Post by thomasonlyboulders on Apr 2, 2017 6:33:09 GMT -7
Warning: kind of my life story
A little background: I'm exclusively a boulderer (I have roped up, I just don't care about getting better at it). I just got back from Font and am going to the Rocklands for the second time starting on july 4, so I have 3 months. I'm gonna rest for another week or so and then get to work. I have been climbing for almost 5 years. I have climbed about 10 v7s outside and 1.5 years ago I did a v8, but I have seemed pretty stagnant or regressing due to injuries over that time.
I did a rctm workout in the fall but didn't stick extremely closesly to it. I made gains hangboarding, but once I got to the power phase, I felt bad on big moves and I didn't make any campusing gains. Honestly, I think biggest problem for me buying in was that the book seems so tailored to route climbers, with bouldering almost as an afterthought. Somewhere on these forums Mark even admitted it was the weakest chapter, which is reasonable considering it seems like he's not that focused on bouldering. But I'm going to try again, this time try to be strict about doing everything.
The Plan:
Basically to follow the intermediate RCTM bouldering plan with a few tweaks:
Strength phase:
For my hangboard workouts I'm going to do a warm up boulder ladder up to v5 and do a circuit of 3 hardish boulders that I give 1-2 attempts on each. I feel I need to do this to maintain some level of all around fitness and skill. I feel like for a boulderer, ARCing isn't really doing anything for my skill. I don't need to learn how to climb on jugs efficiently, I need to learn how to climb on hard, steep sections efficiently.
Do an intermediate hangboard workout with 7 grips totalling 14 sets. I already did 3 hard boulders so I figure its a similar TUT as if I did one more grip. Also my last grips always suck, so I figure I might as well spend the time on supplemental exercises. Grips will be: SVDER Left side, MR 2F, crimp with thumbguard, Wide Pinch, IMF, LVDER middle tick, Sloper
I'm gonna try to do quite a bit of supplemental exercises. I'm supposed to be a big brawny boulderer so I guess these are important? Also remember, I'm not training for technical font shit, I'm training for going balls to the wall on big jugs and pinches in the rocklands. The style there is total beefcake big moves on big holds type stuff. If I only have strong fingers those dynos are gonna look far as hell. I'm thinking 4 exercises of 3 sets each for shoulder stuff and the same for cores stuff. There also tons of roofs in the rocklands and I love roof climbing so getting core strength on point is important.
One last thing for the strength phase, I'll probably have 2 or 3 workouts that happen to fall on gorgeous saturdays or sundays and I probably won't pass those opportunities up. Since I'm bouldering rather than route climbing I think this substitute isn't as bad as would be, especially in the finger strength intensive bouldering of the gunks and new england. I'll make up the workouts at the end of my strength phase, so it will probably be 5 weeks
Power Phase:
This I don't feel like I have to make as many tweaks. It will probably last a full 5 weeks. The way I trained before I got in to more structured stuff looked pretty similar to a giant power phase. The main thing I was thinking about tweaking was adding in some Erik Horst style max hangs to my campus workouts on non edge grips. I was going to do 10 second near maximal hangs on my wide pinch, MR 2F, and sloper grips to try to get recruitment in these grips too (presumably the campusing is recruiting my edge grip). I was thinking for each grip 3-4 Hangs with 2 minutes of rest in between each one.
Again during the power phase I want to try to do a lot of supplemental work but I'm not sure how to adjust the core stuff. I feel like its a little unsafe to do a core exercise where 3-5 reps as my max. Seems like this would increase my chances of injury to my lower back.
Performance Phase:
Go to the Rocklands for 6 weeks and fucking rage!
Goal Routes:
The Rhino 7b+ www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNyWA96hKSA
Born Into Struggle 7b+ vimeo.com/108912524
The Skink 7b: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoOmproxuZM
Des Claques Pour Nini 7a+: vimeo.com/86833275
Tips, suggestions, thoughts?
I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have used structured training to increase their BOULDERING ability. If you went to 5.11 to 5.13 but only v5 to v6, tell me what you did so I can make sure NOT to do that! Again, this is the Rocklands. When you see some boulderer in the gym burling out on big pinches and jugs and think, "yeah but where is he going to do that outside?" THE ANSWER IS THE ROCKLANDS!
Thanks in advance!
