Strength prerequisites for safe campus training

[rob]

Sept 4, 2015 19:59:07 GMT -7 Lundy said:

If this is totally confusing, let me know. I'm posting from my phone but I could probably pretty easily find links to all these exercises and post here.

Yes please, sorry to be a pain. And could you state briefly why you do each exercise, if you know? What does it do to prevent injuries?

After getting shoulder impingement on both sides im desperate to avoid future injuries once this has fully recovered.

[Lundy]

Hey Rob,
Sorry for the delay. I'm on a work trip.

So for the shoulders, the band exercises I do are numbers 7 and 9 at the following link:
orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00663

I do them because they're the ones that seem to best target the external rotators, which is where I am quite weak, as evidenced by my deeply hunched posture (a function of a career as a swimmer then a climber) and the fact that using minimal resistance and low reps I still get crushed by these every time. I'm sure there are lots of others that would also be good, but these seem to very effectively target where I'm weak.

As for the indian clubs, I got turned on to them by a friend and they seem to do a good job of working the shoulder through the entire range of motion. I actually do a couple swings with very light (one pound) clubs as part of my warmup, then swings with the three pound clubs as part of my preventative exercises. Everyone I know who's tried them now swears by them, but I have no evidence to provide you that would support that they are effective. If you want more details, you can just google indian club swinging. If you want specific videos on the exercise I do, add to that search "heart shaped swings" or "mill swings". There are tons of videos, all of them terribly cheesy.

Finally, for elbows, I do the two exercises listed in the following article under the medial epicondylitis section:
drjuliansaunders.com/dodgy-elbows/

I would note that those are the same exercises that Dave MacLeod recommends for elbows as well in his book about climbing injuries, Make or Break (which I highly recommend).

So that's it. Obviously you'll need to figure out what works for you, but since I've started doing this routine, I've had very, very limited elbow or shoulder pain, which has been amazing and really allowed me to train harder than I would be able to otherwise and had been able to in the past.

[rob]

Great, thank you very much Lundy, very useful I'm away at the moment too but ill have a good look when I get back.

[mclay]

There's great value in reading older threads. There is a ton of information in this one that answers a lot of my current questions. Judging from the benchmarks of others, I am seriously weak! I posted a few months ago about possibly skipping power phases, but I now see how stupid I was to consider it.

I don't have a campus board yet in my little home gym, but I'm reasonably certain I'm still a ways away from being able to utilize it effectively. I'm really trying to hit supplemental exercises throughout my training cycle now (currently near end of a Endurance phase), and I think I can see some improvement in upper body fitness and pulling strength. 

It is mentioned in the thread, but I'm curious if someone has successfully built up to real campusing without an actual board by just doing a jug ladder on a home wall. My garage wall has a 4x12 section that is approximately 5-10 degrees overhanging. My biggest foreseeable problem with making a little jug ladder is not having enough consistent holds to fill out the whole ladder.

[scojo]

Campusing a jug ladder will train your upper body pulling strength/power (and coordination). But for actually campusing you need "contact strength" in your fingers as well, which you won't be training by using jugs.

Campusing on jugs could be an effective precursor to campusing only if your limiting factor is your upperbody explosiveness, but for most people the limiting factor is probably finger strength. Since you have a home wall, another thing you could do to prepare yourself for campusing would be to set boulder problems that have powerful cruxes on small holds.

[mclay]

From what I can tell it is upper body explosiveness that is the main problem. When I've tried to do campus-like moves on limit bouldering on the home wall it was always the dynamic initiation of the move that seemed to stop things before they got started.

Regarding contact strength and coordination, I feel like I'm actually half-decent already. Obviously without campusing, it is hard to say for sure. But long, dynamic movements, with one foot on to start the upward movement, rarely end with missing the crimp or my fingers not being able to latch. I've experimented with such moves a fair bit during my last Power phase (boulder ladders/limit bouldering). Even when both feet cut as I get to the new hold I'm usually able to maintain contact. But if I have to initiate the move without assistance from a foot - no dice.