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Training w/o periodization through climbing season?

Original Post
Christopher Rein · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 25

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to see if anyone has had great success with sustained improvement during the climbing season without limiting themselves to the performance windows that come from periodization.

Background on me: I have tried RCTM and have seen pretty quality results, but during the Spring through Fall I would like to climb outside on most weekends. I can currently onsight about 10+/11- in the Valley if things go well. I care more about on-sighting 5.11 trad routes, so I'm not sure the "performance peak" used to go redpoint a hard sport climb is the answer.

Basic training plan: I was thinking about trying to do a combination of repeaters early in the week (Monday or Tuesday) and then switching between a bouldering circuit and a TR 4X4 on Thursdays, and then climb between 10-20 pitches over the weekend. I'll also probably do 1-2 cycles of RCTM again when Winter hits.

Any thoughts or plans that have worked particularly well for people?

FYI here are the routes that I'm hoping to tackle over the Spring/Summer/Fall in order of how difficult I think they will be for me (I'll most likely be leading every pitch above 5.9):

War of the Walls
Serenity & Sons
OZ
Positive vibrations
Voyager
Don Juan
Atlantis
Rostrum

Andy Bandos · · CO · Joined Aug 2013 · Points: 760

I'm very interested in people's feedback as well. In mild weather months I can't stick to a strick block periodization either. My only concern would be overloading your fingers resulting in an overuse injury. The only times I've been injured is sneaking in a gym session soon after hard hangboarding with Max weight added.

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

Actually the RCTM book itself openly freely acknowledges that lots of climbers do just fine training seriously without formal Periodization.
. (some page later in the book) .

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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