's a training plan of sorts, but the "phases" don't involve full-on OCD weeks-in-advance planning. Far from it.

[slackline]

I know that one of the main things top climbers say is to work you're weaknesses so i am trying to address that at the moment but they don't usually explain why.

Is it to make you a better all round climber?

I know that fixing weaknesses will ultimately enable you to climb a larger variety of stuff at a certain grade but wouldn't focussing on your strengths push your maximum grade more?

If its a weakness then there is there is more scope for improvement than in areas you are already proficient at, hence why you will see greater gains faster than trying to eek out a small improvement in something you are already good at.

[mctrials23]

 :devangel:oh I understand that slack line but it won't actually affect your maximum grade will it. You may be able to climb v8 on crimpy routes and only v5 on slopy ones but bringing your sloper strength up to par won't mean you are suddenly climbing v9.

That improvement to get to v9 will still be just as hard no?

[Stubbs]

Consider more the flexibility thread as an example; if there was a v9 Crimpy problem that required a very open hip or stretched out heel hook, by training those specifics without improving your strength you will improve on that climb and also have improved your 'move toolbox'

[bendavison]

I follow a training plan most of the time. Sometimes its more regimented than others. For it to work  if I have I find I need set goals that I really do care about and think are achievable (both difficulty-wise and practically), and if I believe the plan will get me there.

Re training weakness: I prefer to think of it as training the limiting factors related to the things I want to climb.

[T_B]

I followed a 12-wk plan prior to a trip last autumn. It made me do things I would normally make excuses not to bother with. It sort of worked and I've sort of started a new plan with spring goals in mind. It's not absolutely regimented and as I'm an old git, I have to listen to my body. A training plan works for me as a) I have v little time, so can't get out on rock much. I want to maximise what I do rather than dicking around having fun and b) I need to get better to stay interested as I've been living in the same place for 15 yrs and am running out of things to do.

I don't think 3 weeks is long enough to have decided you're not getting gains.

I probably wouldn't follow much of a plan if I was 20 years younger, so long as I was enjoying climbing and had plenty of time to get out/travel to a variety of venues. Part of me finds it a bit sad that younger climbers are training so hard and not actually climbing many routes/visiting different areas.

[nathanie1]

oh I understand that slack line but it won't actually affect your maximum grade will it. You may be able to climb v8 on crimpy routes and only v5 on slopy ones but bringing your sloper strength up to par won't mean you are suddenly climbing v9.

That improvement to get to v9 will still be just as hard no?

If you are a well rounded v8 climber, with no obvious weaknesses, then you aren't limiting yourself to a particular type of v9 problem and therefore you have more v9's to go at. Shirley this will increase your chances of ticking one, and then another, and another... 


With regards to training plans, I have a long list of problems I want to/can't do and a long list of things to improve to help my do said problems. Whenever I find myself indoors I work on whatever weakness is holding me back from my favourite problems of the moment. One day I'll probably adopt an actual training plan.

[Sasquatch]

Yes I do.  It's planned and structured around my personal situation and goals.

For example, this last fall I had two major goals, a local project in Sept/Early Oct, and a bishop trip in Nov.  I also had a trip in August to Squamish, and was trying to get back to full strength after injuring a pulley in March (grade 2/3).  Building backwards from the goals, I had about 7 weeks between the two goals, and about 8 weeks between squamish and Local Project. 

So my training was:
Squamish
Week 1-4 - 2 days FB, 1 day bouldering (hopefully outside)
Week 5-8 - 2 days Campus, 1 day bouldering on local project (sent on week 7)
Weeks 9-11 -  FB 2-3 per week
Weeks 12-15 - 2 days Campus, 1 day boulder
Week 16 - easy week prior to trip

The FB was a specififc workout, as were the campusing days.  The bouldering days were all very high intensity days working 3-5 problems at my limit. 

You can structure training around having fun and enjoying climbing, but you have to set your goals and priorities.  All of my outside days started with a solid warmup, then working the project for about 1-2 hours until it was pretty obvious there was no progression, then I went and played and had fun climbing/exploring/developing for the rest of the day. I could get outside about once a week, so that was my #1 focus.  Also, the campusing days involved quite a bit of climbing to warm-up and cool down, so I never really felt like I was missing climbing.  The FB days can get old, but it's only for about 3-4 weeks, and I still toss in a few climbing days to break it up.

Cheers for the replies guys, seems like most people just do what I do.

