Tag Archives: training for climbing

A Great Day of Climbing + Strength Training for Climbing

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I had an absolutely awesome day of climbing and training yesterday. I love it when that happens – when it all comes together and my previous feelings and choices in climbing and training make sense, bringing me a day like yesterday; those are the days I truly live for.

My energy had dragged through much of last week, as I mentioned – I’d never felt really recovered, though I hadn’t felt horrible, either; just not as peppy and psyched as I usually am (or at least want to be as much as possible and can be sometimes). I ended up taking it as my lighter week for this month’s training, adjusting my schedule accordingly to accommodate my body’s apparent need for this, despite the fact that I wanted to put in another anatomical adaptation weight session to prepare for my upcoming maximal-strength build.

In any case, after Thursday’s killer go making the clip on my project, I ended up taking two rest days. On day one, I stretched, and on the other, I did nothing. I felt guilty for doing nothing, honestly; I still (STILL!) feel bad for taking two rest days in a row if I don’t do cardio on at least one of them. It’s silly, and I know it’s silly. So I listened up and honored my body despite the voices that told me I was being lazy; my body wanted me to rest.

I needn’t have worried or felt bad, though, because the result was a leap forward for me yesterday. I sent another low-lying fruit of steepness, finally doing this short, half-route with the weird sideways/downward dynamic move under a belly. The cool thing was that I finally had enough time (read: improved arm and body strength) in the set-up position to sort out my feet and push off properly. I couldn’t even barely do these moves one at a time less than a year ago; yesterday, they felt not bad at all (as they need to feel, since I’ll do them over and over again in the future, too, when I dig into the full-length route that starts with this baby pitch). This send freed me up to work on a much bigger endeavor, and I put in some cool beta refining on this, tweaking some sequences to make them work better for me.

But it was the at-home training that REALLY got me fired up yesterday; for the first time since my crazy left-hand nerve impingement paralysis episode, I felt amazing in strength training instead of kind of fragile and scared to push things. It’s funny, that, as I’m not sure how much of that has been “only in my mind,” or how much was actually a valid message from my body, but I’ve still felt rather frightened and delicate when training, afraid to push hard. This wasn’t the case yesterday though – it had been more than a week since my last weights session, and I discovered that my body is ready and psyched to move into my max-strength build, starting now. I felt more stable and balanced in all of my lifts; I could easily lift more weight than I could in the previous session in all of my lifts, too – and I felt solid enough to start testing the waters for more-intense lifting levels, moving into lower reps and higher weights. It was awesome! I wish I felt that good every single day. (I always wish I could train hard every day.)

Full of energy through my workout, I still had the discipline to stop at the end of my workout (I tend to feel ebullient and like I could just keep going with more training when I feel so great, but I’ve learned this isn’t really the smartest choice). I instantly drank a protein recovery drink, followed by a delicious big meal shortly thereafter, and a stretching session, too.

Today, so far, I feel awesome as well – I can tell I worked out hard, but I don’t feel annihilated. I feel good enough to get a much lighter workout in targeting a different energy system later on today, most likely – though as always, I’ll test my body out slowly as I warm up and use my observations from that to determine exactly how today’s workout will go and what it will be comprised of. I try to keep an open mind with no rigidity whatsoever about second-day on workouts/climbing days, allowing my body’s messages to guide my choices without coming in with any preconceived ideas about what I should do for the day, especially after a really hard first-day-on workout. I’ve found this to be the most effective way for me to avoid overtraining and encourage maximal performance gains from training and climbing days, both.

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.