need help with training plan

I'm trying to put together a strict training plan to help me achieve my goal of getting to 5.12 by labor day of next year. I'm currently climbing 10's here is the plan i came up with tell me what you think or suggestions

Monday: pushups in morning
after work as many sets as it takes to get 100 pullups
go for run
hangboard

Tuesday: climbing/technique
campus
offset pulls
aerobic
ab ripper
stabilizer work

wednesday:100 pullups
hangboard
legs
core
run as per marathon

thursday:warm up on rope
single move boulder
full boulder probs
campus board/upper body
run as per marathon
;
Friday100 pullups
run as per marathon
ab ripper
hangboard/upperbody

Saturday: climbing outside

not sure if this is to much not enough or whatever i just want to see drastic improvments.

You're likely to get hurt. I'll let the more experience trainers fill in why but I'm pretty sure you're way overdoing the climbing type activities.

Whoa buddy, I don't see a single rest day for your poor climbing muscles. When you do a workout it causes damage to your muscles and connective tissues. When you rest they rebuild and get stronger. If you don't rest enough they just get weaker and weaker till you stop out of exhaustion or they give out due to stress. This will not improve your climbing, it will make it worse until your body forces you to stop. Also if you're trying to get better at rock climbing then I'd cut out the running, unless you're training for a marathon at the same time.

Two questions:

How often do you climb currently?
Where and what do you usually climb?

Project elevens and solidify the grade. Your going to want a lot of eleven climbing under your belt before you start projecting twelves. I would climb outside more. Where do you live? How long have you been climbing? Do you climb with 5.12 climbers?

I would agree with the others. You want to factor in more rest. Psyche for training comes and goes for me. Your setting a very aggressive goal training seven days a week. Pace yourself a year is a long time. Every ten weeks of training should consist of at least one week of rest(no climbing). Taking one month off a year isn't a bad idea either.

Enjoy every climb you do. 5.12 is a lofty goal and it takes some people decades/lifetime to climb that hard.

Good luck,

Jason

I was planning as using sunday as a full rest day. I live outside chicago and try to get outside as much as possible climbing at devils lake, were i find the climbs to be rather difficult, as compared to when i was in SD climbing granite. I know i need rest also, and climbing outside more would help also but being 2 and a half hours from devils lake i get there when i can.

Thanks everyone

Keep some running in your schedule. It always helps me to keep some weight off.

phil wortmann wrote:Keep some running in your schedule. It always helps me to keep some weight off.

I agree with JJNS. Just work the grades. Check out the pyramid charts in Eric Horst's books. If you're goal is RP on 5.12a first work to RP (4) 5.10d, (3) 5.11b, and (2) 5.11d. Throughout that process you'll ready yourself for the 5.12a. Also, eat right and shed the lbs. Enjoy being out there, climbing. Who cares what level you climb ;)

jmeizis asks a really good question, w/ how much do you currently climb/train?
The protocol you outlined might be okay for someone who's been climbing for a few years and has built up to that level of conditioning. However, if you're not already training heavy that is one hell of a demand to place on your body straight out of the gates.

My suggestion would be in a similar vain to other posters recommending more mileage in the 11 range. I would also tell you to not worry about doing a campus board workout and if you have access to a gym or systems board rather spend that time working on doing more physically demanding climbing moves(bouldering). I've seen a lot of elbows and overuse injuries involving them and I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig to try out stacking 100 rep pull up days and campusing for a total of 4 days on.
Otherwise if you feel like those exercises will benefit you best then go for it and tweak it along the way to meet your needs.
cheers,
BA

I think you would have a much greater chance at success if you spent your training time in a climbing gym with your only supplemental training being antagonist(push) muscle workouts, stretching and cardio.

It sounds like you have a gym close by but are training for climbing outdoors. If you do weigh a lot the running isn't necessarily a bad idea but I'm going to guess you weight less than 180 lbs. Same deal for the aerobics, it's only really worthwhile if you need to lose weight.

Generally with an intense workout it's going to take at least a full day after the workout, sometimes two to fully recover.

The pullup thing is just going to get you closer to elbow tendinitis. If you can do ten pullups, probably less, in a row you're fine. There's no reason you need to be able to do 100 of them unless you plan on cutting off your legs and campusing routes for the rest of your life.

I don't know anything about your climbing but I'm going to guess that you'll progress more towards 5.12 if you focus more on technique and less on the hangboard/campus board. Unless, that is, you know you have a significant deficit in strength or power? I could ask you a ton of questions to specifically figure out what would help with your training but that would feel like work.

I went crazy last year with diet. I wrote down everything I ate and ate super healthy. I went from 146lbs. to 137lbs. As far as I can tell it didn't help my climbing. Just an experiment in sacrifice as far as I can tell. I was sure that if I weighed 9lbs. less I would surely be sending a couple of letter grades harder.

sounds like your doing alot of high impact exercises my advise would be def have a extensive warm up routine and add some days of rest. A great tool in a training regiment is swimming. Swimming is super low impact and works every major muscle group. Also you can be retard strong and not be able to make two moves on a 5.12 technique will always overcome strength. One tip two is all the strong as **** climbers I know open hand everything in the gym. Hope you make your goal man.

Mike,
If you live outside of Chicago I recommend training at Hidden Peak. It's pretty easy to fall in with a strong group of very dedicated climbers...
Most people there will help you with dialing in a training routine...and the training that the kids team does is posted and pretty intense.

