In the meantime, part 1: training

In a previous post I made the promise to fix some flaws in my training routine and to focus more on volume and fun outdoors. Whether that was a pledge to you or myself I'm not really sure, but either way I somehow felt obliged to keep it. And so I've been doing! There's enough to write about to fill several posts, but I'll try to keep it down to two.

Focussing on fun outdoors!

Let's start with the training and leave the outdoor fun for last. Most importantly, I abandoned the quite strictly linear training programme based on the Rock Climbers Training Manual by the Anderson brothers. I've been following it for more than a year now and came to realize that for me it has a few flaws. Three, to be precise. Firstly, the very predictable performance peaks that a linear periodized schedule produces may be very desirable for competition climbers or for training towards a big climbing holiday, it is far less ideal for the recreational outdoor climber that wants to get out whenever time and the weather allow, i.e. me. High peaks come with big troughs and when peaks coincide with bad weather or limited time that's rather frustrating. It is uncanny how much rain fell during my performance peaks.

Secondly, some phases of the programme have a strict planning that favors training over outdoor climbing. I want to be flexible enough to go out whenever I can, which doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like to. A training schedule shouldn't be another limiting factor to outdoor time when having a job and grown up responsibilities already are. Thirdly, I felt the training programma neglected maintenance of the performance aspects trained during other phases. For example, it provides little maintenance of strength during the power and power endurance phase. Most of the gains made during a strength fase evaporated during the rest of a training cycle.

So I started reading a lot again and set out to design a schedule that is less linearly periodized, includes more maintenance and always offers the flexibility to go out. I opted for a combination of classical and non-linear periodization (no periodization at all will result in plateau for sure: been there, done that) that cycles rather quickly between a focus on strength, power, power endurance and endurance while maintaining the other aspects. I'll have to stick a bit longer with it to tell whether it's an improvement or not, so I'll leave the description of the schedule for a future blog post. What I can say already, is that I can handle a bigger training volume in the new schedule.

Slowly all T-nuts on my homeboard are getting filled with climbing holds. The latest additions: Core mini jugs (grey) and Core Font micro jugs (dark green).

I also fixed a major flaw of my homeboard. So far, I've only invested in small holds to set hard boulders. Although it allowed me to do relatively short power endurance circuits (~20 move circuits in the 7b-7c route range were the easiest thing I could set), there was absolutely no way at all to train endurance in the aerobic energy system. So I asked my friend Matt from Flow Climbing Equipment to set me up with a new set of climbing holds and he did a great job again. There are 36 'mini' and 'micro' jugs from Core Climbing on my home board now (they really don't do those names justice, they're massive) and I started training on them. Although I aim for exercises around the aerobic threshold, I quickly noticed gains in power endurance as well. It's a bit unexpected (and may imply that the intensity of the exercise is actualy too high), but I'm not complaining.

Core Font micro jugs: extremely positive 2-pad jugs 

Surprisingly (and rather unexpectedly), the jugs provided a new challenge: skin management. Having climbed mainly on small 1-pad (and occasionally 2-pad) holds, my callusses are getting beaten up completely by the bigger holds. They get irritated, deep red and feel like they are about to turn into blisters or even flappers quickly. After a few sessions I figured out that if I climb on them at the end of a session (having well warmed up skin), not longer than 15 minutes and sand down my callusses agressively, I can train on them without getting debilitating skin injuries. It's enough to get quite a lot of moves done (about 200). Let's see if I can increase the volume as my skin slowly adapts to the torture I put it through...


A final fix in my training addresses my flexibility. I've always known that I don't have an impressively flexible body and that with my build genetics aren't exactly in my favor on this. The biggest mistake (the one I've been making for years) is to embrace this as an excuse, accept the weakness as it is and focus on strengths instead. Weaknesses provide the biggest potential for improvement and can be conquered with relatively little investment. So after getting shut down by a high foot placement on an otherwise easy boulder on the competition I joined in Februari, I finally decided to attack my flexibility weakness. At the end of every training I take between 10 and 15 minutes for stretching exercises, primarily for the hamstrings and hips. I'm getting noticably better at using high feet already and will try to keep stretching a part of my training routine.

Enough about training for now! In the future I'll sit down to write about some details of the training for those interested. First I'll stick with it for a while and see what it brings me! Time to write about my modest outdoor endeavours now, stay tuned!