Beginner campus/power related questions

[tomvdw]

Hello everyone,

I've been climbing roughly 2,5 years (started out in a bouldering gym) with a couple of months downtime here and there. Since the start of this year I've been climbing mostly inside pretty consistently though.
In september I started my first training cycle, tracking my progress as described in the RCTM book (awesome job btw Mr & Mr Anderson , loving it!)
I've tried for this first cycle to follow the beginner schedules as thoroughly as possible, sometimes adding (wanted or unwanted..) a day of extra rest here and there. so far things have been going well, I specifically noticed significant strength changes during the HB phase.

Yesterday I ended my second campus session ( one campus session and LB session in) and have a few questions.
First of all my gym has a somewhat different campus setup that doesn't let me exactly match the exercises suggested in the aforementioned book. I don't have any pictures (yet) but I'll try my best to describe their setup quickly. They have one set of semi-circular wooden sloper rungs on one side and then another side that has small (I'm guessing 1,5 cm) wooden straight edge, no incut rungs and slightly bigger 3/4 round rungs (which therefore are more incut and feel slightly more positive to me) that are attached in alternating fashion. Meaning, rung 1 is flat edge, rung 2 is a 3/4 round rung, rung 3 is flat again and so on, all the way to 10 for both. All sets of rungs including the slopers have moon spacing (22cm). The sloper campus board is 20 degrees overhanging and I changed the angle of the other part from 20 to about 15-16 degrees as 20 felt too difficult for my workouts.
What do you all think of that setup? Is it ok to use the sloper rungs as an alternative to the larger flat rungs? They do enable me to get a feel for the general movement and dynamic of campusing. What about the 3/4 circular ones? Are they a good alternative for medium rungs? The flat edge ones feel too small to use for me at this point or are they not?

After the prescribed warm-up I wasn't too tired during the first session but yesterday it wore me out a little more. (perhaps the one day rest after the LB workout was too little or the lack of quality sleep the previous night affected my performance)
So as I mentioned I used the sloper rungs as an alternative to the suggested large rungs on both occasions and each time this felt relatively easy, both matching and basic ladders were not too difficult. I could travel up smoothly and quickly. However I wasn't able to get to try max ladders as the other set of rungs shut me down. During the basic ladders I came off just before the last rung each time. Do you think the prescribed rungs are too small for me to use at this point? I do think I would be able to complete them with a little more practice though. Any suggestions on how to deal with the moon spacing in stead of half-moon?

Also and this is somewhat of a different question but after yesterday's hard bouldering phase (I picked an overhanging problem that was perhaps a little too strenuous, feet kept coming off etc...) I felt an ache coming up in both my arms so I had to take a long rest before I started the campus workout. It also made this second campus session somewhat less successful then the first one. This is something that has happened to me before several times during climbing. The worst time was on a trip to Fontainebleau where we had consecutive climbing days. On the second day I experienced a build up of pain in my arms that forced me to completely quit all climbing activity. It felt as like I was overstraining my body climbing consecutive days without a rest day. It usually starts out feeling like a normal pump but as I continue to put strain on my arms there's this build up of a general pain, not located anywhere in particular but just emmanating from the whole arm up into the shoulder and upper back. Sometimes it's in just one arm, sometimes in both. The longer I try to climb with it the longer it takes for the pain to dissipate afterwards and recover. That time in fontainebleau I had to sit down, arms crossed and had to wait for over an hour before it started to go away. It felt quite dibilitating. The climbing buddy I was with said he never experienced anything like that so I was wondering if anybody here has had a similar experience or can shed any light on this? Would you think it's ok to incorporate more rest days in the workout cycles and would that interfere much with progressions/gains made?

Any thoughts are much appreciated!

Thanks,
Tom

[MarkAnderson]

Nov 18, 2015 4:52:20 GMT -7 tomvdw said:

What do you all think of that setup? Is it ok to use the sloper rungs as an alternative to the larger flat rungs? They do enable me to get a feel for the general movement and dynamic of campusing. What about the 3/4 circular ones? Are they a good alternative for medium rungs? The flat edge ones feel too small to use for me at this point or are they not?

It's not ideal, but if that's all you have then you have to make the most of it. It's certainly better than nothing at all. I think it's fine to use the slopers and circular rungs as substitutes, but just realize they are probably easier to use than the real thing, especially the slopers.

Nov 18, 2015 4:52:20 GMT -7 tomvdw said:

Do you think the prescribed rungs are too small for me to use at this point? I do think I would be able to complete them with a little more practice though. Any suggestions on how to deal with the moon spacing in stead of half-moon?

I would work up to eventually using the small flat edges, but take your time. Perhaps reserve a couple sets at the end of each session to "practice" using the small edges. There are some discussions on here that discuss different progressions you can use if you don't have half-spacing. You will simply have to improve in bigger leaps as opposed to baby steps. It's not impossible, but it's not ideal.

Nov 18, 2015 4:52:20 GMT -7 tomvdw said:

 after yesterday's hard bouldering phase ... I felt an ache coming up in both my arms so I had to take a long rest before I started the campus workout.... This is something that has happened to me before several times during climbing. ... It usually starts out feeling like a normal pump but as I continue to put strain on my arms there's this build up of a general pain, not located anywhere in particular but just emmanating from the whole arm up into the shoulder and upper back. ...I was wondering if anybody here has had a similar experience or can shed any light on this? Would you think it's ok to incorporate more rest days in the workout cycles and would that interfere much with progressions/gains made?

This is a complete guess, but maybe you have some type of compartment syndrome? It's definitely ok to incorporate additional rest days into your training schedule if you feel like it would help. I don't think it would interfere, and if you're dealing with a chronic injury, it would probably be beneficial.

