I may not be putting up cutting edge first ascents, but I am a decent climber and an excellent strength & conditioning coach, so I feel confident in sharing a bit of my philosophy on training for climbing. A climbing wall is for climbing practice, a weight room is for training the body. Let me expand on that statement:
The first part is obvious, and I doubt anyone will disagree with me on that one. A variety of angles covered in holds is best for learning to move efficiently, expanding/improving ones repertoire of techniques (flag, back flag, drop knee, back step, cross hook, bicycle, toe hook, heel hook, rock on, stem, jams, laybacks, matches, lock-offs, cross-throughs, gastons, underclings, etc.), practising static and dynamic movements, rest positions, and clipping.
When it comes to strength, power, flexibility, endurance, and related anatomical and physiological adaptations, a weight room should be the facility of choice for climbers. This is where gymnasts, football players, judokas, dancers and circus performers do their training. The club, field, mat, and studio are where practices are held. Why? because each facility is designed for a specific part of athletic development. A climbing gym with a few dumbbells, some rock rings, and a stability ball is not a weight room. A weight room with a hangboard and campus rungs doesn’t make a climbing gym. A fitness club with a machine circuit and a treadwall is neither.
To truly develop strength, you need really HEAVY implements (such as barbells, dumbbells, and cable systems) whose resistance can be varied based on the movement and progressed along with the athletes development. Flexibility and power are best trained with comparatively lighter loads, but they need to be finely adjustable. To decrease the chances of overuse injuries, the majority of conditioning (sport-specific endurance) can and should also take place in a weight room, and only fine tuned over a couple weeks on the wall.
Now, training an athlete is a very complex task that should be done on an individualized scale, and in a very structured manner. I simply cannot cover it in a blog format. If you’re interested in hiring me, you can. You can also check out my sister blog for general strength & conditioning info.
Finger strength requires a bit of attention here, though. Overall grip strength and endurance should be getting plenty of attention with climbing practice and the use of free weights. When working on movement and rest techniques, you should use a diversity of hold sizes and shapes with occasionally concentrated effort to grip the holds in ways you don’t like to (open hand and finger combinations especially). This will help train grip strength without overtraining it. If you’re coming off injury or have obvious weakness this will require more attention, maybe through use of a hangboard for a month or so.
Hello Goodman,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I will not profess to equal your credentials on this topic but I think you presume that climbers follow a typical body type: one which is atypical of the population at large. Training on plastic boulder problems and routes for several years yielded me personally little gain. Training for El Cap last year on a bike and running I lost about 20lbs, which indirectly bumped my climbing grades up by 2 notches. The winning combination is probably technique 1st, strength-to-weight ratio 2nd, and technique 3rd.
Cheers.
Yes, you are right, my presumption in this post was that the climber was already of a "climber's build" and climbing at a high-ish level.
DeleteYou are right on the other points as well. I particularly your choice of the word "indirectly". ("...I lost 20lbs, which indirectly bumped my climbing grades by 2 notches.") Here's an explanation on your case study, if you don't mind:
What you did for your El Cap trip was very appropriate given where you were physically and what was expected/required for the type of route you were preparing for. Pulling plastic did little as you reached a plateau. In your case, strength-to-weight ratio was your limiting factor. Biking/running was a good way to improve that and it could have been augmented (both the weight loss and the strength gain) with an appropriate resistance training program. Now that you're leaner, more biking/running will not improve your climbing any further. (You likely require some to maintain your current body composition though.)
Deliberate technical practice -now that you're lighter and can try more things- and structured resistance training will improve your climbing. Just think how much easier it would have been to haul those pigs if they were a "moderate" load for you instead of a "heavy" load. OK, so maybe that wouldn't have made a difference on the slabs! But I think you get my point. Maybe there's a market for Teflon-coated haulbags...
Strength-to-weight ratio is important. For many weekend warriors, decreasing the weight side of things my give you the most bang for your buck. For lean climbers, the strength side is the way to go. Initially this is very basic overall strength stuff and eventually works down to the tiny muscles (pulling off a pinky in a tiny pocket, locking off in a half press and reaching up to pinch a grain of rice) for those guys working V16.