Opinions on Tom Randall/Alex Barrows ideas

August: An/Ae Capcity. Climbing every day, switching between two workouts.
Workout 1: Bouldering volume.
10min. continuous climbing warmup
5min. increasing difficulty bouldering
5x15 move problem V5, 3min. rest
10min. rest
5x15 move problem V5, 3min. rest

Progressing throu the month to

10min. continuous climbing warmup
5min. increasing difficulty bouldering
5x15 move problem V7, 3min. rest
10min. rest
5x15 move problem V7, 3min. rest (increased difficulty)

Workout 2: ARC
5min. warmup
10min. Dynamic bouldering
20min. ARC 5.10-
15min. rest
20min. ARC 5.10-

Progressing through the month to

5min. warmup
10min. Dynamic bouldering
20min. ARC 5.12-
15min. rest
20min. ARC 5.12- (increased difficulty)

September: An/Ae Power. Climbing every other day, switching between two workouts.
Workout 1: Boulder problem intervals.
10 min WarmUp
4 x 4 Intervals
10 min Rest
4 x 4 Intervals
10 min WarmUp

Progressing through the month to

8 x 4 Intervals (increased volume)
10 min Rest
8 x 4 Intervals

Workout 2: Linked Boulder problem intervals.
10 min WarmUp
8 x 30 move Intervals with 2min rest
10 min Rest
8 x 1min Foot-On Campus w/ 1min Rest

Progressing through the the month to.

10 min WarmUp
8 x 30 move Intervals with 2min rest (increased difficulty)
10 min Rest
8 x 1min Foot-On Campus w/ 30sec Rest (decreased rest time)

Oct. 11-18: Red River Gorge

Nice Brendan! really clear way of looking at their work. I have no doubt you crushed it if you could do 10 V7 sends in one session. Another aspect I'm grasping is that if you do Ana Cap workouts, your sticking way more hard moves in one gym go rather than falling of say V8 problems at the same rate. You hypothetically did 150 moves in the V4-7 range on those days.

Thanks, Brendan, that's really helpful! Much appreciated.

The first thing that strikes me (other than the overall difficulty of the workouts) is the relatively limited rest time. Am I reading correctly that you climbed every day in August?? And only rested 1 day between your An/Ae Power workouts??? I'm having a hard time imaging this much training volume and lack of rest, how did that fare? How long do you usually rest between hard/limit bouldering and/or campus workouts?

Between the end of September and the start of your RRG trip on Oct 11 did you stop climbing completely? Or just do one or two maintenance workouts?

Also I think you said this earlier but wanted to confirm -- prior to August did you do a more standard RCTM-like hangboard repeaters cycle? How often did you rest between hangboard workouts?

Thanks again!

Dan Austin wrote:Am I reading correctly that you climbed every day in August??

That was the goal, but of course work and life got in the way. It looks like I averaged 5 days a week.

Dan Austin wrote:And only rested 1 day between your An/Ae Power workouts???

Correct

Dan Austin wrote:How long do you usually rest between hard/limit bouldering and/or campus workouts?

I try to keep the workouts short and do them every 24 hours

Dan Austin wrote: Between the end of September and the start of your RRG trip on Oct 11 did you stop climbing completely? Or just do one or two maintenance workouts?

A mix of ARCing and Hangboarding every day, then 5 days rest before leaving.

Dan Austin wrote: prior to August did you do a more standard RCTM-like hangboard repeaters cycle? How often did you rest between hangboard workouts? Thanks again!

Yes, hang boarding every-other day.

nerdlet wrote: I really like their ideas, and I'd disagree with your statement. Its all just a different take on periodization, but not that different. The spinning plates idea de-emphasizes strict linear periodization, but is far from radical.

I'm not a defender of conventional wisdom, just pointing out that they differ from it in several respects.
For example, I find conventional linear periodization doesn't work well for me. Their program looks like a form of block periodization, which Steve Bechtel has advocated.

nerdlet wrote:I've also starting regularly mixing in the 20 x (30s on/30s off) suggested in Barrows trainingbeta podcast into my base phase ARCing, and think it is brilliant; your aerobic systems has to work at its capacity, and you don't get pumped (but get close to powering out by the end), but you still get to work the anaerobic system at level it needs to operate at on a route.

I would call this a high end power endurance workout. It very well might also build some strength, but at a lower level than a true strength exercise.

If you rested 2-3 minutes between 30 seconds climbing reps, it would be similar to doing repeaters with 3-4 reps/set, which would be a strength exercise. But it would be hard to progressively increase the intensity of the 30 second sessions, due to the varied nature of the routes/holds. This is different from hang boarding where increasing the intensity is both simple and easy to measure. On the other hand, you could also be engraining good technique and strengthening other parts of the kinetic chain rather than just hanging off your fingers!

I personally find PE very difficult to improve, despite the conventional wisdom that it ramps up in just a couple of weeks. I'm already committed to my plan for this winter, but maybe next year I'll try to incorporate more of the Barrows/Randall idea.

Brendan N. (grayhghost) wrote: Oct. 11-18: Red River Gorge

This is super useful. I'm trying to wrap my head around your time dedication.

Also, I think this would break me.
My partner and I just went through a cycle of ARC-ing, with the goal of 2x30 min sessions 3x/week for 6 weeks. Its obvious why he's a much better climber - he actually followed through with almost every session. I had elbow issues, commitment issues, time issues, etc. and completed about half the workouts. This is probably typical for me and why my partner's dedication has him moving on faster. At my stage of life you don't get to progress unless you put in the time and focus.

I guess I'm thinking/asking two questions:
1) You laid the foundation for this workload from the last several years of training. The body must have a long training history to sustain training.
How did you assess yourself then project the workload before you started?

2) Examples like yours illustrate the fact that most humans must put in a certain volume of training to get better. A correctly chosen schedule should tap into the specifics of what you need to train.
How does a work-a-day person find the right recipe?

tenesmus wrote: 1) You laid the foundation for this workload from the last several years of training. The body must have a long training history to sustain training. How did you assess yourself then project the workload before you started?

I knew I had to do more if I was going to better my previous cycles, so I scheduled more workouts. The workload could vary with how I'm feeling, but I tried to keep the frequency so I didn't lose steam mentally. If I was having a bad day I would dial down the difficulty to complete the workout and chalk it up to "learning to love the grind."

tenesmus wrote:2) Examples like yours illustrate the fact that most humans must put in a certain volume of training to get better. A correctly chosen schedule should tap into the specifics of what you need to train. How does a work-a-day person find the right recipe?

The back of The Self Coached climber has a great self-assessment tool. It tracks three variables, Boulder grade, 4x4 grade and ARC grade. It gives you a sport grade associated with varying abilities in those three categories so you can see where your weakness is.

Anyone still following this? Curious to what people think 

I can’t believe I started this thread 5 years ago.  Many of the ideas posted in that article are big elements to modern training plans.

I took an online class from Climbstrong called New Rules of Endurance that is a really deep dive into these subjects, if you have an opportunity to take that class or something like it I would highly recommend.

Also:

Have a look at the training program halfway into this thread