Tag Archives: strength training

Step 1 for 2012 in Ten Sleep: Defeating the Nemesis Clip

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On Thursday this past week, I went out to get on this old foe of a climb. This climb has always had this big, huge nemesis of a clip on it for me – I’d never actually made the clip before, because the clip is sketchy and scary. The route isn’t really steep, and the clip comes in the middle of the worst holds on the route. It’s not in the wrong spot because there’s nowhere else that I could conceivably clip; it’s just that all the holds are gnarly and it’s very balance-y. Every time I’ve climbed up into the clipping stance before, I’ve grabbed the draw – even after taking the fall. I’ve never attempted to clip; I’ve just jumped off from the clipping stance, and then climbed back up and grabbed the draw and clipped up, and then stood in the stance and made the clipping motion. I haven’t beaten myself up about this, either; I just figured that as always with me, when the time was right and sending became more imminent, the clip would fall into place. And I didn’t and still don’t fancy falling off with all the rope pulled up to clip, nor do I want to skip the clip and potentially plummet into the slab below.

Back to Thursday. I haven’t really been feeling tiptop this week; my body needs rest days and I hear it; I’m in the midst of two days off right now. But the weather was warm and I was stoked to try and had a belayer, so why not? This climb actually illustrates yesterday’s blog entry perfectly, since the coolest aspect of it for me this season is the discovery that I can do the hardest sequence of the route – which is a balance-y, technical nightmare on mean and gnarly holds – in a more efficient and fluid manner due to my increase in overall body strength. Crazy, I know – but I can take a terrible hold and high step and really pull down on this hold and lock it off in a way that I couldn’t last season. I wasn’t strong enough to get into this position or to lock it off, which meant more abuse for my fingers due to my lack of reliance on the rest of my body.

So after my warm-up burn on this climb, I went for my one real burn of the day. I usually only do two go’s on this thing, because it rips my fingers up. Surprisingly, I high-pointed it. That was cool, since I hadn’t been on it in a couple weeks, and I’d only been on it a couple days this season so far. I fell going for the crux clipping hold, taking the giant plunge. I hung there, gathered my strength and courage, telling myself, “You just need to go up and make the clip,” which is what I’ve told myself every time I’ve hung before this clip – only this time, it worked! Hooray! I climbed up strongly into the clipping stance, pulled up the rope, and even bobbled the clip a little bit, and still made it, and made a couple moves after, even though I was overcome with excitement and was shaking. I tumbled off, whooping with glee: “Woo-hoo! I made the clip!”

The biggest barrier to me believing I could ever send this climb just crumbled; I’m overjoyed. I felt stronger on it than ever on a day when I definitely wasn’t at 100 percent. I high-pointed and made the clip; I climbed the crux a bunch of times, too, to make sure I know how it feels and to train my body to do the moves perfectly. I know for a fact that my increased overall body strength has lent me more stability and comfort and confidence as I move up the terrible holds on this route – my technique is better because I’m stronger, and my increase in strength allows me to utilize different techniques to perform the hardest moves on this climb. I’m so excited to get back and try it again…but alas, we’re in for some cooler days now, so I’ll have to wait until the next hot day plus psyched partner to try to make it happen. I’m totally fine with this, though; all things in time.

Training Talk 6: Perfect Partners — Technique Plus Strength

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I used to be a condescending technical climber who smugly believed that my superb climbing technique could ultimately solve nearly any climbing difficulty that presented itself in my world – never mind that the moment I stepped outside my vertical-technical comfort zone in Ten Sleep Canyon, this was proven wrong time and time again. To that phenomenon (of near-total failure on steeper climbs), I simply retorted, “I’m just not a powerful climber,” as if this summarily dismissed all things thuggery as non-technical. My patronizing attitude toward steeper and more gymnastic climbing styles stemmed from my sheer ignorance about strength and technique and how they go hand in hand to help, support and enhance one another.

And yet, this is not to say that I don’t think perfecting climbing technique isn’t a worthwhile endeavor…

Watching a recent UFC event, Diaz vs. Miller, my ears perked up when commentator Joe Rogan made an astute observation about headliner and fight winner Nate Diaz. Rogan noted that Diaz’ superb technical skills made him need less absolute power and strength to have the same effect as other fighters – in other words, his technical precision and skills (I think Rogan was talking about striking in this particular instance) increase his overall efficiency, thereby decreasing the absolute level of power and strength necessary to have a devastating impact on his opponents. So Diaz, though definitely strong and powerful in his own right, can overcome stronger, more powerful opponents, in part due to his superior technique.

This to me served as an awesome nonclimbing illustration of the importance of developing excellent technique for sport climbers and boulderers – but not to the exclusion of working for more power and strength. It’s all about balancing the two components and using them to support one another, not pitting them against one another with a “vs.,” as in “Technique vs. strength; which one is more important in climbing hard?” The answer is that both are important, and that to develop your peak proficiency as a climber, you should pay close attention to both of these key components.

