Lifting before or after climbing?

saign charlestein wrote:

As far as working on technique with intention: I don’t really do any drills or anything like that, but I will try moves multiple ways and try and find the best beta, and don’t just give up on moves because “I’m not strong enough”  

When I climb outside I have been filming myself if it permits, and should do that in the gym. That is a game changer imo.

I’m not really sure what you’re calling working on technique with intention, but I’d be happy to hear you elaborate.

i'd say working on techniques w/ intention is dedicating time to progressing techniques/skills and maybe having goals for techniques. you could work on the moves in different ways (i.e., doing drills, practicing them on routes, working techniques on a system board, etc.) but they should all be moving towards a minimum proficiency, if not mastery. your technique goals might look like mastering one technique or just getting comfortable with multiple skills like the bicycle, heel hook, and campusing. intention can look different from one person to another but one example is if you have a list of techniques you want to practice and then seek out routes in which you can do 'x' move or 'y' move as a part of the route. of course, you can play around with difficulty more easily by doing 'x' move on a system board, where you can change the steepness/level of the climb. in this way, generally, you are working on technique from a framework of skill building rather than what the gym may arbitrarily set. 

even if you are not say a v10 climber, it's still worth it to learn about and try more advanced moves. there's a lot to gain from continuing to learn about & practice various movements. hope this helps!

I personally would never lift before climbing again. I've tried various approaches including just doing a few singles at a decently heavy, but not maximal, weight to "prime" things, but there wasn't any notable effect in my climbing nor strength.

For me personally I function best lifting after and it doesn't take long. These days it's 1 push, both types of pulls, tricep extensions, and a lower body mobility focused lift. Takes maybe 20-25min and I usually don't do it after really massive sessions.

I've also tried splitting it up, splitting my sessions into smaller/more frequent days, and know people that do basically any setup you can imagine. Personally I want to use my recovery days to recover and I never feel any sort of soreness or tweaks in my shoulders like I did when I'd climb shorter/more frequent. You're just gunna have to try something, and by try I mean 8-12 consistent week, then try something else, compare, and repeat. You're not gunna somehow get worse trying something new as long as you don't get injured. Worst case is you get no gains and go back to what worked.

It probably depends a bit on your short and long-term goals and what your climbing sessions look like... You can get in really good shape by lifting first and climbing after, but your performance during those climbing sessions is probably going to take a dip. Which is fine if you're focusing on volume rather than redpointing. 

I probably wouldn't plan on this approach on the long term, but like others have said, the best thing you can do is to actually do the thing. So if lifting before the climbing session is what works for your schedule / willpower, do that...if you're trying to optimize your sessions to be the absolutely most effective, it probably makes sense to climb one day, lift the following day, and then rest the next day or two, unless you're a machine and don't need that many rest days. 

Just try some different approaches and see what works for you, everyone's different.

I can't see a single scenario where it makes sense for climbing quality to dip. The last thing that makes sense to do at any level is compromise movement quality. Maybe you'd gain a few fractions of a percent of strength lifting beforehand, but you won't be able to apply it as well which is the real limiter for most climbers. There's no sense in building "volume" from either sub par 'hard' movement or moves on jugs that are so easy they don't represent the grips used or the terrain you'd climb on. 

How about a long day of multi pitch where you're not climbing at your limit?

Karl Walters wrote:

I can't see a single scenario where it makes sense for climbing quality to dip. The last thing that makes sense to do at any level is compromise movement quality. Maybe you'd gain a few fractions of a percent of strength lifting beforehand, but you won't be able to apply it as well which is the real limiter for most climbers. There's no sense in building "volume" from either sub par 'hard' movement or moves on jugs that are so easy they don't represent the grips used or the terrain you'd climb on. 

Hard disagree. I think it’s best not to be attempting to perform at your peak all the time.

A lot of time and effort should go towards improving some facet of your climbing, be that physical adaptations, improving your technique or mindset etc etc. it’s ok for the absolute top end of any aspect of your performance to dip in any given session because you are prioritizing improvements in another aspect.

For one example: doing technique drills-if you are intentionally practicing some aspect of technique, it’s best to do this on terrain well below your limit such that you have a lot of mental bandwidth to pay close attention to your movement. Let’s say you are a solid 5.12 climber- a technique practice session should be done in the 9+ to 11- range. Doing a bit of lifting prior is not going to prevent you from climbing with intention on easy (for you) terrain, and increasing your movement vocabulary.

