Continue with onX Maps
Sign in with Facebook
Favorite Endurance Workouts (non ARC)
|
I've listened to the google-able podcasts, read the articles, etc etc and it seems like 90% filler and 10% or less actionable advice. Then that 10% seems to contradict each other from guru to guru and episode to episode... For an experienced technically proficient climber who wants to simply increase his ability to endure on a 30m pumpy/steady pitch without anything harder than V5 or v6 (but sustained consistent v3/v4) what actual workouts (inside or outside) do you like? Let's say you had 3-4 workout days a week to dedicate - what would you do? I've heard the claim that someone should just get stronger and stronger fingers, which makes no individual move very hard or taxing. I'm kinda dubious since I know lots of double digit boulderers who get pumped and fall on short pitches and I recently returned from a sport climbing trip where I was climbing pretty marginally, and always limited by pumping out, despite having pretty good finger/bouldering strength and power. I'm also personally pretty skeptical that long non-pumped ARCing does much for an experienced climber who has been at it for 10+ years. Do high end runners who are trying to run their fastest 800m or 1k or mile ever spend time SLOWLY jogging around at 10-12 minute mile paces?
|
|
Blake - what training (and climbing) resources do you have easily accessible? My experience is that there are numerous different approaches that can work for building sport climbing endurance, and a key driver is what tools you have. Home woody, commercial building gym, commercial routes gym, a pumpy outdoor crag, etc... |
|
I think the claim that someone should just get stronger fingers only applies if one's max finger strength is relatively weak compared to their endurance. This may be the case for someone who only rope climbs and doesn't do any bouldering, and is probably pretty common, hence why that advice is so widespread. However, if you know you have bouldering strength, then that advice would not apply to you. If you need to build your aerobic base, then I do think ARCing type training does help. I've been primarily a boulderer the last few years, and I went to RRG last Thanksgiving and got spanked. Further testing did reveal a deficiency in my critical force, which showed how low my aerobic level was. Over the last couple months I incorporated more low-intensity long-duration exercises: CARCing (squeezing a hand gripper for 8-12 minutes a set), lower intensity repeaters (7-3 at critical force for 6 minutes, 2 sets). I did not do any on-wall ARCing because my bouldering gym isn't conducive to that. I didn't do too much endurance training since I'm still mainly interested in bouldering, and I find endurance training too boring, but these off-wall exercises I could incorporate easily at home while watching tv 1 or 2 days a week. I never did any training for power endurance where I would actually get pumped. Last week I went back to the RRG and noticed a significant improvement in my ability to hang on and recover on pumpy routes. I'm guessing that because my aerobic level was so low, even a little bit of training resulted in a large improvement in my route climbing endurance. To answer your last question, I am not a runner nor do I train any endurance sport. But I have heard that for any endurance athlete, there is no substitute for logging significant time at low intensities. You cannot replace low intensity volume with higher intensity. I think it is also a bit tricky to know what running distances are equivalent to sport climbing, considering that running times range from 10 s at the shortest to 3 hours at the long end, whereas climbing might be an individual move <0.5 s at the short end to maybe 10 minutes at the long end. So perhaps when it comes to forearm endurance, trying to do a 100 ft sport climb is maybe more akin to doing a half or full marathon? In which case, then absolutely those runners are spending a lot of time at relatively slow paces. |
|
I'm curious about folks' responses here and about this question. I've found on the minute boulders for 10-15 minutes (three to four rounds) to be semi helpful. I've also seen people do some form of linked boulders where you jump down or down climb and then hang out on a big jug for the remainder of the minutes rest time. I've also done 7-3 hangs at 60% for max number of reps and done 2-3 sets of those once or twice a week for a few weeks after a training session. This is very, very anti-fun but did seem to help manage the pump on routes when I'd motivate to do it before a trip. But this type of power endurance has been the hardest thing for me to figure out how to train so I'll be interested in responses. I always figured a treadwall would be really useful but have never had access to one. |
JCM wrote: Moonboard, hangboard, weights, kinda middling roped gym x1/week, outdoor bouldering. But I’m curious what your answer would be if someone had access to any and all kinds of training and climbing environments. |
|
I have a lot of fun with 4x4’s and have seen good results, but I suppose you could bump down the difficulty and do 6x8’s or something to add a little fun to the workout. It also seems more realistic to how I would climb a pitch like one you described. If you’re not bored to death by arcing, then long arc sessions are probably your best bet from a sports science point of view. I had a lot of trouble finding the right difficulty to make it work over longer sessions and was so unmotivated to do the workouts. |
