Fitness/Training

New to aid climbing and trying to prepare myself for when the weather improves by reading books and practicing skills on backyard walls.  I was wandering if anyone had suggestions for preparing myself with respect to fitness.  

I was considering hanging up some aiders and doing high stepping repetitions and air squats to prepare myself for hauling.  I figure cardio would also be useful.

Any suggestions?

Are there any common injuries I should watch out for such as shoulders?  

Anyone know of any books or other resources on this topic?

Thanks!  I appreciate your help!

Go get an alligator.

Wrestle with it every day.

Go dig a hole in your backyard, fill it with gravel. Dig the gravel out of the hole tomorrow, fill it with larger gravel. Continue doing the same until the gravel has grown to the size of el capitan.

I learned by reading Chris McNamara "How to Big Wall Climb" book.  I think he does a great job of breaking down the parts of leading and following so you can isolate and practice the various skills.  I highly recommend buying that book and then practicing the skills he lists on a backyard wall.  For hauling go read the 2:1 thread on MP ( mountainproject.com/forum/t…).  Mark Hudon had a couple of really good short and concise PDFs on his website awhile ago.  The 2 that I think were really valuable were on Big Wall Anchors and how to setup the haul bags.  I personally use his method for docking and setting up the bags and think it works well.  Finally I would suggest playing around really understanding mechanical advantage and just general rope trickery.  When things go bad and you need to move heavy bags or fix other rope shenanigans it helps to have a basic rope rescue background.  Being a decent big wall climber is mostly about being very good a systems (ie efficient)....this just takes lots of practice!  Oh and from a fitness standpoint, yea decent cardio, and overall fitness but mostly it is about being able to go all day at a stead pace rather than sprinting.  Injuries...cracked and dry hands and fingers and raw hips from hauling and wearing a harness for a week straight!

Haha.. I see we have a couple comedians up in here!
This discussion makes me think of a philosophical question.
If you’re up high on a big wall would you have more fear if you are tired and struggling or would you get to a point where you’re so tired you no longer give a damn and therefore have less fear?  And which is safer?

You don’t want to be paralyzed with fear but you don’t want to be careless either.

Jogging/cycling for jugging, core for top step, biceps for alfifi pulls, reverse weight squats for hauling and stretching to reach those high placements.  :-)

Truly, you need to be in real good all body shape for wall climbing. Everything is heavy and awkward and you'll be doing it for days on end.

Get a partner and practise jugging.  

Climb up into a tree with a good outwardly extending branch. Put a sling and a carabiner around the branch, and clip the rope through the crab.

Have your partner put the rope through their GriGri on their harness, up through the crab and the branch, and then the end comes down to you. Get on this free-hanging rope and practise jugging. Your partner feeds the rope for you as you ascend.

You will want to convert your rig to the froggy system to maximize your efficiency while hanging in space, and you'll need to figure out how to squeeze the free-hanging rope between your toes to autofeed the rope through your lower ascender. The trick is to make sure all the lengths are perfect, and to mount the lower ascender as low as possible on your climbing harness.

When you can jug 60m of rope in five minutes or less, we'll talk. And if you can jug 200m of free-hanging rope in under 22 min 55 seconds, I will owe you a beer.  ;) 

That'll get ya fit, mate.  

Don’t underestimate the importance of skills practice too. If you have terrible technique no amount of training can save you.

When I was just starting out I had a bad habit of leaving my daisies too long while jugging. No faster way than that to cook your biceps!

I also had no idea how to clean angling terrain. I would just yank on the gear, the “swing and pray” method. So strenuous. (There’s an art to passing your jug quickly and then sitting on it to clean a piece.) As I sat spinning in space below the Kor Roof, watching the full moon rise over Half Dome, fully body cramp setting in, I was totally hooked. But knew there must be a better way...

Jack Yipwrote:

Go dig a hole in your backyard, fill it with gravel. Dig the gravel out of the hole tomorrow, fill it with larger gravel. Continue doing the same until the gravel has grown to the size of el capitan.

