Periodized Training 2 (Foundation)

I went skiing last night and it was tough.  Thirty centimetres of powder had been skied out as it fell through the day making for hard work over, through and between the soft yet heavy bumps.  My thighs have never burned so much when skiing.  Not one of my 8 runs was done top-to-bottom without stopping for relief.  The point of this anecdote is to convey to you how drastically proper training can affect performance:  This is the first season I have not trained to ski.  Climbing season went late, and we've had no snow so there's been no point.  I doubted I would ski at all this year.  How I have been training is contradictory to what I'd be doing if ski season has been the goal, and I paid for it on the hill.  (Everyone in the lodge and on the chair was discussing the difficulty of the conditions, but most winters I'd have no trouble gracefully ploughing through a fluid descent.)

How have I been training?
This first month has been the foundation phase: a goal of restoring symmetry and efficient joint mechanics for the work that's to come.  It is similar to a hypertrophy protocol, but the muscle masses involved are smaller (typically single joint movements) and the work-to-rest ratios are volitional.  Basically, the training stimulus is one that will improve joint integrity through increasing muscle length and strength simultaneous to stability and control.  It has been working.  Some increases in lean mass, are noticeable.  My co-ordination at the end ranges of motion have greatly improved and I'm climbing better.

Training is done 3 days a week, and climbing practice 3 days a week.  I'm following a 3-day split: 1) is anterior musculature, 2) is posterior musculature, and 3) is medial and lateral musculature.  Seven exercises each day, three sets of ten at a controlled continuous pace.  Rest periods are typically in the 90 second range but may vary greatly one way or the other.  Loads are progressing linearly.  The details of the training programme are far to complex for me to convey them in terms climbers can comprehend to safely and effectively follow.  Find a good Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) in your area and get them to work with you.  How you do the exercises is paramount, and you need a qualified, insured, experienced professional who can get you the optimal results without injury.

The climbing practice is not strictly regimented, but it is deliberate.  Realizing there are some skills where I need more work than others, I set a number of problems that rely on executing moves where I am limited skill-wise.  All problems are within my ability; some quite easy, and the hardest ones I'm successful on about 30% of attempts.  My goal on non-training days is to take at least one attempt on each of the roughly 10 established problems.  Some days I'm taking lots of rest, get only half of them first go, and call it a day.  Other days I'm a little more motivated to work multiple attempts, then I'll take down a few shitty problems and replace them with some nicer ones that I work as well.  A couple times last week, I walked all of them thrice consecutively and played around on the wall a bit longer.  As the month has progressed, my climbing strength and technique have both improved noticeably.  Some of the hard problems that came off the daily list after week one, made it back on last week and I could do them with ease.

The current 10 on Kermit the Zebra

We're still 2 or more months away from Munson Lake road opening (which with some luck will  happen before peak bug season).  At this point in the training process I'm hopeful of success on my projects.