Tag Archives: weight training

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!

Pyramids and Fruit? Yes, I’m Still Talking About Climbing & Training…

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After three days off from climbing and one day of total rest, I felt awesome yesterday morning, full of energy and with no residual soreness – exactly where I want to be to start my spring/summer training. I’m beginning my more structured training program with a gradual accumulation and build-up in weight training to prepare myself for some maximal-strength training when summer in Ten Sleep is in full swing. Soon, it will be far too hot to climb at the chossy steeper crags, meaning I’ll be back into the more finesse- and finger-oriented style of climbing in the canyon — a climbing style that allows me to push my body’s power and strength levels in weight training while still climbing somewhat for performance outside.

I decided to give the route I’ve tried a couple times that’s honestly too hard for current-me a rest for at least a week, and I may not get on it again until I’m stronger. I have sound reasons for this choice. Sure, climbing (or I should more accurately say, flailing my way up) that too-hard-for-me route will make me stronger, but I’m also giving up a ton of climbing/training days if every single attempt on the route makes me so destroyed that I need three or four days to recover from one pitch of climbing. I don’t regret checking it out, though — it gave me a good, solid insight into another level of climbing power and strength that I want to work hard to attain; it gave me an incredible on-the-rocks strength-and-power workout (twice!); and I really enjoy the more subtle technicality of the powerful moves on it, even though I can’t do many of them together yet.

As I see it, though, if I’m still getting pushed and falling off of easier climbs, and if I still have easier climbs available that I haven’t redpointed, I should probably try to send those climbs first, before ramping it up and trying a route repeatedly that renders me useless and destroyed for all climbing and training for days after a single effort. And I do firmly believe that building route pyramids is one of the smartest ways to progress through climbing grades. For me, of course, this has meant building an entirely new pyramid over the past few years, made up of routes featuring climbing styles I historically sucked at. I pretty much had a Ten Sleep pyramid (you can throw Shelf Road and other vert-tech areas in there, too) and an “everywhere else pyramid,” and the everywhere else pyramid was more like a random, tottering, structurally unsound Jenga building ready to crumble into dust at the slightest touch.

So I had to start constructing my new route pyramid at what felt like a relatively low level on the more popular sport-climbing angle of all styles of steep overhangs, from the endurance-fests of the Red River Gorge to the powerful dynamic styles of other steep areas, and everything in between. Since I set my mind to it and stopped obsessing about how much I “sucked” at this kind of climbing and how the grades were “so easy,” I’ve been hungrily plucking all of the low-lying fruit that I can to solidify my base. I’ve come to view each letter grade I add to my steep-’n'-powerful pyramid as a crucial building block indicating breaking into a new level. I then surround that block with many of its fellows, using the overall imaginary picture of a sturdy pyramid as evidence of my improvement and my expanding base of knowledge and strength.

And yet I still believe there’s merit in trying routes that are too hard for me (or you), in really pushing outside your current comfort/ability zone now and again. This can be especially worthwhile in your home area where the climbs are always there for you to try, and it makes sense, too, if you’re out of easier climbs to try at your local area, of course. When you check out a route that’s on the edge of your current ability, your eyes get opened up to what’s possible for you in the future – what you might be able to do in a year or two, with hard work and dedicated effort in training. It can be motivating, and it can also help put the difficulty of your current project(s) in perspective, making them feel easier. As always, it’s about balance and priorities – do you want to spend your time banging your head against the proverbial wall, or do you want to send lots of routes quickly, or something in between these two extremes? And do you want more climbing days, generally meaning you’ll have to try less-difficult climbs, or fewer climbing days characterized by much harder efforts?

In any case, by sticking to the lower-lying fruits still left for me (and I didn’t send, so they’re obviously still challenging), I didn’t trash myself climbing yesterday. This is a crucial key to successfully climbing and training on the same day without overdoing it, and it’s also critical for multiple days of climbing and training in a row without injury. You have to stop climbing and/or training when you still have plenty of energy left in the tanks to do whatever you plan to do next without risking injury or overtraining. This can be a hard thing to judge, especially at first. That’s why it’s always best to err on the side of underdoing it rather than overdoing it, especially when you are first embarking on a new or different training program or level of training (since there’s no point in getting injured in training). No matter what you plan or your trainer/coach/friend/partner has planned, if your body doesn’t feel recovered and fresh enough for a given workout, you must have the discipline to walk away from it and to understand that in doing so, you’re making the right choice for the overall progression of your climbing ability.

After a snack, I started my post-climbing workout, doing half of my full set of 18 lifts/exercises; I plan to do the other half after climbing on Saturday. I interspersed my grip-strength work throughout the weights workout; again, it’s so much fun to work on my strength in climbing for a change of pace right now. I do strongly believe that no matter how good a person – any person – is at any skill, there’s always room for improvement, and I’m no exception to this. It’s just problematic and counterproductive to our full development as well-rounded climbers (or athletes) when we fall into the alluring trap of always working on and climbing/training to our strengths while totally neglecting our weaker suits, as I did for so many years.

