Campusing for n00b on first power cycle- How to make easier?

[benc]

I'm at HB6 on my first training cycle ever for rock climbing and everything seems to be going great so far (I feel like I floated up a 5.9 on a wall that I've struggled on before).  I'm a bit forward looking to next week, which will be the first week of my power mesocycle. 

I understand the theory of the power cycle, but I'm a big guy at 6'2 215 lbs (I'm on a plan to drop 20 lbs for my climbing so the weight loss will come).  My gym has a great campus board, but I'm not even able to deadhang from the board on the widest rung.  The RCTM suggests having a superfriend hold your body up to take some of the weight off, but I'm only able to train at 6 am when nobody else is there.  

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can get started off? My thoughts are to try to put my legs on the ground so my body forms a lazy "L" shape and I can take some of the weight off of my fingers, but I'm not sure that that would get the proper physiological response.  My gym has a double pullup bar... would practicing deadhangs on the campus and doing dynamic pullups be a good substitute? Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

[scojo]

Another option is just to do more hard/limit bouldering instead of the prescribed campus board sessions. That should give you the same physiological response, and you'll get a lot of technique training at the same time. If you follow RCTM for another macrocycle, you will be much more ready to start campussing the next power phase.

[daustin]

Agreed with scojo, and I'd go even further: I'd recommend against campusing and just focus on hard (not even necessarily limit) bouldering for your power phase. As a beginner, you'll still make great power gains through hard bouldering, and also get a lot more benefit in movement practice. Once those beginner gains start to plateau, you can worry about weaving in more limit bouldering and campusing.

[mclay]

Mar 5, 2017 19:04:57 GMT -7 benc said:

I understand the theory of the power cycle, but I'm a big guy at 6'2 215 lbs (I'm on a plan to drop 20 lbs for my climbing so the weight loss will come).  My gym has a great campus board, but I'm not even able to deadhang from the board on the widest rung.  The RCTM suggests having a superfriend hold your body up to take some of the weight off, but I'm only able to train at 6 am when nobody else is there.  

I'm relatively new to training (5th cycle), but I didn't even attempt campusing for the first several cycles. This was partly due to not having access to a campus board for most of those cycles, but even when I did have access briefly I focused on hard bouldering. I was like you and unable to dead hang the large rungs up until my last full cycle. If you have access to a wide range of boulder problems in your gym just start there.

In my garage gym (no campus board), I've improvised three small campus rungs on a less than 10 degree overhang and I practice the general campus movement while alternating one foot on a jib/chip foothold for one set, and then changing to the other foot the next set. It's an approximation of the power spot technique shown in the RCTM.