[cha1n]

Hey up, I have a 3 week trip to Rocklands in 5 months time, is it too late to bother trying to get any stronger?

My training plan was going to consist of 'lose some weight and try not to get injured for the next 5 months' but others going on the trip are giving me shit and seem to think it's enough time to get strong.

In all seriousness, I am about a stone overweight so losing that's going to help a lot. Am I better off trying to lose the weight gradually or train heavy and lose the weight last minute?

Strength wise, I've got decent shoulder and general body strength but my fingers are and always have been weak as fuck. I'd expect to bash out low 7's quite quickly but basic style that requires strong fingers - I'd probably struggle on. Is there likely to be much benefit from doing some fingerboarding stuff leading up to it? I much prefer the woody if I'm going to do boring strength training stuff but equally, my fingers feel quite fragile when doing that stuff. I'm guessing I might break myself if I just train flat out for 5 months, so is there enough time to do some form of periodisation?

I can only climb properly around 2 sessions per week at the moment but could add some fingerboard/woody sessions in if they were reasonably short. Not expecting a tailored training plan or anything but if anyone could give some general advice like, if I should do some sort of base phase, and lengths of phases, order of phases, etc.

Instinct says I should do some sort of base conditioning phase so my body doesn't break straight away (maybe repeaters and core, etc?) for a month or so, and then do some more hardcore stuff like woody and campusing once the fingers are feeling prepared and then keep cycling the intensity from high to low every 3-4 weeks or something? Gotta be better than going down the wall and messing around on whatever tickles my fancy?

Appreciate any advice.

[cjsheps]

DISCLAIMER: I'm no expert. If I were, I'd be climbing harder and wouldn't need a coach myself.

too late to bother trying to get any stronger?

Of course not - it takes time to get strong, and now's as good a time as any.

Am I better off trying to lose the weight gradually or train heavy and lose the weight last minute?

I would say that ~3 months would be a good time scale.

I can only climb properly around 2 sessions per week at the moment

Are you climbing on the weekends? If not, training twice a week seems like not very much for someone of your calibre!

You mentioned that you enjoy climbing on the woodie - I'd say that if that forms a large part of your training plan, you're more likely to stick to the plan. Maybe have it there from the beginning, alongside conditioning, and carefully set finger-friendly problems. You could always crank up the intensity and drop the conditioning in the run-up.

Regarding injury avoidance, the most important lesson I've learnt from being coached is the important of "unloading" weeks. For some people, these happen naturally due to life commitments. But Free Folk would benefit from backing off every three-four weeks and letting the body catch up with adaptions.

[cjsheps]

P.S. Good luck!

[cha1n]

Cheers sheps.

I wouldn't say I enjoy the woody, it's just the handful of times I've climbed on a woody were more fun than the handful of times I've hung on a fingerboard. I've had one play on a woody this year and it was actually quite good as there was a good 'board scene' but I could also tell that I could quickly get injured on it if I was unable to show some self-control.

I did consider getting someone to write me a training plan, I'm not concerned about paying for one, it's just that I'd be fairly unlikely to follow something vaguely structured from my previous experience of following training plans. I could deal with slotting a regular fingerboard session in once per week and having months with general themes such as, 'woody', 'campus board', 'horizontal roofs', etc. It would be nice to have some general advice of what order to do them though.

Yeh, 2 sessions per week sucks but I made the terrible decision of buying a house and then ripping it back to brick on the inside, so I have to commit some time to that unfortunately. That may ease off closer to departure depending on how much tradesman lie to me about them turning up to do work on it (general pattern so far is that if they ever turn up, that's a bonus).

I must admit that my reasons for wanting to improve aren't 100% pure, I mostly want to be able to work the stuff other people in the group are trying and I'm currently the weakest in the group I reckon. If it wasn't for that, I actually fairly content at pottering on low 7's at the moment, though this could be an opportunity to pull the finger out and bump my max grade up from 7C. Decisions, decisions...

