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Post by joev9 on Jan 6, 2015 10:48:34 GMT -7
Found this review of a couple "Team of 2" (Kris Peters and Justin Sjong) training programs (10 week and 5 week). These guys seem to be training a bunch of the pros and seem to know their stuff.
markclimb.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/review-team-of-2-online-training/
My question for Mark is: What is your opinion of their "mixed" training protocols (power, strength, PE, and performance all mixed together) as opposed to your's and Mike's periodized programs?
One other question, do you think that the "load" of their training program is too much (seems like a lot to me)?
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Post by MarkAnderson on Jan 6, 2015 15:58:26 GMT -7
I have a tendency to come off as a jerk on the internet at times, so recognizing that, I try very hard not to criticize others on the internet. If you really want to know what I think, you will have to talk to me some time in a room that has been swept for bugs You can probably make a good educated guess on what I think about most training-related things by reading the book. If I thought "Activity A" was really effective, then I would recommend it. If I don't recommend it, then... On an unrelated note, I have a friend who runs his own Crossfit Gym (I think we're supposed to call them "boxes" instead of "gyms" for some reason related to the science of cult-building). What I noticed when I went there to watch a session, is that it's easy for even really smart people to get confused between what makes an athlete tired, and what makes an athlete better. They are often not the same thing, and they are not interchangeable objectives.
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Post by heelhook on Jan 6, 2015 16:41:00 GMT -7
Best. Reply. Ever.
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Post by joev9 on Jan 7, 2015 7:14:23 GMT -7
I have a tendency to come off as a jerk on the internet at times, so recognizing that, I try very hard not to criticize others on the internet. If you really want to know what I think, you will have to talk to me some time in a room that has been swept for bugs You can probably make a good educated guess on what I think about most training-related things by reading the book. If I thought "Activity A" was really effective, then I would recommend it. If I don't recommend it, then... On an unrelated note, I have a friend who runs his own Crossfit Gym (I think we're supposed to call them "boxes" instead of "gyms" for some reason related to the science of cult-building). What I noticed when I went there to watch a session, is that it's easy for even really smart people to get confused between what makes an athlete tired, and what makes an athlete better. They are often not the same thing, and they are not interchangeable objectives. Having read the book, I kind of figured what your response would be but really wasn't intending for you to criticize someone in your line of "work." (Sorry about that....) I think what appeals to people about their program is that it is still in the realm of "climbing to climb" rather than "training to climb." Sure it has training elements (HB, campus, supplemental work, etc.), but they still include projecting sessions and performance days throughout the training period. Essentially there's no sacrifice (other than long-term improvement). Their program appeals to part of me because all I really want to do is climb, but I also really, really want to climb harder. The sacrifice to dedicate 30 days to just hangboarding isn't easy, I have passed up several prime conditions days and bitched out on going out bouldering with friends to keep to the program. I know it's worth it but it involves sacrifice and not everyone is willing to do that...
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Post by MarkAnderson on Jan 7, 2015 9:24:27 GMT -7
I can certainly understand the desire to climb outside regularly. I think there are ways to build in outdoor days into the Strength Phase (or any phase) if that's really important to you. Even where I am now I will occasionally go outside (for what is essentially an "Outdoor Mileage" day) during the Strength Phase to climb 5.10/11-ish routes with my wife for fun. Sometimes I will go out in the afternoon on the day of a workout (do the workout in the am), other times I will climb on the first rest day, or if I want to climb harder I will build in an extra rest day between the workout and the outdoor day. Years ago I used to do that several times during each phase, and when Mike started HBing he always climbed outside on the weekends if the weather was good and he had a partner.
In my experience its definitely more effective (training-wise) to pretend like the outside world doesn't exist, but sometimes you are presented with opportunities that are hard to ignore, and those instances may be worth a small sacrifice. If you do it in a smart way any negative impacts to your training can be reduced to near-zero.
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Post by tedwelser on Jan 7, 2015 10:50:49 GMT -7
I want to expand on a point that Mark makes, which is, that whole premise of the RCTM is to plan for peak performance at certain times of the year. The training structure relieves me from the pressure of feeling as though every climbing day has to be a performance day. It can't be, obviously, but I certainly used to feel that way.
These days, if I want to shift my schedule a bit and climb outside I know that I will not necessarily be at my best, and that I do not need to put pressure on my own performance as though that day is a critical test of my performance.
