[Sidehaas]

Had a good read of Self Coached Climber (and the web) at the turn of the new year am currently following the following suggested training schedule, aiming to peak (on sport) in the autumn:

- 2 months ARC
- 3-4 months strength & power
- 6-8 weeks power endurance (4x4s etc)

However one thing is puzzling me.  SCC suggests the above as an ideal schedule even though it states ARC and aerocap benefits tend to regress faster than strength/power benefits when not used.  I'm 3.5 weeks in to the ARC training and just starting to see some real gains.  After 8 weeks I'm hoping I'll feel super fit but don;t want to lose it all through my strength phase.  I will be doing some routs at weekends during the spring, which might help a bit, but does anyone have any real experience of maintaining the gains from an ARC phase while focusing on something else?  Should I still aim to do one ARC session per week to maintain the gains, or something like that?

Ta 

P.S I know there is loads on the forums, but just can;t find the specific answer I'm looking for...

[TobyD]

low intensity ARC / aerocap whatever you like to call it can be a perfect active rest / easy day in power phase. Some people tag it onto the end of a session, others do it on seperate days. Some may may tell you to bin ARC altogether when focussing on power. I'd tinker a bit and see what works for you.

[slackline]

Whenever I see "ARC" I think of where I used to work (although its since been rebranded, used to be Arthritis Research Campaign).

I.e. acronyms mean different things to different people so spell it out, particularly when A could easily be Aerobic or Anaerobic.


 

[Paul B]

As Toby says.

I think a lot of these questions (energy systems based) could be answered by a document that Senor Barros has finally typed up (after he got sick of continually reminding me what I asked him last week). I think he intends to make it public at some point in the future/soon.

[Muenchener]

I.e. acronyms mean different things to different people so spell it out

Surely it's rather clear from the context that he's not talking about your former place of work? (or the geometric concept)

I would have thought in the context of training for climbing the term has fairly consistent and generally understood meaning that should be obvious to anybody who chooses to click on a thread in a climbing training forum.

Also, it's not clear to me whether your use of "pissed" here is a confession that you are nit-picking other people's choice of wording on internet forums whilst inebriated, or a blatant Americanism. Spell it out.

[abarro81]

What he said. Anyone who is going to reply to this thread knows what the OP meant by ARC

I think he intends to make it public at some point in the future/soon.

Will get it online this week.

OP:
Unless you're very unfit I'm unconvinced about the wisdom of having a 2 month phase devoted to aerocap. You should be able to do a bunch of strength work in that phase too. Personally I'd probably have the aerocap focused part of my base phase later on too.

Anyway, for maintaining aerocap/ARC I just tag some onto the end of sessions which precede rest days. How much you can tag on, or how much you'll need to end that session early in order to be able to do it without nailing yourself will depend on how fit you are, how intense the work you want to do is and what else you're doing. If it's what most seem to mean by ARC (bottom end of aerocap, punting around with minimal pump) then you should be able to do a bunch a couple of times a week after bouldering or PE work pretty ok. Or do it as active rest/easy day like Toby mentioned, depending again on how well you can recover from it and how your schedule works.