[Dexter]

As far as the weight goes I'd recommend losing it over the next 4 months or so for a few reasons
1) You will be less injury prone training up to the trip (the last thing you want)
2) Crash dieting will likely make you feel strong for a bit but if you're doing 3 weeks you will burn out pretty quick
3) It's probably generally healthier

Not sure about the whole periodisation thing I'm afraid but I'm sure there are other ukb'ers that know a thing or two.

Other than that sounds pretty sweet I'm gonna be there too so need to get stronger as well 

[joel182]

Just as a quick ball park, 5 months is enough time to do four 4-week deadhang cycles, each cycle followed with a rest week (as per Eva Lopez's instructions on her poster) - that seems to me to be a very significant amount of training!

[Duma]

1) 5 months is fucking ages (like I said to you the other day)

2) what dexter said about the weight - doing it soon and slow will be more sustainable, better over a 3 week trip, and better for your fingers, esp in terms of injury risk.

3) Careful on the woody, it's easy to get carried away.

Gotta be better than going down the wall and messing around on whatever tickles my fancy?

Where's Nik @ Work when you need him?

I must admit that my reasons for wanting to improve aren't 100% pure, I mostly want to be able to work the stuff other people in the group are trying and I'm currently the weakest in the group I reckon. If it wasn't for that, I actually fairly content at pottering on low 7's at the moment, though this could be an opportunity to pull the finger out and bump my max grade up from 7C. Decisions, decisions...

we're all going to get better too!

[cha1n]

Yeah, that's a valid point regarding the weight loss, never thought of it from that angle. Does everyone still rate the Eva Lopez approach? I remember it getting rave reviews on here for a while and then it all went quiet. Most of the people I see fingerboarding at the wall are either doing beastmaker app stuff for the Chris Webb-Parson approach. I'd certainly want to do a period of lower intensity fingerboarding, think of my fingers as dry twigs.

Duma, you're all going to be injured by the time we go, maybe I should just follow my original plan for the tactical approach!

[Duma]

It's weird how heavy folk always seem to complain about weak fingers...

[bendavison]

As others have said, 5 months is plenty of time to make significant progress.

In general, I'd do a bunch of bouldering, some boulder reps/short circuits, and some fingerboarding. I suspect the order doesn't matter a great deal, but perhaps an ideal order would be:
1. some bouldering just to get you into it.
2. boulder reps/short circuits for a bit (till you feel like they're not working much)
3. fingerboard (always boulder a bit too)
4. Boulder (+1 fingerboard/boulder reps sesh if you're psyched)

When doing each of the above, I normally wouldn't only do that, but it would be priority. But since you don't climb often they might be the only thing you'd do.

Don't worry too much about the precise time spent doing each one or the precise methodology of each session. Make it hard and make it progressively harder. Have an easier week if you think you need it, but climbing only twice a week you might not. If you like being sure of progress/measuring it, then, where possible, time your rests and keep a mental/written note of problems/circuits/pb's/fingerboard sessions etc - so when you come back a few days later you know how much harder you can make it.

[Coops_13]

Cheers for starting this thread as will be useful for me too. Also planning on heading out to Rocklands in June  I'm heavy with weak fingers too, so that's where my focus will probably be, when I get myself uninjured obviously.

[SA Chris]

Instead of worrying too much about climbing intensive training stuff, you could pay some attention to the things that get neglected; core strength, antagonistics and and structured fat burning weight loss.

These can be included in day to day life with little time commitment and low risk of injury.

[cha1n]

Cheers for starting this thread as will be useful for me too. Also planning on heading out to Rocklands in June  I'm heavy with weak fingers too, so that's where my focus will probably be, when I get myself uninjured obviously.

Fuck it, let's binge on food and beer for the next 5 months and climb 6C's in June eh?

[Coops_13]

Cheers for starting this thread as will be useful for me too. Also planning on heading out to Rocklands in June  I'm heavy with weak fingers too, so that's where my focus will probably be, when I get myself uninjured obviously.

Fuck it, let's binge on food and beer for the next 5 months and climb 6C's in June eh?

[SA Chris]

Or save the binging and drinking for when you get there; cheap beer and wine, quality steaks and seafood. And just sack climbing off completely.

