Training

And we’re back! This time I want to talk a bit about training. This will be a multi-part post, so keep an eye out for the rest of it.

I’ve been climbing for about 7 years now. Crazy, right? I’d never done any sports before that. I was always into working out though, so I had some strength, but I wasn’t a climber. I didn’t know anything about how to train for competitions, or just climbing in general.

Now fast forward to 6 years later. I’d learned a little more about how to train. I would work out a lot. I climbed often. I did everything I knew how to do in order to get better. But it didn’t feel like enough.

Almost a year ago, my partner introduced me to the idea of periodic training. Periodic training is hard, slow, and effective. The overarching idea is that it helps you learn how to understand your body in a very different way.

There are a few different phases in periodic training: endurance, strength, power, and power endurance. By the end of the power endurance phase, you should hit your ‘performance peak.’ Periodic training lets you choose when that performance peak is. One would make a goal, figure out when they want to hit that goal, and then plan out the lengths of their phases.

We were in our strength phase for a while, but we cut it short. We’d realized that strengthening my legs meant that I would have to try harder to control the new strength in them. It also meant that my legs were stiffer, so my running and bouldering had taken a hit.

That happens though. We’ve moved on to the power phase of our training now, and my legs are already doing better. Power training means doing things that are hard enough that you can only do them in short bursts. In this phase, we’re doing kilter board circuits, campus circuits, and hard bouldering or rope routes. We also do more intense, but shorter, strength workouts. The workouts are fun and hard, and they’ll get their own post because I really want to show them off.

Here’s a kilter board warm-up we were doing:

We start by warming up for about 20-30 minutes off the wall. Then we move our warm-ups to the kilter board. We work our way up from V0 routes to V2. After the warm-up, we move on to projecting.

Here’s a V1 project I’m working on at the moment:

For campus circuits, I will either do rapid movements on the kilter board, or I’ll do dynamic moves up the campus board. In both cases, the idea is to go quickly and to pull with as much effort as possible. On the campus board, I’m working on not pausing between hand moves. I’m also working on being able to pull harder and pop more accurately to the edges.

Here’s some campus board workouts I’m doing:

On the kilter board, I’m working on moving to holds without thinking about where I’m going. The goal is to grab whatever I grab and hold on well enough to not fall, and then go from there until I fall off. Pausing is also discouraged for this workout, although you’ll see that I end up pausing a bit anyway.

Here’s some kilter board campusing:

The workout portion, as you’ll see in a different post, are going to look pretty similar to normal strength workouts. The difference between the two is that power workouts are shorter, more intense, workouts. The exercises should be done with heavy enough weights, or be hard enough, that you can only do sets of 4-6. My general rule of thumb is that if you can do more than 6 reps for an exercise, then weight needs to be added.

The power phase of the overall workout cycle is crucial because it gives you the ability to apply your strength training to your climbs. It helps you be explosive, dynamic, and improves your commitment to harder movements. Power has helped me become better at doing bigger, more explosive campus moves. My foot placement is more direct and the footwork itself is more accurate. My high steps are more useful, and I can use them much more dynamically. Overall, the power phase is going well.

Do you all do power workouts? Share suggestions, questions, or workout videos with me either via my email or by messaging me on Instagram!