Monday, July 19, 2010

Life Without A Shirt

“When you haven’t been laid in three months there are more important things than climbing. This spring I'm wearing tank tops to school everyday.” – semi-famous climber to me (loudly) while doing curls and eyeing a hot girl in a gym



My workouts in the WFH aren’t 100% about climbing. I’m also a cyclist and runner and, though injured, I’m not willing to let the muscle groups that support these activities slide much in order to climb harder. I once made this sacrifice. I’ll go into depth on how during the power phase of this program. Today I’m just going to address what I’m doing that doesn’t facilitate my climbing endeavors, mainly because I’ve been asked about leg work during the program.



While they need to be functional, legs are little more than dead weight for a climber. It’s funny that so many climbers are also cyclists because the body type needed for maximum performance in each is 180 degrees opposite. Cyclists have massive strong legs and try and keep their upper body muscle to an absolute minimum. Conversely, climbers build their bodies to resemble apes. Since I want to do both at a reasonably-high level I need to compromise.



My WFH journey mainly started with an injury to my back that didn’t allow me to either run or ride. Now that I can do these a little I’m slowly bringing them back up to speed. Day 2 on the schedule includes legs, which are done at the end of the workouts. And at least two days a week are devoted to some “track” drills for running, usually done as my warm-up for the day’s workout. These are day to day activities. What I do is simply what I can do. Right now it ain’t much.

Because this is climbing-specific journal the details are not important. I just wanted to point out I was doing more exercise than listed. Most of us have some other interests in life. Whether those interests are sports specific, wearing tank tops to school, or looking good naked it’s important to note that this program can still accommodate your interests.



vids: in the 80s, no one exemplified the important aspects beyond the climbing lifestyle like patrick ‘the dream maker’ edlinger. note the subtle differences in the original version and the more straightforward parody. after all, when it comes right down to it, none of us can dispute the importance of german techno music about robots.

8 comments:

TheThinker said...

I had an important question regarding this topic. About 6 months ago (before the hybrids) I was doing a lot of HYP stuff with beachbody programs which made me quite bulky (my prime but still no bodyfat gain), and I sacrificed my climbing. To be honest, what guy doesn't want to look a bit bulky? In my case right now I am super lean, even to the point where you can compare me to Usobiaga. I was thinking of changing this program a little by adding an HYP phase during phase 2 instead of the 15 rep thing, any harm to that? I want to return to a state that is in between lean and bulky. I know this will reduce my climbing performance but I can gain it back later on, any thoughts?

Thanks so much.

Steve Edwards said...

I'm going to blog on transitioning in this program at some point as well but the short answer is yes. What I would do if I were you is do a week at 15 reps, a week at 12-15, then three more weeks at 8-12 and extend the entire program two weeks. I think that still gives you at least a couple of months before you challenge which should be enough time to strengthen the new muscle and develope your neuromuscular patterns.

TheThinker said...

hmm 18 weeks without transition will be painful, My plan was to lift for 6-8 reps heavy hypertrophy 3 weeks, so maybe a week of 15, then 3 weeks of 6-8?

TheThinker said...

ehh I second that 6-8 rep thing, It will break down a lot of fast twitch muscle fibers and it takes a while for them to recover so training the muscle groups twice a week will lead to overtraining. Can I just do the good ole fashion Seperate Muscle group (ex. Lats, Legs, Chest, Shoulder, Bicep/Tricep) type routine for phase 2? and then jump back to the same W.F.H technique for phase 3 and then do a combo of (30, 8, 5) for last phase?

Sorry for bugging you about this, Thanks.

Steve Edwards said...

You CAN do anything, and I'm adding a lot to the WFH myself, but I'd suggest you stay with the one body part til exhaustion pattern for these 9 or so weeks. You've never done it before and that alone will reap you benefits. There's a lot of be said for seeing programs all the way through. Otherwise you never really know how certain styles of training affect you.

I'll be writing on transitions later this week.

TheThinker said...

A better place to discuss phase 2 would be the boards I think. Maybe I'll ask on the boards. Post a schedule or something.

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Steve Edwards said...

Man, did you spam the wrong blog! See you in court.