How much should I rest/shakeout during ARCing?

[Mike]

Hi all,
   Recently bought the RCTM and love it; I've read some training books before but this is the first one in my 21 years in the sport that has been digestible enough and practical enough to get me to actually start a training program.  I am 2 weeks into my first Base Fitness phase, and have a question about ARCing.

I find ARCing to be pretty strenuous, and I'm wondering if this means I'm ARCing on holds that are too hard for me.  I definitely feel the moderate pump, heavy breathing, and sweating, but the pump is not intense enough to knock me off the wall.  However, I am achieving this by taking very frequent rests/shakeouts (alternating arms, I'm not doing no-hands rests).  I'd say for the second half of most ARC sets, I'm spending more time resting and shaking out than I am climbing up or down.  Does this defeat the purpose?  Does ARCing require continuous movement and continuous weighting of both arms, without stopping to shakeout/rest often?  Or is it ok to do this?   

I'm already climbing mostly on jugs, as I have terrible endurance, so it might be hard to find any easier terrain than I'm already on.

I'm confused because I hear people talk about how low-intensity ARC is and how it is not that strenuous...but then I also read a blog post somewhere by one of the Andersons where they said that they see most people not getting the maximum benefit from ARCing because they don't do it at a high enough intensity, and that it should feel strenuous even though it's not as intense as hangboarding/campusing, etc.  Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks!

[brendann]

To get the most out of ARCing you want to be right up under your anaerobic/aerobic threshold. You can also sometimes cross that threshold if you come back under it quickly and recover. Since terrain isn't perfectly linear in difficulty you sometimes have to make a jump into the deep end and struggle for a bit. Resting a lot is a good way to survive the first few sessions in more difficult terrain. Don't worry about it, just make sure to rest less and less each session to keep your progress moving forward.
The best analogy I have heard about ARCing effort is to aim for a level like casual running. You don't go out running at a pace that blows up 3 minutes in (a route). You also don't run at a pace where you never break a sweat or breath moderately. Aim for a pace where you sweat, breath hard sometimes and feel very warmed up at the end. It's also a pace where I noticed a third set of 20 minutes ended up being detrimental to recovery.

[Charlie S]

Sounds like you're doing it about right, based on my understanding.

For my ARC sessions, I do 2 30-minute sessions. 10 minutes in I feel the pump. I change difficulty consistently to maintain that pump.

That being said, I am well past warmed up when done. I'm pretty much useless. The first two or three ARC days had my forearms feeling it the next morning.

[jessebruni]

Whether or not what you're doing is "ideal ARCing" you're certainly improving your ability to recover. My ARC sessions were similar to yours, though I was doing one session as a warm up before my PE work and I found my ability to shake out and recover on good holds drastically improved. Where before, even at a jug rest with good feet I MIGHT get back up to 50%, after a few weeks of these ARC warmups I was able to recover up to 100% on the same jugs. I'd say that is pretty valuable, even if you're not raising your MSS as much as you could be by doing more climbing and less resting in your ARC sets.

[sr]

If I am doing straight arcing (ie. 15-20 min continuous), I try to keep the pump low to mild.  I climb on climbs where I can continuously move and don't need to shake out only pausing briefly to chalk.  

When I want to have more of a pump, I have been implementing shorter intervals and actually getting off the wall to recover. One workout I do is 5 min work/ 5 min rest interval and repeat.

 

YMMV (also, I have pretty good endurance, so I am doing as little as I can to maintain this and focus more time on Power/Max strength).