Tag Archives: training for climbing

Ways to Improve Your Sport Climbing/Bouldering (8): Strength Training (HARD)

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Tree

Five years ago, this tree was a struggling sapling that I was trying not to run over with the lawnmower. Like this tree’s slow, steady, and unnoticeable growth from day to day, tangible strength gains from weight training will happen slowly. However, with consistency, dedication and time, you may find that a few years from now, you’ve entirely transformed your climbing strengths and become much better at styles and moves that used to stymie you. It’s hard to be patient and to put the necessary time in, but the end result just might be worth it.

I’ve talked about strength training a ton and how much it’s helped me in improving my climbing here already. I’ve written about it from an instructive standpoint a lot, too – lots of articles on exercises and such. As I don’t really want to repeat myself over and over and over again, I’ll point you in the direction of the other articles I’ve written to get you going if you’ve never contemplated weight (or strength/resistance) training for climbing (or just general fitness) gains before. You can start with Basic Weight Training for Climbers & Boulderers; Why To Consider Weight Training for Climbing (Flashed Blog) and check out the numerous weight-training article links on my Online Articles page as well as ExRx.net’s article “Low-Volume, Progressive-Intensity Training.”

Instead of explaining why strength training can be so effective for almost any athlete when employed intelligently as a key component of the training plan – since I pretty much went over that in my last four-part WI entry on SAID/OP – I’d like to just touch as briefly on 10 other notable aspects of strength-training in today’s entry.

  1. As the ACTION Personal Trainer Certification Textbook says, “No one can perform resistance training for a month and expect to see significant changes.” Seeing awesome results from a well-designed strength-training regimen manifest in your climbing will take months, if not years. Our brains want instant results. Our bodies usually take a much longer time to build strength than we want or expect them to.
  2. Build a solid and balanced base. If you’ve never strength-trained before, start by following general strength-training guidelines before you get more specific with your exercise selection, sets and reps.
  3. Before you attempt any new or unfamiliar exercises, you must understand without reservation how to execute the movements correctly and how to use the equipment safely. Ask for a spotter if and when necessary. Consider hiring a personal trainer for a session or two.
  4. When you have established a solid base in strength training (usually a minimum of two or three months), consider adding in weakness-targeting exercises if you’re not already performing these as a part of your general program. Make working your weaknesses a top priority in training, both in weight training and other forms of training alike. Also, keep in mind that the areas that start out as your obvious weaknesses may change over time. As you strengthen your original target areas, other weaknesses may appear as more crucial to work in the future.
  5. Depending on your background (both strength-training and general fitness) and your (unchangeable) training (i.e. genetic) potential, no matter how well you choose your exercises, the more you’ve trained an area well and thoroughly in the past and the closer you are to your genetic potential, the fewer gains you will make. This sucks. I’ll discuss this along with some other annoying and sucky aspects of training more in the “Things That Suck” WI entry coming up.
  6. Realize that the best exercises for improving climbing-related areas of strength may not always be obvious. Deadlifts are a great example of this – and yes, I know that people will still argue that they’re not applicable for climbing or only for certain climbers, body types or styles of climbing. I respectfully but thoroughly disagree. While I’m sure there’s an upper limit of relevant amounts you could lift in terms of making climbing gains, I’m also fairly certain the majority of climbers aren’t at or anywhere close to that level. If you’ve never tried deadlifts consistently and built up to lifting a reasonable standard, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on in terms of potential body tension/core-strength gains for sport climbing and bouldering (not to mention avoiding injuries from life). It’s ultimately your choice – the same goes for other relevant exercises.
  7. Increasing volume (frequency and duration of exercises) isn’t the best way to build strength. “Increasing frequency or duration [i.e. volume] cannot make up for a decrease of intensity,” as explained in the ExRx article referenced above. It concludes, “Performing the fewest sets and exercises necessary to reach your objectives will facilitate higher workout intensities and can reduce the occurrence of overtraining.” This means that effective strength training doesn’t require hours in the gym and countless repetitions to exhaustion in every workout. It does require intensity – or lifting heavy weights/resisting difficult amounts.
  8. What about muscle gain? I know the arguments here: “But what about strength-to-weight ratio?” and “I don’t want to gain weight because being heavier could never help my climbing.” Etcetera. Again, this is your choice, but from what I’ve observed, it’s hard to get huge from low-volume, high-intensity strength training, and most folks seem to benefit from the (usually minor, if at all) muscle weight gain, should it happen – meaning that if you put on a few pounds of functional muscle weight but your body-fat percentage remains the same, you’ve likely actually improved your strength-to-weight ratio (this topic is covered and explained really well in Advanced Sports Nutrition-2nd Edition, by Dan Benardot). And you might not gain weight – you might lose weight as your body gains strength, too. See “What’s Your Strength to Weight Ratio? How I Got 50% Stronger While Losing 3% Body Weight” for a runner’s experience with this; it’s not exactly how I personally approach strength-training for climbing, but it’s a great general endorsement. The basic point here, though, is that functional and/or slightly more/bigger muscle is usually better than no muscle or weaker, smaller muscle. You’ll notice this is the case if you’re heavier but moves feel easier and you consequently feel lighter overall when you’re climbing. Of course, if you’re heavier and moves feel harder, you’ve either added fat (not good), or you’ve added too much muscle (not very common) for your own good, or you’ve added muscle in the wrong places for climbing. I hope to talk about this more – body composition/diet/nutrition – in another entry (man, I’m promising a lot of these – but the topics are all so interrelated, it’s hard not to digress!).
  9. Raw strength gains don’t usually translate directly into wild and immediate improvements in overall climbing performance. You have to take the time to mold the strength gains into your climbing. This means that even if you get stronger from lifting/training in the gym all winter, when you come out to climb in the spring on real rock, you’ll have to undergo and adjustment and manipulation period during which you learn how to effectively employ your strength gains in climbing. New techniques may have opened up for you to learn and integrate (as strength gains have a way of making formerly inaccessible techniques available), requiring you to rework aspects of coordination, balance, pacing, flexibility and so forth. Your mind may not completely understand your body’s new capabilities, and it won’t instantly and automatically integrate your strength gains into your climbing game. This takes time and is an integral part of the process, a key portion of the yearly training scheme.
  10. Similarly to No. 9, after you strength train for a period of time – and especially if you focus most or all of your training time on this for several months – it will also take time to build your power, power endurance and endurance up closer to your new strength level, allowing you to take full advantage of your strength gains. By raising your absolute strength level, you do indeed raise the potential level that you can bring those other components up to – but this won’t be automatic or quick, either. It’s a process that takes time (weeks to months) and discipline (training some of these can be painful) as well. I’ll discuss these components of climbing in my next few WI entries.

