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Training 101 for real people with normal/abnormal lives who are nonetheless bad ass climbers and wish to keep it that way as long as possible.

Original Post
Old lady H · · Boise, ID · Joined Aug 2015 · Points: 1,374

Edit to clarify: first thread title was "Training for the non-obsessive"
Second title, "Training for non-motivated, old, fat, lazy people with spouses, children, and real jobs", to amuse Mark Dixon, title three will stay, well, maybe. ;-)

Edit: "101" added to title.

1) I am not young (big six zero looms one year from today)
2) I am not physically gifted (4' 11 1/2" and still a tad too heavy)
3) I loathe "exercise"

I am also one of the minority on here who is NOT a big goal, chart your progress, laser focus type.

With the stipulations above, I have had a lot of success by not really setting big goals, but by "tricking" myself into being active, doing little bits constantly, and really trying hard to hang on to what I've got. I've lost, and kept off, weight, for example, by having a 5 lb. bracket I have to stay in. If I creep toward the top, I eat a little less.

For my 60, I don't have anything specific in mind right now, but I do want to climb as often as possible coming up this season, and in the remaining stretch of winter/mud/rock fall season, would like to do a little active training.

Any suggestions on small scale, short term training? Especially from any of you who are also easily distracted?

Thanks much! Very best to all, Old(er!) Lady H.

john strand · · southern colo · Joined May 2008 · Points: 1,640

Bouldering...you only need a little time, so brief weather windows work for outside.

Stretching-- will help more than anything

and of course hiking in deep snow..with or w/o snow shoes !

M Sprague · · New England · Joined Nov 2006 · Points: 5,090

I too have never been one to stick with a training regimen more than a couple weeks. I have always been lucky in that my body responds very quickly to a little exercise and I have never been fat so I have gotten away with that. When I did though the results were pretty fun. In a few months my climbing level went from 12s , where I had platued for a while, up a number grade. The only way I went longer than that is when a friend who is much more dedicated to that sort of thing made up a periodized schedule for a group of us that we followed for a while. Having a little group all on the same page so we would be looking to do the same thing while out for the day, like sharing belays for 30 minute easy workouts or bouldering power problems really helped. A little friendly competition helped too.

Being a little sick of watching my climbing ability atrophy slowly over the last 10 years and at close to 52 noticing occasional hints of the old man gut which even the idea of completely repulses me has recently refocused me to try to do at least something each day to improve my climbing, even if it is just a set of pushups or planks or hangboard routine to get my finger strength back up. Bouldering is what I really like for training. I love it anyway, and I get good results as long as I pay attention to my body and know when to stop. Being older you have to be a little more aware of that.

Now to see if I get past a week of doing the hangboard, lol

Joe Garibay · · Ventura, Ca · Joined Apr 2014 · Points: 86

I'm not looking to progress my climbing much more than it is now. I'm happy to just get out and enjoy what I can. I recommend just staying active. Continue hiking. Climb what makes you happy. Set small goals as your experience grows. My wife is not the strongest climber. She can get on 5.7's and that's about where she'll happily stay. My goals for her aren't so much to push her on harder climbs but hopefully to get comfortable with long traverses and mountaineering. Something of a hike with mixed low class climbing. Perhaps if you're not so set on getting vertical, then moderate trad routes may give you a new lift and outlook on climbing.

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974
Old lady H wrote:1) I am not young (big six zero looms one year from today) 2) I am not physically gifted (4' 11 1/2" and still a tad too heavy) 3) I loathe "exercise" I am also one of the minority on here who is NOT a big goal, chart your progress, laser focus type. With the stipulations above, I have had a lot of success by not really setting big goals, but by "tricking" myself into being active, doing little bits constantly, and really trying hard to hang on to what I've got. I've lost, and kept off, weight, for example, by having a 5 lb. bracket I have to stay in. If I creep toward the top, I eat a little less. For my 60, I don't have anything specific in mind right now, but I do want to climb as often as possible coming up this season, and in the remaining stretch of winter/mud/rock fall season, would like to do a little active training. Any suggestions on small scale, short term training? Especially from any of you who are also easily distracted? Thanks much! Very best to all, Old(er!) Lady H.
I think you are so wrong it's difficult to know where to start.

