Rock Climbing Training
Season 01
Workout No. 001 ~~ JAN/08
Base Fitness Phase – Week 1
Oh man. I've been hyping myself up for today for about a week now.
- My thumb is feeling fine after being crushed and losing my thumbnail;
- The holidays are over, and I feel like my body has recovered from the plague of beer and chocolate I smote upon it;
- No work trips on the horizon and I have no professional heart-attacks in sight;
- I've recently become a member of a community where writing things down, capturing, creating, and sharing is encouraged.
I've hummed and hawed and dabbled about with trying my hand at some photography (which is tons of fun and I intend to continue) -- but when I think about what I'm passionate about and that I can share, I think of rock-climbing (and, by effect, all the camping, hiking, adventuring, reading, training, dreaming, injuries, and life stories that come with it). So I'm going to dedicate the vast majority of my energy and time on here towards becoming an absoloute climbing monster.
Today is the first day of my intentional / driven journey into training for climbing.
I'll get into more details on this in a further post, but to start, I'm going to ease in with a season of training as outlined in The Rock Climbers Training Manual by Michael and Mark Anderson. Specifically, I'm going to start with a seasonal routine geared towards beginners. I've been climbing pretty steadily for about 4 years now, I think -- so I'm not exactly a beginner; however, in order to get a metric of where I am at, we'll start at the beginning, evaluate as we go.
This is going to be a dynamic "first" season....
Realistically, I've completed 2 structured training seasons before this, but not without taking a pretty lengthy 'beer and chocolate' oriented hiatus. While, in essence this is a training journey for myself, I encourage others to join me. This training book has some pretty great ideas -- if you already have a membership at a climbing gym, or can access one via university, then it's a pretty legit book to sign out at a library, make sense of, tailor a plan, and get going with.
Hey @mstafford, this shit's getting a bit wordy... Wrap it up quick.
Okay long story short. I and whoever joins me, is going to get really good at climbing by following a plan. Today is day one. Day one includes ARC training. It's ENDURANCE exercise for your forearms essentially. Like doing lots of little runs before a marathon. Check out this YouTube (ugh) video of Alex Barrows describing how he does it. Throughout each training post, I'm going to find hopefully interesting / thorough / funny / delicious / sexy ways of explaining the different components in this training plan, and climbing resources / humour that I've found.
The Workout:
The Plan (The Good):
ARC Workout #1.
- Two sets of 20m uninterrupted climbing at easy grade on auto belay. 10 Minute break.
- Moderate bouldering for 30 minutes. (OPTIONAL)
Skillwork: Precise foot placements. "Glued feet" (Foot stays after initial contact)
How it went (The Bad):
- First day back after a “lengthy” (10 week) hiatus, but it felt really good. Except for how sweaty I got. It's a good thing I don't care. Both sets went down smooth. Had to jump around between a couple different auto belays because of how busy it was, but it was generally 3~4 laps on autobelay climbing 5.9 ~ 5.10d routes, or a bit of V0~V2 bouldering.
- Skillwork went well. Definitely need to plan ahead better to understand best position for footing
- Bouldering at the end didn't happen.
Injuries / Thoughts / Comments (The Ugly)
- No injuries or concerns.
- It's nice to not be climbing with a stomach full of sushi and soy sauce.
Down here, I'm going to try to share cool climbing resources and articles that I've found useful or interesting. First up, one of my favorites and regular e-visits, is the open-source climbing guide / beta database. I'm talking about theCrag.com! This place is another amazing ecosystem, and deserves a lot of praise! It's pretty big in Australia, and was instrumental in helping me plan out a climbing trip that never really came to be. I've been trying to populate information for areas that I've been fortunate enough to climb in, and I encourage others to do so.
Be well, stay safe, and I'll see you on the sharp side (once it dries out around here). Sorry for how wordy this shit was.
Always good to see others train as well. Do you have any specific goal you want to reach and how many days in a week do you train?
I did a training in October and November last year, should start soon with a new training to become strong for the spring-season.
Thanks for the question @markpu! I haven't set any specific goals just yet, but having a goal to work towards is definitely an integral part of training.
Over the next couple weeks I'm going to talk about some of the sport routes I'd like to send during my performance phase and how to train for it.
As far as schedule, that's another great question. I have a calendar of together that I'm hoping to share in a post later today!
You should totally start a ming season as well. We could start a revolution.
I'm looking forward to your future posts. It's probably motivating to see somebody else training.
Currently I'm trying to get the volume a little bit up and end-January I should really start training again. I really like the 4x4's (bouldering), do you know them?
Yeah definitely. 4x4s are a really good workout, and a great way to get absoloutely exhausted! hahaha. Thanks for the support, dude! Looking forward to some more good stuff from you, too. Those ice-climbing posts are great.
Just talked to a friend, and if the conditions are good we'll go half february ice-climbing again. So hopefully in a month there are new posts!
Very cool post!
I've always daydreamed of rock climbing - without safety gear.
They say you haven't lived - until you've almost died and I've always wondered what that feels like.
Anyway - I look forward toward more rock climbing updates. Perhaps I can live vicariously through you.
👋
Thanks for the comment! I promise that things on this blog will get a little spicy when we do some outdoor climbing, but does will always be included. I was climbing some easy routes a few summers ago that I could have solo'd (no rope ), but decided not to. It's easy enough to make things interesting by shipping a bolt or piece of protection while still generally making sure you don't die. We did bump into a couple people (dubbed "the heathens") that are famous to the local crag that were doing it though. But it's not for me, plus it's easy enough to hurt / kill yourself with regular speed climbing anyways ;)
Looking forward to sharing stories.
So what your saying is you're not a real man!
LOL JK
It takes a lot of guts to do what you're doing. If, rather when, I start getting in shape it's something I'd look into.
You'll see me like Tom Cruise...
Hahaha one day, maybe!
And if you're looking for a recent movie with some cool climbing in it, check out the recent remake of Point Break. Don't get me wrong -- the movie itself is pretty bad -- but it's fun.
I liked the first act - but then it fell off from there.
If idle hands do the devil's work, what do climber's hands do?
... Drugs?
Will you join me, @OriginalWorks?