How much training time do I need?

[rctmdotcom]

This was posted on RCTM.com:

Hi Mark, can’t wait for the book!!!

I am a father of a 1year old, an IT manager and a husband. I started climbing after at the age of 30. So, I have a few odds against me, but I keep trying Currently, I am stuck at around f 7b red point. I manage to squeeze in two boulder sessions of 60minutes per week and two gym sessions of 45min per week (I have a gym at work, otherwise I would skip that due to time limitations). All in all, my training takes 3.5h weekly + 2h commuting to the boulder gym in total = 5.5h weekly in total for training. Most kids spend that much in one boulder session. I can not afford more, until I build a boulder in my house.

Due to good geo location, I manage one day of real rock every week also. Good routes are available 30-45min from my house, so I take one morning in the weekend for this.

I was looking at your August plan and it seems you only do fingerboard training? So, you do not touch rock or boulder plastic for an entire month++? That seems like a great time saver for me. But, I have doubts about loosing a whole month of other muscle activity. This does not hurt your overall performance on rock?

Thanks for the blog man!

Weekend warriors FTW

RR

RR,

Good for you! It sounds like you have a good system in place.

To your question, no, I do not hangboard exclusively for a month. I begin each hangboard workout with a 15-minute warmup on plastic (essentially a 15-minute ARC set). After I finish each hangboard workout, I perform 2-3 sets of 3-5 “Supplemental Exercises” as described here rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2013/09/16/whole-body-strength-training/ .

I find that not only is this enough ‘other muscle activity’ to maintain strength in these muscles, my other muscles actually get quite a bit stronger during this period. Sometimes my technique is a bit rusty when I begin Limit Bouldering at the end of that month, but I’m usually back to normal by the end of the second Limit Bouldering session (this is another reason the Transition Phase rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2014/02/26/the-most-important-phase/ is important–it provides an opportunity to get back into actual climbing after a long period of specialized finger training).

One more thing i missed previously–I normally will put 2 or 3 burns into a project each day. The example referred to above was an unusual cricumstance.

Mark

[Chris W]

Mark and Mike,
Some of the workouts you have suggested seem to be quite long, up to 2 hours. For example, a linked bouldering circuit routine involves 20 minutes of ARC warm up, 15 minutes of bouldering ladders, and 20 minutes of hard bouldering. That's almost 1 hour of training before even getting to the "main" exercise for power endurance, which is the linked bouldering circuit! I typically don't have anywhere near that amount of time to train each day. Most of my workouts to this point have been between 30 and 45 minutes in length.

1) Have you experimented with trimming down the extensive warm up (ARC + ladder + hard bouldering) to the bare minimum to get to the main exercises for the specific phase?
2) How do you think this would affect the efficacy and outcome of the training?
3) I probably can't contribute more than 60 minutes to a workout on a typical training day; does this sound like enough?
4) What would be the effect shortening the workouts and spreading the training volume out over more days? For example, instead of 2 x 30 minutes ARC with one rest day after, what about 1 x 30 minutes ARC on two days?

Chris W

[andytheblacksmith]

Hey Chris,

I also noticed the length of Mark and Mike's workouts. Anecdotally, I find that the older I get the more I respond to quality over quantity, so I prefer sub two-hour workouts. I'm 32, am a full-time artist-blacksmith, and use my body in a continuous and vigorous way every day. After I turn off my forge and head home to work out, I tend to already be "warmed up" to some degree. To wit: my hands, shoulders, and core have been activated all day, and I don't seem to require a long, protracted warmup. That's just me. If you work in a sedentary or semi-sedentary profession, I can see the reasoning behind a longer warmup, since your body hasn't "activated" its pistons and pulleys yet.

Again, this is anecdotal. I'm just observing the nature of a tradesman/climber's life. I imagine there are all sorts of tradesmen out there who climb, and they constantly have to discern how much physical real-estate to conserve or invest in their respective pursuits. It's tricky, really. Chris, I'm particularly interested in your 4th question regarding "spreading the training volume over more days". I've experimented with that, but I never garnered much strength or power, other than a modest plateau of endurance.

Any other observations out there?

[Chris W]

Thanks for the input Andy. I can't speak from experience (this is the first season I'm training using the rock prodigy method and/or any systematic form of training), but based on my knowledge of physiology, I'm guessing that if spreading the volume out over several days will work, it will work best in the base fitness phase, which is low intensity. I'm basing this off of the idea that, during strength training, the most beneficial reps occur during the very end of the set when you really have to fight to complete them. These are the ones to force your body to adapt, with the preceding reps serving to fatigue your body to get to that point. This is all an educated guess, but a guess none the less.

