Lessons from 7 years of fingerboard training


Its been a while since I have posted on this blog. I haven’t decided if I am going to start doing regular updates or just write about how my training has changed in the last few years, which should last for at least a few posts.

The early years:

For the first three and a half years I trained my fingers I did so only with maximal singles hangs. After a short warm-up, I would perform 5 single hangs with as much resistance as possible and as much rest as I wanted between hangs. If I succeeded in hanging for 7 seconds I would add more weight to the very next rep. I focused on 4 grips:

1. front 3 open hand
2. middle 2 open hand
3. 4 finger half crimp
4. 4 finger full crimp

This seems like a short workout but if my memory is correct, it took forever. This was probably due to the fact that I was always over resting so I could get new personal bests during every session. There were several negatives about only relying on this type of training and a few positive.

Negatives:

1. Time commitment: This took too long, especially considering that my life is much different now. I have a job and toddler, whereas back then I was a beginning grad student taking classes with material I was already familiar with.

2. Frustration: Always working within a few percent of your max is a recipe for major frustration. When I increased weight I would do so by 2.5 lbs, which is within the daily variation of my bodyweight. I was attempting to make finer variations in intensity than was even possible.

3. Injury: I injured tendon pulleys a few times while training full crimped.

Positives:

1. Strength: I did greatly increase my finger strength. I sent some of the hardest fingery one move wonders of my entire climbing career during this time. Putting focus of climbing sessions on power endurance will also help smooth out inconsistencies.

2. Experience: Training this way for a few years provided a base of finger strength that was easy to build on.

The recent era:

In the fall of 2009 the Beastmaker 2000 was becoming a popular fingerboard and with it, came a band of “multi-rep” fingerboard training. I have written about the basic repeater protocol on this site before so I won’t repeat that discussion here. As history goes, I continued with this two set repeated protocol until the Spring of 2012. This still seems like a solid system, but I would like to describe a variation that I used during August-December of 2012.

Pick four grips -  I use back 2, front 2, middle 2, and half crimp, but lets call them A,B,C and D. A `rep’ is defined as hanging for 7 seconds and resting for 3 seconds. A set is any number of reps strung together one after another.

1. Start with grip A.
      a. Perform an 8 rep set
      b. rest 90 seconds
      c. Perform a 7 rep set
      d. rest 90 seconds
      e. Perform a 6 rep set
      f. rest 3 minutes
2. Repeat this with grips B, C, and D.

During this time, I would perform similar workouts with a 5-4-3 rep-scheme and a 2-1-1 rep-scheme.

The weekly fingerboarding schedule was as follows:

Monday: Repeaters 8-7-6
Wednesday: Repeaters 5-4-3
Thursday: Repeaters 2-1-1

Negatives: All of the negatives have to do with the 8-7-6 workout.

1. Time: The 8-7-6 workout took over an hour.
2. Too many hangs: I suffered collateral-ligament soreness from hanging on pockets too much. I also noticed that by the time I got to half crimp (my last grip) I was too tired to hang a quality weight. The half-crimp is by far the most important grip, so this was a major issue.

Positives:

1. Lots of hangs: My fingers got really used to being loaded. This was by far the pumpiest hangboard workout I have ever performed.
2. Variety: Varying the rep schemes from day to day is something that I always try to do. I am loosely following the “daily undulating periodization” protocol.

Summary:

Probably the most important realization i have had over the years is not to rely on the fingerboard for more than strength development. This seems very obvious now that I write it down, but I spent years using training protocols that ventured into the realm of power endurance. There is too much going on with the rest of the body during climbing for this to be apppropriate and I will discuss more late on my current power endurance training.

That’s it for now. I am doing yet another fingerboard scheme at the moment that has many advantages over those I have done in the past. The next post will outline this in detail.

Three climbers and the story of climbing level.

Lets start with a few definitions.


  1. We'll say a climber's base level is the level at which a person climbs quickly(in a day for routes, an hour or so for boulders) when they are fit but haven't performed any intense training.  
  2. The standard level is the level at which a person climbs quickly when a person is benefitting from a training regimen. 
  3. The maximum level is the level at which a person climbs, after training, given a large amount of time.
Now lets look at three common types of climbers.

  1. The organic climber only trains by climbing. More specifically, this climber only trains by trying a project.  The organic climber will try other climbs but only for "fun" and never at a level appropriate to add significant fitness. This climbing style is best suited to a person who wants other interests and lives near a never-ending supply of climbs
  2. The human climber uses traditional training methods for climbing. This climber holds to the mantra "the best training for climbing is climbing". The human climber trains by doing intervals on routes/boulders, repeating difficult routes, having multiple projects that work different strengths, etc. Cross-training is achieved through running, calisthenics, and other standard fitness builders. This climbing style is suited to someone who wants to perform well in a wide area of climbing and has no interest in boring training.
  3. The robot climber uses all of the methods of the human climber but adds to them some "advanced techniques". These techniques are what this blog is devoted to. See the workouts page above if you're new. The robot climber thoughtfully combines all of these training methods so that nothing important to the goal is left out. This style of climbing is suited to someone who wants to push their physical limits and redefine what is possible.
Now lets put these ideas together, here is a rough chart showing the three different levels of the three different climbers. For simplicity I've shown the case when all three climbers have the same base level. There is no hard data behind this, these are from observations I've made in the field.