Digging it up over here boss!

You better get your mind right before climbing up them walls cause they are one tough son'bitch!!

Don't learn to jug or practice jugging in a tree. It will build bad habits for when you jumar in less than vertical terrain (most terrain is).

Brandon Adamswrote:

Don't learn to jug or practice jugging in a tree. It will build bad habits for when you jumar in less than vertical terrain (most terrain is).

Less-than-vertical jumaring is an easy skill you can essentially master in an afternoon, and isn't strenuous at all when you figure out how to keep your weight on your feet.

Jumaring a free-hanging rope is much harder to learn, and is strenuous even when done very well.  When done poorly it's absolutely exhausting.

Carry an 80 lb. haul bag from El Cap meadow to the Heart fixed lines, then back to your car and then back to the fixed lines and then haul the bag to Heart Ledges, rap to ground with your bag, haul to Heart again and rap back to the ground and hike back to your car.  Now is a good time to do something like that.

Yeah, these guys are probably right. You don't have to practise free-hanging jugging; you'll figure it out when you have to, which won't be very often, anyway.  You don't even need to train, either.  I climb all my walls off the couch.  

Pete has a point. For a wall gumby is it worth doing physical training or spending that time dialing in systems and efficiency so as to waste less energy? I feel like no amount of training is going to help if you don't set up your jumars optimally every time.

I really appreciate this topic, as I've seen some people on Mountain Project say that aid climbing takes absolutely no physical fitness.  If that's the case then I am certainly doing it wrong because I am very sore and tired after a day of aid climbing and jugging.  I am pretty new to aid, so I am trying to do both physical fitness and practicing aiding and jugging.  I am working on completing the training from Chris McNamara's book.  It's really easy for me to go to the gym for an hour a day to lift weights after work, and it takes a lot more time to go out and practice things on a rock.  I know I need to increase my practice time of techniques.  I just need to make the time to be out on the rock alone.

I'm pretty new to aid climbing, but my guess for the original question is to do a lot of climbing, or exercises that simulate climbing motions like pull ups and shoulder exercises.  I also think aiding takes a lot more leg strength than normal climbing.  My biceps also get really sore from aiding and jugging.  So I would say do a lot of climbing, with extra attention to legs and biceps using weights.  Hiking up steep trails could help and get you used to being out for a long time.   

orange piewrote:

Carry an 80 lb. haul bag from El Cap meadow to the Heart fixed lines, then back to your car and then back to the fixed lines and then haul the bag to Heart Ledges, rap to ground with your bag, haul to Heart again and rap back to the ground and hike back to your car.  Now is a good time to do something like that.

I like this idea as handling your haul bag poorly can really increase the suffer factor on a wall. If you get totally worked from humping your bag up to the wall, the route probably looks about double the height! Psychologically devastating !! 

I will also say that, we felt pretty spry topping out our first el cap route, and jogged up to the summit to check out the Nose tree. But by the time we got the bags down the east ledges, we were cooked. Heavy backpacking might help with that.

Overall I'm glad this concept of bringing up your skills along with physical training was mentioned. A lesson hard won, but one that should be in the forefront of the modern wall gumby's psyche.

jt newgardwrote:

I will also say that, we felt pretty spry topping out our first el cap route, and jogged up to the summit to check out the Nose tree. But by the time we got the bags down the east ledges, we were cooked. Heavy backpacking might help with that.

.

It’s too bad nobody was there to tell you that you were going the wrong way 

https://youtu.be/rLY5KBuzLDE

  You did your best Quinn...unfortunately you can't fix stupid.

Planes and Trains , one of my favorite movies! Here's some footage of my partner and I bivouacked on the 4th pitch after a few days of climbing:

Bivy talk

Do I post too much on MP? Maybe. But you know what, I like me. My partners like me, cuz I'm the real article. What you see is what you get. And I'm not changing !

