12 Days of Psyche: 1500 Pull-ups

Fuckin’ Stevie Haston, man! Psyche doesn’t always require video. Reading Stevie’s blog is like one long strange Psyche trip. This guy is, what, 55 years old? He’s been bolting all day (harder than climbing) and he comes home and rattles off 1500 pull-ups. It’s just so.. SO… rad. Then he posts this:

A perfect bolted a brilliant route, radiant sunset. . Got home and did 1500 pull ups on the board..... Still haven't mastered the small sloper with one hand, anyway there is always tomorrow...

So, yeah, in the midst of all this he’s trying to hang a hold at his power limit. I don’t care if none of this sounds sensible because this guy’s older than me, stronger than me, and out training me. He wins.

Today I did a lot, me happy if I can keep it up for a couple of months I will improve. Simple Innit?
- Stevie un-bored Haston

Warriors for the Working Day

I love December. Not for the holidays and indulgence, but because it’s the month I reflect on past year of training and get to re-shuffle the deck and create a new template for what’s next.

The year’s wane is always a ghost town here at ‘the Dope. I’ve had over 2 million readers, and less than 1% of them have engaged in December. So I’m dedicating this month to my friends and the die hards interested enough in training to still be reading about it when the rest of the great unwashed is reveling to the point of disgust, hoping it will motivate them to make a proper New Year’s resolution.

This month I won’t distill for the masses. It’ll just be straight talk on training, motivation, and other assorted oddities that will hopefully be amusing and, if you don’t get it, it’s on you to catch up. God’s will I pray thee wish not one man more.

We few, we happy few. We band of brothers. For he who sheds his blood with me will be my brother. Be here ne’re so vile, this (month) shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in (America), now a-bed, shall think themselves accursed that they’re not here, and hold their manhood’s cheap, while any speaks who fought with us...

Fasting, Aerobics, and Weight Loss

GoreTex Experiance Tour - Dave MacLeod goes for a run! from Hot Aches Productions on Vimeo.

I just got back from an easy morning run. It was slow, almost plodding, ended with a short stretching session, and in total took about 45 minutes. I did it because I need to shed a few pounds quickly and it’s the oldest trick in the book when it comes to fine tuning your weight loss.

I was reminding of this “trick” yesterday when my friend Ben brought up Dave Macleod using this tactic to get ready for his hardest routes. We used to run this tactic in college for track. As for climbing, before the most successful road trip of my life I’d tweaked a finger and had to back off on my training. Without the ability to train for strength I aimed instead for lighter (a roundabout way of getting stronger in gravity sports) by starting 3-4 days per week with 2-10 miles of easy aerobic-paced running. I ended up going into that trip 8 pounds lighter than my average weight, which increased my performance far more than any strength training could have hoped to.

Running in the morning before you eat helps improve your body’s use of fat for energy or, as Macleod puts it, “normally if I run I do it after the overnight fast to get into fat oxidation quicker”. A fasted state, while not optimal for hard training because you quickly run out of stored glycogen (or bonk, a point where your workout goes south quickly), is great for easy to moderate exercise because you can improve your body’s ability to tap into it’s “fat for fuel” process.

In general, light aerobic training has very little effect on your metabolic process. This is why you often hear trainers say things like “cardio only burns calories while you’re doing it where weight training burns calories all day long” and so forth. Aerobic training in a fasted state helps your training in two ways. It heightens your metabolism for a longer period of time than it normally would and it doesn’t break down much muscle tissue so you can utilize it during your hard training.

This is why when we recommend doubles programs one of your two workouts is always easier than the other. It’s not running that’s the magic pill here but aerobic training done in a fasted state. Running is efficient, since even easy running stresses the body more than most things, but any low-intensity exercise that raises your heart rate will work. For example, Cardio X was designed as the P90X doubles workout, which is why it’s much easier than everything else. If I don’t feel like going out, like I do right now because it’s raining so thankfully i'm already done, I’ll pop in a cardio vid instead.

vid: macleod on a 'run'. my runs are often similar. i don't generally (ever) solo 7B in my hiking boots but would guess well over half my runs are explorations that include a lot of off-trail rummaging around looking for rock, or whatever, which often includes technical climbing or, at least, scrambling over rock. you don't need to keep your heart rate at a steady state to get the effects of aerobic training. you just need to keep moving.

Can You Taper And Gain Fitness Simultaneously?

