Category Archives: Training Tips

Ways to Improve Your Sport Climbing/Bouldering (7): Using Two Key Training/Exercise Principles – SAID and Overload, Part 2 of 4 (MEDIUM – HARD)

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On to how I now use SAID/OP these days to inform my training choices differently than I used to. For sure, if I’m struggling with linking specific sequences or performing specific moves on a route, I’ll still start any outdoor climbing season with training those sequences on the route regularly, within reason (enough rest between efforts/days on the route in question). I’ll also work on refining the rest of the route and building up my power endurance/stamina (topic of a future entry) and endurance (topic of yet another future entry) if necessary in the process. If and when I feel that I’ve mastered the problematic moves (otherwise known as cruxes, haha) sufficiently on their own, I’ll then steadily work on trying to incorporate the problematic or challenging moves/sequences into the rest of the route.

But – and this is where the big learning curve and training outside of climbing for climbing part of SAID/OP has come for me – if I am attempting a route that I can’t seem to put together after a ton of effort and refining and too many tries to count at building up the necessary power endurance or endurance or even just percentage on specific moves, these days, I have learned a different way to apply SAID effectively and to enhance the effect of the OP. With the help of my partner, I try to break down and then specifically strengthen the muscles or muscle groups responsible for movements on the route(s)/sequence(s)/moves(s) that consistently shut me down.

This means that now, instead of beating my head mercilessly on whatever (obviously too-hard-for-my-current-strength-level) route I might have decided to try my hand at, which was my former not-so-fun approach, I’ve learned to take this information with me into winter training season and use it to my advantage. My strength-training routine involves exercises replicating the movements we’ve noticed as being most responsible for my shutdowns or difficulties throughout the previous season and/or on specific long-term projects. I work these using the overload principle (OP), gradually progressing the levels I can lift in a strength-building scheme designed to make the needed muscles stronger so that the overall drain on my strength will be lessened when I return to the route(s) in question — so those troublesome moves and sequences hopefully won’t feel quite so hard in and of themselves.

Also, consequently, my power, power endurance, stamina and endurance will all have the potential to be built up to a higher maximal level as I gain strength (since all these are subsets of absolute strength). Strength, as I’ve mentioned before, also impacts your technique – a lesson that I was loath to learn, but that I accept fully now. When I deliberately strengthen the weakest muscles in play on specific moves, my technique improves, too – I can better hold positions and execute complicated maneuvers more deliberately and precisely.

The problem/downfall I’ve repeatedly experienced with trying to train these muscle groups specifically just with climbing is that often, multiple other factors will play into an inability to execute movements before the muscles or muscle groups in question have actually been trained to their full capacity – so if my fingers get tired on a hold because they’re tired from all the other climbing I’ve been doing, but part of the problem in the move is locking off and contracting my biceps fully, I won’t get to overload my biceps enough to get the gain I can from doing biceps curls regularly over the course of months of training them specifically. In other words, it’s just not as efficient, because whatever is the weakest link on any given day makes me fail on the climb, whether it’s my biceps or my delts or my core or my legs or my skin or even my brain – but when I isolate the elements in resistance training, I choose to fatigue them and push them consciously and systematically, without having all of the other elements in play potentially interfering. And, then, those elements inevitably get stronger – and the more appropriately I choose which areas to apply SAID/OP to, the greater impact it has on my overall climbing ability (meaning if I train my areas of relative strength, I lose out on the potentially greater gains I could make by training my relative areas of weakness).

(To be continued)

This multipart series of blogs and articles starts here, in case you have to catch up. Remember that my designation of each area as “easy,” “medium” or “hard” is purely subjective. I’ve arrived at the designations from my personal experience garnered from 20 years of climbing along with my observations from climbing coaching throughout the past four years. You may find some of the areas harder or easier to change than I do/did. You also might not agree with me or my take on things. That’s fine – feel free to take it or leave it as you wish! Also, remember that the information I provide here is purely offered as advice and that no exercises or training program should be undertaken without receiving medical clearance from a healthcare professional.

One other caveat: As will be true for all of the entries and articles in this series, if you’ve already mastered or maxed out the topic at hand to the best of your ability level, you’ll reap far fewer benefits or none at all from my suggestions – good for you that you figured it out, but sorry I couldn’t help you out more. Happy climbing, bouldering and training!

Ways to Improve Your Sport Climbing/Bouldering (7): Using Two Key Training/Exercise Principles – SAID and Overload, Part 1 of 4 (MEDIUM – HARD)

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I touched on the concept of SAID – or Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands – in my recent entry talking about triceps training. This simple training concept offers one of the easiest paradigms for effective and efficient climbing training, especially if you’re training for specific climbing-performance goals. Basically, you train for what you want to be better at by doing what you want to be better at – i.e., you train for climbing by climbing. Your time spent trying to improve your climbing game is better (more efficiently) spent actually climbing than it is spent, say, running or swimming or biking or some other fairly-irrelevant-when-it-comes-to-climbing activity.

Aha – but haven’t I said that this exact approach is what failed me, and failed me miserably, to be honest, (and undoubtedly too many others to count) in my own efforts to improve my climbing?

Yes – well, sort of.

In fact, SAID has been serving me really well these past few years of training, and the more I’ve learned to apply it effectively, with particular attention to the overload principle (OP), the more improvements I’ve seen in my climbing. (OP, as simply explained on ExRx.net, states: “If overload is not present, adaptation is not necessary, and will not occur.”)

I’ll explain this from a sport climber’s perspective (mine); the basic outline I’m offering here can be manipulated for bouldering or other climbing disciplines as well as other sports. Actually, it already has, because these are athletic training principles that have been effectively applied beyond what I’m briefly explaining here – obviously.