Good luck!

[tomvdw]

Hello Mark,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will try to slowly incorporate the small rungs.

Oh boy I sure hope it's not compartment syndrome, that definitely has me a little worried.. I read the wiki article on it and some of that sounds a little familiar but for now I'm going to assume it's not that just to keep my cool..
I think that the only times I've had it happening was when I had insufficient rest from previous workouts or when there was still some muscle soreness present. I don't think it ever occurred when I was completely recuperated/fresh.

[daustin]

Just a note of caution re: moving to the small rungs -- without knowing your finger strength or what grades you're climbing, it's hard to say -- but I wouldn't rush to move to the smaller rungs unless you're quite sure your fingers can handle it. I think there's lots of benefit in campus training on larger rungs for novice campusers and for those with less finger strength. You might not be specifically training contact strength on very small holds, which surely matters more as you progress into harder climbing, but you still train explosive pulling, channeling momentum, precise deadpointing and medium hold contact strength, which are all extremely helpful to the moderate climber. Maybe you already have fingers of steel and this is moot, but think it's worth at least mentioning.

Couple good blog posts from Kris Hampton that touch on this:

www.powercompanyclimbing.com/2015/04/campusing-part-1-for-powerbig-rungs-big.html
www.powercompanyclimbing.com/2015/05/campusing-part-2-when-and-why-to-use.html

[Chris W]

:oShouldn't it be Dr. and Mr. Anderson?

If you're making it all the way to the end of your basic ladders and only falling off on the last rung, that's considerably better than I was doing after my first several seasons.

Regarding your 'I hope it's not compartment syndrome' pain, do you get it while ARCing? How about routes? LBC's?

[tomvdw]

Thanks for the help guys!

Daustin, thank you for linking to that blog, very useful it seems. It does annoy me a bit I don't have access to normal yet big campus rungs. It seems I should definitely spend the majority if not the entire campus session on those. The reason I started this type of training was precicely because I started platteau-ing around V5-V6/ mid 5.11 (based on indoor grades). And no, regretfully I don't possess fingers of steel...(yet )

Chris W, Thanks, no it doesn't occur when arc-ing or normal to hard route climbing or bouldering. I can manage an onsetting pump and am generally able to sustain a 'normal duration' session of hard climbing or bouldering and pushing myself when I start the session well rested. I think it only occurs when I was either not fully recovered from a previous workout (even if there's only a hint of light muscle soreness) or when I climb too long a session and ignore upcoming fatigue. The thing is, when that happens it seems I reach a certain treshold after which no amount of resting during that particular session (let's say a 30 min or longer snack break) can help me avoid it. I just have to call it a day. (which isn't so much of an issue in the gym but painful when you're in the middle of magical Fontainebleau forrest, you know..) The particular session I was describing earlier though was the second campus session in my power phase and I felt it coming during the end of the warm-up (hard bouldering), right before I was going to start the campus session. Next time I'm going to shorten the suggested warm-up phase a little bit. I took a snack break and then I continued (perhaps unwisely so) with campusing which because of its short set-duration allowed me to still get some work in but I decided to end it earlier then originally planned and only did matching and basic ladders.

I talked with the gym owner (a passionate Font boulderer who after talking to him about it recently also bought the RTCM book) and in fact he was thinking of changing the campus setup. Do any of you perhaps know of an image source or like to share your ideas on your 'ideal' campus board that I can persuade him with?

Thank you very much for all your help so far!
Tom

[Chris W]

Tom, I'll look into it, but it's encouraging that your symptoms don't happen with all of your climbing activities.

Regarding my ideal campus setup, I built it. One of the many advantages of having a home wall.

rockprodigytraining.proboards.com/thread/583/bubble-room?page=2

[MarkAnderson]

Nov 20, 2015 3:41:17 GMT -7 tomvdw said:

 Do any of you perhaps know of an image source or like to share your ideas on your 'ideal' campus board that I can persuade him with?

Thank you very much for all your help so far!
Tom

Start here: rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2014/04/29/how-to-build-a-campus-board/

If you want to know more look here: rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2014/01/01/comparing-campus-board-configurations/
 and then here:  rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/2015/01/14/the-original-campus-board/

[tomvdw]

Thanks for sharing guys, that's great.
Mark, that's exactly what I was looking for. Cool to see you actually tracked down the original campus board !

Minor update: I allowed myself three days of rest after that last campus session and the last bouldering workout went great and completely pain free. I omitted the LB part and just continued to do difficult boulder problems at my limit rather then individual limit moves. I'm taking 2 days off now to recover in stead of one and then hit the campus board again.
For now it seems if I take enough rest things are fine but it's a little weird my body gives out such a strong signal when I cross a certain barrier compared to other people. Then again maybe that's not a bad thing..
I was also wondering if it could be triggered by some kind of nutritional deficiency?

Anyway, thank you for all your helpfulness, this is a great forum!

[tomvdw]

Hello everyone,
Continuing somewhat off-topic..
After talking to a couple of people (both climbers and non-climber athletes) describing the pain sensations it was suggested to me it might just be a normal symptom of adaptation? Since I only started climbing 2,5 years ago at 33 (I turn 36 next month) could it be my body might simply still be reacting to the high impact/stress induced by hard climbing? Since I'm unable to locate the pain specifically I was thinking it might be some form of combined tendon stress pain. Is that plausible?
Some boulderers in my gym I talked to shrugged it off and basically said " Yeah, that's normal, we all experienced that at some point" Although slightly reassuring.. that response wasn't particularly helpful..