ClimbTech Removable Bolts for Rock Climbing from ClimbTech on Vimeo.

I did a birthday challenge test run this weekend. It was, unfortunately, harder than expected. Now I need to start tapering for a performance peak but I still lack fitness in one physiological realm, beckoning the question: can I taper and still gain fitness?

Further complicating this issue is that I don’t have a date set for the challenge. Like an alpinist, I’ll be watching the weather and take my shot when I can. I need a weekend in the next two to four weeks. The forecast is calling for perfect conditions this weekend but that would seem suicidal if my test run was an indication. The longer I wait the more time I have to train but the chances also increase that I get completely shut out by winter.

Tapering is never simple. Basically, the less training you do over the last two weeks before an event the more your body recovers, which increases your reserves for race day. Two weeks is the magic number because that’s how long it takes for your fast twitch (emergency so far as your body is concerned) muscle fibers to fully recover. However, two weeks is enough time to wreak havoc on your system when you’re used to training hard. Primarily, your reduced training load can negatively affect your diet and sleep patterns, two things that can send your fitness level south quicker than anything else.

Luckily for me I’m lacking endurance, though it’s power-endurance, which is harder to gain than aerobic endurance. Still, it’s better than if I were lacking power, which would spell doom at this point. I could use more power (who can’t?) but since I’m getting all the moves on my routes and will get a recovery bump of a couple of percent through tapering, that bit of hay is in the barn.

With this in mind, here’s my training template for the next few weeks. For those confused by this lingo use this blog’s search function for “periodization” and you’ll get caught up pretty quickly, or maybe start with the 5 most important factors for race training.

Goals: To taper in all areas but make increases in power endurance, or resistance in climbing terms (the ability to hang on when pumped).

Variables: date for actual peak not set.

Logic: Since I know the event will happen on a weekend I will have a hard power endurance session early each week, and one more on each weekend that it doesn’t happen. All other training will be based around recovery and weight loss. The latter is super important because every pound you lose without sacrificing fitness is increases fitness by decreasing the load you need to push (think of it as taking weight off of a max set).

Specific focus: The challenge (click here) includes heavy volume of aerobic work so I’ll want to keep riding and hiking at an aerobic pace. I recently did a hundred-mile mtn bike ride so I think I’m okay here as long as I continually get some saddle time.

Finish the work on the routes. 4 of the 8 routes still need some work and it’s no small task. While not “training” it’s hard work (watch the vids) that’s, at least, good for caloric burn and weight loss.


Increase anaerobic endurance. This is the rub. In my test run I did 4 of the 8 planned routes and failed within the last 4 moves of the others. This sounds close but I was using routes in my garage that I HOPE are harder than the actual climbs. They might not be, however, and I was completely cooked. To have any confidence I need more cushion.

Schedule

Mon – Aerobic conditioning and active recovery: yoga, easy but long-ish ride and/or hike.

Tue – Hard anaerobic session. Redpoint burns at challenge intensity but—very important—nothing above challenge intensity. No 100% moves or powerful bouldering problems. No moves I might fail on due to anything but being pumped because it’s too much recruitment (of high threshold muscle cell motor units).

Wed – Aerobic training. Slight different than Monday, I’ll do some specific muscular work for climbing that works as active recovery. Some easy routes, rice bucket and stabilization work, a solid ride and/or hike at aerobic level, and yoga. This is a high volume but low-intensity day. Should not feel hard at all but burn calories.

Thurs-Fri – Active recovery only.

Sat – Test run, which is a lot like Tuesday.

Sun – Active recovery.

First Female V14

With October sending season in full force how about the first female V14 for your weekly Psyche? Congrats to Tomoko Ogawa for completely her three-year project, Catharsis, at Shiobara, Japan, and taking the sport to another level.

If this looks familiar it's because the problem was also featured in this Daniel Woods video last spring. With over 20 moves it's almost more of a route than a boulder problem. No matter, it's one of the coolest looking boulders I've seen.

Uk Climbing posted a short interview with Ogawa on how she trained for Catharsis, which you can read by clicking this excerpt. These perfect fall conditions won't last forever. Get out there!

I thought I need more finger strength and reach. I did "finger pull ups" for a long time that I had seen Daniel Woods do in a DVD. It is like hanging on a campus board with open hand and close it to crimp and open and close over and over while you are hanging.