In terms of shortening my warm up, one of my problems is that, depending on the shift I'm working, I workout long before the crack of dawn when I'm stiff and cold. I could experiment with working out after work, but that presents its own challenges (wanting/needing to play with/watch the kids).

[Michael Hall]

I have similar time/energy constraints. I get up at 4am for work (work east coast hours but live in CO) and don't end my day until ~4/430pm, but have a real desire to maximize time with the family before my 2yr old goes to bed, and I am usually not far behind her given the early mornings. I can usually make the 2hr workout happen, but it gets tight and so I was thinking about two ways to trim some time out of the intermediate/advanced hangboarding workouts.

1) How important/"dialed in" are the 3 min rests between sets? Trimming 30sec-1min from each could actually save a nice little chunk of time off the entire routine. Mark/Mike, do you think ~2 min rests would materially impact the training response? Or maybe 2 min rests between like sets and 3 mins btwn each new grip? It seems to me that if I keep rest intervals consistent, I can still track progressive overload while measuring relative gains over time, but I am unsure if there is a minimum recommended rest time for proper strength training.

2) Would shifting the supplemental exercises to the following day would pose any issues with recovery or anything else? It seems to me the muscle groups being targeting in the hangboarding session are different enough that perhaps the HB session could be followed up the following day with a workout targeting the larger muscle groups, and that way each group would have two days of rest between intense workouts. Thoughts?

[MarkAnderson]

A lot of great thoughts and questions on this thread. It may take a couple posts to address all of them so I better get started!

First, there's an element of "Do as I say not as I do" going on here. It's hard for us to predict how much warmup time another climber will require, so we erred on the side of prescribing longer warmups. In reality, if I'm doing an LBC day, my ARC warmup is about 8 minutes, then I start my Warmup Boulder Ladder. I'm completely warm and working projects at about 30 minutes in. If I were pressed for time I could start the LBC at about 45 minutes, and be out the door in about 70 minutes total elapsed time.

If you're new to any of this, I recommend that you start out conservatively (taking your time to warmup and rest), but then experiment and see how it goes. You will be far better off doing some form of training, even if its a compromise, than doing no training at all. That said, don't skip on your warmup! That can actually cause harm, literally.

Chris, for LBCs you have a few options. You could skip the hard bouldering entirely. The purpose of hard bouldering is to maintain your power through your PE phase and into your performance phase. So skipping it has consequences. Another option would be to train on back to back days, doing 1 hour or less of WBL & Hard Bouldering on day 1, then doing the LBC and Supplemental Exercises on day 2.

Also, you are correct that the Base Fitness phase is a great time to chop up your training volume and spread it over multiple days. It matters very little if you do two sets in one day or one set each of two days. Its all about volume.

[MarkAnderson]

Mah,

Regarding rest between HB sets, I know Mike has done 2:00 rest between sets in the past. The downside is that less rest makes it more difficult to keep the intensity high, so it becomes more and more of a Power Endurance workout, and less Strength. But it would still be better than not doing it at all! And yes, if you keep the rest intervals constant you can still track your progress, and you will still get stronger even with 2:00 rest between sets.

How many exercises are you doing? I do 3 sets each of 6 exercises, not counting 2 warmup sets. So I do 20 sets total, which works out to 80 minutes total elapsed time for a hangboard workout. My warmup takes about 15 minutes, and then I spend 20-30 minutes on Supplemental Exercises.

Shifting the SE to the next day is also a viable option. I've done that in the past as well. If you tend to be injury prone, and you really need two full recovery days, I wouldn't recommend it (in fact, that is why I do it all on the same day--I would prefer to spread it out, but I've found my fingers don't like that). If you go that route, try to do your SE's in such a way that your fingers are stressed as little as possible (use a lose grip on dumbells for example).

[Chris W]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'll probably be doing some experimenting soon, so I'll share my results as they come. For the most part, however, I'm going to try to stick with the training plans as written. I'm going to do an abbreviated season now, and a full training season in preparation for a trip to the Red [River Gorge] in October. I'm excited to actually have a useable training plan.

Mark, it does help to know that you've varied your warm ups. 60-70 minutes is much more "doable" for me than 2 hours. Especially when I come home and my wife has that frazzled look that comes from wrangling two little kids all day.