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 4 of 4 (MEDIUM – HARD)

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A great way to train for specific moves or sequences on a project route right now, if you’re at the start of your season, is to repeat them regularly (i.e. work the route, a great application of SAID — specific adaptations to imposed demands) to see if you can build up to doing them on the route (more on this when I talk power endurance and endurance). If you do happen to have lots of time midweek, and you’re recovered, and you can’t climb outside or you don’t want to or can’t replicate those moves on an indoor climbing wall but you want specificity in training, you can also try to break out any specific areas of strength that are lacking and train them in isolation with weights or resistance work.

This can lead to accumulation of fatigue for those specific moves, though, so use this method with caution – what I mean is that you can sabotage your efforts by tiring out the muscles you’re working to strengthen, and then carry that fatigue into your climbing days. I did this a lot last year, but I did it consciously, as I was working on a bigger-picture goal – trying to build and balance my injured left side back to and then beyond where it was before, while also noting what areas were really lacking on my long-term projects in terms of strength deficits. So I sacrificed the short-term satisfaction of trying to send for the (hoped-for) long-term gain of having a body that could take on the training plan, without injury, that I wanted to pursue this past winter, and hopefully come back stronger and send some routes more quickly while feeling better doing it as a result.

But for most people right now, it’s most likely too late if you’re smack in the middle or just starting your performance season to pick out your areas of weakness that hold you back or cause routine failure in terms of muscle strength and to implement a new weight-training program at the moment, unless you want to devote some or all of your season to training rather than performance, of course. And it’s honestly probably too early on for most folks to have hit their stride in terms of routes fitness yet, too – I know I’m not there yet. But SAID/OP is something to keep in mind as you go through this season, just taking note when you struggle on specific moves OR get a project dialed but still have trouble with a certain sequence or move despite knowing how to do it – and to try to figure out what muscles/muscle groups/motions are in play when you fail to execute.

And let’s say that you do happen to work on a project for a month, two months, three months, or more – and you just hit a sticking point, a move or sequence you can’t seem to put together or perform in sequence no matter how hard you try or train on the route. You’ve refined the beta ad nauseam, and you have nothing left to work out given your current strength level. Now, you have a choice – you can 1) try to stick with the route and hit that one lucky peak day where you’ll crest the wave and nail all the sequences, which does happen sometimes or 2) you can walk away – or perhaps the weather or your trip coming to an end will force you to walk away, ending your season despite your psych – armed with awesome training knowledge, so long as you can take it in that way (instead of “I’m a failure for not completing my ultra-hard-for-me project.”)