And I started to straighten up my body. Actually I was hunched. I thought because of my backside muscles got too big since I started climbing, I wanted keep my chest and body open to extending my reach. But it took a year to get better...

When To Deviate From The Plan

This is a follow up post to my training article that appeared in Dead Point Climbing Magazine last month. I’ve been on the plan myself so here are some observations that will answer some of the questions I’ve been getting about recovery and lock-off hangs.

Yesterday I got on an old nemesis, a 140-foot traverse that I used to train on many years ago. The crux has been underwater for ages, so I hadn’t been able to try it in a decade. I figured it might be dry, finally, and a decent barometer of how my training is going since I’ve only done the entire thing a couple of times and it’s always felt right at my limit.

I began this training cycle in earnest on Sept 1 following the plan I wrote for the article. The board workouts were exactly the same. We added a set of lock-offs on the wall, superset with bicycles (see them here as a part of Sean’s training) which one of us would do while the other did their rice bucket. I didn’t do the weight training, since I do plenty of that in general, and have been mtb riding or running/hiking on the off days.

Though I’ve done this plan before I knew it might be ambitious for me right now. For one, I’m old—probably older than DPM’s entire demographic. And while I’m fit, age matters. You don’t recover as fast. The other factor is that mountain biking isn’t a perfect rest activity and I didn’t want to stop riding. So I was expecting that training with only one rest day might be challenging and I was right.

After two weeks I needed to back off because I feared getting injured and my workouts weren’t improving. I added some climbing days and lengthened the time between sessions. My climbing was awful. I expected it to be bad but I was so worn out from the training that everything was a struggle. This is why I don’t usually recommend much if any climbing during the program. It worked, however, and the extra recovery time allowed my workouts to start improving. I also started to get stronger on rock as I adapted and was able to integrate the strength gains I’d made.

This pushed my schedule out longer than four weeks. Week 5 just ended and I still have a few workouts to go in order to finish the planned 4-week cycle. I just took a week off of training and did two very hard days back to back outside. My climbing wasn’t great, I still feel effects of the training/recovery holding me back, but I’m much stronger than when I started. The longer schedule with more rest and some actual climbing seems like it was the right course, this time. What you do should be based on your own recovery.

I’ve had to adjust my lock-offs and most of you will, too. Full lock-offs felt too stressful on the elbow, so I start locking off as high as I can, then medium, then low (but not all the way down). Repeat for a set of 6. The actual angles don’t matter much. Do what you can and STOP doing them if you’re elbows get touchy. We actually started the phase attempting lock-offs on the first workout and scrapped the idea less than one set.

So, yesterday, after a day of traveling and office work I got to the traverse pretty tired. I was still feeling the effects of my hard two-day session and wasn’t sure if I’d even climb. But the traverse was dry so I stared re-acquainting myself with the movements that I once had wired but were mostly forgotten. It seemed impossible. I thought about leaving and going for a run, instead, so that I didn’t waste the afternoon.

But because I hadn’t seen the thing dry in so many years I figured I might as well try. I did the first 80 or so feet of 5.11 to warm-up. I botched a bunch of the sequences but managed to hold on to the rest before the business end, and felt it wasn’t as hard as I was expecting.

Then I began a move-by-move assessment of the second half. The ground had washed away, adding some new footholds (making one of the cruxes substantially easier and probably taking a grade off) and tacking a scare factor to the finish, but it still seemed way too hard for my current condition. Oddly enough, as I warmed up it started to feel doable and, then, even stranger, not all that bad. Just before dark I gave it one good go and, shockingly, it went. I’m now even more psyched on my training program and can’t wait for the next session.

Original article

Part II

Part III (diet)

Part IV (crazy sciency shit)

Other good ideas

vid: couldn't find a pic of the sandbox so here's another traversing nemesis of mine.

The Map Of Athletic Performance

This is a great article for those who enjoy geeking out about fitness. For anyone interested in what I do for a living here’s a taste. I’m always evaluating the latest data and techniques looking for ideas we can incorporate into what we do. It’s from an elite climber and strength trainer Rob Miller and titled The Map of Athletic Performance.

Articles like this are what opens the door for training advancements. I can’t say that I learned anything new, exactly, but certainly helped my thought process. I mean, we’re all working off of the same science so new aspects about training tend to come from experience and trying to think outside the box. This is why breakthroughs in training rarely come from scientists and usually from athletes and trainers (Rob is both) who experiment outside of known templates--why we call exercise physiology an “applied science”. This is similar to what Charlie Francis was doing with runners and Paul Rogers is doing with cyclists.

