Training in prison

[John]

Well not quite, but close. I run a summer camp and need to be on site June 1 - August 14, pretty much 24 hours a day. I can generally get to a crag or a climbing gym on Saturdays, but it's not always easy.

I could use some help coming up with training ideas to replace some of those suggested in the RCTM book.

As my schedule is laid out right now it looks like this:

May 24-June 20: Base Fitness
June 21-July 11: Strength
July 12-July 25: Power
July 25-August 15: Power-Endurance
August 16-September 5: Performance!

My most readily accessible resources are:

• A traverse wall (which is kind of crappy and very public but I can make it work).
  
• A basement with a hangboard, campus board and a sound system.
• A love for You Are Your Own Gym workouts.
• A gym I can get to early in the morning (before kids and counselors wake up).
• Running shoes and decent camp trails.

So please, those of you who have been in this situation before, help me out. What can substitute decently for ARCing and OM? What are the best warm ups and cool downs to do around hangboard and campus board workouts? What are your suggestions for those long six day periods when I can't get to a gym or out on real rock?

Thanks!

[jcm]

Based on your description above, you look to be very well equipped to train strength (hangboard, free weights, etc) and power (campus board); you have basically everything you need to do these effectively. Base fitness and power endurance might be harder to do, given your poor resources for actually climbing on something. In my mind, you would be better suited to opprotunisitically focus on those factors that you are well equipped to train optimally (i.e. strength/power) that to try to "make it work" trying to train BF or PE in really suboptimal conditions. In other words, instead spending a month trying to do BF by ARCing on a crappy traverse wall, you might be better served by just doing additional hangboard and campus board phases.  Others may disagree; it really comes down to the balance between trying to include everything and focusing only on those things that you can address effectively given the circumstances.

If I were in your shoes, I would mostly ignore BF and PE for now, and focus on strength/power.  I would do 3 weeks HB, then 2 weeks campus, then a week rest, then repeat the sequence, during each phase, mix in 1-2 light ARC sessions on the "crappy traverse wall" if/when possible to keep up the basic base fitness.   Once the summer prison sentence ends, go for a more holistic approach and do some remedial BF/PE work.

[Chris W]

John, Mike Anderson spent some time overseas with the service (Afghanistan?) and did well with less. He has some nice posts on the blog and in the book about what he did.

[MarkAnderson]

Ya, I would look at Mike's posts about the tools he used in Afghanistan: 

rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2014/03/06/hows-your-hang/

rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2014/04/29/how-to-build-a-campus-board/

All you really need is a hangboard, a pulley system and some weights (an Ipod, etc really helps too).  If you want to bad enough, you can do ARC, Max R, and PE training on a hangboard.

[MarkAnderson]

Apr 5, 2015 21:36:55 GMT -7 jcm said:

  You can always dial back the training and just do a little bit of training as maintenance. This isn't really discussed in the RCTM, which focuses entirely on improvement, not maintenance (I think this is a bit of a shortcoming in the book). Dave Macleod talks about this pretty well in "9 out of 10 climbers". Basically, it really doesn't take much to "tread water" strength-wise for a few months if you have to. Just a little bit is much, much better than nothing, so don't feel like you need to go "all or nothing" with the training plan. If you only have time and energy each week for 1 HB and 1 Arc session, then that is great--do that. It is amazing how little it takes to maintain a decent base level, and, again, you can go back to "real training" once you're out of prison. Of course, if you can do the full training regimen, then that is even better.

I've never found that type of "treading water" maintenance training to be necessary or even useful.  I've taken breaks of many months due to various injuries or lack of interest, and I've always found 0-3 ARC sessions followed by a normal Strength Phase is more than enough to get me right back where I left off (and usually better than where I left off).  I'd rather just enjoy my mental break than feel the need to hit the gym once a week for no reason, but to each his own

[John]

The point about the mental break is a decent one, but honestly camp can be so all consuming that that's really what I need a break from. It's not burden to hit the gym, that helps keep me sane. Last year I spent the time training for a marathon. That was a great break from the world around me, but being away from camp for long in the middle of the day isn't really tenable.

It seems like building a campus board in the basement and hanging my training board down there is the way to go. Working up strength and power, rotated through with other general workouts should give me the mental stimulation I need.