Adaptation question to RCTM's plan

[Otis.]

I have a question for the board on structuring my training program and hangboarding.  Specifically, I know that refining my climbing technique and increasing my power are my two biggest opportunities for improvement.  If I had better power and refined my technique, I believe I could progress a lot quicker than I could by building more strength on the hangboard.  Essentially, my hangboarding #'s indicate that I should climb harder than I currently do.  As I begin planning out my summer training schedule, I was hoping for some help with the following questions:

Has anyone ever cut down their hangboarding plan to either fewer sessions or fewer grips to allow more time for bouldering for technique practice?  I know some people have great success training technique in their ARC sessions, but my technique suffers the most on tiny foot chips and hard powerful moves, so I haven't had great success training technique on ARC days.  I was thinking of maybe doing some volume bouldering prior to/or after a slimmed down hangboard workout and would love to hear your thoughts on this?  

Essentially, my schedule would look something like this:

Conditioning - ARC - 2 weeks
Strength - volume bouldering/slimmed down hangboard workouts - 4 weeks
Power - campus/limit bouldering - 3-4 weeks
Power endurance - 2-3 weeks
SEND!

If it matters, I currently boulder V7 and climb 5.13a.  Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 

[daustin]

I think your plan makes sense, for the most part. Couple thoughts:

1) how important is ARCing to your goal routes? if it's not that important, i'd consider adding in some bouldering to work on the techniques you described above during the initial phase. I have nothing to base this on, but what I'd probably try is bouldering one level 'below' what you consider 'hard bouldering'. so if you boulder v7, maybe it's finding a few v4s and v5s to get really dialed and effortless. easy enough that you're not full on power training, but hard enough that you can still train your technique

2) the way you wrote it sounds like you were thinking about doing volume bouldering and hangboarding in the same workout session? I'm not sure how you define volume bouldering (maybe the same as what I described in the above point?) but I'd be concerned about injury risk and suboptimal hangboard workouts if you're doing anything more than light bouldering. Again, nothing to base this off, but what I would try is alternating between bouldering and hangboard workouts, and maybe even doing 2 boulder workouts for every hangboard in the 'strength' phase. Maybe at the beginning of the phase focus on the 'one level below hard' bouldering and as you progress towards the power phase weave in harder and harder bouldering until you're ready to campus/LB. So you'll be doing fewer HB workouts but the ones you will be doing you'll be fresh and able to get as much out of them as possible.

Just my thoughts on what I would try if I were in your situation -- I've got no actual experience to support either recommendation!

[MarkAnderson]

I like Dan's idea of replacing ARCing with "volume bouldering". I've done this, and I know others who have as well. I would still suggest doing some ARCing, like 15 minutes at the beginning to warmup, and maybe 15-20 more at the end of each session. In the middle, work a relatively high volume of relatively low intensity problems, emphasizing your technical weaknesses. That should help with the Skill Acquisition side of things, but you will also want to do some more intense bouldering for the Stress-Proofing side. That can and should be done during your Power Phase, but if you feel strongly about it, you could shorten your Strength Phase and lengthen your Power Phase to provide more opportunities.

I would avoid mixing hard bouldering with hangboard training, because I think one will impact the other such that whatever you do second is going to suffer to the point of being a waste of time. You need to be fresh to do either activity effectively, so I think adjusting the phase lengths is the best way to go. You can get a lot accomplished in 6 or so hangboard workouts, especially if you have a good record of resistance to work from (so you don't need to spend the first 2 or 3 workouts dialing in the resistance).

[adam]

Otis, I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that your hangboard #'s indicate your climbing grades could be higher?

[Otis.]

Mark and Daustin,

Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of doing some larger volume bouldering sessions in the first phase. Especially the idea of ARC-boulder-ARC in a session. In the strength phase, I was basically thinking of extending my warm-up a bit longer, prior to hangboarding. Right now I usually do 10-15 minutes of general warm-up and then roughly 30 minutes of bouldering in the V3-V6 range before starting my hangboard workout. I was thinking of pushing that bouldering up to an hour and then cutting a few sets off of my hangboard workout, either by doing fewer sets per grip or fewer grips overall.

Adam,

Mostly from comparing my hangboard #'s to friends who climb harder than I do and other comments I have seen posted on message boards. For example, I can do my hangboard workouts with 50 lbs. added on a 3/4" edge, the fat and medium pinches on the RCTC with 10 lbs added and the smallest crimp at full body weight. All at 7/3 intervals. I have a few friends who can climb 5.13d/V10ish who I can hang with and/or out hang on the hangboard.

My technique has never been great. It used to be terrible, but I have worked on it quite a bit, but still have room to grow. With campusing, I can't do much more than 1-3-5-7, however I can do it on any of the 3 Metolius rungs. So I have the base line finger strength, but need to develop better overall power.

[jessebruni]

As someone who has a personal best of 1-3-5 on the metolius small rungs, -15 on the RPTC large pinch, cannot hang on the smallest edge at bodyweight, has bouldered V7 and sport climbed 13b outdoors I can verify that your strength puts you at a level where it's pretty reasonable to assume you can climb harder than V7/13a.