Anyone interested in last week’s articles on customizing P90X should consider investing some time, so bookmark this article for reference. While techie, it summarized a lot junk you’re forced to learn in school and is much more fun to read than most text books. That’s because it stays focused on a subject, which is training for climbing, though its scope if far beyond that particular sport. The theories discussed here can be applied to any type of training.

I’m going to try and break this down a step further for the layman by adding notes and perspective on various sections. Miller begins with the climbing aspect and goes into the general exercise phys stuff later, which I’m reversing for readability in my analysis.

Getting “generally” strong is just smart. Whether it is to increase lean body mass for health reasons or to gain an edge at the sport you love. Full range of motion basic barbell movements performed well will have the farthest reaching impact in support of all athletic endeavors. Essentially, strength improves the body’s capacity to perform at a greater intensity. This is true for all developing athletes and remains true for even the most advanced.

This is a great paragraph but it needs to be noted that Rob is a barbell trainer (how he makes his living). Of course that are others ways to accomplish this, but barbell training is his bread and butter. He knows it very well and can teach is safely, which everyone cannot do. He addresses that fact but he doesn’t explain that there are other ways to safely do compound lifts (he has no reason to) that are easier to learn.

What became very obvious while dwelling on the ramifications of the Map (above) is that there are many trajectories from the inside ring toward the outside that can naturally be pursued over the course of an athlete’s career. But the closer an athlete is to expressing most of his genetic potential – the further out from the center of the Map – the greater the need for the effort to become more focused. Deliberate choices need to be made with regard to which, and how many, outward trajectories from the center will benefit the athlete most. Because training is a deliberate approach to systematically achieving one’s goal, after 5 years of “Elite” distraction the first deliberate thing I did for my training as a climber was to stop pushing out in all directions on the Map at the same time in the pursuit of “increased work capacity over broad time and model domains.”

This is a challenge faced by any athlete who practices many different sports (hence most weekend warriors). He’s specifically addressing Crossfit and its misguided emphasis when it comes to sports (he has a long history with CF’s founder, discussed at length) but the challenge he’s addressing—-efficient sports specific training to leave time for sports specific work—-is the meat of what all athletes are after.

The activities may be listed along the Map’s perimeter but the process of athletic development begins well within the Map’s interior. The activities being listed on the outside have to do with creating a trajectory for development. Reaching the outside limits of the Map means that you are up against your genetic potential in that sport. It is a rare individual that has exhausted all means to achieve greater abilities and capacities in his sport. But more importantly, an athlete on the outer reaches has developed other “supplemental” trajectories either by exploring other sports or deliberately pursuing physical qualities that his primary trajectory will directly benefit from. And this is one of the more significant implications of the Map.

He’s just defined the concept behind “muscle confusion” from P90X, which we’ve taken to a much deeper level in X2. What’s so important in this paragraph is that you can’t change your genetic potential but within your genetic make-up you can improve your capacity for improvement and efficiency. That is what any trainer’s goal is with an athlete, to maximize their genetic capacity for performance.

Prioritizing training time is weighed against the timeline of the upcoming season, event or competition in every stage of athletic development. Advanced training takes on a laser-like focus the further out on the Map one is, and it and becomes less tolerant of any superfluous training “noise.” Each training session has a clear purpose and all available resources go into achieving that purpose. The ratio of work to rest that productively drives adaptation no longer has a forgiving margin of error. The work is focused and deliberate, so that the body can be left alone to do its thing during recovery.

The single biggest challenge most of us face, especially when life (job, families, etc) enter the equation. Efficiency is king but, let’s face it, most of us would rather do what we enjoy. Sometimes, especially if you want to maximize your potential, you need to put that aside and make decisions about what is best for you to reach your goals and not just what you like to do.

There is no parallel to the barbell in its ability to meet an athlete exactly where they are now in terms of neuromuscular efficiency and begin the process of progressively applying higher demands on the entire system. The neglect the barbell receives from both regular folks and athletes is something of a mystery, given its potential. Still, given that we live in a culture that sells products offering quick fixes or a “silver bullet” for most everything people are interested in, it is understandable that training with the barbell is undervalued or ignored. It takes time, like anything worth doing thoroughly.