Before you walk away from the project, though, whether you intend to abandon it forever or just for now, if you want to get the most out of your efforts, take the time to ask yourself and those around you, “What muscles or motions am I specifically lacking strength in that hold me back from executing these movements more easily?” This sounds simple, but it often is more complex than the obvious (i.e. “I need to be able to pull harder.” But pull in what direction? Are there leg/core muscles involved? Is it about finger pull or lats or biceps or triceps? And so forth.). If you’re in the realm of No. 2 (which I have been for many of my long-term projects around here), it might in the end be more effective and rewarding (or less tedious or infuriating — two terrible ways to feel about rock climbing, for sure) to break out those motions and muscles and train them in isolation over a longer period of time to build up more strength so that you DO feel more secure and less drained when executing challenging movements and sequences as a result.

So to sum it up, unless you want to sacrifice some potential climbing performance now (or your season happens to be ending instead of just starting), routinely applying SAID/OP methods outside of climbing is something that you’re more likely to start looking at toward the end of the season. But it’s worth thinking about now and starting to take note of in the present (for example, though my biceps are stronger, they still aren’t strong enough, something I already recognize and am psyched to train again through another training season, which will happen whenever I decide I’m over this whole ”climbing outside” thing — right now it’s all I want, though!). At the end of this season, then, you’ll round up what you haven’t been able to do or the moves/sequences that have given you the most trouble, and assess the motions, holds or angles that you struggle with – and then you can adjust your training program accordingly to address those areas. Strength training outside of climbing for specific climbing-related gains – applying the principles of SAID/OP to specific areas of weakness that hold you back – can and should get more and more route- and movement-specific the more you do it, allowing you to pinpoint your areas of weakness and strengthen them accordingly.

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 3 of 4 (MEDIUM – HARD)

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Okay, so how about some real-life examples of SAID/OP?

Sure, I have some already this season early on, though it has been long in coming (and I’ve never been the patient type, but I am learning to bide my time) – bad spring weather kept me off a rope consistently for the longest time in years, meaning my strength was up but all the other stuff was pretty much down when I started on a rope again this year (except my head – which I can only explain by the fact that I have noticed as a bonus that every time I’ve gotten stronger, my confidence goes up as far as just getting on and going for it).

I honestly didn’t mind this time away to train this winter/early spring – not after last year’s debacle of the nerve injury and the subsequent loss of training time, which was followed by a scary ‘n’ tentative rehabilitation training period and then make-up/catch-up training period that I chose to employ through most of the summer season. That decision, hard as it was to make, left me in a much more solid stance and a more educated place to train intelligently through the winter. By that, I mean that my biggest goal was to have enough of a base to not get injured in training, and after that, to train my weaknesses smartly using SAID/OP to my greatest advantage.

With strength and power still (probably always) being my greatest weaknesses, being more of the slow-twitch type than the fast-twitch, I chose to train these almost exclusively through the winter. In addition to some standard exercises and opposing muscle exercises that I will likely always include in my training, I chose some new ones this year – biceps curls and dumbbell rear delt rows, to share a couple. These motions mimicked areas we’d classified as severely problematic in my climbing – the culprits of many of my falls and failed efforts, though honestly I hate to use the word “fail” anymore, because I’ve come to view those longest-term, hardest projects that I’ve bitten off as the greatest educational resources in my climbing world – they’re much more instructional than the routes I send easily or onsight, of course.

Thouhg my season has just begun, I’ve already seen real benefits from using the principle of specific adaptations to imposed demands (SAID) and the overload principle (OP) in as training tools – coming out and being able to perform a move easily on one route, for example, off a hold that I couldn’t even begin to pull my body into, let alone execute the move off of the hold, last year at this time. And on another route, I’d been just constantly irritated by the knowledge that if I was a stronger short-ish person, I’d just jack my foot up on a high step and lock off deeply and grab the next hold, but I just couldn’t hold the lock-off, so I was doing this wild, unpleasant, off-kilter and power-sapping throw. This season, I went up and out loud said, “Well, I’m going to take here and try this move again how I want to do it and not be able to do it, and then go back to the other way,” (stellar positive thinking example there, but hey, I’m human, too!) and then I pulled on and did it the way I’d always wanted to – shockingly enough to me, because, yeah, I am still surprised when I see the results of training, even though I believe in it. And then I lowered down and climbed all the way through the sequence that way, and have since kept to that new, stronger-short-ish person beta.

(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!