Periodized Training for Climbing

Climbing is an odd activity that blurs the line between lifestyle, hobby, obsession, and sport.  If you get into climbing, you'll want to get better if for nothing else than the ability to explore more places and more climbs.  Getting better involves two distinct components, namely 1) technical skill and 2) physical ability.  In this post, I'll discuss methods and means to improve physical ability.  **Disclaimer:  this is not professional advice, nor is it for novice climbers.  Novice climbers should climb a lot, pay attention to movement efficiency and balance, climb on varied terrain and find a mentor.

If you want to know more, read these books:

• The Self Coached Climber - the most current book on the market that brings it all together
• Performance Rock Climbing - a little dated, but still full of good info
• An Eric Horst book (How to climb 5.12, Training for Climbing, one of the other equivalents)
• The Making of  Rock Prodigy / Anderson Brothers' Training Guide - this is essentially the beef from the above books; what exercises to do and in what order to get results.  It may not be the be all end all, but it gets results for a lot of people.  

What I do:
My training is essentially based on these books plus what I've picked up from friends.  I don't want to restate what others have said better, but as a brief summary, I try and periodize my training as follows (3-6 weeks per step):

1. ARC:  build up aerobic endurance/increase anaerobic threshold through long times on the wall.  
2. Hypertrophy:  build muscle mass, one rep max weight lifting style by hangboarding.
3. Power:  force divided by time, improve explosive strength by campusing
4. Anaerobic endurance:  climb through more pump with 4x4's

Try it once and listen to your body.  Then individualize your regimen.  Here is my current schedule (note the incorpration of bouldering, antagonist muscle training and spreading out of hard workouts):

A few more details on each phase:
ARC:  Look at professional marathon runners and you'll see that their mile splits are faster than you can run a single mile.  What pushes you into unsustainable anaerobic excercise is within their sustainable aerobic capabilities.  According to running literature you can train yourself to run at 80-90% max intensity and be in your aerobic state by running a lot at your aerobic limit (right under your anearobic threshold).  So do long sets on the wall over easy to moderate terrain, like 30 minutes of 5.8 climbing.  Take this time to work on movement, practice backsteps, footwork, and flagging.  Then reap the rewards of recovering while climbing sections of routes that within your aerobic limit.

Hypertrophy:  This is building muscle to gain strength.  You do this by working so hard that your muscles fail within a very short time.  The rock prodigy method suggests choosing 6-8 grips on the hangboard and doing 3 sets consisting of 6 reps of 10 sec hang / 5 sec rest.  Furthermore, rock prodigy suggests using weights and rigging a pully system to add or subtract weight as needed.  I have also been mixing in "frenchie's" (pull up hold, drop, pull up, lock off at 90 deg, pull up, lock off at 120, repeat...).  And to keep it interesting, boulder problems that focus on small holds with stopper moves, essentially fast failure but on a route.

Power:  also known as max recruitment, this is about getting all muscles to fire simultaneously to generate maximum force.  The classic exercise here is campusing.  I do 4-6 sets of ladders, that is start with hands off set (left hand low, right hand on the rung 18 inches higher, then reaching the low hand to the next rung 18 inches above the right hand).  I have also been doing 1 arm lock offs / negatives (with assistance as needed) and it is paying big dividends.  Not sure if that is more hypertrophy, but it helps with low lock offs while climbing.  To avoid campusing too much I am also aiming to do dynamic bouldering - big moves to small holds that focus on explosive power and contact strength (its not about finishing the problem but trying hard).

Anaerobic Endurance:  This is supposed to be the fastest to gain, but the fastest to lose, so it goes at the end of the periodization.  All I know to do here are 4x4's - choose 4 problems that are below your grade such that you can just barely do them all back to back to back to back.  Maybe you could eak out harder problems by doing running style repeats - alternating hard problems with short rest or an easy down climb.

Putting it all together:  
It seems easy, but the details are critical.  Find your target peak period - send season (October in my case) or a trip date, then plan backwards.  You have to do it to figure out what your body can handle.  Remember, injury free is the number one goal, so take a day off or drop down to one hard workout per week if you are feeling off.  Note in my plan the included antagonist muscle training.  Make sure to do pushups, wrist rotations, elastic therapy band workouts for your shoulders (rotators and stabilizers) at least once a week.

That got a bit long... I'm curious to here what else you guys do for exercises in each phase.  

The Climbing Media Fantasy

There seems to be a trend in climbing/mountaineering media that glorifies total commitment.  As a climber, who doesn't love commitment? That knowledge that the only way out is up and that when you make that move, there is no turning back; it raises your pulse and hits you with that shot of adrenaline you crave.  But this focus is more than just the moment while climbing, its about committing to the lifestyle of climbing.  