Obviously, as a barbell coach, this is his opinion. Almost nothing you do with a barbell can’t be done using something else—-though a barbell can be very efficient. What he hasn’t addressed is the injury potential when doing his exercises, which is very high. His angle is that if you learn the moves right they are safe but he also states it took him many years of devoted study and training to do this. Thus...

Because of the previous collective move away from barbell training in the fitness industry, few trainers have appropriate knowledge of its value or how to teach people to utilize it.

What’s he’s saying is to take his camps or train differently. I can’t argue. If I can find the time I’ll take one of his camps. If not I’ll train differently. I’ve been around these lifts my entire life but have never devoted near the time Rob has to learning about them, even though...

The squat is the single most important exercise there is. Nothing else recruits more tissue doing more work than this one movement. The full range of motion squat done properly is the most potent tool in the gym. The other four add balance and support to this central movement. The time it takes you to learn something in the gym has a lot to do with how long it will remain interesting and effective, no matter what your goals are. Correctly performed squats take some time to learn. Even if your sport does not require squatting, and most do not, there is enormous benefit from becoming fluent in this basic human movement.

...this paragraph sounds exactly like one of my mentors, Fred (Dr. Squat) Hatfield.

In an endurance setting, strength and power will always be expressed at a fraction of one’s overall potential due to the lower strength and power demands of endurance sports. Therefore, the increase in strength and power will directly benefit one’s endurance simply by increasing that overall potential, and thereby increasing the reservoir from which to pull that fraction.

This is very important. My biased definition as to why P90X2 is so important for all athletes, even endurance athletes.

Perhaps the misguided emphasis on cardio-respiratory endurance will shift when more people try alternatives to mainstream ‘trendy’ workouts. Maybe the idea that “more” is not better will begin to sink in.

Very true but he’s talking about elite athletes. The emphasis in their training has been moving this direction now for more than a decade. The exact point is discussed in the X2 guide when addressing why there is no “cardio” in that program.

This is a quick synopsis of a broad topic. In the article he provides a nice discussion of energy systems and how training them applies to everyone. It’s very important to understand that no matter what kind of sport you want to train for.

miller walking the talk on el capitan

Now off to more specific things...

I’m saying that if you’re training, then it’s time organize your climbing into a weekly period of work-to-rest for the best results. To get the most out of the climbing you are already doing, we’re going to organize your week around a primary session called the Heavy Day. This is the day, or a combination of days if you go climbing for the weekend, that will be driving your intermediate rate of adaptation. This is the stressor that your body will need a full week to recover from.

It doesn’t mean the intermediate climber takes a week off. He needs to engage those skills during the week of active rest. This way, skills stay sharp and are ready to ‘neurologically fire’ when fully recovered. To accomplish a full intermediate recovery, you’re going to follow the Heavy Day with one Medium Day and one Light Day during the remainder of the week.

The A,B,Cs of training. I’ve written on this a lot and it’s the focal point of my latest training article for DPM Climbing.

Your body is conditioned to climbing. So some climbing, even at your limit, won’t inhibit your recovery. It’s when you don’t understand how to actively recover, or that it’s necessary, that so many climbers eddy in a performance slump way longer than necessary.

Interesting in that this is what the Spanish do, and they have the most strong climbers in the world, by far. They call it tranquillo y a muerte (you mostly relax but when you do climb it’s “to the death”) and, I think, many traveling Americans have trouble with such a small volume of climbing—-myself included (we’re on limited holiday time fer crissakes)—-but those who do embrace it generally improve.

So why do climbers do the same thing as the example tennis player, and climb routes that don’t really challenge their abilities – a bunch of sub-maximal work that doesn’t challenge the skill set? Since there is no specific motor pathway being practiced – because the sport consists of myriad ways to climb any route – there is no point in the sub-maximal repetition. The worse case scenario is that the sub-maximal work at higher volume sets them up for injury when they do ramp up the intensity, like ‘junk’ miles on a bike for a cyclist.

This is key. Most of us waste a lot of time like this. It’s why you see people climbing for years and years and never really improving. Maybe they get slightly better when, say, they lose a few pounds for a redpoint but never by much. Focused systematic training out of your comfort zone is the only way to reach your body’s capacity for strength.