[Nibile]

Before embarking in any training, I think you should make yourself very clear about what you want out of this trip. You can't plan according to the process, you plan according to the goal.
And on this matter, no offence meant, you seem a bit weak: if you simply want to work the same problems of your mates, just do that. You'll marvel at how much you can improve during a trip, with no specific training.
But you say that you'd be happy to simply climb in the low 7's, so why don't you do that?
Really, I don't want to sound rude, but this 5 months training thing seems a bit self-imposed to me, a bit too rational and not deeply felt.
If you want to catch up, fair enough, but you have to get into a mindset: it's going to be boring, tiring, not funny. You'll have to find bits of spare time everyday to smash a couple of deadhanging sets in, you'll have to change your eating habits, etc.
Don't make a half effort, because it's like no effort.
Be sure about what you want to achieve, and bear in mind that success is never guaranteed, so be familiar with the thought that you could spend 5 months training and still not reach your goals.
I'm playing Cassandra here, just because you don't seem totally committed to this thing, so you're at risk of a big reality check.
Hope this helps.

[Duma]

Listen to Nibs Ross.

[dave]

If you want to catch up, fair enough, but you have to get into a mindset: it's going to be boring, tiring, not funny.

Or alternatively make sure your training is enjoyable, varied, and fun.

[finbarrr]

If you want to catch up, fair enough, but you have to get into a mindset: it's going to be boring, tiring, not funny.

Or alternatively make sure your training is enjoyable, varied, and fun.

if you've climbed for years and really have weak fingers, fingerboarding will be both boring and rewarding at the same time.
because it is not fun or social, but you're gonna progress every session..
at first it should not be tiring the way you think about climbing being tiring.
i started four months ago, because my golfers elbow didn't like being bent to 90 degrees.
i'd done some fingerboard work before, repeaters, usually one day a week, climbing three days (indoors as i live in the netherlands).
did six weeks of max hangs (two or three sessions a week).
no climbing
did do stretching and core and straight arm theraband stuff.
then went to font and had best two weeks (x-mas and new years) ever

[Nibile]

If you want to catch up, fair enough, but you have to get into a mindset: it's going to be boring, tiring, not funny.

Or alternatively make sure your training is enjoyable, varied, and fun.

Yes, for sure. Maybe attaching on the fingerboard a picture of a unicorn riding a rainbow.
The perception of fun is subjective, and from what I've read Cha1n isn't very psyched or determined, so probably whatever he's going to do will feel not fun at all.

[cha1n]

Yeh,  it's starting to get hard to ignore all the people who are recommending finger boarding.

So over the course of 5 months, how should I cycle my finger board sessions? Surely doing max hangs for 5 months would be a bad idea, even if there were rest weeks added between blocks?

[cha1n]

Cha1n isn't very psyched or determined, so probably whatever he's going to do will feel not fun at all.

Don't get the impression I'm not psyched or determined to climb, just not massively psyched to train. I climbed like a thousand routes in my first year of climbing, I climbed 4 times a week, 4 hour sessions, etc. 7 years later and I can't imagine my life without climbing but training still doesn't fill me with psyche. Maybe because up to this point I've not had to train to be able to climb classic stuff all over Europe.

[peewee]

After my last 2 trips there id say that climbing on a board would be most applicable to the style of climbing out there.

[Nibile]

Cha1n isn't very psyched or determined, so probably whatever he's going to do will feel not fun at all.

Don't get the impression I'm not psyched or determined to climb, just not massively psyched to train.
I can't imagine my life without climbing but training still doesn't fill me with psyche.

That's exactly what I was referring to with my reply. Cheers for making it even clearer.

[SA Chris]

I've got a fingerboard at home, and occasionally get a video on the iPad and bang out a few repeaters, but get no real enjoyment out of it as an activity in itself. Whereas my weekly (or occasionally biweekly) steep woody sessions down the wall get me really motivated and I look forward to trying my ass off on  something i (personally) find really hard and getting better on the woodie is what fuels my motivation for fingerboard sessions. Which in turn are fuelled by my motivation to get some harder stuff done when I (eventually) get on rock again. Psyche follows through.