Congratulations on making the decision to start training! Smart training goes a long way, and achieving your goal of 5.12 is for sure possible so don't listen to anyone who says otherwise! Essentially I was in the same position as you two years ago and improved to 5.12 by the next year. Here are my thoughts on your training plan:

1. Intensity and volume of work are on opposite sides of the scale and need to have an appropriate balance. In other words if you increase the volume of work significantly then intensity needs to be reduced, and if you increase intensity significantly then you will need to reduce volume. Over time your body will adapt to increased volume and intensity. Assuming "hangboard" means some sort of intense repeater or single hang workout, and "campus" means a powerful workout on a campus board, then I would say that your balance of intensity and volume more closely resembles Rich Simpson's training for Action Directe (14d) than a plan for improving from 5.10 to 5.12. My point is that I think you are taking on way too much volume of very intense work and will probably get injured. My recommendation would be to start increasing the amount of time you spend in the climbing gym incrementally, perhaps by 30 min per week for a few weeks. Then cut back the time, but try harder routes before beginning to increase the volume again.

2. climbing 5.12 is still about technique. Forget the campus training and endless pull ups, your energy is better spent on actually trying routes or boulder problems. It can be difficult to train technique in the gym, but using tiny footholds and practicing "silent feet" are worthwhile. The more days you spend climbing outside the better.

3. Some might disagree, but I think using a hangboard is a great idea. Make sure you don't overdo it. I would not use it for more than two short sessions per week. Take a long term perspective and progress slowly to make sure you're not going to get injured by increasing the load on your fingers too quickly. Make sure the hangboard remains a supplement to actual climbing.

4. Energy is limited, if running is helping you lose weight then it might be worth it, but lots of running could make recovery from climbing more difficult. If you are exclusively focusing on climbing then I think you should streamline your training to focus only on climbing and the exercises that will directly help your climbing and keep your healthy.

5. Focus on onsights more than redpoints. Don't get sucked into projecting a 12a, instead try and get your solid onsight level to 5.11. This will give you a broad base of technique and experience, and will make climbing multiple 5.12s much more likely.

6. This one should be #1 - Listen to your body and be honest with yourself. If your start warming up and feel like crap then take the day off. If you feel fresh but 'The Office' marathon is on, then get off your butt and get to the gym.

7. Keep a log of your training. I think a good baseline is to record the number of hours in the gym (a basic way of measuring volume of training) as well as specifics about what you did (which should convey the intensity).

5.12 is yours for the taking, Good luck!

Here are some useful links

Steve Bechtel's blog is solid, he includes some ready-to-use training plans that would probably be perfect for you:
climbstrong.wordpress.com/

Moon climbing: great tips from guys who know their stuff
usa.moonclimbing.com/school…

Didn't get the Rich Simpson reference?
vimeo.com/6848413

300 pull-ups a week will not aid you in climbing 5.12, only in your pull-up count. Doing 2-3 sets to failure once a week is probably more than enough, and only good for general strength.

yea the pullup part is more cause i have a personal goal to do 20 in one set and have been stuck at 13 for ever so i figure maybe doing more would build up endurance to bang out the rest probably thinking wrong. So yea seems i need a new training plan i need to come up with.

Among other sources, have you seen this? I'm in favor of running or biking for cardio in addition to the climbing and some pullups are fine (don't kill your elbows). But for climbing specific training this article is informative.

Rock Prodigy

Also rec'd is Self Coached Climber by Hunter/Hague

Good overview on everything you need.

It's interesting though, I knew someone who did 12a their first year, but it was because they put like 100 days on it. They couldn't climb 10 in other places because they didn't really know "how" to climb.

I'm an example of the other extreme...I was onsighting 11c consistently before I did my first 12, but soon after, I could onsight that grade, often more than one in a day and in different areas. But working routes has always been a weak point=-even to this day, I haven't really addressed it...and would probably be the most benefit.

My thinking is you need a ton of more climbing in there (channeling Dave Macleod, another recommended book, 9 out of 10 climbers Make the Same Mistakes)! I don't really see any endurance (ARC or AT) training in your plan. Do whatever you can to make it to the Red as much as you can, do a ton of pitches and then pick something up your wheelhouse (sounds like bouldery) like Wild and Tasty....not Bare Metal Teen!

The rockprodigy article is awesome for sure...make sure your technique and skills are progressing with your power! Like the article references, keep great records...that way even if you can't go out and send projs, you see improvement, a great way to keep the fire stoked.

would something like this be better

monday: 20 minutes of hangboarding on 3 different holds. 4 sets for 5- 10 seconds
5 pullups on min for ten minutes
short run to keep off weight and some core excersizes

Tuesday: boulder ten onsight level problems taking ten min break after
then 9 taking nine min break down to 2 min

Wednesday: same as monday

Thursday: Run laps on autobelay or climb as many routes a grade below onsight also downclimbing to build endurance.

Friday: rest

saturday: climb outside at crag or light cardio

sunday: outdside climbing or rest

I'm up for any changes i should make

If it were my training I'd use MWF all as rest days. If you really want to do the hangboarding then shove it on one of those days. Drop the pullups. You don't have to be able to do a pullup to climb 5.12. I like the laps but it's on you to keep your focus so you don't lose your technique.Remember you can start out with a lighter volume or less intensity and increase it if you are recovering or adjusting well to the workout.

I'd still like to know how long you've been climbing, how much hard training you've done, and what kind of climbs your goals are aimed at. I mean if your wanting to climb 5.12 at the Red then that will be fairly different than if you want to climb 5.12 at Devil's Lake.