What he leaves out, which is important to less serious athletes (most of us) is that “junk miles” (or its sports equivalent) is important for season athletes as a way to condition the body when you haven’t practiced a sport in a while. Skin conditioning of the hands for climbers, feet for runners, and saddle area for cyclists are simple examples. Re-engaging neuromuscular patterns is another. This should not detract us from his main point, which is that creating a strong foundation of fitness minimizes our need for “junk” volume.

The difference at the advanced stages is that the athlete is so developed in his specific sport that it’s really difficult to apply enough of a stress that the body will have a hormonal response.

That stressor doesn’t have to come from the sport you’re training for. That’s what happened to me when I got into CrossFit. Not identifying the unfamiliar stimulus was unfortunate. I could have saved a lot of valuable training time.

Great point, but are different stresses the climbing causes that should be addressed individually depending upon the type of climbing you do, which he gets into...

Strength takes the longest to develop but it also sticks around the longest. Endurance comes and goes almost by the week. Strength is persistent and has the greatest training carryover, like in our bouldering example.

I think he’s underselling endurance. As any cyclist/triathlete knows it does take a while to bring all of your various “endurance” parameters up to speed. You improve by the week but it takes many weeks to have everything humming along perfectly.

However, his main point, that strength takes the longest to train (he means power or “absolutely strength” or muscular efficiency) is not only valid it’s the one essential key to improving performance even as an endurance athlete. It’s harder to train, takes both focus and specificity, and, mainly, to truly address it you must curtail your endurance training, which is a hard sell for most of us who are addicts, especially true of runners, cyclists, surfers, and climbers.

It’s really the key to the entire article: that we neglect full body strength training in favor of random volume. It’s not a coincidence that Francis and Rogers, who coached a stack of Olympic champions, were thinking along the same lines.

above: note no cyclists on the map. This is because those sports are hard to define this way. A road racer, for example, is an endurance athlete whose entire success is dependent on the anaerobic pathways, or the ability sprint or climb a hill at key points in an otherwise aerobic race. this means both areas must be trained with specific focus on the individual depending on the type of races they want to do well at.

Great Advice For Climbers, Or Anyone, Really

“Stevie Haston is rad,” said Elijah on a recent post that linked to his blog. I concur. And while I’ve linked to things he’s written quite a few times I’ve never had a post of his to completely focus on. Today's the day, as he’s offered some top-notch advice for climbers that transcends the sport into great advice for everyone.

So who is this guy and why should you pay attention to him? Because he's in his mid 50s who still climbs harder than 99% of the world. He also does other assorted adventures that most mortals wouldn’t consider, noted by the casual reference to an injury he picked up during a 200-mile run. His blog offers insight into all sorts of things, but mainly training. I can't recall ever spending any time on it where I didn't learn something about something. Plus he’s funny, which for me is reason enough alone to have his blog pegged atop my reading list.

This post, called Making Monsters, is some advice on how not to get injured that includes an exercise I’ve never done (part of it anyway), which is saying something. Click on the excerpt below to read the article and enjoy Haston’s unique style of prose:

Making monsters is what its about, but in the end monsters devour themselves, or just rip themselves apart. I did it just over a year ago running in a 200 mile run, half way I slightly tore a calf, but of course I continued for a while and made it much worse. In climbing you don't have the luxury of even time to consider, it happens very quick. Above is standing or upright row, its very good for shoulders, you really need to watch your self in a mirror to watch for imbalances! My shoulders are good again, because I sorted them out.

Climbing Fitness in 4 Weeks

My latest training article for DPM hit the shelves this week. It can also be found on their web site by clicking here. This is a follow-up post, to add both some detail and personal perspective on why this protocol was chosen and how you might alter it.

I am this article’s target audience as it’s almost identical to what I’ll be doing for training this month. It wasn’t my plan when I wrote it but life got busy and I now find myself lacking climbing fitness as summer wanes. Sending temps are coming and, when pressed for time, hangboarding is by far the best bang for your buck to improve quickly.