(I also posted this in planning and training but I thought this might be a nice thread for boulderers to give some two sense)
A little background: I'm exclusively a boulderer (I have roped up, I just don't care about getting better at it). I just got back from Font and am going to the Rocklands for the second time starting on july 4, so I have 3 months. I'm gonna rest for another week or so and then get to work. I have been climbing for almost 5 years. I have climbed about 10 v7s outside and 1.5 years ago I did a v8, but I have seemed pretty stagnant or regressing due to injuries over that time.
I did a rctm workout in the fall but didn't stick extremely closesly to it. I made gains hangboarding, but once I got to the power phase, I felt bad on big moves and I didn't make any campusing gains. Honestly, I think biggest problem for me buying in was that the book seems so tailored to route climbers, with bouldering almost as an afterthought. Somewhere on these forums Mark even admitted it was the weakest chapter, which is reasonable considering it seems like he's not that focused on bouldering. But I'm going to try again, this time try to be strict about doing everything.
The Plan:
Basically to follow the intermediate RCTM bouldering plan with a few tweaks:
Strength phase:
For my hangboard workouts I'm going to do a warm up boulder ladder up to v5 and do a circuit of 3 hardish boulders that I give 1-2 attempts on each. I feel I need to do this to maintain some level of all around fitness and skill. I feel like for a boulderer, ARCing isn't really doing anything for my skill. I don't need to learn how to climb on jugs efficiently, I need to learn how to climb on hard, steep sections efficiently.
Do an intermediate hangboard workout with 7 grips totalling 14 sets. I already did 3 hard boulders so I figure its a similar TUT as if I did one more grip. Also my last grips always suck, so I figure I might as well spend the time on supplemental exercises. Grips will be: SVDER Left side, MR 2F, crimp with thumbguard, Wide Pinch, IMF, LVDER middle tick, Sloper
I'm gonna try to do quite a bit of supplemental exercises. I'm supposed to be a big brawny boulderer so I guess these are important? Also remember, I'm not training for technical font shit, I'm training for going balls to the wall on big jugs and pinches in the rocklands. The style there is total beefcake big moves on big holds type stuff. If I only have strong fingers those dynos are gonna look far as hell. I'm thinking 4 exercises of 3 sets each for shoulder stuff and the same for cores stuff. There also tons of roofs in the rocklands and I love roof climbing so getting core strength on point is important.
One last thing for the strength phase, I'll probably have 2 or 3 workouts that happen to fall on gorgeous saturdays or sundays and I probably won't pass those opportunities up. Since I'm bouldering rather than route climbing I think this substitute isn't as bad as would be, especially in the finger strength intensive bouldering of the gunks and new england. I'll make up the workouts at the end of my strength phase, so it will probably be 5 weeks
Power Phase:
This I don't feel like I have to make as many tweaks. It will probably last a full 5 weeks. The way I trained before I got in to more structured stuff looked pretty similar to a giant power phase. The main thing I was thinking about tweaking was adding in some Erik Horst style max hangs to my campus workouts on non edge grips. I was going to do 10 second near maximal hangs on my wide pinch, MR 2F, and sloper grips to try to get recruitment in these grips too (presumably the campusing is recruiting my edge grip). I was thinking for each grip 3-4 Hangs with 2 minutes of rest in between each one.
Again during the power phase I want to try to do a lot of supplemental work but I'm not sure how to adjust the core stuff. I feel like its a little unsafe to do a core exercise where 3-5 reps as my max. Seems like this would increase my chances of injury to my lower back.
Performance Phase:
Go to the Rocklands for 6 weeks and fucking rage!
Goal Routes:
The Rhino 7b+ www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNyWA96hKSA
Born Into Struggle 7b+ vimeo.com/108912524
The Skink 7b: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoOmproxuZM
Des Claques Pour Nini 7a+: vimeo.com/86833275
Tips, suggestions, thoughts?
I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have used structured training to increase their BOULDERING ability. If you went to 5.11 to 5.13 but only v5 to v6, tell me what you did so I can make sure NOT to do that! Again, this is the Rocklands. When you see some boulderer in the gym burling out on big pinches and jugs and think, "yeah but where is he going to do that outside?" THE ANSWER IS THE ROCKLANDS!
Thanks in advance!
(I also posted this in planning and training but I thought this might be a nice thread for boulderers to give some two sense)