Here are some important things to notice from the above chart. Because of how the organic climber trains his standard level is never much higher than his base level, though his maximum level is a good deal higher than either. The human climber and robot climber have similar standard levels while the robot climber has a significantly higher maximum level. This will play out with the human and robot climber performing similarly on a week or two road trip even though the robot has climbed much harder at home.

We'll end there for today. Next time we'll discuss how to "reset" you base level and how that process differs for the three different climbers.


Data Collection and other notes

The fingerboard and one arm pull-up spreadsheets are being updated live during workouts. Look at the top of the page and click on "Training Charts and Logs" if you are interested. I'm going to start keeping a log of climbing days as well so I can start to see how the training numbers carry over to climbing performance.

In other news, my friend Tyler has joined the chart keeping team. It will be interesting to have another set of data points.

Readers may have noticed that the information in this blog is devoted to the physical aspect of climbing as opposed to the technical or mental. There are a few reasons for this bias. I'll make a list.


  1. I don't believe climbing is quite as technical as everyone says. This might have something to do with my background in much more technical sports(gymnastics, diving).
  2. I don't feel qualified to talk in depth about the mental side of climbing. Dave Macleod's book 9 out of 10 climbers makes the same mistakes has some good writing on this topic.
  3. I feel like the training methods I have developed are very beneficial while breaking most of the standard "rules" regarding training for climbing.

If anyone has a good link or reference for training climbing movement skills or mental strategies: Write a comment!

One last thing.  You can now "like" this blog on facebook. If you are interested in such things click the box at the top of the page, or search for "Robot Climbing" on facebook.

Maximum vs. "Usable" Strength

I am still collecting data on the relation of Beastmaker training numbers (like these here, here, and here) to climbing performance. What would really help was if someone would join me in the study so we could have two data sets. Anyone? Before we get started here is a new addition to the Robot Training Facility.
From Robot Training Facility

Reading this thread on the Gymnastic Bodies forum got me thinking how this applies to training for climbing. The main point of the thread is that maximum strength has little use if you cannot apply it. For this discussion lets distill climbing strength down to finger strength and upper body pulling strength. Obviously there are a lot more subtle things going on, but lets ignore them for now. I train maximum finger strength with my fingerboard, and pulling strength with one arm pull ups(either weighted, unweighted, or with assistance). As I see it there are two methods for refining this maximum strength into something usable.

Campus Boarding: The campus board is the most basic method for refining maximum strength. While campusing one's muscles have to react quickly and with coordination. Both of these are missing in a fingerboard workout.

Bouldering: The subtle way muscles work together is not captured when pulling straight down on a campus board, but Bouldering does not develop quickness as much as campus boarding. A complete training plan contains at least fingerboarding, campus boarding, and bouldering.

Now I'll present a few examples from my own climbing history, keeping my level at the time in mind. I've tried to keep the spray at a minimum on the blog but its hard to give these examples without mentioning grades and such, I apologize.

Example 1(Winter 2005/2006-Spring 2006): This was the beginning of my serious training(I was climbing around V6/7, and 5.12b/c). For November and December I trained with the complete trinity(fingerboard, campus board, bouldering). That January I spent in Hueco and climbed several V7s easily, a handfull of V8s, and one V9. Shortly thereafter I injured a finger. I trained myself back to what I thought was a high level only using the fingerboard and took a spring break trip to the Red. On this trip I barely climbed 12a and got shut down on 12c's. Upon returning I added bouldering and campusing to the equation and quickly climbed 13a for the first time. There was not enough time between the red and this to add any strength, but the strength gains needed to be refined.

Example 2(Late summer/fall 2007):At this point I had climbed V9 and 13b consistently. My training in the summer of 2007 consisted of fingerboarding and campusing without bouldering. When I started climbing again in september it took a few days to get back in the swing of things(due to the zero bouldering). After this, I quickly dispatched V10/11 for the first time. Later that fall I nearly climbed 13d(I didn't from a beta mistake not a lack of strength).

Example 3(Winter 2009/2010): At this point I had climbed V11 and 14a. After a good Rumney season working on China Beach I spent around 6 weeks training for a bouldering trip to Arkansas. The training focus was one arm pull-ups, fingerboarding, and a small amount of bouldering. In the trip to Arkansas I was able to climb many problems in the V8/V9 range very quickly. I was only able to climb one very soft V10. This was a slight disappointment. Every problem I climbed I was able to do so with control, but I didn't have the "pop" to climb the next level problems.

I'll leave you with a video from last weekend.

Rumney Trip

After a summer full of very little training and no climbing I can safely say that my finger is finally better. This has been the worst finger injury I've had, and the first that has forced me to take significant time away from climbing. I was able to maintain some of my strength through supplementary exercises and thus climbed much better on an end of the summer two week trip to Rumney than I expected. We didn't catch any sends on video but here are some edited ascents from the trip:


Serious training will begin tomorrow at which point my training charts and logs will finally be updated live again. It should be interesting to see the relationship of my "training numbers" with the success of this "comeback".