This fall I went to Summersville for a day trip on what was scheduled as rest day, coming immediately after a HB workout. I lead some 10's, I top roped some other routes, and then, had the opportunity to get on Narcissus, a 12a just for fun. I chose to top rope it, and tried to climb my best without worrying about the outcome. I really just focused on climbing well, paying attention and enjoying the route. I ended up hanging once to work out a move midway. I then finished it, having learned the moves and having a really fun and positive experience.
A month or so later, at the start of my performance phase, I came back and sent the route on my first lead attempt. It was my first 5.12 redpoint in over 10 years. It was made possible by the fact that I was not always trying to send, or "project" a route per se. I had just been on a fun day out earlier, and I took advantage of an opportunity to climb and learn.
Today I have a HB session, but tomorrow I am going with a friend to climb routes at Vertical Adventures in Columbus, just for fun. I will lead some routes, but I have no obligation to to try to push myself or climb especially hard. This is good too because then I am more likely to listen to my body, and if needed take an extra rest day before my next HB session.
I guess the one thing I would say directly about the Team of 2 routine is that besides the fact that it seems like overtraining, it seems to succumb to the fallacy that you can eat your cake and have it to. People love climbing, they want to get better and so they want to find a way to pile extra training on top of their climbing. I think besides the risk of injury that seems like a recipe for unhappiness.
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Post by kerwinl on Jan 7, 2015 12:55:58 GMT -7
It might also be worth thinking about is whether or not training programs are able to produce consistent improvement over many cycles, vs. only first few cycles. The progress may initially be slow with a plan similar to that proposed by Mark, when compared with "other" workouts, but you will continue to improve year over year, this may or may not happen with a more mixed plan.
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Post by slimshaky on Jan 7, 2015 22:35:07 GMT -7
i looked at the training plan and i honestly rolled my eyes. don't get me wrong, sjong is a masterful climber and i am going to do my best to write a post without being disrespectful to his accomplishments as a climber, as well as his knowledge. Kris is extremely knowledgeable about overall fitness and training, although i'm not really sold on his approach to training for climbing. i'm not a great climber. not remotely. it doesn't come naturally to me, and every pitch i have ever climbed has pretty much been not easy for me. i'm not naturally strong. at all. oddly enough both of my grandfathers had annihilating hand strength. my cousins got that. (and everytime i see them they like to shake my hand and note their disappointment that a rock climber has such a weak grip i think the one thing that i did get from my grandfathers though was an analytical nature and a dedication to grinding through unpleasant situations. some will probably say that, given my meager accomplishments, i don't have the credentials to assess training plans, which is fair enough. i think a lot of people who have known me for a long time realize that i am not a stellar athlete, and that for the most part i have done pretty good for what i have to work with. there are several reasons that this program isn't for me. 20 hours a week for training? i don't have that kind of time, not remotely. also, way way way....way too much volume, a lot of which is pretty useless, empty volume in my opinion (unless you plan on speed hiking up a 5000 foot hill to compete in a crossfit challenge before your day at the crag). i know this from experience - i went through a period for approximately 6 years where my training volume and exercises was fairly similar and i didn't have good results. at all. i don't agree with the 'more is better' philosophy. at all. when i look back at this period it was probably the worst mistake i made in my climbing career. here's my story. i started using the hangboard for strength and MR training in '98. my GF at the time bought it for me when i had foot surgery and couldn't climb for almost 6 months. i read Performance Rock, and a friend of mine told me about 6 rep strength sets. so i did all of my training on the HB for 6 months. i did the strength workouts and when i plateaued i switched to a 5 on 15 off x 3 rep protocol. then back to the 6 rep set... most people would be bored out of their mind doing this for 6 months, but it helps to be OCD. when i started climbing again, within about a month i was climbing 12a (equal to my previous best, which i only had ever done a handful of). for about 5 years i increased from around 5 to 30 routes 12a or harder each year, topping out at 12c. i was pretty psyched. then, i moved to the big city and started climbing at the gym. i read some of the new theories on training and applied them, hoping to move upwards. i trained 4 days a week and climbed on the weekend, pretty much from november to may. i could climb 8 12a's at the gym on tuesday nights, i could climb a bunch of v5 and the occasional v6 in the gym with some work, but by the weekend i was just dead. my fingers weren't that strong. my footwork had greatly deteriorated. i was having a hard time climbing sport routes in the 11 range. basically i went down to only averaging maybe 5 12's a year. interestingly enough almost all of these routes were desert routes, which i trained for using a modified hangboard/crackboard and were all in the fall, after i had taken the summer off from 'training'. there were also a few sport routes sprinkled in the summer and fall, probably after recouperating from the 'training'. i was pretty depressed about this, and ultimately my wife asked what i was doing differently. i looked back through all of it and said 'i think its the hangboard'. "why don't you just put one up and use it