Hard Bouldering during strength phase

[Thomas]

I was wondering if anyone has experimented with doing a warm-up boulder ladder and some hard bouldering as a warm up for a hangboard work out. I'm exclusively a boulderer and I felt like I lost so much shoulder and core power during my strength phase that my limit boulders during my power phase weren't as hard as I knew they could be. Is there any merit for a boulderer to work in hard bouldering in the strength and power phase to keep baseline try hard ability high?

[Lundy]

This is basically what I do. I warmup for HB workouts with about 40 minutes of WBL and some hard-ish bouldering. Then I jump into the HB workout. I think the updside to this is that I can put the most critical grips early in the HB workout and feel strong and ready for them, but it also means the backside of my workout is pretty weak, so I put less important (i.e. not specific to any current project, but something I want to keep strong) and/or maintenance grips (i.e. RP) back there...

[Thomas]

I was considering using this as an excuse to only do 7 grips (plus the warm-up) for the intermediate work-out, so 15 sets. I figure the TUT is the similar, if less organized. How many sets do you do?

[Lundy]

I do 6 grips three sets each, so 18 total...

[Jon]

I also boulder before hangboarding, but I don't do repeaters during strength training. I do 10 second hangs with 50 second rests, so max hangs with a timed rest component. It's about a 30 min. hangboard workout, so less intense than the Anderson repeater protocol. I warm up, do a 60 minute hard bouldering session, then hangboard. I have found the balancing of time between hard bouldering and hangboarding to be more effective for me in getting better at climbing.

[Thomas]

Jon,
I've been wondering if that's a better way to do it for boulderers. Are you mostly a boulderer? Have you seen good progress doing this?
I was considering incorporating some max hangs on grips besides edges during my power phase. The idea being that I'm using campusing to build recruitment on edges, so I should be doing something to build recruitment on my other grips.

[Jon]

Thomas, most of my goal routes are sport climbing oriented, but I definitely do a fair amount of bouldering. My biggest reason for mixing in hard bouldering before hangboarding is that climbing is a skill sport and I need the practice more than the absolute max finger strength gains. With that said, I have seen really strong gains on my current plan. I've added significant weight to my hangboard maxes and jumped my bouldering nearly two grades in the last year under my current plan. I've been climbing for over 12 years, so a 2 grade jump in a year is pretty significant for me at this point. I had plateaued for several years before adapting my current plan. I can't say whether it is better than the Anderson brothers approach, but it works really well for me. I had a hard time sticking with the strict Anderson brother approach and also felt the changes in phases were too abrupt for me. A lot of my current training plan is based around Steve Bechtel's approach from Climbstrong, with elements from RCTM, Horst and a few others sprinkled in.

[Lundy]

Jon,
If you have the time, I'd love to see the details of your plan, how you move between phases, etc. There are a number of us on here who have taken inputs from lots of different sources, and it's always interesting to compare notes.

Thanks.

[Jon]

Lundy,

I'm happy to share the basics, but I would highly recommend reading Steve Bechtel's new book, Logical Progression. The bulk of my training follows his planning in this book.

The basics to my plan are:
3 climbing focused training days per week.
2 weight lifting/core training days per week. Usually one is a stand alone day and the other a slightly lighter workout on a climbing training day.
1 optional free climbing day. (Half the time, this ends up as an added rest day, getting old sucks )
2 rest days per week, which won't involve anything harder than yoga/hiking.


In regard to my climbing training, all of my phases are 4-6 weeks in length and I do a 2-1 weekly split. Depending upon the time of year, I will do a strength phase, followed by a power phase, then followed by an endurance phase, but other times, I combine strength and power into a single phase, then move to endurance. Depending upon my focus, my two hard workouts will focus on that attribute. The third workout will be a maintenance workout to maintain the non-focused attribute.