In the first place, you should retitle the thread 'Training for the non-motivated'

Lynn Hill is what 5'1"? That has nothing to do with being physically gifted.

I'll bet the vast majority of people on here are "NOT a big goal, chart your progress, laser focus type." Just like you.

Good job keeping your weight under control. I think that is vital for older climbers.

You do have something specific in mind- "I do want to climb as often as possible coming up this season."

You can work with that- what will interfere with maximum climbing time? Injuries? Fatigue? You need to answer this to come up with a plan that will actually help you achieve this goal.

Speaking in general terms, I see 3 broad fitness areas you might consider.

Cardiopulmonary- you lose aerobic capacity with each passing year unless you counteract with exercise. If you can tolerate running, then that's easy. Start small and slowly advance- don't get hurt! If running doesn't work frequent snowshoeing will. Could also climb laps aerobically, but that is hard on shoulders and fingers.

Flexibility- unlike John, I've never had much luck stretching, but if you can do it successfully you will be very glad eventually.

Strength- bouldering is a good idea, but somewhat high risk. Honestly, you would be best off learning to enjoy weightlifting and having a trainer develop a good general strength program for you. At the very least, look up shoulder stabilization exercises and start doing these. Otherwise you will likely get hurt sooner or later and have to start them after the fact! Being able to do a half dozen pull-ups would be useful too.
If you really cannot tolerate the gym, look into a bodyweight strength program you could do at home.

Hangboarding, campusing, etc would be a waste of time at your level of skill and motivation.

On the other hand, using any indoor gym time learning to climb as efficiently as possible will allow you to climb more each day when you do get outside this spring.
john strand · · southern colo · Joined May 2008 · Points: 1,640

Stretching & Flexibility by kit Laughlin is a great book, lots of pics for us old folks and tons of stuff,,both individual and with a partner. i do the basic stuff 4x a week and it's about 15-20 minutes per session.

I have tried weights off and on for 30 years..boring ! I'd much rather swim.

MELT therapy also has really helped me recently, though I do them because of injuries/surgeries. My wife likes it a ton .. cheap and easy to do

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974
john strand wrote:Stretching & Flexibility by kit Laughlin is a great book, lots of pics for us old folks and tons of stuff,,both individual and with a partner. i do the basic stuff 4x a week and it's about 15-20 minutes per session. I have tried weights off and on for 30 years..boring ! I'd much rather swim. MELT therapy also has really helped me recently, though I do them because of injuries/surgeries. My wife likes it a ton .. cheap and easy to do
I'll take a look at the book. I did Meridian stretching for a while and it was the most effective thing I ever tried, but expensive, painful and tiring! And only gained me an inch or two in sit and reach, for example. But I worry about becoming progressively stiffer as I age.

Funny you find weights more boring than swimming! I usually run but am on hiatus currently since I overdid it with intervals and got achilles bursitis. Got too motivated reading a book "Fast over Fifty."
john strand · · southern colo · Joined May 2008 · Points: 1,640

I ran a lot when younger, among other things. Now 2 hips, a knee ( all replaced) and messed ankle pretty much stop that.

M Sprague · · New England · Joined Nov 2006 · Points: 5,090

I just tried to touch the floor and the tips of my fingers were about 6 inches off the floor, haha.

For a lot of people, I think running is a terrible exercise. People mess their knees up etc. I think you are better off doing fast bushwhacking in steep terrain or light mountainbiking or swimming, Xcountry sking. Plus they are all a hell of a lot more fun (maybe not the swimming for me, since I sink like a stone)

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974
john strand wrote:I ran a lot when younger, among other things. Now 2 hips, a knee ( all replaced) and messed ankle pretty much stop that.
I have a climbing friend who needs his knee replaced and is quite worried about it. Mind if I direct him your way?
Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974
M Sprague wrote:I just tried to touch the floor and the tips of my fingers were about 6 inches off the floor, haha.
This may hijack the thread. Sorry H!