Special Home Improvement Post

There has not been much climbing this summer for the robot.  This is mostly due to my fingjury(thanks for the term beastermaker.co.uk), which was the worst I've ever had.  For the lower elevation areas of the northern hemisphere summer does not lend itself to difficult climbing.  A climber has a few choices around this:

1.  Travel(hopefully we'll do that next summer)
2.  Climb sub-maximally(I don't really enjoy this)
3.  Explore other facets of life.

This summer has been devoted to the third.  There were three main projects this summer, the kitchen tile back-splash, the floor, and the garden. I was nervous about installing tile on the walls of the kitchen, but it turned out being a very reasonable project I would recommend to anyone.  Here are some before and after pictures.




Next up was the tile floor. After our new found skills we decided to shoot for the stars by laying it down in an off-set diagonal pattern. I highly suggest against this if the space is small complex(ie our old house). Here are some before, during, and after pictures. Note how much open space is left after all of the full sized tiles are down.






An ongoing project for the summer has been the garden. We have a garden in our front yard and Murph has a plot at the community garden. I haven't talked any about diet related to climbing performance, mostly because I have a somewhat unorthodox diet(vegan) for an athlete. I used to think that my diet hindered my performance, but now I think it helps me. Here are some photos of out front yard garden:



Now climbing has begun again, and I'm already thinking of good posts. Like the relationship of hangboard numbers to climbing performance.

Summer 2010 Goals and Schedule

I'm on a rest day in the Red River Gorge right now, staying here.  I've decided to take it easy for our two week trip to give my body some down time and hopefully finish healing my finger.  This is slightly frustrating but not too bad seeing as the conditions are not great.
I'm working on a post on periodization but until it's ready I thought I'd share my training plans and goals for the summer.


1. Active rest(May 1 - May 22): I would have rather done this some other time but my finger conspired against me.  The first of these weeks I played around with some of the exercises which will become my goals for the summer.  The second two are spent climbing at the red.  The intention is to climb 2 or more number grades below my hardest redpoint.


2.  Rock Climbing and Cross Training(May 22 - June 24):  I should emphasize during this portion I plan to climb on actual rocks.  I consider this to be not as effective for training versus climbing on plastic, but the idea is to ease my finger into functionality.  Assuming the weather cooperates this gives me 10 days at Rumney to do some climbs I have been ignoring and four days bouldering.  Here is the schedule
Monday: rest(maybe easy bike ride or run) 
Tuesday: Rumney
Wednesday: Rumney
Thursday:  AM:  Fingerboard(maximum repeaters), one arm pull up pyramids, strength.
                        PM:  Metcon
Friday: AM: 8x500m rowing intervals
           PM: 4x1/2 mile run.
Saturday: Bouldering, weighted one arm pull up pyramid.
Sunday:  AM: Fingerboard(maximum hangs), one arm pull ups on holds, strength.
             PM: 2000m row and 1 mile run. Metcon.
All of the finger board work will be open handed(not even 1/2 crimp) focusing on one arm hangs on bigger holds.  
3.  Adaptation to Serious Training(June 25-July 5) This is a transition from training for my non-climbing goals to a more serious training for climbing.  I'll test my current level by doing a couple of finger board sets as listed here, and revisit the campus board and my bouldering wall. 
4.  Training(July 6 - August 10) This is the hottest part of the year and thus best for focusing on training and not actual climbing.  I plan to follow this approximate schedule:
             PM:  Campus board power endurance.
Tuesday: AM: Metcon
              PM: Timed climbing intervals.
                    PM:  Campus board maximum efforts, bouldering.
                PM: Metcon 
Friday:  rest or easy bike ride/run.
Saturday:  Rumney
Sunday:  Rumney
5.  Rifle, CO(August 11-August 27)  Earlier this year 6 weeks the above training program gave me the fitness to send China Beach so if everything goes well I should have pretty good fitness for this trip.  
Goals:
Here is a list of my non-climbing related goals for the summer.  




Rowing: 2000m: under 7:00(best so far 7:24)
            1000m: under 3:20(best so far 3:29)
             500m: under 1:30(best so far 1:37)
Running:  mile: under 6:00
             800m: under 2:30
             400m: under 1:00

 Strength:  iron cross
               front lever pull up(I can do this straddled now)
               one arm standing ab wheel
               one arm pull up +20lbs(I've done one +10lbs).

The n-tuple Training Notation

In the last post I introduced a new notation for organizing training distribution.  Here I would like to expand on this idea.  First we need a few definitions.

Definition 1:  An n-tuple is an order collection of n numbers.  Ex: (1,3,5,2) is a 4-tuple.
Definition 2:  A positive rational partition of 1 into n parts is an n-tuple whose sum of entries is 1.  Ex (1/2,3/4,0,1/4) is a partition of 1 into 4 parts.
Definition 3:  A training n-tuple is a partition of 1 into n parts in which each entry represents the portion of training time spent on a single type of training.

