Training while traveling

[bones]

Hi RCTM Community,
  I'm new to this DB, and, though I've been climbing most of my life, I'm also new to dedicated training.  I've bought the book and am nearing the end of my first ever ARC phase.  I have a trip planned to Laos in December when I hope to hit my sending phase, but between now and then I have some travel for work that is going to take me away from my hangboard and my local gym.  Does anyone have any good tips for keeping up training while traveling (other than finding local gyms while you travel)?

Thanks,
Tim

[jcm]

I unfortunately have had a lot of experience with this situation this year. Training while traveling can go either way: it can work out just fine, or it can severely derail you. It depends on a lot of variables, including the length and frequency of your trips, what phase you are in, access to training facilities while traveling, ability to carry training equipment with you (driving vs. flying), your motivation level, and how well you plan.

I have gone through the whole range of travel/training combinations this year, so I can give more specific suggestions if you provide a bit more detail about your situation. Most importantly, how long is the trip and during which phase?

Other, general notes:

-It seems to work best if you adapt your training schedule around the travel, instead of being wed to a specific out-of-the-book schedule and trying to superimpose that schedule atop your travel itinerary. Obviously, you shouldn't try to train on a day that you have 14 hours of flights; shift that training day to either side.

-There are certain phases which are easier to do effectively while traveling than others. This also largely depends on whether there is climbing gym access. If your work travel is in a city with a decent climbing gym, you can be pretty effective with limit bouldering, base fitness, or PE training. Pretty much just stick to your usual training schedule and do you workout in whatever the local climbing gym is. You just have a make some minor accomodations to the fact that you aren't on your usual terrain and circuits.

-If you don't have access to a climbing gym, it is more difficult to train effectively, and it requires a high level of planning to execute. It is still possible, though. The absolutely key item is some sort of portable hangboard setup. If you can find a fitness gym with a pullup bar, a portable hangboard or a rock-ring type item can work adequately. On the Metolius Rock Rings the holds are too big for effective finger strength training; you may want to build your own out of wood, or look into other products (like the Sicgrips "G-String"). If you really have no gym access, or even a pullup bar, then you need to figure out a system to mount a hangboard in a hotel room. I have tried several ways of doing it, with varying degrees of success. I have not yet found a perfect system.

- If you are doing all of your training in a hotel room, on a portable hangboard, you will have the most success if you are training strength. There are various methods of training power, PE, or even ARCing on a hangboard, but IMO the quality and benefit of the training is significantly compromised. Strength, on the other hand, can be trained very effectively in a hotel room with just a hangboard. If you can finagle your training and travel schedule such that you are in your strength phase when you have no gym access, this will help.

-Length and frequency of travel are important. If you are just gone for 5 days, for one work trip, you honestly don't even need to train while travelling (unless there is convenient climbing gym access). For this sort of travel, it can be effective to pursue a "load-unload" protocol. For the 10-14 days before your trip, train at a slightly higher frequency/volume than you normally would, to "load" an excess training stimulus. Then when you travel, you get to "unload" by resting for 5 days and recovering from that stimulus. You'll then feel reallys trong when you get back. I did this several times last winter, and it seemed to be effective.

-Things are harder with greater length and frequency of travel. If you are gone for two weeks, back for 2 weeks, gone for three weeks, back for 1 week, and so on, this makes it very difficult to train effectively. This was my sitution this spring/summer, and it completely derailed my training. Maybe someone else has been able to make it work, but I found with this quantity of travel it was just not realistic, and honestly posed an injury risk due to the irregularity. In the end, I adjusted by summer/fall goals to based on the curcumstances. It was difficult to develop the correct for of PE for my summer sport climbing goals, but I had good leg and generally body fitness from doing a lot of field work. As such, I shifted my attentions for the summer away from sport climbing and toward alpine rock routes and big slabby adventure outings. I didn't accomplish any of the big-number goals I had been aiming for, but still got to do some cool stuff. It was a good and sensible opprotunity to return to trad climbing for a season. This winter I'll be back on the wagon for proper finger-strength training, in anticipation of a late winter / early spring sport climbing trip (Spain!)

-Continuing this last point, one needs to be realistic about what goals can and should be pursued at a given time. If you find it easier to train strength/power than PE during a busy travel schedule period, then maybe it would be a good idea to devote that season to improving your bouldering. if you spend all summer hiking around doing field work, and have big legs and weak arms by the end of the season, then you should plan to do routes that play to these strengths when you return. Usually, you should develop training methods to match your goals, but in some cicumstances you need to flip around the cart and the horse and choose goals to match the training that you are able to do. Be opprotunistic.