Setting pumpy traverse tips?

Anyone have any good tips for setting pumpy traverses? I'm wanting to set a 30-50 move traverse for training where I can do the moves but can't get though the whole thing.

I've got a connected 10deg and 30deg wall plus a roof connecting them. Each wall is about 12' wide.

Some thoughts:

- Up and down climbing is a lot more taxing than traversing, where you can basically pivot from straight arms, so set your traverses in an "M" pattern, with lots of ups and downs (may need to number the holds sequentially for this to work on a small wall)

- It will be difficult to maintain a pump on the 10 deg wall, so try to use lots of underclings, gastons & sidepulls, and use tiny, sloping feet.

- The key to making things pumpy is to have no place on the route where you can drop both hands, because that would allow a shake. Even better: no place where you can drop either hand (i.e every move is dynamic)

- You can probably climb harder than you realize, so build a traverse that you think is hard, then start whittling away the good holds (eliminate entirely or replace with worse holds) one or two at a time as you get better at climbing the traverse

You are probably going to need to number the holds as Mono says to get the amount of moves you want. This has an additional advantage in that even if you could match a hold you can just tell yourself it is only for your right hand on move 23 or something tike that. I know it is contrived but hey it is training.

• Don't use anything that you can pull straight down on.
• Use directional feet. Dual texture edges, and turn them, once something feels easy you can turn them some more so they are harder to stand on.
• Think about how easy it is to move back and forth between holds to rest, the better the holds are the further apart or more complex the movement will need to be between them to keep you from resting. Such as long crosses or going from one gaston to another.
• Use high feet on the less steep wall, higher than you would think
• When you first climb the moves, really think about what were the easiest parts and make them harder.

Keeping it really simple: decent to good hand holds and shitty, little foot chips.

Thanks guys, good tips here. I just picked up a bunch of new holds for cheap and will start setting a new traverse :)

Anything for the hands should be slopey or not have a lip. In my experience I can usually crimp holds when a pump starts to stay on the wall, but if there is nothing to crimp, the pump just gets worse and worse.

Monomaniac wrote:You can probably climb harder than you realize, so build a traverse that you think is hard, then start whittling away the good holds (eliminate entirely or replace with worse holds) one or two at a time as you get better at climbing the traverse

A good tip. Here is more elaborated description of this idea:

Set a traverse/sequence/route that feels reasonably hard; work it until you can do it. Once you can do it, replace the best hold on the route with a bad hold. Do route with the new, worse hold. Once you can do this, replace the next best hold with a worse hold. Continue ad nauseam.

Rob Gordon wrote:Anything for the hands should be slopey or not have a lip. In my experience I can usually crimp holds when a pump starts to stay on the wall, but if there is nothing to crimp, the pump just gets worse and worse.

This may be effective (no doubt it gets you pumped). The flip side is that it is generally believed that PE training is specific with repect to grip type (not sure if that is true, but it certainly is for strength training, so it would seem plausible).

So ideally you would train PE using the same type of grips you will find on the route(s) you are training for.

Awesome idea. Since I'm stripping a bunch of the wall anyway I'll find a good hot point hold and try it out.

Also just wanted to add in here this website has some excellent information on setting routes. Geared towards the actual gym routesetter but really gets into some of the specifics of quality routes:

routecrafting.blogspot.com/

Monomaniac wrote: This may be effective (no doubt it gets you pumped). The flip side is that it is generally believed that PE training is specific with repect to grip type (not sure if that is true, but it certainly is for strength training, so it would seem plausible). So ideally you would train PE using the same type of grips you will find on the route(s) you are training for.

Interesting stuff. Got me thinking too... I wonder which would be more effective, 1) To make one long route with a variety of holds or 2) A handful of routes that only use one type of hold each. So you would have a route of pinches, a route of slopers, a route of crimps, etc... Then you could select the route you want, would probably pump out that muscle group quicker if you just did laps on it, and if you wanted to do a circuit you could do that too.

(Just thinking outloud. For full disclosure, I don't really train other than climb a lot of long traverses once a week and then project stuff the other climbing day or two of the week. It seems to be a pretty effective way of getting stronger as long as the volume and intensity is high. Just not lately cause I get to the crag and just warm up then smoke cigarettes and farf around. )