Climbing has always struck me as odd, its a rare subculture in which "the dream we all aspire to" is to be homeless, living out of a van at the crag.  You can see why the media loves this:  awkwardly good looking person realizes they don't fit the "traditional mold" forced on them by society so they abandon it to find freedom and follow their dream; its a perfect fairy tale.  But thats all it is, a fairy tale.  

We all love the butterflies in our stomach as we commit and feel every inch of air under our feet.  When it comes down to it, we like that feeling, but no one wants to get hurt.  Just the same way, no one actually wants to be the dirt poor totally committed climber.  What they want is to be recognized as the unique and individual snowflake of a person who contributes to society with their personal art of a lifestyle, but still has enough money to hang out at coffee shops on rest days while they live out of their off road and fuel efficient RV.  Its hypocrisy to want all the benefits from society without making any contribution.  

The opposite of the dirtbag dreamer is the weekend warrior, not the nameless, faceless, dead-inside cog-in-the-machine worker bee drone of society.  What sets the weekend warrior apart from the dirtbag dreamer?  Where the dirtbag dreamer is a hypocrite living in a fantasy, the weekend warrior is rooted in reality.  The weekend warrior cannot give up climbing, nor can they give up their life.  The result of climbing is that it makes us feel good.  The result of our careers is that it leaves our mark on the world.  Along the way, it earns enough money to provide stability, to live comfortably and even to climb a fair bit.  

Its easy to see the trap of society as a slippery slope: buy a car, buy a house, pay off debt, buy a bigger TV, pay taxes, repeat. die.  But is the dirtbag dream really any better?  In short, dirt bagging is neither sustainable nor secure.  Food, lodging, and transportation cost time either in money earned or effort spent.  Is it better to spend a day foraging for food or a day working and buy a weeks worth of food?  The weekend warrior is a roped climber while the dirtbag dreamer is a free soloist.  The weekend warrior is hindered by what he carries where the dirtbag is hindered by what he doesn't.  

The trick is to walk along the ridge top and not slide down the slippery slope on either side - not the societal trap to the left nor the dirtbag illusion to the right.  Plan ahead, take risks, and wander down off the ridge top.  Just don't get struck in a rut.  Dirtbags make for better videos, just don't confuse fantasy with reality.  

Malcom Gladwell: Blowing Up

This book is good.  Check it out!

Blowing Up: 
This story compares and contrasts two archetypical and polar opposite investment bankers.  One who is a knowledgeable gambler, your typical Wallstreeter, the other is Nassim Taleb (of the Black Swan fame) who trades in options.  One can apparently make money by trading options – betting that the price of a stock will rise or fall.   Here, my lack of financial knowledge clouds the details of how this works, but apparently it does.  Nassim’s idea is that by having a balance of options (bets?) that a stock will go up and others that a stock will fall ensures that he wins – kind of like MPT, but with options.  From the article, it sounds as though his portfolio value experiences drastic increases when the market goes haywire, but generally slowly bleeds in value. 

This whole story was curious.  The pin stripe Wallstreeter goes through booms and busts, living large and then losing the shirt off his back.  Nassim’s strategy makes for a hell of a payday, just widely separated and sporadic in nature.  No matter how well balanced (stocks, bonds, international markets and REITs) your portfolio, if the market crashes, so does the value of your portfolio.  But with Nassim’s options, you can cash in on a market crash.  It seems like Nassim’s options allow you a perfect negative correlation – that is, you could buy stock of company X and watch its value grow with the company, but also buy an option betting the value will drop; if the first half of your investment works, the second doesn’t, but if the second half works, the first doesn’t.  I wonder if there is a way to buy a small but significant set of options betting on a crash such that it would offset your losses in the event of a market crash.  Your portfolio value might look like this: 

This plot compares returns of a standard 7% return (red) to a simplified options balanced model (blue), assuming in both cases a $5,000 per year contribution (Roth IRA).  The options balanced model has a 5% compound interest return, where I assume the extra 2% is spent on options to balance your portfolio.  Then, depending on a random number (if rand() > 0.9), the market experiences a crash.  Your Portfolio loses half its value, but if you have options, you get a bonus ($50,000).  It’s a back of the envelope style calculation, so I doubt the numbers are right, but it seems like an interesting idea.  I’m guessing the devil is in the details – how much time can you spend buying options and how much of a return can you expect from your options?  But it’s an interesting idea and perhaps someone will offer an interesting financial product to simplify this (option index insurance?).