So in a strength phase, I'll do two strength focused sessions that will include one hour sessions of hard bouldering (usually some limit bouldering work), followed by 30 minute hangboard routine. I rest about 10 minutes between bouldering and hangboarding. For the endurance workout, I'll do route laps, or a high mileage bouldering day, ticking off a ton of problems up to about onsight. I only do what is typically referred to as power endurance work during my endurance focused phases. I find those to be too taxing to do during strength and/or power phases.

During my endurance focused phases, I'll do two endurance focused workouts per week, usually doing shorter aerobic power ( roughly 30 moves) in one workout and interval 30-50 move sequences in the other with minimal rest between laps. I end both with a quick 10-20 min. ARC session at the end. For my strength focused workout, I will boulder (usually longer problems) for 60 minutes and then do a 20-30 min. hangboard workout.

In the strength phase, I do heavy weighted near max hangs on a 10 sec hang/50 sec. rest cycle for 3 reps. I'll do 2-3 sets per grip, usually doing 2-3 grips per workout. So for one day, I'll do half crimp and 2 finger open and the other I'll do 3 finger open and pinch blocks or something to that effect.

In my endurance phase, I'll do repeaters on my hangboarding day. Usually 2 sets per grip and no more than 3 grips. I have my doubts on the effectiveness of doing 6 different grips in a single workout for all but the most elite trained climbers.

Happy to answer any other specific questions.

[Jon]

I'll add that two of the biggest benefits for me on this plan are:

1. I am always in relatively decent shape for either an unplanned bouldering or climbing trip. I'm sure I don't get the great peak that RCTM produces, but I also avoid the valleys. Since I climb mostly weekends throughout 9 months of the year, this is more conducive to my climbing goals.

2. It's easy to follow and easy to stop/re-start when life (family, work, vacation, injuries, etc.) gets in the way.

[elevate]

I had this same question, so I figured I'd bump an old thread rather than creating a new one.

I really enjoy warming up with WBLs rather than the suggested ARC warmup because
1. It's fun
2. I want to regain some of the lost "hard-move" coordination after ARCing for the last 3 weeks prior to strength phase
3. I want to retain some semblance of power so that the power phase isn't such a shock

I see a lot of benefits, but I also find it likely that I might be getting slightly too fatigued and not getting as good of a hangboard workout as I could if I warmed up with ARCing. Has anyone tried both and seen significantly different perceived hangboard workout quality between the two warmups? I'll give the ARC warmup a shot for my workout tomorrow to see if it feels significantly different.

PS: I do mix in hard technical sequences with my ARCing but it is different than the last rungs of a good WBL.

[erick]

My HB warm up includes...
5 minutes of dynamic stretching
3 min of traversing on jugs, 20* wall
1.5 min traversing at moderate difficulty getting a light pump, 20* wall
10 to 15 problem WBL starting at V1 and usually ending around V4/5 on a 40*. My LB on this wall for reference is usually around V8/9
After the WBL I will maybe do a few hangs on key grips without any weight hanging to remind my fingers/back what proper posture and force feels like.
This process takes me about 45 minutes after which I rest another 10 and get started

[MarkAnderson]

How many HB sets do you do (Erick)?

[Chris W]

Wow, I don't warm up anywhere near as long as you guys do. I pretty much just do 3 warm up sets on the hangboard before getting into the true session. My fingers feel fine after this, so I assume I'm good to go.

More regards to hard bouldering; I consider my Strength Phase to be sacred, and put everything on hold to try to develop strength as efficiently as possible on the hangboard. I feel like finger strength is a true weakness of mine, so building it is my top priority. I'm still pretty weak though... 

[elevate]

Nov 19, 2018 17:41:08 GMT -7 erick said:

...usually ending around V4/5 on a 40*. My LB on this wall for reference is usually around V8/9

WBL stopping well short of max is an interesting compromise.

My LB is V6/7 and my WBL is repeating 2 routes of each grade up to V5. Then a maximum of two tries to repeat a V6. Rest ~15, eat gummy bears, hangboard.