Improving work capacity

[erick]

What have you found to be the best way to increase the number of “goes” in a day? I just spent two days at maple and while there I realized I really only had two good full on reps in me. After that my ability to work hard fell off a cliff. While fresh my aerobic ability was awesome. Climbing really well and recovering quickly while onsite climbing.

What have you all found to be the best way to increase your ability to climb a higher volume of hard routes. Long easy ARCs, shorter but more intense sessions? Or is this a overall strength problem on some way? I have been doing a lot of ARCing lately so I expected to have a bigger tank then I did.

[cozisco]

I used to feel the same exact way. If I didn't send something on my 1st or 2nd try, I knew there was no chance of sending because I just didn't have the gas. Over the last year or so, I've been able to increase my work capacity (or # of quality attempts/day) by simply putting in more burns on my project(s) on performance days. At first, if I felt like I was done after 2, I'd force myself to put in a solid effort for a 3rd, 4th or even 5th attempt. Doing that consistently over the last 3 training cycles has really worked for me.

I originally tried to increase work capacity through ARC'ing but I think that didn't help simply because it's at such a different intensity level as compared to RP attempts (esp. when comparing to a PE-intensive area like Maple). In theory, increased capillaries should help you recover faster by removing waste products more efficiently, but that simply wasn't my experience.

[cozisco]

Also, it should be said that resting and fueling properly in between attempts is more important than any sort of work capacity training ahead of time.

[acmesalute76]

My experience has been that after a complete training cycle, if I’m doing a long route with a sustained crux section that I’m failing off because I’m severely pumped, then I will be able to take three solid burns in a session. I will need to rest up to an hour between burns. On shorter routes I may be able to do up to 5 solid burns, resting around 20-30 minutes between. Either way I’ll be completely spent afterwards.

I don’t know if there is a way to increase that capacity to take more burns. I would imagine that over time you’ll get better at it, but redpointing at your limit takes a lot out of you, and from what I’ve heard from most people three to five burns is about all they get. Maybe the pros can do more but I don’t know.

This doesn’t really answer your question but I wanted to chime in with my experience on how my work capacity has been.

[hajekmarek]

It's interesting, your question is not about how to increase power endurance or power. It is about how to increase the number of times, in a given day, that power endurance (or power) is utilized near maximal capacity.

Let's say you've met all the prerequisites, your aerobic capacity is at a high level, you've trained power endurance to a decent level, you are resting properly between climbs, are eating properly throughout the day, etc. Now, you want to do multiple 12a burns (arbitrarily chosen for this example) that are near your redpoint limit. How do you train to do 5 12a burns in a day instead of 2 12a burns?

First, if you increase your strength and maintain a high level of power endurance and aerobic capacity, the 12a burns won't feel so hard any more. The capillaries in your forearms are not going to occlude as fast because you are no longer working at, say, 60% of max but are now working at 40% of max. You'll be able to do more 12a burns because now you are climbing "easier" climbs, sort of like a 12a climber climbing many 11a's in a day. The problem is, the second a 12a climber gets stronger s/he no longer wishes to do 5 12a burns in a day but will try to do 5 12c burns in a day and is back to struggling to do more than 2 12c burns in a day.

Second, power endurance is the least trainable. However, there is training specificity in terms of the type of activity you train for and the holds you grab (gym holds are typically different from outside holds, hence, won't produce the same training result as climbing outside). I have personally experienced that spending a whole day outside, doing multiple burns on routes at or near redpoint level (with lots of rest in between) yields much better increases in the number of times I can exercise near-limit power endurance than spending time in a gym on 1-2 hour training sessions. I tried spending up to 4 hours in a gym in the very distant past, but that did not yield the desired results and, from what I remember, caused tendonitis on more than 1 occasion. In the past, when I felt well trained for near-redpoint-limit climbing, I could function near my limit about 4x per day (typical route length ~60'-80').

I feel some of this is repetition of comments by other users but I wanted to contribute from a little bit different perspective.

[RobF]

I've found bulletproof coffee useful during PE training phases...