Examples of Training n-tuples:


There are training n-tuples of size 0 and 1 that aren't that useful so we'll start with larger sizes.  A training tuple of size 2 (or ordered pair) could have entries representing strength/power and endurance(including "resistance" as discussed before).

Example 1:  (1,0) represents only training strength and power
                     (1/2,1/2) represents equal time spent on strength and endurance.

There are a few useful examples of training 3-tuples(triples).  A climbing only training triple would involve (strength, power endurance(resistance), endurance).  A triple could also include cross training: (strength, endurance, cross training).

Example 2:  (1/4,1/2,1/4) represents one quarter of training time spent on strength and endurance and one half of the time spend on resistance(for the triple of type 1).
                     (2/5,1/2,1/10) represents 2/5 on strength, 1/2 on endurance, and 1/10 on cross training.

One can create arbitrary training n-tuples by ordering the entries from the least to most number of moves, then adding cross training at the end.  A version of the training 5-tuple was discussed last time.  The largest useful training n-tuple I can imagine would be the training 8-tuple:

(c1,c2,c3,c4,c5,x1,x2,x3)

c1:  Short power
c2:  Long Power
c3:  Short Resistance
c4:  Long Resistance
c5:  Endurance
x1:  Cross Training: Strength
x2:  Cross Training: Metabolic Conditioning
x3:  Cross Training: Endurance

Creation of smaller training n-tuples from this 8-tuple can be done by combining some of the above types of training or leaving them out all together.  If I were teaching a course in climbing training I would assign you, the reader, to create 5 different training n-tuples(leave them in the comments if you like).  

Why?

Some of this is for sure overkill, but if there is anything I've learned from studying math is to take an idea and extend it to its logical conclusion.  Later we will explore a periodized training schedule taking advantage of training n-tuples.
              

Charts



There was some confusion about the chart from the last post.  I'll split it up into several charts here and discuss.  

So as seen above training short power(1-4 move boulder problems) has a little carryover into resistance and decreases endurance.  Long power(4-12 move boulder problems) is widely helpful. 

Short resistance(12-30 moves) has good carryover into all climbing strengths, while long resistance(30-60 moves) does little to help power of any kind.

As seen above training endurance is a real killer.  There are cases that could be made for training endurance as active recovery, or for building one's "base" fitness.

Discussion

The charts above come from my personal experience with training each of the facets of climbing.  The interplay of climbing strengths is probably fairly unique for each individual.  Depending on the time of the year or my projects I will train different mixes of power, resistance, and endurance.  This can be broken into a 5-tuple with the sum of the entries 100.  So (20, 20, 20, 20, 20) would mean an even split between training short power, long power, short resistance, long resistance and endurance(20% of training time for each).  Now that we have notation, I'll list a few scenarios below.

Bouldering:  For bouldering around the northeast, where problems tend to be short I find training (60,30,10,0,0) to be useful.  For bouldering elsewhere and as a general prep for sport climbing I find (40,40,20,0,0) to be a good mix.

Sport Climbing:  For climbing at Rumney (33,33,33,0,0) seems good.  Any other sport climbing location needs a shift toward the endurance end: (10,20,30,30,10) for onsite climbing, and (10,20,40,30,0) for redpointing.

Types of Training

By far the best book on climbing training I have "read" is Planificacion del Entrenamiento en Escalada Deportiva by David Macia.  I say "read" because I don't speak Spanish but I was able to sift through the book pretty well.  Macia has trained some very successful climbers such as Ramon Julian, Yuji Hirayama, and Edu Marin.  Throughout the book the word resistance is used for power endurance and he has a good way of organizing the different facets of physical training for climbing.

1.  Short Power:  This is 1-4 move power.  Best trained with short boulder problems, the campus board, and single hangs.

2.  Long Power:  This is 5-12 move power.  Best trained with longer boulder problems, short bouldery sport routes, the campus board, and maximum repeaters.

3.  Short Resistance:  This is 12-30 move power endurance.  Best trained with boulder problem intervals, short sustained sport routes, campus board power endurance, and repeaters.

4. Long Resistance:  This is 30-60 move power endurance.  Best trained with timed intervals on a climbing wall, longer sport routes, and super repeaters.

5.  Endurance:   This is 60+ move endurance.  This type of endurance is not that useful because rarely are there climbs with more than 60 hard moves in a row.  The biggest reason to train this type of endurance is learning how to rest on a jug.  Once you know how to rest, "Long Resistance" will get you between the jugs.  I have trained this in the past with intervals of 8 minutes of continuous climbing separated by 1/2 mile runs.  This type of training is probably good once every week or two if you climb long routes, any more and you will throw out any power you've ever had.

Carryover


There will be carryover from one category to another, but this is probably different for each person.  My experience is reflected in the following graph(the numbers don't really mean anything other than scaling):
So if you read the chart you see training endurance gives you a "-50" in power and "+25" in long resistance and etc.  In my experience training endurance helps your long term power endurance a little but hurts everything else.  This analysis is most applicable to systematic training and falls apart in the case of someone climbing for skill acquisition.

For the early spring Rumney seasonI have had good success training short power, long power, and short resistance and letting carryover take care of the rest.  For my upcoming trip to the Red I've been training everything except endurance with less focus on short power than normal.