then?". so i did. and i cut my training volume way, way back. i quit doing all of the intense circuit stuff. i quit all of the endurance climbing at the gym. i cut back on gym bouldering. so i started just doing an HB workout on tuesday night, bouldering CIR or pyramids on thursdays that were as directly applicable to the climbing in my area as possible. within about a month i was climbing in the 12a range again, and that first year climbed about 25 12a routes. same with the following year or two, including some 12b's and a 12c. then i had one down year due to some shoulder injuries (from gym bouldering, doh!) and a hernia surgery. at this point in my professional career, work was starting to really get a lot more intense. this really starts to take a lot out of you. when i started the comeback i focused on the HB training and getting good rest. then, i slowly incorporated a small amount of campusing. campusing really was a total game changer for me. my wife immediately noticed a big difference in how aggressively i climb when i am redpointing (still got a ways to go to apply it to onsighting though . i immediately was climbing in the 12a to 12b range again and did another 12c. the following year i did 51 routes in the 12a/12b range. the year after that i did 13 routes 12c or harder, including my first 2 12d's and my first 2 13a's. all of this while focusing on the things that are hardest for me to acquire - strength and power, along with focusing on getting a ton of rest. to put this in perspective, in the last 3 years i have sent 139 routes in the 12a or harder range outside - and i have sent 3 (!!!!!) routes that were 12a or harder in the gym (2 12's and a soft 12b . and i spend quite a bit of time at the gym! i also have watched quite a few climbers go through similar high volume climbing training plans at the gyms and here is my take on it. if they are 5.10 to 5.11 climbers they initially have some success and start climbing around 12a in the gym, maybe 12a outside, then plateau, or worse - totally tank or get injured. usually, i see these folks working SO hard in the gym, doing the same things i did, night in, night out. then i see them outside having similar performance that i did. they usually look really jacked though! i honestly feel really bad for them, as there really is nothing worse than looking back at a chunk of your life and feeling like you totally wasted it. there are a maybe 2 or 3 folks that i have seen who have had some success with these types of programs, but they are usually folks who are pretty athletically gifted and just needed ANY sort of training plan to get them going. i think some folks really just enjoy it also. if that's the case, super - i suggest they keep it up and wish them tons of success. in a nutshell though, you don't need an insane high volume multi modal quasi non linear complex muscle confusion training program to improve. more isn't better. more 'fitness' doesn't necessarily equate to better climbing. pretty much in everything i have ever done, whether it be climbing, engineering, investing, building stuff, buying stuff, selling stuff, dealing with people, dealing with animals, straight up dealing, whatever - the simpler option is almost always the better option. one of the best quotes that i have ever heard is "when you really want to start improving a design, see what you can remove from it instead of looking for what you can add to it". anyway, i really hope this wasn't too negative. just wanted to tell my experience.
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Post by slimshaky on Jan 7, 2015 22:36:55 GMT -7
holy long post batman... doh!
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Post by MarkAnderson on Jan 8, 2015 9:59:07 GMT -7
I don't think that was negative at all. I didn't realize you did two 13a's last year, great job man!
When working with Jonathan we ran into this "boredom barrier", where he was always like, "you know, I don't have a job, so I can train a lot more than this" and we were constantly explaining that more isn't better. A lot of these young pros just have so much free time that they (and/or their trainers) feel compelled to fill it. Or perhaps they see their "competitors" putting in all these hours and think they're being lazy if they aren't training 8 hours every day.
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Post by daustin on Jan 8, 2015 10:53:11 GMT -7
I don't think that was negative at all. I didn't realize you did two 13a's last year, great job man! When working with Jonathan we ran into this "boredom barrier", where he was always like, "you know, I don't have a job, so I can train a lot more than this" and we were constantly explaining that more isn't better. A lot of these young pros just have so much free time that they (and/or their trainers) feel compelled to fill it. Or perhaps they see their "competitors" putting in all these hours and think they're being lazy if they aren't training 8 hours every day. That's an interesting observation. I think the trickiest part about the more=better mentality is that it's so natural to think that a workout that leaves you feeling completely wrecked afterward MUST be more effective than one where you don't have any significant muscle soreness the next day. And on top of that, I think a lot of athletes actually crave that "wrecked" feeling; there's just something uniquely satisfying about it (personally, I think it's mostly because it makes post-workout beers taste significantly better, but YMMV). So far in my training for climbing, I think I've struggled with the power phase the most because of this -- it's hard for me to gauge when I'm nearing/passing the point of diminishing returns, and some part of me probably wants to actively push past that point because it makes the workout feel more "complete", even though it probably only means I'll need more time to recover without any added power to show for it. This is especially true with limit bouldering vs. campusing, and something I need to be very conscious of, lest my mentality shifts from "training power" to "sending the problem".