^^ That's kind of what I meant when I said I mostly climb off the couch.  I can get away with it because I am well practiced with the systems. But I've paid my dues, so now I know how to climb walls.  

You asked about fitness training, and I repeat that jugging a free-hanging rope in a tree is excellent training for the wall and it will most assuredly get you fit. There aren't too many more exercises you can do at home without a cliff that are as muscle-specific to big wall climbing as jugging. You will have to learn how to build and use two different jugging systems - one for hanging free in space, and one for when your feet are touching the wall. It's true you don't do a lot of free-hanging jugging on a big wall, but if you have fixed your ropes to the top of pitch 2 on Zodiac or the top of pitch 4 on Tangerine Trip, you will be VERY glad that you practised free-hanging jugging in a tree. The converse is also true!

Another great way to get fit for walls is to practise hauling rocks! Seriously. Made sure your haul bag is well padded, and choose round rocks, not pointy ones. Assemble your 2:1 hauling ratchet, go to your local crag and practise practise practise! That'll get you fit too. You MUST practise first with your 2:1 and learn how to use it, and how fine tune it. Many a wall climber has thought, "I can figure it out at the top of the first pitch after I blast," and many a wall climber has found out how wrong he was. The 2:1 is easy to operate once you learn how, but it is kind of hard to learn how. Pay your dues first.

You don't need leg strength at all for the leading part!  Get those new roller buckles of Skot's, and you'll be able to pull yourself up with a 2:1 mechanical lifting advantage that will make it feel so easy, you're barely need to use your legs at all. When Chongo gave me a Rope Ratchet to use on my first El Cap solo back in 97 - the predecessor to the adjustable daisy - it made advancing up the aid ladders so easy, I told him I could climb without using my legs.

Kevin is right that a high level of fitness will not get you up a big wall efficiently. First you need to know how, and although it's great to work on your general fitness, you should be expending as much time, energy and expense as you can into practising the fundamentals - how to lead, clean, haul, pack your pig and bivy on the wall.  Then when it's time to blast, you have to go up on the rock with the mentality that you're going to suffer [at least when you are not relaxing in your portaledge enjoying a beer or glass of wine] and that it's going to hurt, but that you will never quit, no matter what except for serious injury, until you reach the summit. One of the best recent examples of not quitting that I'm familiar with was when Alex Barlow and Michael Memmel grunted their way up the Nose. They suffered greatly, but stuck with it because they were both committed to the cause, and were too stupid and stubborn to quit until they reached the top. This more than anything is what will help you reach the summit of your first big walls, and the converse is also true! 

Chris Mac's book will get you up the easier walls fast, but it's a pretty basic explanation that's now decades out of date. Adjustable daisies and the Alfifi I don't think were even in use when Chris wrote his book?

Thanks Kevin for the plug for our book HOOKING UP that I wrote with Fabio.  I just contacted the Eye-talian publishers and they're going to be sending me more copies, so I'll let yous know when I'll be receiving them so you can order.  I still have yet to lay my eyes on Andy's book Higher Education - I really ought to get a copy and read it. There has to be a bunch of cool ideas in it. I always say that if you buy our book, you will learn so much that the time, effort and heartache you save by reading it will underwrite the cost of the book many times over. There's always something new to learn in big wall climbing that's for sure. 

I greatly appreicate the last two posts from Kevin and Pete.  Thank you for helping out the newer folks like me.  I need the advice, inspiration and overall general sense of hope since it's all so new and things can seem impossible.  

I guess I am just really drawn to the simple methods in Chris Mac's book.  I've also heard from many experienced wall climbers that no daises is best for C1 and C2.  It's hard to not listen to really experienced aid climbers like Chris Mac and Mark Hudon.  They've climbed so many walls succesfully and I've only climbed half of one and done some aid cragging as of this date.  I do plan to get an Alfifi but not use any daises.  That seems to make the most sense to me.