I don't necessarily feel like I have plateaued massively, I just want to improve as quickly as I can.

How do you define improvement?
 

I know that one of the main things top climbers say is to work you're weaknesses so i am trying to address that at the moment but they don't usually explain why.

Is it to make you a better all round climber?

Partly, others have mentioned a couple of reasons and I'll mention another.  A weakness will hold you back without you knowing it.  For the better part  of a decade, my fingers were relatively weak.  I could still climb fairly hard, but what I didn't know was how my fingers were limiting the techniques I could apply.  It's really hard for me to explain, but when you fix a weakness, you sometimes find yourself seeing and making moves you would have never connected to that weakness. 

I understand that in bodybuilding you eventually compromise your gains if you don't target all areas of your body so is that the same in climbing?

I know that fixing weaknesses will ultimately enable you to climb a larger variety of stuff at a certain grade but wouldn't focussing on your strengths push your maximum grade more?

Are you trying to push your peak, or build your base. They really should go hand in hand.  I'll typically cycle between the two.  During the early part of the summer, I try to build more base, then at the end of the season, I try to push my peak. 

[TheTwig]

I've started the training cycle as advocated by the Anderson brothers in the Rock Climbers Training Manual, and have all of 2015 planned, with trips pencilled in for each peak. I'm just peaking now, and (no pun intended) heading to the peak for 8 days on the 14th for some gritstone. I've tailored each training phase on where the season trip is and what the rock is like. So for the grit I had a big fingerboarding phase, lots of openhanded hangs etc, as well as slopers, medium power phase and then a very small PE phase. I'm feeling stronger than I ever have before and it shows in what I'm climbing indoors.

Compliance wise I've found writing it down and going to the wall with a written down plan definitely helps. I overtrained a lot in the fingerboard phase and wrecked my elbows, by doing too much climbing with not enough rest inbetween FB sessions, and had to skip a fair few FB sessions due to injury etc :\ . Lesson learned for in a few months when I get around to that again. I actually enjoyed fingerboarding, I have the Rock Prodigy FB with a pulley system and it was fun seeing my grip strength going up. I tracked it all on a spreadsheet and made a chart etc etc.

As others have said working your weaknesses definitely is the way forward. Do you really want to be shut down on a problem or route because of 1 sloping hold, or whatever? I used to crimp everything and when it came to things I couldn't crimp I didn't have a chance. Ditto slopers. Now my strongest grip is open hand and palm strength is pretty good. Same with overhanging climbing, when I started actually thinking about the discrepancy, I was bouldering up to f7a indoors on slab problems, meanwhile f6a on an overhang was quite a struggle. That's a bit of an ongoing battle! 

(I'm fairly new to climbing training before everyone laughs at my somewhat crap grip strength )

[jwi]

Not most of the year, no.

If by plan you mean something else than “climb lots, 90% onsight, get weak as a kitten.”

Most of the time I made and followed training plans I made good gains.

[cheque]

I've only ever followed a training plan when I've had an overseas sport trip coming up. Otherwise I just try and go rock climbing whenever I can, which is not conducive to having a training plan (and vice versa) I find, particularly when it's BST rather than GMT.

When I've had a plan I've achieved exactly what I've been training for. It hasn't always been what I've wanted to train for or thought I've been training for though. I find training and climbing on plastic can make me "better" without having any impact on what grades I can climb on rock!

[csl]

Having it written and printed out seems to help me stick with it. I have this on the wall above my desk, so its impossible to avoid.


Then the thing that really helps me stick with it is benchmarking every three months or so. If i can get some metric of improvement, its so much easier to motivate myself to keep trying!

Why not see how much weight (if any) you need to take off with a pulley set up to one arm hang a one pad edge for 5 seconds - then repeat that every so often to see if you are getting stronger? Or for power endurance you could see how many moves of foot on campusing you can do at a max effort, and then repeat that as a benchmark.

[Pebblespanker]

...  it is benchmarking every three months or so. If i can get some metric of improvement, its so much easier to motivate myself to keep trying!

Why not see how much weight (if any) you need to take off with a pulley set up to one arm hang a one pad edge for 5 seconds - then repeat that every so often to see if you are getting stronger? Or for power endurance you could see how many moves of foot on campussing you can do at a max effort, and then repeat that as a benchmark.