|
The strongest folks I've watched and known IRL who care about this type of endurance seem to love up-down-ups or lapping sport climbs. IIRC Solomon Barth and/or Maya Madere talk about it on their Nugget podcasts and Connor Herson talks about it on his recent "stronger than you think" podcast. I at one point remember seeing Joe Kinder spend a session lapping a 12c 6 or 7 times for multiple sets in the big lead cave in Berkeley Ironworks. A related observation is that people who sport climb in the Red or Jailhouse all the time, and many people who climb hard trad in the Valley all the time, seem to naturally get the kind of endurance we want, and a theory of "how to get pump resistance" should be able to explain that. I think your comparison to running/cardio sports is interesting. If I understood correctly, a big message in "Training for the Uphill Athlete" is that vascularity and your cardio + circulatory systems basically respond to the amount of time you spend above a certain threshold of output, not to the intensity above that threshold. The threshold is roughly a "zone 2" heart rate, which is a running/biking pace at which you can sustain a conversation indefinitely. An hour in "zone 3" or "zone 4" (levels of try-hard with real biological definitions, but roughly efforts that you can sustain for ~1 hour and ~20 min, respectively) has basically the same benefit for general endurance as an hour in "zone 2". But, since it taxes your muscles and joints and energy stores more, you can do way less of it in a week. So elite cyclists and runners do spend a ton of time at relatively low speeds to build their "base," logging many hours of training stimulus while staying within their body's recovery capacity. |
Andrew D wrote: What is a 6x8? Doing six boulders as fast as I possibly can, then resting a bunch, then doing that 7 more times? For the gym (or crag) laps folks - doesn’t just the process of lowering, pulling the rope (guess you don’t tie and untie if you pull through the “wrong” way) kinda give you too long of a rest? Or are folks sorta speed lowering or downclimbing and then freesnake toproping to prioritize minimal rest? |
blakeherrington wrote: I've seen some folks lower very fast, then pull onto the start holds and wait there as the belayer pulls the rope (the 'wrong' way, as you say). I think up-down-ups instead of laps aim to solve the same problem. |
blakeherrington wrote: You really could make it whatever you wanted, but 8 low intensity boulders (v3 or v4 in your example) with some dedicated rest time between sets (2-5 minutes) and do 6 sets of that. Depending on the number of moves, that’s anywhere from 250 to 500 moves at the desired intensity. Finding a nice spray wall cuts down on any movement to/from your set boulders. |
|
Climbing endurance training is super broad and hard to get a good handle on because in climbing you pretty much always always need all of your energy systems, unless you want to give one burn a day on a one move boulder. I think arcing is absolutely helpful, from a sport science perspective, from trusted expert sources (google dave McLeod arcing, he credits a year spent arcing consistently with a big breakthrough in his climbing) to personal anecdotal experience. It can be boring, and hard to dial in the intensity but if done right it’s definitely effective. Basically all of your muscles respond to locally elevated blood pressure increase (ie pump) by vascularization-building out a better network of blood vessels and capillaries. This helps raise the level at which you can perform indefinitely, AND helps your other energy systems recover faster, on shorter and longer timescales. this is aerobic endurance. But the key is that it’s the amount of time spent under that condition of locally elevated blood pressure that dictates your bodies response. This is why bouldering doesn’t give you endurance-you might get very pumped repeatedly, but never for long enough to trigger those vascular adaptations. Science seems to suggest that about 20 minutes is the minimum. You can do this by staying on the wall continuously for 20 minutes or longer or by intervals, because your muscular blood pressure does not return to zero immediately after stepping off the wall (ie lowering and doing repeats or long duration sub max repeaters on a hangboard can work) as long as you pull back on before you depump below the threshold that provides the stimulus. These adaptations take the longest to happen (think months), and the longest to fade. Power endurance is also important - Boulder intervals, foot on campus laddering (steve McClure swears by these, google for his protocol), hangboard repeaters are all good tools here. This stuff trains a more anaerobic fitness- it’s about mitochondrial efficiency and density, rather than your vascular system. How much ATP do your muscles have on hand and how quickly they can recycle it. These adaptations happen quicker (think several weeks to a couple months) and fade quicker. As far as stronger fingers equaling better endurance that hasn’t been my experience. Obviously you need to be strong enough to hang the holds in order to have any shot at enduring on them, and being stronger is always going to help, but if you other energy systems are shitty, more strength is not going to allow you to endure in a meaningful way on longer routes. Potentially something that could become a barrier after leveling up your endurance I guess. |