Bonus Training

First off, I added a page to the blog containing all of the workouts that have been thus far discussed.  The weather around here has been great for climbing when I am busy and lousy when I'm free(Friday and Saturday).  Combining this with my injury, which is a lot better, has given me time to experiment with my training protocol a bit, with good results.  I'll write it all up later.

The point of this post is to describe how to add unplanned, unstructured exercises to your routine. Bonus training can help your strength, flexibility, or endurance, sometimes it won't really do anything for your fitness other than burn a few extra calories.  I'll group bonus training into three main groups, with examples.

Bonus training that serves an another purpose.
1.  Riding a bicycle to work/school/for errands.
2.  Walking the dog.
3.  Doing yard work.

Bonus training that can be done while watching TV or a movie or reading.
1.  Floor calisthenics.
2.  Stretching. 

Bonus training that can be fit between daily activities.
1.  Run around the block.
2.  Do a few pull ups every time you walk by your pull up bar/hangboard.

Here is a list of some of the bonus training I do:
1.  Ride my bicycle to school.
3.  Handstand push ups and press handstands
5.  Squeeze power putty.
6.  Stretching.

Training with an injury

It is often said that our fingers are not made to withstand the forces put on them during hard climbing.  I seem to collect pulley strains at a decreasing rate of one per year or so.  Early on this was from crimping all the time.  Now I have rules for myself of when I can crimp, but the forces of the universe conspire against me.  This time it started while trying the bottom of Parallel Universe at Rumney in the rain. If you've ever tried the route you already know on which hand the finger is, as well and the offending hold.  Luckily I was able to keep it under control for a good spring send, but now I'm looking out at beautiful climbing conditions getting myself ready for a hangboard session in my dark, wet basement.

There is good discussion of finger injuries on the web here and here.  I won't go deeply into how I treat my injuries, other than saying I try everything: contrast baths, cold water, heat pad, stretching, putty, etc.   The training described here is probably safe if you have a slight pulley injury, I can't speak for other injuries: collateral ligament, flexor tendon etc.

Okay, now down to business.  If you're going to train with an injury get used to the open handed grip.
photo: www.moonclimbing.com

My experience is that with a minor pulley injury one can pull as hard as you want as long as they don't close your hand more than the above picture.  This is difficult, but not impossible, if you are climbing outside.  The best tools, in order,  are the fingerboard, campus board, and a bouldering wall where special problems can be set.


1.  Fingerboard: Review the hangboard workouts on the workouts page of this blog.  Notice that only one set of each workout asks for a 1/2 crimp hang.  Either skip this hang or hang 3 finger open hand with the hand of the injured finger.

2.  Campus Board:  This is where I lose most people.  The campus board is thought to be a very dangerous training tool.  This is not deserved unless you campus with a full crimp.  With an injured pulley one can safely perform any campus workout if they stick to a 3 finger open hang grip.  This requires a fairly large degree of strength so its probably not best for everyone.  I have even experimented with two finger open handed campusing during an injury without aggravating my finger.

3.  Bouldering Wall:  This requires problems to be set so that the hold for the injured hand can be grabbed 3 finger open handed(see a trend?).  These problem can still be quite difficult, but care must be used to not close ones hand if the holds are poor.


Why is 3 finger open hand important?  This grip allows the fingers to be loaded while remaining nearly fully extended, thus there is very little load on the pulleys.  What about 4 finger open hand?  In order to engage your pinky the other fingers must bend.  This puts a nontrivial strain on the tendon pulleys.  The 4 finger open hand/ half crimp is very safe for training on non-injured fingers, but not so great for an injured finger.

The Away Game


I've just returned from a week trip to the Red River Gorge, and it has reminded me of what I consider to be my biggest weakness as a climber: the away game.  Climbing at my "home" crag of Rumney is conducive to projecting at or above your limit.  This is due to a number of circumstances:

 1. There is not a wealth of climbs at all grades.
 2.  The climbs tend to be technical and powerful requiring considerable rehearsal.
 3.  The harder the climb the more fun the climbing. (I believe this to be true everywhere not just rumney).

If you add the fact that I'm naturally more of a power climber than endurance climber, this all adds up to subpar performance on the road.

Since this blog is meant to be about training lets go over some "holes" in my training methods that make for my underachieving in the away game.

1.  I do zero pure endurance training.
          
I have done plenty of pure endurance training in the past without very good results.  While doing endurance training I watch my power and power endurance levels fall like a lead weight.  Hard sections of climbs that I should cruise past become so difficult I either fall or barely squeak through and never recover.  This is the weakest portion of my training program.

2.  My over-reliance on the fingerboard, campus-board, and problems I set on my home wall.

In order to be a good away game climber one needs to be subjected to a large volume of different climbing movements.  I've pointed out in an earlier post that my local gym does not consistently provide climbs in a good range for me.  If I were able to set there(which I am not) the situation would be slightly better, but really I need problems set by other people.

I am in the process of brainstorming some solutions to these problems.  Here is what I've come up with so far.