I can just barely touch the floor with the tips of my fingers.

Do you remember the thread about percent body fat where folks posted pictures of themselves? That went on for pages.
Mike McHugh · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jan 2013 · Points: 420
Old lady H wrote:Any suggestions on small scale, short term training? Especially from any of you who are also easily distracted?
Not kidding: Trail work, especially building stone retaining walls and such. Cardio, big variety of muscle groups used, builds crushing hand strength and callouses. You might even feel good about your bad-ass self at the end of the day.
mountainhick · · Black Hawk, CO · Joined Mar 2009 · Points: 120
Old lady H wrote:1) 3) I loathe "exercise"
Change your attitude. It is the time of life when you need to embrace exercise as a necessary habit to enhance your life and keep you healthy. Look at it as long term, not short. You can try to make short term changes but typically unless there is some longer term reward and enjoyment, you'll burn out quickly and it won't stick.

You have to want to get off your ass, challenge yourself and move. You already seem to be doing so with climbing to some extent. Transfer the motivational tendency to wanting to be more fit and healthy.

I was forced into it myself by dealing with an illness that left me emaciated and wasting. I HAD to make the change. Changing attitude isn't easy, but I feel better about EVERYTHING and am so much more fit by exercising regularly.

You don't have to go overboard. In fact it can be self sabotage to try to change too much too soon.

My daughter gave me the framework, and her personal example has been incredible. She incorporates a pretty high level of fitness fanaticism in her daily life, but it did not come completely naturally nor quickly. She decided she wanted it, then methodically incorporated little things one at a time for 1-2 months each until she had a full routine day to day week to week that she now can't seem to live without.

The technique: Choose one small thing that is not a huge deal to do on a regular basis. incorporate just that little thing until it becomes habit. Anything that has positive physical effect tends to produce dopamine, your own little internal reward, and once habitual you want to do it. Then add the next step.

At our age, over training is also a huge enemy. Along with learning to want to exercise, you have to learn to listen to your body and rest to be fully refreshed energized and motivated for the next workout.

Good luck.
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

Well, I'm 72 and have managed to stay active for my entire life---so far. For many years, I trained intensively and reached fairly lofty fitness levels.

I think using the word "obsessive" is a way of making not training seem more normal and actual training some sort of behavior disorder that could perhaps be cured by appropriate therapies. You then get to celebrate your lack of obsessive-compulsiveness rather than wonder why you can't get the motivation to train.

I do think that one problem is that almost all of the training advice for climbing you can find is oriented towards much younger people with a substantial amount of time to devote to climbing. If I tried to follow most of the routines I read about, I'd end up in the emergency room within a week. As Jesse Owens famously said in a commercial that accidentally aired just after he had died, "I'm moving at a slower pace now."

At 60 and beyond, one has to attend to basic fitness. This means some kind of aerobic training and some kind of strength training. If you don't find ways to do this, you will decline physically year after year. (Actually, you will probably decline anyway; but the training will slow it down.) Some young climbers manage to do fantastically well without these two basic types of training, but neither they nor you can get away with just highly specialized training after 60 or so.

Then comes climbing-specific training, which basically means hand and finger strength and endurance. I don't think it is realistic to expect to build that much additional finger strength at 60 and beyond. There is more hope of developing more endurance, so anything you do should be slanted towards that. Bouldering is a high-risk activity that is likely to be a bad idea, both in terms of the stresses involved and the hazards of jumping down, even on pads.

A different approach to all these things penetrated my consciousness when I had to rehab an ACL reconstruction (from a bouldering jump!). You do rehab exercises with light weights every day, rather than the much heavier lower-rep exercises with multiple rest days between them that are typical of most training. So that's what I'd recommend for openers. Start with 5 minutes a day of some basic strength and finger things, and try at first for an hour a week of aerobic work. This doesn't sound like much---for a young person it might well be the warmup before real exercise begins---but doing something every day is a lot better than not, and I bet you'll see some modest gains in climbing from it.