|
Nowhere just gave the best sports science take you're going to find on MP so I'll just focus on exercises I've done. Note that you need to dial in the intensity of these exercise so you are getting at most a light pump, otherwise you are not focusing on the aerobic system. It may be counter to your internal beliefs but no pump is perfectly fine. You should however notice increased blood flow and pressure in the forearms (they will look bigger and feel firmer but lactic acid is not building up). In a rope gym: 4x4s (lead the first, TR the remaining 3 reps, rest 5-10 minutes. Route doubles (same idea but harder routes and/or shorter rest interval), route pyramid (most fun, start easy, increase difficulty to just under os level, then decrease back to easy, you should go straight from one route to the next, pretty much impossible unless the gym is dead). All of these are better with longer routes, you have to double the reps if the walls are only 30ft. In a boulder gym: on the minute boulders for 20 minutes, Boulder pyramid, perfect repeats for endurance (pick a few onsight level boulders that you've done before, do one as many times as you can in 5 minutes focusing on doing it better each time aiming for good flow and technique, rest 3-5 minutes and go to the next). Boulder circuit. At home: a pick up edge in front of the TV (pick your favorite symmetric interval and do it for an hour in front of the TV. I do minute on each hand, half crimp and ramp the weight over the first 30 minutes). Can also be done on the hangboard with a non symmetric interval, like 10:5 repeaters or something. Best done in the ARC intensity range because that is the least mentally draining for such a boring exercise. Incredibly effective once you dial it in at hitting the right blood pressure in the forearms. |
|
Some rambling thoughts and a then a couple of exercises I like... I think that endurance in climbing is as much about skill and tactics as it is a physiological adaptation. I think every climber can relate to their 'endurance improving' over the course of a two week climbing trip. Obviously though, no meaningful physical adaptation is occurring in that timeframe; the climber just got better at everything else (resting, holding on lightly, moving on the rock type/angle, etc). I think this generally scales across ability levels, except maybe at a hyper-elite level where the skill is so deeply ingrained that the limiting factor is always going to be strength (hence 'get stronger fingers/more power' rather than focus on endurance). I think most people ARC (or do their long slow distance in running) at too low an intensity (totally avoiding pump like Israel explained). Huge aerobic volume works for an elite runner because their easy pace is probably in the 6:30-7:30min./mi. range. The movement patterns and musculoskeletal demands are similar to running faster, so they are developing those systems in conjucntion with the aerobic base. If my easy pace is in the 9+min./mi pace, I'm almost definitely moving differently than at faster paces, and I'm training sub-optimally. The same applies in climbing. An elite-level climber doing a lot of laps/TUT on 5.12ish climbing will be beneficial in a way that a 5.11 climber doing tons of volume on 5.8 just won't. The movement patterns are too different, and I think that climbing is so skill-intensive that whatever aerobic gains you might make in the forearms are going to be far offset by the detrimental effect on your movement skills. I also think most climbers blow it in pacing their endurance exercises. Most of us climb way faster in the context of a 4x4, ARC, or route-lapping session than we do on the rock. I find it helpful to pay attention to time under tension on a project rather than move count, and base my training off of that. For me, the two most helpful exercises for practicing climbing endurance have been density bouldering and 60-30-60's on a treadwall. The density bouldering is from Steve Bechtel, I believe. Basically, I create a list of 10-20 boulders (moonboard) that are hard for me and then work on doing that list in shorter and shorter time. First, I work on flashing the list. After that, I start reducing rest time between boulders, ultimately striving to get down to on the minute. If I do this (basically never), then I'll add in harder problems. I like this a lot because it kind of goes from a strength exercise to a strength endurance exercise. 60-30-60's is from Eric Horst. On a treadwall climb, for 60 seconds, rest for 30 seconds, climb for 60, rest for 120 seconds, repeat, then macro rest (5-10 minutes). The climbing should be pretty hard and stylistically reminiscent of the angle/style of the outside climbing you're doing. The climb/rest intervals can obviously be adjusted to suit your goal routes in a pretty specific way. |
Israel R wrote: Thanks for the detailed answer - I didn’t really understand this part. Are you saying you you take an hour and do 30 minutes of single hand half crimp hangboard hanging on each hand with some weight removed? (1 minute left, 1 on right, x30)
|
blakeherrington wrote: Yup except for the single handed stuff I'm using a pickup edge (lattice mini bar, tension block, etc) and lifting 20ish pounds off the floor. I like it a lot more than I would expect and it makes my fingers feel pretty good for the next day or two. I work from home and can even do it during long meetings because it is super brainless. I don't really do the two handed hangboard stuff because my hangboard is not in front of the TV and you have to take off an obnoxious amount of weight to get the aerobic zone unless you have really strong fingers. |
