Tag Archives: climbing project

Ways to Improve Your Sport Climbing/Bouldering (5): Resting (EASY-MEDIUM)

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Resting enough between efforts can help you send routes in fewer tries.

Resting enough between efforts can help you send routes in fewer tries.

Today’s topic: Resting. I originally had this designated as “easy,” because nothing seems like it should be easier than resting enough to promote solid climbing (or athletic performance), right? But then I thought about my own struggle with resting enough, and I realized that this one falls into a gray area, at least for me. Resting enough seems like it should be an easy thing to adjust, but it often isn’t – especially not for enthusiastic folks like me who are more than willing to push their bodies beyond the breaking point on a daily basis.

(An aside, here. Wow, is it ever hard for me to separate these elements out into single components for blog entries and articles. I suppose that’s to be expected and a good thing, really; it indicates how interconnected and integral my view of the whole climbing/training process is these days. But, for example, I find myself wanting to include nutrition and hydration and recovery tactics and commentaries on supplements and substances and so forth into the topic of resting…but no! Those have to wait, though I will touch on some of them briefly in today’s discussion.)

My routine: After years of struggle and overtraining despite my best intentions and growing knowledge of the necessity of resting enough in order to reap gains and avoid overuse injuries/burnout, I seem to have finally settled into a pace and ratio of training and climbing to resting that works for my individual body.

My current winter-training regimen (focused on training my weaknesses) involves several weeks on of heavy-intensity training. Each week includes 2 hard days and 1-2 more moderate days of specific climbing training (the components of each of these days depend on the week and the day, and I’ll discuss these components more in future blog entries). I take at least one day totally off from physical activity in each on week, sometimes more – this just depends on how I feel. Most important to me is to maintain a consistent high-quality effort in my two high-intensity workouts each week, and to come into each of them as recovered as I possibly can so that I can give 100 percent and reap the benefits of that effort.

Backing the camera up for a more month-to-month view of this year, each month includes a lighter week, with some months featuring two or three lighter weeks, depending on the cycle, my travel plans and climbing-performance plans, and so forth.

Beyond this, no matter what my training or climbing schedule says, I will forgo my plans or a particular part of my plans if my body doesn’t feel recovered enough for me to proceed and see gains. For a driven person like me, this concession has been hard-fought, but I’ve pushed myself over the edge into overtraining far too many times. I’ve also seen the positive results of “extra rest days” enough times now to realize that they’re pretty much always good, despite the nuttiness I experience when weather or whatever other circumstances force me into extra rest days. In other words, while I don’t love rest days, I can handle them better now because I’ve seen the results. I’ve learned, at long last, that (within reason), more rest is almost always a good thing – so long as the person in question is putting in high-quality, high-intensity, weakness-focused workouts or solid high-intensity climbing efforts on their “on days.”

Today’s article: Resting to Improve and Promote Peak Sport Climbing and Bouldering Performance

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. 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 (4): Clipping (EASY)

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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. 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!

The most efficient clipping stances aren’t always obvious!

Today’s topic – Clipping. (Sorry, boulderers, this one’s for sport climbers only!)

My routine: I strive to clip quickly and efficiently every time. Clipping for me is automatic at this point; it’s rare for me to bobble the clip. On redpoint efforts, clipping stances are one of the first pieces of beta I work out. Basically, I want to figure out where to clip so I can then not think about the clips anymore – they just become part of the flow and movement of the route, instead of something to stress about. I will work hard to figure out the least strength-sapping, speediest clips possible, integrating the clip into a climbing move if that’s more efficient than clipping from a stance.

Sure, I can still mess clips up occasionally; I’m human. I find it harder to clip perfectly on onsight efforts; unknown terrain is more challenging, and it’s not uncommon to make a hard clip and then do a couple more moves only to discover that you missed the obvious clipping stance and wasted some energy in the process. Also on onsights, I also will miscalculate my height (still!) sometimes, thinking I can pull the rope up and make a clip from a great stance, only to discover I’m missing an inch or two of wingspan (sometimes more). In these situations instead of getting frustrated, I try to assess the danger (i.e. is it safe for me to do a move or two more to make this clip, and do I have the strength to do so) and proceed as my assessment dictates.

The overall point, though, is that clipping the quickdraws shouldn’t be a regular hindrance to your climbing performance – it shouldn’t even be a factor on most climbs (except for those climbs where a strenuous and unskippable clip represents a crux or the crux of the route, of course). It doesn’t take all that much time to train your body and mind to make the actual motion of pulling up the rope and clipping it efficient and automatic. Best of all, it’s easy to incorporate clipping training into your day, no matter how tired you are or how tight your schedule is.

Today’s article: How to Clip a Climbing Rope Into a Quickdraw on a Sport Climb. (This has been revised and updated since its original 2010 publication date; I’ll be revising and updating articles as needed for each topic covered in this 2013 series of blogs…and writing new ones as needed if I haven’t adequately covered the topic in an article already).

Ways to Improve Your Sport Climbing/Bouldering (3): Breathing (EASY)

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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. 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!

Today’s topic: Breathing.

My routine: It’s pretty simple – I start breathing deeply and rhythmically on the ground before I try any problem or climbing route. I work to keep that going throughout the route, and really strive to return to that baseline while resting on the route. I don’t hold my breath. And yeah, I shout sometimes when I’m trying a powerful move, too, and that also has to do with training breathing tactics and using them to your advantage.

I learned this lesson loud and clear (though it was one of those things that I’d “known I should do” for years) a few summers ago – I just needed the push from a partner and to see the results in order to make it a habit. My partner (Kevin) told me to start breathing like a freight train before leaving the ground on a longstanding redpoint project that I was consistently managing to one hang but couldn’t seem to put together; it was right at my power-endurance limit (meaning I could do all the moves by themselves, but putting them together was too much for me – not enough shakes plus too many lengthy, power-draining series of movements for me at the time – a classic sport-climber tale of woe, right?). Anyhow, when I actually DID the freight-train breathing, I was amazed at how much better and stronger I felt, not to mention how many more moves I could do in a row (and this ultimately contributed to me sending, I’m sure).

Lesson learned, correction made – and it’s stuck with me to this day. I breathe consciously before I climb, try to maintain the breathing rhythm during the climb, attempt to bring my breathing back to my established rhythm at the rests on the climb, and I focus on breathing to help me recover after the climb. More importantly, though – I don’t hold my breath when I do hard moves or sequences of moves. Ever.

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As for the shouting, that somehow has worked its way into my repertoire, too. I used to never make noise when I climbed (aside from whining when I fell, of course!), but (curiously enough), the more strength and power I’ve gained and the more dynamic movements I’m able to try or do, the more I yell. It’s unconscious most of the time, but sometimes it’s somewhat or even entirely conscious and a bit angry (truth be told); this happens when the shout is an effort to override my doubting brain that’s trying to get me to NOT try the next move. The vocalization seems to help drown out the internal voices of doubt.

Today’s article: Using Smart Breathing Tactics to Improve Your Climbing or Bouldering (This has been revised and updated since its original 2010 publication date; I’ll be revising and updating articles as needed for each topic covered in this 2013 series of climbing training blogs…and writing new ones as needed if I haven’t adequately covered the topic in an article already).