Simple Programming
Building an "alternating linear" plan to get out of that rut.
Let’s start with an assumption: that planning our training is better than not planning it. This can be argued, of course, but for most of us, having a plan that acts as a set of “guardrails” is pretty useful. And like any idea that is pretty good, we can take it way too far. So, in the interest of optimizing for a good experience, and with the knowledge that over-programming often leads to frustration and anxiety, I propose we plan and that we keep our planning as simple and flexible as possible.
When building out programs, we look both at where we want to go as athletes and what fits within our current schedule. Although I’ve been really psyched a time or ten and planned for way more training than I could possibly do, the desired result—me leveling up—never happened. I just felt lame and frustrated.
So, step one is looking at your hours each week based on what you really have been doing. We then want to optimize the current schedule before adding additional training, especially when the need for additional training is questionable.
The next thing to keep in mind is the adaptation curve of our training, understanding that after several similar sessions, our improvement starts to level off. As this occurs, any improvement requires much increased training effort. Thus, the training stimulus is best changed at this point to assure continued progress.
The final component of a functioning training plan is the training itself. Does it “feel” right? Does it produce the kinds of things we want from a session? For many of us, the training doesn’t need to be very complex, just hard and progressive.
There are many potential structures for laying out a week or a month of training. Many readers will be familiar with the nonlinear program that we put forth in the book Logical Progression. In such a program, the athlete switch is between strength, power, and endurance stimuli as the week progresses. Although this is an excellent format to experiment with, many of our climbers do best with such a program only during a performance phase, and can see better gains in strength and power with more focus on those specific modes during other parts of the year.
More and more these days, I am apt to program what is called an “alternating linear” program. In such a program, we spend three weeks focused on one outcome, and then spend the next three weeks focusing on a second outcome. During each of these phases, the workouts differ but the general training schedule stays the same.
In the plan I am about to put forth, the training is based around three days a week of gym sessions, and one to two days a week working on projects. Going back to the point above, If you don’t currently train on a similar schedule, this is not encouraging you to scap the plan, instead you should adopt these ideas into your current plan and start from there.
The training is organized into two different blocks of three weeks worth of training. During the three gym sessions, the volume of training is varied. The first session of the week, we do what is called a medium volume session. The second session of the week is done after at least one rest day and is a high volume session. The third session of the week, normally done on a Friday, is a low volume session. This allows for a training stimulus, but the volume is generally so low that you can have a successful climbing day the following day.
Block 1