1.  I've never tried to add pure endurance training to the program in its current state.  My current training program (a version of this fitted to climbing at Rumney on friday and saturday) seems to be perfect for power and power endurance.  If I replace the maximum hangs with "super repeaters" (more on that later) I think I'll be able to hang on to most of my power endurance and only sacrifice a moderate about of power.  I have a few more ideas I'll outline later.

2.  Since there is no real hope of better plastic climbing around here any time soon I've made it a goal to get more mileage days climbing outside this spring/summer.

A good question to ask is: What is a good standard to achieve on roadtrips?  My goal is to be able to climb within 2 letter grades of my hardest redpoint in a few days and within 3 or 4 letter grades in a day. On my recent trip to the red I was 1 for 3 on the second goal which gives me a good starting place for improvements.

China Beach

It all started in August 2005 in Rifle, CO.  I was there for two weeks with my friends Warren and Chad, and the topic came up of lifetime goal redpoints.  Warren's goal was Zulu, Chad's was the 7pm show, both of these in Rifle.  I was enroute to a Ph.D. program in Albany, NY so I knew I wouldn't spend much time traveling so I picked a far fetched route within a reasonable distance: China Beach.  At the time Chad and I were fairly new climbers, we had consolidated mid 12's, and we thought anything was possible.  I left Rifle that summer having sent a handful of 12b's and one 12c.

That fall I spent my first weekends at Rumney.  I did routes like Technosurfing and Whip Tide, and got incredibly shut down on Tsunami, Aquarius, and Suburban.  All of this took place in the shadow of this:

Around this time I began seriously training for climbing.  At first the training had a moderate effect on my climbing.  Finally in the last 8 months or so I feel like I've found the training formula that allows me to climb at my best. 

From that fall until fall 2008 I never thought It would be possible for me to do the route.  I held it in my mind as a carrot during long and unpleasant hours of training, but I was doubtful.  Then in November 2008 I sent Cold War(14a).  I was ecstatic, now my dream was only one letter grade away.  Little did I know that Cold War sits in the bottom of its grade, while China Beach sits at least in the middle of its grade.  That winter I spent training and climbing all alone at a boulder near my house:

                                       
The next spring I had my first serious tries on the route.  It was hard, but it felt possible.  Plagued with a minor finger injury I wasn't able to put as much of myself into the route as I wanted.  I never linked past the halfway point.  I knew once I stuck the move out of the break it was just a matter of time.  While the bottom half of the route was funky and difficult for me, the top half could not be more my style: big moves, good crimpers, and climbing square to the wall.  

I had a detailed plan in my mind for the winter that would maximize the chances of success.  Train only power and strength until a 3 week bouldering trip to my home state of Arkansas.  I would try to send everything I could in Arkansas.

Horshoe Canyon Bouldering 2009 from Maya Alfonso on Vimeo.

After the trip I would take a week off and detrain the perfect amount to start making huge gains(see for yourself in the training charts section).  The plan had me climbing or training 6 days a week 2 session most days until late March, when I would go to Rumney to rework the route.  Then, I would have all of April to take it easier and make serious redpoint attempts. Everything was proceeding as planned until good weather early in March put me trying the route several weeks before expected.  Even without a taper the training had paid off, and I was immediately getting huge high points.  Two weeks later everything came together and I sent!  It was perfect in every way:  the weather, the scene and the cliff that day.  I'm glad I didn't send faster this spring because climbing on it was so enjoyable this year, and I'm glad I didn't take longer because now we can go to the red next week and not worry about losing power.

What's next.  After a little hiatus from serious training I'll start up again.  I've ignored 10 or so 5.13's at Rumney I want to do during this quest, after that is anyones guess.


The Training Week for Bouldering Season

Though I haven't described quite everything I do I think I can fill in the gaps while describing what a typical week is like.  I have added links on the charts page to my rowing times as well as a training log for odds and ends.  Before I continue its worth noting that this level of volume has been built over the last few years.  It breaks most of the rules in popular training books.  I decided that I would train this much as an experiment.  Once I did this I saw quicker gains in my hangboard, campus board, and one arm pull up numbers, as well as stronger climbing in general.  For descriptions of each exercise see previous posts.

Sunday


Morning: 2 sets of finger board repeaters separated by a set of one arm pull ups pyramids plus.  Row 500m.

Afternoon:  Campus board power endurance.  Pick a time (15 seconds or more) and ladder up and down the campus board for that time, rest 2 minutes and repeat 8 times.  I got this from the moonclimbing site.  In their article Rich Simpson suggests 40-60s of campusing.  I found this brutal, and the best I've done is 25s with failing in the last two sets.  I am convinced 60s is 9a climbing fitness.

Monday

Morning:  Row 2000m.  This is the only day of the week I row a full 2000m.  I try for a personal best each time.  I had good improvement until the last 2 weeks where I am stalling around 7:35.  I would like to row sub 7 minutes, but I think that would take too much time from climbing specific training.

Afternoon:  Four rounds for time of (run .25 miles, 5 muscle ups on rings, 10 push ups, and 15 pike ups).