Back to the topic at hand though – when I first started climbing, and for a long, long while – years, I’m sure – I improved a lot at climbing just by climbing and trying climbs that were harder and harder: SAID/OP in action. But I also gravitated toward the style of climbing I was best at and avoided what I wasn’t naturally good at – which also resulted, inevitably, in SAID/OP in action. Meaning that I got better and better at technical vertical face climbing with lots of bad footholds and intermediates, but not much else – never developing the skill set needed for steep, thuggy, powerful climbing – or steep endurance climbing, for that matter. Or crack climbing or true friction slab climbing, either.

Those latter two are still victims of SAID/OP for me, actually – I’m sure I “suck” at them, still, but that’s how it goes; I won’t get better at them without practice…of course not. But frankly, I don’t much care at the moment. Climbing is personal – as in you choose to train because you love the results or you love training or both, or you choose not to train because you’re happy enough just climbing or you’re getting the results you want from just climbing or both, and you choose to care about certain angles/styles or you choose not to; it’s up to you, always, to choose what you like and want to care about in climbing, or in anything, really.

For me, as someone who really likes seeing the results of training manifested in my climbing, I’d rather focus my training efforts now on the areas that I’m passionate about getting better at – the areas that will help improve both my steep climbing game AND, at this point, my ticky-tacky vertical maneuvering, too, because I did hit a wall there that I couldn’t get beyond, as I’ve discussed too many times here to count – hit the limit of routes/route level I could climb near home that didn’t require more strength and power than I possessed. And that’s where a whole different application of SAID has come into play for me.

(To be continued)

This multipart series of blogs and articles starts here, in case you have to catch up. Remember that my designation of each area as “easy,” “medium” or “hard” is purely subjective. I’ve arrived at the designations from my personal experience garnered from 20 years of climbing along with my observations from climbing coaching throughout the past four years. You may find some of the areas harder or easier to change than I do/did. You also might not agree with me or my take on things. That’s fine – feel free to take it or leave it as you wish! Also, remember that the information I provide here is purely offered as advice and that no exercises or training program should be undertaken without receiving medical clearance from a healthcare professional.

One other caveat: As will be true for all of the entries and articles in this series, if you’ve already mastered or maxed out the topic at hand to the best of your ability level, you’ll reap far fewer benefits or none at all from my suggestions – good for you that you figured it out, but sorry I couldn’t help you out more. Happy climbing, bouldering and training!

eHow Fitness Article: Replacement Exercises for Triceps Pushdown

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Strength training has gradually opened up a whole new realm of climbing to me that I never believed I’d enjoy or embrace: the world of steep, thuggy sport climbing. As this transformation has gradually taken place (and gradual, it has most definitely been and continues to be, as strength-training gains take a relatively long time to manifest, but boy, when they do and you look back a year or two or three behind you after putting in the time and consistency, the results can/will likely totally wow you!), I’ve seen tremendous gains in muscles and muscle groups that I targeted with specific exercises that mimic or work the muscles in a fashion similar to climbing movements (the Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand — or SAID — principle of training).

The result has been a slow but steady and ongoing improvement (this despite my oh-so-many misfires due to my enthusiasm for training and the resultant overtraining and overuse injuries I incurred as a result) in my major areas of climbing weaknesses – something I’ll discuss in more detail in an upcoming Ways to Improve Your
Sport Climbing/Bouldering blog in greater detail (the use of directed strength training to improve climbing/bouldering ability, that is).

Today, though, I share with you my latest eHow Fitness article: Replacement Exercises for Triceps Pushdown. This article details myriad ways to strengthen your triceps, the main muscles on the backs of your upper arms. Your triceps brachii play a big role in executing “pressing” or “pushing” motions in climbing (though technically when triceps contract, they’re pulling, as muscles can only contract/relax — meaning that when your triceps contract, they are indeed pulling!). Through targeted triceps strengthening, I’ve improved my own ability to take holds down farther, buoying my belief that this type of training can prove a huge help for any shorter-than-average (i.e. sub-5’10″-ish) rock climber. Stronger triceps will increase your ability to reach between holds and decrease your perception of being too short or finding nearly as many routes too reachy for your wingspan. Don’t knock triceps training if you’re taller, either — you, too, can reap the rewards of stronger triceps — taller folks with meatier fingers, for example, will find that with a stronger pressing ability that they can reach right past those crappy intermediates. Plus, almost any boulderer will find greater comfort in and less fear of sketchy topouts with a stronger ability to mantle.

My current favorite pure strength-training triceps exercises are kickbacks with free weights and cable side triceps extensions (which you can modify to replicate the motion of gastoning). I also find that certain yoga poses/classes provide a butt-kicking (or rather, triceps-torching) upper-arm workout, while also demanding balance, flexibility, focus and stability in the process. As always, the takeaway message here is that — despite my best efforts for so many years (15+) to prove otherwise to myself AND despite my personal former avoidance of all upper-body/outside-of-climbing training methods beyond running and stretching regularly — training specific areas of weakness outside of climbing, and in particular, areas that have never been challenged specifically or strengthened in the past, can yield tremendous on-the-rocks improvements in climbing ability. Yes, strength training takes time, effort, belief, persistence and consistency — plus most likely more resting and less climbing for at least some of the year – but you’ll never KNOW if you have the potential to improve your climbing and expand your climbing world by using off-the-rocks strength-training methods until/unless you give them an honest, long-term, dedicated effort and thus, the chance to prove themselves worthy of your time and commitment.

Stronger triceps help make moves like this easier.