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Post by MarkAnderson on Jan 8, 2015 13:17:25 GMT -7
With LBing, you really have to go off your watch IME. On a LB+Campus day, I know if I LB more than 65 minutes, my campusing will suffer, it's almost guaranteed. YMMV, so you need to do some trial and error to figure out where the point of diminishing returns is for you. LB+Campus is the time to do it, because you can relatively easily use the campus session to measure your level of fatigue relative to other campus sessions. On an LB-only day it will be hard to tell if you went too far until the next workout.
Campusing is easier to judge, because its pretty-well quantified. Usually near the end of a campus session I will be working a difficult Max Ladder that I can't quite do. On the first attempt or so I'll be short of the rung on the second move, then I'll hit the bottom or middle of the rung, then the lip, then the top surface, maybe latch it for a split second. If I never stick it, and I keep trying, eventually what I just describe will happen in reverse--I'll get further and further away from sticking the move. After I regress on two consecutive sets I know I'm done.
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focus
New Member
Posts: 5
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Post by focus on Jan 8, 2015 15:47:00 GMT -7
slimshaky ~ thanks for sharing your experience. It's interesting.
To summarize, it sounds like you saw much better results by focusing your training on HB and campusing (strength, power) and reducing (eliminating?) gym routes. Is that accurate?
I've been coming around to a similar conclusion. I'm a route climber at heart looking to improve. I'm experimenting with a regimen of primarily HB and bouldering throughout the winter months with little gym route climbing. I'll add some right before outdoor season. It's a little counterintuitive for me, but I hope it is a good "gamble".
Your story helps me feel better about it, if I interpreted is correctly.
have others had this same experience?
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Post by slimshaky on Jan 8, 2015 16:27:10 GMT -7
hi focus, that is pretty accurate. i still do some gym bouldering to warm up for my HB, and campus workouts. i do 5 each from VO to V4 and maybe a V5 or 2 if there are any that look applicable to my goal routes. i also rope up some times and do more of a moderate intensity CIR type of workout (maybe 5 to 10 routes at sub-onsite levels). i usually do this if my level of recovery compared to how-close-the-weekend-is hasn't recovered enough. i use this workout to focus on technical and tactical things. sometimes i might do 1 route 3 or more times and work on smoothing it out and climbing it as relaxed as possible. stuff like that.
my current gym has a good system board that is set up perfectly to work on several key parts of my project route. there are a bunch of pockets, i can adjust the steepness and measure it with an app on my phone, it has a bunch of small footholds. i have started incorporating this into my power workout. just a few sets to get more comfortable applying speed and long moves on pockets, on steeper angles.
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Post by slimshaky on Jan 8, 2015 16:30:45 GMT -7
With LBing, you really have to go off your watch IME. On a LB+Campus day, I know if I LB more than 65 minutes, my campusing will suffer, it's almost guaranteed. YMMV, so you need to do some trial and error to figure out where the point of diminishing returns is for you. LB+Campus is the time to do it, because you can relatively easily use the campus session to measure your level of fatigue relative to other campus sessions. On an LB-only day it will be hard to tell if you went too far until the next workout. Campusing is easier to judge, because its pretty-well quantified. Usually near the end of a campus session I will be working a difficult Max Ladder that I can't quite do. On the first attempt or so I'll be short of the rung on the second move, then I'll hit the bottom or middle of the rung, then the lip, then the top surface, maybe latch it for a split second. If I never stick it, and I keep trying, eventually what I just describe will happen in reverse--I'll get further and further away from sticking the move. After I regress on two consecutive sets I know I'm done. just quoting this to say that this is really, really good advice and very accurate in my experience. i would almost say less is more in this case. it really sneaks up on you. i campused the monday night and stopped at the first sign of being tired. i kind of thought that i stopped too early. i have had 2 full days rest and am scheduled to boulder tonight and my fingers are still pretty sore.
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