Training Block

Wow it’s been a bit! There’s been some exciting news, planning travel for the next World Cup, and finding new ways to train. I know that all sounds cool, but that’s not what this is about.

See, for the last few weeks I felt kinda stuck. I felt like I couldn’t train properly. Nothing I tried would work. My legs were stiffer than they’ve been for a while, and no amount of stretching or muscle relaxers or stretching changed that. I also couldn’t campus for some reason. I couldn’t trust my hands, and my arms couldn’t do big pulls. I was essentially stuck in a rut. I felt discouraged because the Innsbruck World Cup is right around the corner, and I didn’t feel as ready for it as I’d like.

Let’s talk about that. Training ruts happen every so often. Mine seem to pop up when there’s a change in temperature. In the winter, my muscles lock up and it takes me a bit to figure out how to cope with that. The transition to warm weather is almost worse because heat makes controlling the muscles really difficult. It makes me feel like there’s weights on my legs, so lifting and moving them just feels impossible sometimes. This spring/summer transition is no different.

This also happens when there’s a competition I’m particularly excited about. Innsbruck is my favorite World Cup of them all, so I’m very excited for it. I get to see all my international friends, eat fun Austrian food, and go to my favorite gym in the world. I also love that comp because the routes are usually really overhung and very creatively set. The last thing I need is to be fighting with my legs while I’m just trying to enjoy the vibes of the city and the comp itself.

So then, what do you do about it?

The thing is, you just have to push through it. I’d changed up how I train, again, and it seems to be working so far. I was doing what’s called phase training, where you focus on different aspects of training for long periods of time before moving on to the next one. The order we’ve been going in is endurance, strength, power, and power endurance. That was working for a while, but then it stopped working. I’m not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I stopped trusting the process. There’s also the fact that my normal training has gotten me very far, so when comp season rolls around it might be good to transition back into doing what I know how to do rather than phase training the whole time.

But aren’t you already in Europe for the next World Cup?

Yep, I sure am! Luckily I’d gone through this before, so I was able to snap out of it before it got bad. I regained my strength and endurance quickly enough, and the power endurance wasn’t far behind. I spent the winter building up a lot of leg and arm strength, so I just had to retrain my brain to activate it and then trust it.

Wait, so you just snapped out of it? Well, no. There are steps that I take to help me. The first step was to make training more of a fun activity. If it feels like a reward, you’re more likely to want to do it. My way of doing this is to just go to a gym and climb up and down on autobelays. As I’m more of a boulderer now, I reward myself with some bouldering afterwards. This is fun to me, but it also really wakes up the legs and makes it so that I can pull stronger leg moves on rope routes, and not get as tired on tall wall. When I’m at my boulder gym, I’ll try a bunch of v0s on the kilterboard. I can do more of the leg moves that they ask for on these routes, which makes me feel confident, so I really enjoy doing it. I follow it up with trying to campus the holds on the same route.

The next step is to figure out how to take that fun and make it a bit more structured so that you can accomplish certain training goals. It helps to get others involved at this point. If you have a training partner, it becomes easier to do the workouts that feel less fun. I’ve also started to do the autobelay, boulder, rope climb thing in that order each time. It helps because it keeps me from getting bored, I get to do my own thing for a while, and then I get to play around on boulders and fun top rope. It all works out.

The third, and arguably most important, step is to remind yourself why you’re doing this. What’s the point? I do it to fuel my love of climbing. I get to go to Europe with my partner, see a lot of my international friends, and climb on walls that are made specifically for us. All of that fuels my training, so I take that and find a way to use that to break the rut.

The thing to keep in mind is that this feeling will pass. It’s not permanent. It will go away, and once it does you’ll feel better and stronger for having pushed through it. Remember that your chosen sport is supposed to be fun, and that whatever you put out is what you will get back. If you tell yourself that you’ll get through it and come out on top, you’ll gain the will and strength to do the work to help yourself.

It took a bit, but I eventually got my mojo back. I can once again lead and boulder the way I want. My mental game has improved which has let me get my dynamic power back. I feel more ready for this comp than I did even for the Salt Lake comp. And once this comp is over, I’ll restart my training progress so I can be ready for Seoul.

What do you guys do when you’re finding it hard to train for your sport? How do you get yourself out of it? Share your thoughts either by emailing me or commenting on the Instagram post!

Anyway, happy climbing y’all!