Evening:  Ideally on monday evenings I climb on plastic somewhere other than my attic.  Originally I wanted this to be my local gym(AIR), but the problems don't change nearly enough, I don't have setting privileges, and would rather save my money for road trips and indian food.  Recently I have been climbing at my friend Adam's home wall on mondays, Its great fun.

Tuesday

Morning:  2 sets of finger board maximum repeaters separated by a set of one arm pull up pyramids.

Afternoon:  Cross Training Strength:  Usually involving some assortment of straddle front lever pull ups, assisted crosses on rings, upside down sit ups, and the standing ab wheel. Then: Campus Board maximum efforts and bouldering on the attic wall.  I have a training partner,Ben, on Tuesday afternoons and it is great not to toil alone

Wednesday

Morning:  I attend a yoga class and afterwards row 1000m.  

Evening:  Six rounds for time of (row 250 m, 20 touches of HS wall runs, 10 pike ups), followed by climbing at a friends home wall.  Mostly moderate traverses, taking it easy and getting a little pumped.

Thursday

Morning: 1 set of finger board single hangs followed by some one arm pull ups on holds.

Afternoon:  Same as tuesday.

Friday:  
This is a rest day.  I will usually do an easy run for about 20-30 minutes.  

Saturday:  
This is the day for climbing outside.  What I do depends on where I am.  At a new area with lots of problems I'll usually try to make some good flashes and climb everything I can in a few trys.  At a new area with a few problems I'll try to make a one day ascent of something that is hard for me.  At an area I frequent I usually try 1 or 2 medium/long term projects and then try to repeat everything I can.

How do I find the time:  At the moment I am a math grad student.  I teach one class and I'm currently writing my thesis.  This gives me a good deal of flexibility.

Why do I find the time:  Short answer: China Beach.  Medium Answer:  I am convinced that ordinary people can climb at a pretty high level if they put the work in.  I consider myself to be more average than mutant and so this is a grand experiment to see how hard I can climb.  Long Answer:  Maybe later.

Possible Gaps in the program:  A later post.




One Arm Pull-ups

As usual the charts from when I do the following workouts can be found on the charts page of the blog.

This is the most controversial element of my training.  Does it help climbing, is it a waste of time?  Who knows.  I find it a fun distraction that has no danger of popping an A2 pulley.  Its taken me years to get a solid one arm pull up(OAP), but I never spend more than 15 minutes 2 or 3 days a week on them.  Also my methods have evolved to what seems to be a much more efficient system then I originally used.

Weighted Pull-ups


I've used weighted pull-ups in the past but now I don't do any pull-up(apart from front lever pull ups and muscle ups) with 2 arms.  These could be important for someone who doesn't have the necessary strength to perform a OAP without significant assistance.  Each of the following workouts could easily be scaled to use weighted 2 arm pull-ups instead of OAP's.


Tools


Unless you are incredibly strong you are going to need a system for assisted one arm pull-ups.  I use the following pulley system.


Here is Ben with the pulley system in action.

Obviously you need something to do the pull ups like a bar or a hangboard.

Pyramids


I got the basic idea for these from the beastmaker website, though doing pyramids for an exercise is not all that original.  This workout consists of 9 sets separated by a 2 minute rest.  The sets have the following structure:

  1. reps: 1, weight: base
  2. reps: 2, weight: base-5
  3. reps: 3, weight: base-10
  4. reps: 4, weight: base-15
  5. reps: 5, weight: base-20
  6. reps: 4, weight: base-15
  7. reps: 3, weight: base-10
  8. reps: 2, weight: base-5
  9. reps: 1, weight: base

 Now you need to decide your "base weight".  Originally I just picked the amount fairly randomly and let the amount of assistance drop as I got stronger.  Now I've noticed that I do the first and last set with ~7 pounds less resistance than my one rep max.  For example if your one rep max is a OAP with 3 additional pounds then -4 pounds is a good base weight.

Its worth noting that -10 pounds means 10 pounds in the pulley system but +3 pounds is a one armer with 3 pounds in the free hand.  I usually increase resistance(1 pound at a time) in this workout when I am able to finish the last set strong.

Pyramids Plus


This is a version of the above workout tailored to building the ability to perform multiple repetitions of one arm pull ups.  There are 5 sets separated by 3 minute rests with the following structure

  1. reps:2, weight: base
  2. reps:4, weight: base-10
  3. reps:6, weight: base-20
  4. reps:4, weight: base-10
  5. reps:2, weight: base-20 
The base weight used here is 3 pounds less than the weight used for the 2 rep set in the "pyramid" workout.  



Pull up on Holds


This is only mainly useful for climbers.  If you are not a climber I'll offer a suggestion for the 3rd workout.

I pick 5 different holds on my hangboard.  For the beastmaker 2000 I currently pick the mouth jug, the big edges, the middle edge, the big 2 finger pocket, and the 15 degree sloper.  For each hold I'll do 2 singles with as little assistance as possible, resting as much as needed between sets.