 For route climbers, maintaining good technique while fatigued is an incredibly important skill-practicing it is important. One will naturally get to this point in a session of hard climbing-getting there sooner or at a lower threshold is not strictly a negative thing, unless you are trying to perform in that session rather than improve.

Also the idea that doing volume on sub max moves is worthless is just wrong. Doing this type of training will lead to local adaptations in your forearms to increase the density of the capillary beds in your flexors, resulting in increased endurance,  and greater intra session recovery, ie more quality red point burns or attempts on a Boulder.

You misread basically everything I wrote to the point where it would take even longer to re-write and explain it.

There is a difference between intrasession fatigue or the goal of a session requiring intensity to drop and entering a session neurologically fatigued and thus compromising the quality of movement. This is also different than quality of movement dropping from doing energy systems work with the goal of fatigue of the forearms.

I was trying to say that lifting before could, for some, compromise movement quality enough to impact specific types of sessions. I do think too many climbers chase "volume", but the intensity is too low and/or movement too generic and they miss out on a vital aspect of refining movement and efficiency: two facets of climbing that can make the difference between sending or not.

I didn't say sub max volume is worthless. Certain types are like if you are just paddling on gym jugs when you're training for outdoor projects on small granite holds. Using the Moonboard as an example- if my session max is V9 and I've never not flashed v5, doing a bunch of V5s on the huge blocky holds is going to have a huge margin of error and not suit the goal of climbing on the yellows in a way that is specific to anything I'm targeting on rock. Doing volume on v7s yellows would make more sense even if I can only tolerate 10 of those vs 20 on the blockier holds at a lower grade. In some sessions the margins for me doing many of the 8's not in my style is fairly slim. I'd rather have more gas and less nervous system fatigue going into those as I stand to learn more and gain more from completing one than potentially being too tired to do so.

To me it's the concept in polarized training in endurance sports of the junk miles middle ground where things are "hard-ish", but not at a high enough intensity to cause anaerobic adaptations to a significant degree yet the amount of fatigue is almost equal. And not easy enough to be purely aerobic and really rack up mileage with lower fatigue cost.

My current projects are a 20 move V12 and an 18 move V11. The 12 only has 2 holds that are finger intensive, but a lot of position changes. The 11 starts with 2 finger intensive moves and then eases up but has a lot of burly movement. Even for these projects going down in grade on the Moonboard, for example, to the blockier holds on V5s doesn't make sense since the amount of body tension required is so much lower. What has worked much better for both work capacity and anaerobic capacity is doing fewer climbs, but with the appropriate amount of body tension and TUT on each hand hold, which means V7 or so. I do less per session, but it's all targeted. Even as a boulderer this same approach allowed me to quickly tune up for sport climbing and send a few things in the 12d-13b range on a whopping 3 weeks of specific training. I can't count how many climbers I meet that have tried to break into these grades for years that are just mindlessly ARC'ing or "accumulating fatigue" doing twice as many unspecific moves and never really moving the needle.

Going back to the topic of this thread if I were to lift I'd find more value doing so after so as not to compromise my climbing since lifting is complimentary to climbing for me. I know some that love doing stuff at 80% before and do just fine. It's always a trade off for the individual, but my observations over the years indicate that way too many climbers operate in the middle zone that polarized training tries to avoid and just slap the "volume" label on it when their volume oriented climbing isn't very specific. They just chase being tired and not how they're specially getting tired. If I'm trying to increase work capacity for v8+ granite bouldering I'm better off doing 100 moves on smaller crimps than 200 on massive holds just to "fatigue the forearms more" since I'm actually using the exact grips and movement patterns I intend to use on rock. If I were a sport climber in Rifle I'd train much differently.

Ricky Harline wrote:

Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

This town ain't big enough for the two of us

...this is a bot, right? I haven't seen one grab a real user's name before. Weird. 

I've been lifting before indoor climbing for three or four months now and really enjoy it. Been climbing 5 years, 46 years old, sport focus. I do two sets of a few major categories - pulls, push, quads or hamstrings, hinge, light hangboarding or pulling on the Tindeq. It takes about 20 minute, and it's an excellent warm up. Then, I'm practically ready to jump on my hardest project after a 10 minute break, but I usually do one or maybe two warm up routes at least. I climb 3 days a week and probably do my exercises at least two of those sessions if I have time. I generally don't push volume on my sessions except for some endurance work maybe once a month. So that's 6 - 8 routes on average per session. All in all, this feels great for me, is sustainable, and consistent. I'm slowly increasing weight/reps and progressively climbing better. Project 12a indoors.