History

Hangboarding is boring. It takes mental toughness. For inspiration, here are some personal anecdotes on how much it can help you:

In 1990 I had a fledging business that didn’t allow me to go climbing at all, forcing all of my training around a board in my shop. A serendipitous meeting with a Swiss exchange student, who showed me techniques far in advance of what came with the Metolius Simulator (the only board on the market back then), led to a two month training cycle that transformed me from a 5.10 to 5.12 climber.

life at the @#$%! video shop

In the md-90s one of our friends followed his girlfriend to grad school. A shy lad, he didn’t bother trying to meet climbing partners. Instead he hung Yaniro Board in their apartment and started entering all the national competitions. Out of nowhere, he always finished near the top. This is a guy who’d only redpointed a few 5.12s, did very little actual climbing, and was suddenly beating guys you’d read about in every issue of Climbing. He simply became so strong that he could hang onto basically anything.

elijah demonstrating a move where technique will not help you but hangboard training will

Last year, what’s left of the old Santa Barbara crew, Phil and Elijah, lost their climbing gym, The Shed, a state-of-the art training facility. They bought a Beastmaker, a Moon Board, and hung them in a garage. Turns out a gym full of equipment was mainly keeping their focus from where it should have been all along. Both had the best climbing season of their lives.

phil shows stuff you can do in your mid-40s if you hangboard train

Another of our crew, Micah, used a hangboard because he had ankle reconstruction and couldn’t walk. Before he could even go on a proper hike he ended up redpointing the hardest route of his life.

micah shows stuff you can do when you can't walk if you hangboard train

There are plenty of stories like this. Check out the Anderson brothers, Sonnie Trotter, or the guys over at Beastmaker. As Ben Moon once said, “technique is no substitute for power.”

There are many ways to train effectively for climbing. Almost all of them have some amount of merit that vary in effectiveness due to the individual. Like I state in the article, if you don’t know how to climb there are better ways to spend your time. But when all is said and done, the ability to hang onto holds and not let go is always going to be the single most effective way to raise your level.

Variables

The routine I wrote for DPM is just one option that has worked very well for me. As a multi-sport athlete I’m always in and out of climbing shape. This is the best plan I’ve found for getting back into shape quick, without spending much time (I work a lot). Following the links in this post will give you other ideas. All of them are good. Training should always have an individual element to it. Find what works for you.

The lock-off hangs are very stressful. Proceed carefully. They are a suggested protocol. If you aren’t strong enough and need to alter them your training will not suffer. Do them when you’re ready.

Training is only as effective as your ability to recover. The article's schedule is a suggestion. Tony Yaniro once wrote an article stating that he never decided if he was going to train until he warmed up. If he felt strong he trained. If he didn’t he rested. This can be tricky to gauge but climbing is a tricky, subtle, sport where you put an excessive amount of stress on very small muscles and connective tissues. Listen, astutely, to your body. Hangboard training is generally safer than most forms of training because movement is controlled. Still, it’s easy to get hurt training for climbing no matter what you do. Remember Stevie Haston’s first three rules and live by them.

haston showing stuff you can do in your mid-50s if you hangboard train

Diet

The article presents a few tricks I use to lose weight. I dig a little more into the thought and history behind them next week. For now, drink water. A lot of water. It both keeps your connective tissues strong and helps you lose weight (note the scribbling on stevie's board). And nothing, not even a hangboard, can improve your strength to weight ratio as much as shedding some pounds.

pic at top, tommy caldwell. want to climb massive virtually holdless granite slabs thought to be impossible? hangboard train.

Fall Is Coming

Days are getting shorter, leaves are starting to turn, temps are waning; all meaning good climbing conditions are on the where-the-hell-did-summer-go? horizon. As usual, I’ve been tooling around the high country on my bike and am weak as a kitten. With an ambitious birthday challenge on the docket, it’s time for a little training Psyche.

This video shows Canadian climbing Sean McColl doing a workout. It’s rad. I tried a version of this yesterday and could not finish the climbing portion. All subsequent exercises had to be abridged. For reference, I tried doing three 45-move problems that I’d climbed in a single session in the spring, in 4-12 move segments, and could not finish. Pathetic, sure, but basically something I deal with on a yearly basis as a seasonal multi-sport weekend warrior.

That this workout is too hard for me off-the-couch is not surprising. McColl is very strong. As I mimic it my routes will never be as hard as his. I will, however, be able to do most of the exercises and complete this training session by the time I’m ready for the challenge. I will train to do this differently, following an article I wrote that will come out in the Sept 1st issue of DPM. More on that later. For now, enjoy the vid.

A funny aside is that McColl’s session somehow caught the ire of some climbing “training experts” over at the Climbing Narc. If you’re into mental masturbation on training it’s probably worth a read as there are some quality perspectives presented. While the main point, that just because someone climbs hard does not mean they know how to train is valid, it’s also rendered ridiculous in that there is no quantitative data in this case to support the statement.