Absolutely 100% agree - I did a bench-marking session on Saturday for my new strength cycle that is planned to lead up to a 4 day County trip at Easter - like Chris I have had an injury riddled last few months that torpedoed the last lot of plan/s. One other bonus of bench marking is you see exactly how much progress you lose when you switch between training types as well as any hiatus due to injury, xmas, family holiday's, work etc. As I have target problems in the County I am also focusing on certain grip/hold types and have tweaked the plan accordingly. If it's a local problem I would aim to have sessions on it every month to 6 weeks to measure progress, rather than more frequently - this works for me as I gain slowly and reduces the number of what can become demotivating (for me) failed attempts - everyone's different, so you need to work out what is best for you mentally and physically around your plan to maximise gains

FWIW I use an Excel spreado to plan and track my training - I use lots of graphs as I (am sad and) find them motivational - so long as they are going the right way!

[mctrials23]

How are you guys tracking your fingerboard sessions beyond a general summary of the session or a simple explanation of what you did.

I am doing some one arm hangs and would want to track:

duration of hang,
hold used,
number of fingers used on hold
weight removed via pulley.

That doesn't make it easy to "chart" progress as far as I can see. At the moment I am just logging when the session was, how much weight was removed and a general summary of what I did that was hard. Hopefully this will give me a loose overview of whether I am improving or not.

Another thing I was wondering about is how much resistance a pulley adds to the system. I have a pulley attached to the bottom of my fingerboard which I run a cord through with one end attached to a weight plate and the other is a foot strap to stand in.

I try to minimise any cross loading when I use it but I'm sure that the pulley adds quite a bit of resistance on top of the weight on the end of it.

[Stubbs]

If you are recording the weight you take off for each grip for a given length of time then is should be very simple to chart progress?

In this situation the resistance of the pulley doesn't matter as that is a constant.

[Pebblespanker]

For me a detailed Excel spreadsheet works. I use the same data as you plus grip type, half-crimp or Open handed, I monitor starting set up e.g. Beasty 1K, Deep 3F Hold, 6 reps @ 6secs with 10KG taken off, then track % gains in reps, duration, weight added/removed with simple formulae.

benchmark = 6 reps @ 6 secs, (10kg removed)
6 reps @7 secs  = 17% gain in duration
6 reps @8 secs etc. = 33% gain in duration
etc

Excel is good for this if you set it up correctly and suits me because I use in my day job. I wouldn't worry about the precise physics of the assistance, what I focus on is same set up each time and the amount of weight slowly coming down. Set firm rules for progression e.g. once I can do 6 reps for 10secs with 10Kg assistance for X (I use 2-3) consecutive training sessions then remove 2.5kg and see how long you can hang the 6 reps for

[slackline]

then track % gains in reps, duration, weight added/removed with simple formulae.

I wouldn't advise the use of percentage change

[mctrials23]

Cheers for the replies but how do you plot more than 2 things on a graph?

If I am tracking length of hold and weight added against a calendar how does that work? You would also have a graph for every single grip position on every different hold I assume?

Also, although the resistance on the pulley is constant for a given weight it will obviously change if the weight changes. For 50kg it may be an added resistance of 20kg whereas for 20kg it may only be 5kg. Its not likely to be a simple function of the weight added times a percentage.

I may be talking utter crap here but thats my understanding of these things.

[slackline]

Cheers for the replies but how do you plot more than 2 things on a graph?

If I am tracking length of hold and weight added against a calendar how does that work? You would also have a graph for every single grip position on every different hold I assume?

Either come up with your own metric or assess yourself in two ways by either fixing the weight added and seeing how long you can old, or fixing the amount of time you hold and adding weight until you can only hold for that period.  The former is likely easier and you then plot x-axis with time (in training calendar) and y-axis with the length of time you can hold a given hold, with a separate line for each hold/grip.

When you come to adding a different amount of weight you'll see a sudden step down in the length of time you can hold (since you've upped the intensity of the training and made the exercise harder).

Also, although the resistance on the pulley is constant for a given weight it will obviously change if the weight changes. For 50kg it may be an added resistance of 20kg whereas for 20kg it may only be 5kg. Its not likely to be a simple function of the weight added times a percentage.

Thats the sort of crap calculations that was taught in Applied Mathematics when I started doing it at A-Level (quickly ditched in favour of Statistics).  Search around and I'm sure you can find out how to do the calculations.  Try Wolfram Alpha.  You'll probably need to measure the frictional properties of the pulley itself.

I doubt its worth worrying too much about myself.