Oh---I forgot about stretching. Mobility is important for climbing, and enables you to get in positions that require less strength. Mobility goes even faster than strength as we age. I think the best approach to stretching is to incorporate it into your day. If you spend any time watching TV, for example, you should always be doing some easy floor stretch while you are watching.

Good luck, and hang in there.

Chase D · · CA · Joined Apr 2015 · Points: 195

Exercise for 20 minutes a day makes a big difference. You can do this at home with little or no equipment. Kettlebells offer a ton of variety for full body workouts. The hardest part is starting but once you start, it's fun and rewarding. If you loathe exercise and limit yourself mentally, you will be physically limited as well. Mind over matter!!!

Kyle Tarry · · Portland, OR · Joined Mar 2015 · Points: 528
M Sprague wrote:For a lot of people, I think running is a terrible exercise. People mess their knees up etc. I think you are better off doing fast bushwhacking in steep terrain or light mountainbiking or swimming, Xcountry sking. Plus they are all a hell of a lot more fun (maybe not the swimming for me, since I sink like a stone)
I strongly disagree. While there is a risk of injury with nearly any form of exercise, running in appropriate moderation is not any harder on knees than climbing is on, say, hands. There have been quite a few studies done that show this to be the case.

Anecdotally, some of the most active/fittest "old guys" I know are/were runners.

The beauty of running is that it's a simple, natural way to exercise that you can do nearly anywhere, nearly any time.

Mountain biking, swimming, XC skiing, and other recommendations above are arguably just as good at keeping you healthy, but they are significantly more time and cost intensive. For someone looking for an easy way to exercise, running around the neighborhood a few times per week is really difficult to beat.

npr.org/2011/03/28/13486144…

npr.org/assets/news/2011/03…

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/233…

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/240…

runnersworld.com/newswire/r…

To the OP: Is "non-obsessive" a synonym for "lazy" in this context? The human body needs exercise, and (thankfully) moderns technology allows us to require very little in our day-to-day lives. Since you don't need to work the fields or hunt down your dinner, moderate exercise a few days a week is probably more of "a good idea" than "obsessive."
reboot · · . · Joined Jul 2006 · Points: 125

Practice, not train. In training, you (mostly) target a set of numbers. In practicing, you aim for perfection. The latter is typically much more mentally engaging.

At your level/experience, performing climbing movements with the intention of practicing is plenty to getting stronger.

Kyle Tarry wrote: I strongly disagree. While there is a risk of injury with nearly any form of exercise, running in appropriate moderation is not any harder on knees than climbing is on, say, hands.
I figure there'd be a crusader for this... For one, climbing is very very hard on the hand. Also, there are people who've already destroyed their knees (or have had large chunks of meniscus shredded/removed, as is in my case).
Ryan Palo · · Bend, oregon · Joined Aug 2006 · Points: 605

Instead of training, why not just lose 10 lbs? You dont have to do a thing. Im not kidding around about this. Go to the hangboard in your gym, hang with 10lbs in one hand. Pretty telling how important a few extra lbs can be.

Training is a PITA and not really worth it if you half ass it. Might as well do the next best thing.

john strand · · southern colo · Joined May 2008 · Points: 1,640

Kyle.....I gotta say that running will eventually get ya !

mountainhick · · Black Hawk, CO · Joined Mar 2009 · Points: 120
rgold wrote:At 60 and beyond, one has to attend to basic fitness. This means some kind of aerobic training and some kind of strength training. If you don't find ways to do this, you will decline physically year after year.
Most sources cite ages from mid 20's-40s as turning points for physical decline. 60 is very late in the game. We geezers have to kick ass (relative to age, fitness and ailments) to stay in it.
Aleks Zebastian · · Boulder, CO · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 175

climbing friend,

you may meditate on using the force, and slap yourself about the face with frozen fish.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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