This morning, I feel pleasantly worked and ready for an easier training day, though as always, I struggled to get to sleep last night and woke up way too early this morning. This seems to be my status quo after hard training and/or climbing days, much to my annoyance. It’s like I’m too hyped up from the training to get to sleep, and I’m still wound up when I wake up, too. You have to work with what you’ve got, though, and that’s what always happens to me – and then I’ll get super tired by tonight, and I’ll be really tired tomorrow night, too, I’m sure – but I have two nights now to catch up on all the sleep I need to be recovered for another hard session on Saturday.

As for today’s training…well, I’m not sure what I’m going to do quite yet. After an ultra-intense session like yesterday, I always view the second-day training as optional rather than mandatory. It really all depends on how I feel when I warm up. Last Saturday, I felt pretty torched, so I ended up only doing light dynamic stretching, brief endurance/recovery work and general-fitness cardio. I’d always like to do more than I can do without hurting myself, and I know this about myself, but I’ve learned the hard way (overtraining and overuse injuries) that so much of the time in training for climbing, less can be more. One or two high-quality, high-intensity and focused training sessions in a week’s time can often yield faster and better results in the big picture than three or four lower-quality, less-focused and less-intense but longer and more scattered training sessions.

It’s Time for Spring Training

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I hiked up to the crag yesterday despite having lots of misgivings about rock climbing at all. After all, Monday had been a successful day; after three days off, I’d sent a powerful route and then put in a solid effort on an even more powerful route that’s way above my current ability level, rendering me sore and utterly worked in the aftermath. And then on Wednesday, I’d climbed despite not being fully recovered, albeit on a different style of climbing, though for Ten Sleep Canyon, still a steep, bouldery and powerful affair. So it really should have come as no surprise, and it really didn’t come as a surprise to me at all, that when faced once again with trying Monday’s too-powerful-for-me project as my prospective route yesterday – or checking on a new project entirely – I didn’t feel all that enthused (since I think it’s never that fun or smart to check out a new project when you’re already feeling tired and worked; you can really get the wrong impression this way).

I’ve finally (FINALLY!) learned over these past few years more and more and more how to honor my body and to really heed the messages coming from it instead of just going along with whatever the plan (be it training or climbing) might be. If I’m not feeling it on a given day, I don’t ignore that message. Yesterday, my initial impulse was that I would have a more productive and fruitful day, and I’d risk less of a chance of overuse/overtraining, if I trained at home in a controlled environment rather than the haphazard (by comparison) way that rock climbing uses the body. This way, I could move through selected and directed exercises slowly and consciously, instead of getting pulled into the moment while I climbed and possibly pushing a muscle or muscle group or system too hard that was already overly fatigued. Sounds sort of strange, but it was my gut feeling from the moment I thought about climbing when I awoke, and it grew as I hiked up to the crag.

I’m proud of myself that I didn’t even try to climb; I managed to resist the temptation and maintain discipline. I belayed a few times, and then we came home. I warmed up for my indoor training session with a few light sets of pull-ups. I then completed about half of my standard full set of weight-training exercises, instantly nixing a few as I realized that these were the specific muscles that didn’t want to be worked hard; they were still too fatigued from climbing, and pushing them yet again would’ve been a bad choice. What I was most excited about was doing a grip strength and forearms workout, as I rarely specifically focus on this, since it’s training to my strength and most definitely still far and away my strong suit in climbing, when compared to big-muscle pulling power and power endurance and such. But seeing as my hands and forearms felt the least worked of all (i.e., totally fresh), it only made sense – because even if they’re my strength, this doesn’t mean I don’t have room to get stronger in these areas as well.

This led to an awesome second session of finger and forearm training with Kevin, and as always, it was so much fun – training strengths usually is fun. That’s usually why we gravitate towards them and explains how I spent 15 years looking the other way and claiming that I couldn’t really develop upper body strength or pulling power, which is obviously total hogwash; I just didn’t understand how to train this properly or effectively until the last three years or so.

After our training session, we discussed our plans for May, which are going to include less outdoor climbing and more structured training, since we both can see the benefits of this. For me, it’s partially about my inability to recover quickly from massive powerful efforts on the rock – I need more rest after tackling powerful beasts of climbs that push my max-strength levels so much (same way I’d need lots of rest after doing a max-strength weight-training workout) before I get on them again. And since I want to push myself in this area most of all, since it’s still so clearly my weakness, I should be willing to “give up” some climbing days in order to make it happen – but this doesn’t mean I can’t train at all, as I realized yesterday. It opens up my grip and forearm training possibilities on those days when my big-power muscles aren’t ready to be pushed again.

This is really exciting for me, both because it’s fun to train this and because I get to train it with Kevin, and training with a psyched partner can be really fun. I’m also stoked because I’m planning to do structured additional workouts focused on different systems on second days, like today – some high-intensity endurance and/or power endurance workouts. In the excitement of coming home and healing my nerve impingement and being able to climb and having fun friends here to climb with and the April weather that was too good to be true, I’ve been feeling pretty neglectful about my own climbing training, honestly, though I’ve definitely been diligent about stretching and cardio and climbing to my weaknesses instead of my strengths. But I feel now like it’s time to refocus and get back on target in terms of systematically working my body in an intelligent and more directed and structured and targeted fashion – and I’m really psyched to embark on this yet again, guided by a stronger faith than I’ve ever had in my ability to hear and heed the messages from my body in terms of appropriate training intensities and focus areas on any given day.