Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Training Regimes 9-Apr-2015 At 10:39:03 PM dhunchak

Message

On 9/04/2015 Sabu wrote:
>All valid points Wendy. However, not all of us live next door to a world
>class crag nor is it feasible to get to the gym multiple times a week,
>and even if it were the $$ would add up fast. Hence, other options like
>a hangboard, woody or set of relevant exercises are needed.
>
>The preference is of course always to climb and certainly the most gains
>I've noticed have been where I was in the pines for a few weeks but that
>is a luxury not all of us can have all the time.

I work way too much and climb too little, but am still relatively ambitious when it comes to my climbing. I've tried over the years to come up with a regime that will allow me to trad climb well when I get outdoors once every few months. So far this has been a bust, but since I've tried a lot of things that didn't work (for example metolius hang board exercises), I thought I'd share what I'm working on now, which is a bit of an improvement over my past efforts. It still doesn't address any of the issues that Wendy brings up, which are all very important obviously.

The basics of my workout are inspired by workouts posted on the Athlete by Choice website (you can google this easily and I recommend people give it a read), but I've tweaked it to work on my weakness which is steep route stamina.

Basically I have a set of rock rings that I hang from a chin up bar in a door frame. I hang with my feet out front resting on the floor in roughly a seated position, simulating a 45 degree overhang. You can put your feet on a chair to make it steeper if you like. Currently, I'm hanging from various size holds in the following pattern: both hands on for 10sec, then L / R handed only for 5sec each. I do sets of 10min continuous hanging on various hold patterns, with the goal to both decrease the size of the holds I'm using and increase the length of time I'm holding on. Eventually I want to be able to get strength back while "resting" on the jugs instead of pumping out like I am currently, and start to do 30min sets.

The idea of hanging both two and one handed is based on some stuff I read in a Dave MacLeod book which suggested that climbing endurance is always anaerobic due to the body weight forearm strength ratio, however we frequently give each arm a rest while reaching for the next hold / shaking out etc, and that the ability to recover from short bursts of anaerobic activity is crucial.

In between sets, you can do core exercises etc if you like. I don't recommend doing too many chin ups or push ups, as repetitive movements are a good way to injure yourself. For the same reason, I recommend only doing one of these workouts / week, and viewing it as a less time intensive training supplement to bouldering or some other actually effective training tool. The main drawback is that these workouts are intensely boring and motivation flags pretty easily. The main advantage is that you can get pretty pumped in 20min if you're weak like me, which is way less time than going to the gym.

Hope some people have found this helpful / interesting.