Sean is one of the world’s best on the competition circuit. What he’s doing here is similar to how all of this competitors train. Granted it’s only a workout-—making no mention of his systematic training plan. But it’s in line with every other elite competitor’s training if, perhaps, slightly more realistic for the average human. To dismiss it is akin to saying the Jamaicans know nothing about sprint training, Kenyans distance training, or Laird Hamilton on surf training. Without real world examples and data you simply cannot dismiss a training protocol that is working at the highest level.

Bradley Wiggins’ team now has a case to state Lance Armstrong wasn’t training efficiently because they have a quantitative improvement. But until your training philosophy can provide data for actual progression, you’re no more prescient than Jesus Quintana.

When You’re Not Feeling It, Press On…

One of the frustrating facts of training is that getting fitter is not a linear projection. At some point you’ll have a bad patch. If you’re lucky it will only last a few workouts, though it might last a few weeks and if you overtrain it can last months. So while there is strategy to consider when you’re not feeling it the solution, as Scottish climber Dave MacLoed points out in this recent article, is always to press on.

This isn’t something unique to un-fit. In fact it's the opposite as the fitter you are the more likely it will happen. This is because the closer you are to peak fitness the less margin for error you have when it comes to overtraining, which is why you always hear about athletes struggling to get their training timing right around competitions.

Overtraining is a hard—-and sometimes impossible—-thing to gauge because it’s based on so many factors that you can’t always assess. Things like your mental state, that can cause fluxuations in your hormonal and nervous system function, are always issues that are somewhat out of your control. Pressing on means you don't want to give up because it's not working, but continue to trust your training program with an open mind, always evaluating the possibilities for minor tweaks. Here's a very similar article I wrote on the subject that's more specific to Beachbody programs. If your training program is solidly-crafted, as I hope ours are given I'm the one that does it, the benefits will come in the end as long as you don't give up.

MacLoed, one of the world’s best all-around climbers as well as an exercise physiologist, says,

I could go cragging I guess, which might be good for the head. But it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do for some reason. Training feels right, or at least did feel right.

I have been doing my circuits night after night. Some strange things are going on though which I can’t put my finger on. I’m definitely getting less pumped per circuit. I’m even getting a reasonable amount done. Yet for some reason, I don’t ‘feel’ fit.

When warming up I’m feeling rough and starting from a low base. And even once I’m going I feel heavy. I’m guessing it’s just one of those periods you have to go through every so often. So I’ll carry right on, until my body decides to wake up to the message that I need it to get fitter and stronger.

Those of you who follow TSD know I’ve been blogging on this subject using my own training and how nothing seems to be clicking this year. My solution, like Dave's, is going to be to keep pressing on. As should yours.

vid: for those who don't know, dave is on a very exclusive list of those who climb near the top of the scale in many disciplines: ice climbing, sport climbing, mega-scary trad climbing, and bouldering.

“Age Doesn’t Mean Shit”...

...is a somewhat famous quote by track legend Johnny Gray after he won some race (Pam Am Games I recall—maybe age affecting my memory) in his 40s. And while father time will catch up to all of us eventually it’s been my mantra both before and after he’d said it. In fact, I’d say it’s an unspoken mantra for Beachbody since our goal as trainers is to offset aging through diet and exercise, which is more effective than even anti-aging medicine if you want to live an active life for as long as you’re here.

With that I present today’s Psyche vid of 52 year old college professor Bill Ramsey climbing an 8c (5.14b). This is a grade climbed by only a fraction of climbing’s elite. And while it sounds like he gave to route over 400 attempts most people still wouldn’t be able to do this if they were paid to climb full time. It’s an incredible athletic achievement, especially for old dude, and even more so considering how powerful the climb is since we lose fast twitch muscle fiber as we age.

Ramsey’s training is legendary. According to Mike Doyle’s blog:

At some point I will try to get footage of one of his training days. 6am wakeup, stumble to the coffee maker, go into his garage for some deadhangs to warmup, do a little training there, then off to the climbing gym for 3-4 hours then to the treadwall for another 2-3 hours before hitting weights to finish it off. I can’t even fathom it but clearly it works for him.

Who says you have to reduce training volume with age? I am inspired, though I’ll still never attempt one route 400 times because, well, I’d probably lose my mind, my wife, and most of my friends. That said I still find this exceptionally cool.

The History of Santa Barbara Climbing, Part I