In fact, as Periodization-5th Edition: Theory and Methodology of Training, by Tudor O. Bompa and G. Gregory Haff explains, ““The limiting factor of improvement for prospective athletes is generally considered to be technical proficiency. However, recent evidence suggests that muscular strength may be the most important factor because it is strongly related to technical abilities.”

In other words, my snooty and patronizing attitude about my high-‘n’-mighty technical climbing skills was off-base and misplaced. Before I started training (beyond the random bouldering in the gym, etc. that I thought qualified as “training” before), I didn’t have the strength and power to continue improving my technical skills or to incorporate new, more strength- and power-dependent technical skills into my climbing repertoire. This has happened regularly as I’ve developed more strength and power in the rest of my body beyond my fingers during the past few years. I definitely have more technical skills in my arsenal due to my increased total-body strength. But, like Diaz, I may still not have to be as strong and powerful to accomplish movements or send certain climbs as a less technically developed but stronger and more powerful climber.

I’m not saying that I’m God’s gift to technical climbing, here, either – I’m just noting that if you train either of these crucial components of climbing exclusively or you put too much weight on either of them, you may be hosing yourself from experiencing your peak performance potential. Technical development and strength/power development should always go hand-in-hand, supporting one another in an athlete’s overall improvement toward becoming the most efficient and effective player of the game or sport in question, whether it’s MMA, rock climbing or something else entirely. Neglect either one and you give up the opportunity to advance as quickly as you can, potentially setting yourself up for long periods of plateau or stagnation, like what I experienced for at least a decade.

To sum it up: Perfect technique will never make up for a lack of strength and power. A high level of strength/power often makes it possible to execute climbing moves successfully with less-perfect technique. BUT (and it’s a big, big BUT!) perfect technique makes it possible for a climber to do moves using less strength/power, since solid technique translates into a consistently more efficient usage of the climber’s current strength/power level.

Just Another Sunny Day in Wyoming

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On this lovely Wyoming Mother’s Day, I’m going to content myself with a lazy, laid-back enjoyment of the continued blast of unreal, unseasonably warm and dry conditions that we’ve had this entire spring season. Thankfully, we’ve been a bit more sensible about plotting out a more sustainable sequence of climbing and training days in May so far. After climbing hard and training harder last Wednesday, I took it really lightly on Thursday, and then spent all day Friday with my butt glued to my stability ball, saturated with work obligations.

Yesterday, I felt pretty decently recovered on my warm-up, but then I discovered when attempting my projects that I still wasn’t quite recovered at the outside edge of my power and strength. What I mean by this is that the little bit of extra oomph and push needed to do hard dynamic moves or long, static strength-dependent reaches was noticeably lacking to me compared to how I’d felt on Wednesday on the same moves.

No matter. I still had some decent climbing time, working on refining the subtleties of movement required for this weird, swing-under-the-roof-belly move that keeps shutting me down in sequence. I think I’m messing up some little adjustment in my trajectory and maybe not going for it hard enough. As a naturally more slow-twitch athlete, I always find it really hard to suddenly switch gears like this on a route (it’s equally hard for me to perform an explosive move right off the deck). On this route, I go from plodding along on easy terrain to a wild, momentum driven swing down and under a roof – very unusual movement for any climb, as well as being a huge change of pace. Maybe next time…still have to learn how to make that happen consistently in sequence.

I got on my newest project after this, for the second time only, and I was pleased that even feeling more tired than I had on my first venture up it on Wednesday, I remembered almost all of the beta on the entire route (and it’s more than 100 feet long!). I had some beta refinement that needed to happen, for sure…reworking the first crux into a more Alli-friendly method (tick-tacking through the moves instead of doing bigger moves), sorting out clips, etc. I like this climb; it’s varied and requires endurance along with strength and power; usually for me, the longer the climb and the more places I can stop and shake and the less steep it is, the better off I am, and this climb is no exception. Hopefully I can put it together quickly before we move on into climbing only in Ten Sleep Canyon – with the weather so hot and summer creeping up on us, it seems like our season for off-season, low-lying choss crags will be ending sooner rather than later this year.

And I do have some beefs to address from last season in Ten Sleep Canyon, that’s for sure – but those, I’ll save for another day. After climbing yesterday, I wanted to train one-arm pull power again and fingers again, but I could tell from how I felt testing myself with my standard warm-up protocol that this wasn’t a wise decision – these areas were already shot. As always, my mind wanted more than my body could handle. At least these days I listen up instead of doing the workout anyhow and driving myself into a state of overuse/overtraining, which is what I would’ve been doing, for sure. Instead, I did the weight training elements that I hadn’t done on Wednesday, and curiously enough (totally sarcastic), those areas felt good to train yesterday. Funny how that works!