Maximum Singles


If your not a climber/do not have a hangboard a good workout to balance against the other two is as follows.  Perform 10 single OAP's where the assistance is as follows for each set

  1. one rep max -4
  2. one rep max-4
  3. one rep max-2
  4. one rep max-2
  5. one rep max
  6. one rep max
  7. one rep max-2
  8. one rep max-2
  9. one rep max-4
  10. one rep max-4
Training Week

I perform each of these workouts once a week.  This gives me a hard day(pyramids plus), a medium day(pyramids), and an easy day(pull ups on holds).  Every so often I test myself:



Scaling for the Fingerboard

Before I get started, if your interested check out the charts of my fingerboard workouts by clicking above.

The last post was about the fingerboard workouts I do at the moment.  These have developed over the last several years.  I believe the workout can be done by only scaling size of hold and weight added down to a level of about V6 or mid 5.12 climbing.  If you take out the front 2 and back 2 hangs and replace them with front 3 hangs I think it scales down to V4 and low end 5.12.  Any climbing level below that and the fingerboard probably is not the best use of climbing time.

Its also worth noting that each workout has a totally different perceived difficulty.  The repeaters are by far the most painful of the three.  Because of all of the rest built into the single hang workout it feels like your not doing much work at all.  The maximum repeaters fall somewhere in between.

I do one workout of each every week.  This gives me one hard, one medium, and one easy day of fingerboarding each week.  Of course this can be scaled to your need.  Another good choice would be a three week cycle.  On the first week 2 days of repeaters, in the second week 2 days of maximum repeaters, and in the third week 2 days of single hangs.  This could be worked up to a 6 week or 12 week cycle as needed.  During the climbing season one day of maximum repeaters are probably sufficient to maintain finger strength.

The fingerboard may be less important for others than it is for me.  Whenever I'm on climbing trips I get progressively weaker throughout the trip.  I think some of this is due to missing training, but this will be the subject of an upcoming post.

Hangboard Workouts

This blog was started mostly so I could document my training. I'll begin be explaining all of the things I do separately and finish with how they fit together into a "program". Its worth noting that I have no formal education in these matters, but I have spent a considerable amount of time reading training material for climbing and other sports in general. Also I've been involved in sports at a high level that have more systematic training than climbing: gymnastics and diving.

First of all which hangboard to I use. I started out with the Revolution "Hovah", then moved to a Moon Board, then I used a combination of the two plus a single small campus rung. Now and for the foreseeable future I'll be using the Beastmaker 2000.

When I do a a hangboard workout I use five main grips.
  1. Back 2: ring and pinky finger.
  2. Front 2: index and middle finger.
  3. Middle 2: middle and ring finger.
  4. Half Crimp
  5. Sloper
I have 3 different types of workouts I do with the hangboard. I'll describe each.

Repeaters:

This is the main workout described on the Beastmaker website. 1 set of repeaters consists of hanging for 7 seconds, resting for 3 seconds, and repeating 7 times. Between each set I rest 2 minutes. I order the grips as follows:
  1. Back 2 (7s+3s)x7, rest 2 minutes
  2. Front 2 (7s+3s)x7, rest 2 minutes
  3. Middle 2 (7s+3s)x7, rest 2 minutes
  4. Half Crimp (7s+3s)x7, rest 2 minutes
  5. Sloper (7s+3s)x7, rest 2 minutes
I'll do two rounds of repeaters per workout with some one arm pull-up work between(to be described later). If I make it through all 7 "reps" in a given grip during a workout I'll add 2 or 3 extra pounds the next workout. If I fail before the 5th rep I'll subtract weight next time. This is the hardest of all the fingerboard workouts I do.

Maximum Repeaters:

These are performed the same as repeaters except there are only 4 "reps" per set, and I rest 3 minutes between sets. This allows for more resistance in the form of more added weight, the use of a worse hold, or hanging with only one arm(with a pulley system for assistance). I order the grips like this(with notes how I increase resistance):

  1. Back 2 (7s+3s)x4(smaller hold), rest 3 minutes
  2. Front 2 (7s+3s)x4(smaller hold), rest 3 minutes
  3. Middle 2 (7s+3s)x4(more weight), rest 3 minutes
  4. Half Crimp (7s+3s)x4(one arm), rest 3 minutes
  5. Sloper (7s+3s)x4(one arm), rest 3 minutes
As above I'll do two rounds of these with some one arm pull ups between. If I make it through 4 "reps" in any grip I'll add 2 or 3 pounds next time. If I fail on the 1st or 2nd hang I subtract weight.

Single Hangs

These are well named. I do 3 single hangs in every grip type with as much rest between as needed. Here I use enough resistance to fail within 5 seconds. I order the grips as follows(with increased resistance):

  1. Middle 2 (small sloping pockets)
  2. Front 2 (with more weight)
  3. Back 2 (1 arm)
  4. Half Crimp(1 arm and smaller holds)
  5. Sloper(45 degree sloper: HARD)
Sometimes I add mono work to the single hang day. Currently only index finger monos, but in the past I've done middle and ring fingers too. If I perform any hang for 7 seconds I add more resistance to the next hang. I'll only do one round of this during the workout.

In upcoming posts I'll discuss my one arm pull up workouts , there are three of these that fit in with the three fingerboard workouts, campus board workouts, bouldering wall workouts, cross training, and how I train while climbing outside(bouldering and routes).