|
I train endurance athletes for a living and so I've thought about the parallels between the pure endurance sports and climbing a lot. In cycling and running the optimal periodization involves an intensity distribution of 80% easy (below ones aerobic threshold), with the remaining 20% being spent at higher intensities. In my view, we do this because the fatigue incurred below the first lactate turn point (the aerobic threshold) is very low relative to the benefits, in other words, there's a lot of adaptive bang for your fatigue buck. When looking at the research on the topic, specifically this meta-analysis by David Bishop, we see that mitochondrial content is basically proportional to total training volume (duh) BUT the kicker is that it's NOT correlated with intensity, therefore, you can do a near-infinite amount of low intensity training and keep seeing benefits, all without over-training. The adaptations seem to be driven by # of contractions more than intensity per se. Therefore, I'd guess that if you CARC'd for 5 hours a week your endurance would be much better than someone who only CARC'd 2 hours a week. With that said, peripheral adaptations like mitochondrial and capillary density are only part of the endurance puzzle and hence why we don't only do low intensity training. The high-intensity shit is indispensable and also comes with great rewards in terms of adaptations but the poison is in the dose, in other words, we can only do so much. Evolution is clever too, so many of those adaptive pathways become saturated quickly and so doing your third hard day of 7/3 repeaters probably isn't providing additional benefits but IS making you super tired. All of this said, I think the optimal training program would utilize a few methods. Maybe one phase could look something like this: 1x week of training just below critical force, maybe using 7/3s (increasing length of sets week-week) 2x week of pure aerobic work, i.e. ARC/CARC 1 x week of over/unders, i.e. 4x4 or 6x4 alternating boulders above critical force on average, and boulders below cirtical force. The training theory here is to work on lactate clearance and get some large motor-unit recruitment on the hard boulders, all while getting a good threshold stimulus. ...I don't train climbers but bear in mind that many of the Lattice concepts are just taken from endurance sports so maybe that gives some of the above relavance? |
|
Limit boulder like twice a week, then volume boulder 1-2x a week. Mix in max hangs or some sort of extra hard finger stimulus. I used to climb about 12ish on a rope, now i never rope up and can usually flash 12+. Cardio never hurt either. CARCing is also good, if you want bruised palms |
|
You know 10-12 min/ mi is for normal people baseline. High end runners will do slow distance at a rate similar to a slow person’s fastest effort. I am sure it would be relative in climbing as far as ARC is concerned. |
|
Another endurance training exercise is circuits on a board. This is pretty much the standard for most comp climbers. The Brits love it, too. Set the board to around 40 degrees. Go as very At 30 or as steep as 50. Avoid less than 30 as you’ll need to use smaller holds, which is hard on the skin. Tailor the circuit to mimic your project. Choose a similar number of moves, movement and hold type. Use the circuits that come with the Tension Board 2 and the Kilter Board. If setting your own, an easy intro would be to link existing boulder problems. Avoid low percentage moves. Go for smaller moves, more tension based climbing. If you are prepping for very long routes (40m or more), simply to a double of an easier circuit. Do the circuit once then immediately repeat it. Give yourself plenty of rest between circuits. You are effectively climbing a route, so rest accordingly. Also do your best to climb the circuit at a pace on par with your rope climbing. Take short shakes every 10 moves or so. You could even bring a chalk bag, though I don’t as it’s a bit of a pain. |
|
So, I used to race bikes with reasonable success. Like a poster stated above, I’d spend long days in the saddle at well below threshold, while about two days a week were spent on hill repeats and intervals, about 2 to 5 minutes in duration, with some 20 minute threshold work thrown in Though effective for endurance sports, this does not translate to climbing, which is a power endurance sport at best, even when climbing the longest routes. You just simply don’t spend 6 hrs on a route, putting out steady wattage with occasional max effort bursts that leave you cross-eyed. That said, I love long sport routes, and I have had luck with the following unscientific and unstructured program. I do at least four days per week of the following: - three to four sets of three back to back routes at flash maximum, with no rest between routes, if I fall off I pull on and keep going. Twenty minutes rest between sets. Routes should be familiar. - eight to twelve laps on the system wall of repetitive movement for three minutes each. Three minutes leaves me barely hanging on. Five minutes rest between laps. - climb my project a lot…even when tired and I have no chance. - fallback is repeaters on the hangboard. This is probably hairbrained as far as training goes, but it seems to work (somewhat) |
|
I think these guys break it down in an easily digestible way
|
