Staying Strong
Simple. Not easy.
Once in a while, we have these moments. We are climbing well, closing in on our projects, and we leave the ground to climb and just float. It gets related to me in so many ways, and with such reverence, that it seems as though it’s magic. Sometimes it happens for a few weeks at a time. Sometimes just one climb a year. But when we are in that state—call it flow, call it a peak, call it the zone—it is the feeling we will want to replicate ever-after in our climbing.
It ends.
Why it ends is a complex issue, but it can be a loss of enthusiasm, a loss of capacity, or a slow decline in strength over a peaking phase. The first thing a good athlete wants to do is assess as best she can what the decline probably was, and the next thing is to not let that happen again. I, myself, tend to let it happen again a few times so the lesson finally becomes painful enough to remember.
One of the bigger issues we see in redpoint climbing and hard bouldering is climbers “training” too long into the performance season, then, inexplicably, switching it all off and just going into redpoint mode. The end result is fatigue at the early stages of the peak and then a quick decline in strength and power as they over-focus on sending. This then makes a “sweet spot” as we see in so much of our climbing, where there truly is an optimal level of readiness we can hit.
My friend Micah Elconin just sent a relevant quote from Dan John to the CS coaches a while back:
“I use an odd example when I explain most people’s attempts at delivering an optimal performance at the right time (“peaking” for short). We’re like archers: We pull back the bow string. Then we pull some more. And then, just to be safe, we pull back more.
And, instead of just letting go and letting the arrow fly, we grab the arrow and try to throw it.
This is the hardest lesson I ever learned as a coach and athlete: Superlative performance comes when you let the arrow fly.”
How do we perform optimally, or peak? “Peaking”, says famed coach Joe Friel, “is simply not being tired all the time.” Once you have built fitness for a while, and the gains are not coming as quickly… go try to be a great climber. Don’t do burnout laps at the end of the day. No 4x4s on Tuesday nights to get more power endurance. Get to the crag as often as possible and try hard things.
And stay strong.
Where we tend to backslide is our strength, since it is typically not loaded as much on our route climbing projects and long boulders as it is in our gym sessions.
Staying strong is simple.
Figure out how strong you are.
This would include your “in a session” boulder limit, 2 rep max weighted pull-up, peak force test on your fingers, and maybe some explosiveness numbers. I like to see these numbers monthly leading up to performance phases so we have a strong baseline, and then we try to hold within about 5-10% of those numbers (testing every 4 weeks, still) throughout the performance phase.
When should the performance phase end? As far away as possible. Look—I love training as much as the next person, but bear with me: If I am strong enough to perform well at the crag, and those numbers aren’t going down, and I don’t really have the time to dedicate to a full-on strength phase because I am at the crag doing my sport… I should go climbing! If 3 hours a week of training gets me that, but I have a compulsion to do eight, we’ve got a problem.
How much is enough?
It’s less than you might think. I tell my athletes to start with half as much strength work as when they were training hard. 4 days drops to two. 4 sets per exercise drops to 2 sets. 120 minutes on the Moon Board drops to 60. You can hold the intensity pretty high, very near max levels, but don’t freak out if it slides. A bit of decline is fine, especially if you truly care about what’s happening at the crag.
One of my favorite in-season sessions is to combine bouldering with weights. This depends heavily on your facility, but for us it is pretty easy to move between them.
After warming up, I’ll do:
2 sets each of a Pull / Squat / Core
4-6 boulder problems with plenty of rest
2 sets each of a Press / Hinge / Core
4-6 boulder problems with plenty of rest
Specific finger strength and assistance exercises for 10-15 minutes
4-6 boulder problems with plenty of rest
This keeps me resting between boulders, doesn’t wipe me out for the weekend, and clicks by pretty quickly. I’ll do it once a week if I am climbing twice or three times, and I’ll do it more often if my climbing days are limited.
There is a suggestion that we all unfortunately hold in the back of our minds, that peak performances last only a few weeks and come only after months of gym time. I blame Matveyev, but it’s really the colossal misunderstanding of his work (what we call “classical periodization” was suggested as a beginner’s program in the original text) that has screwed us up. This works OK for a weightlifting comp where you do one lift, using one energy system, but it’s goddamn terrible for climbing. To perform well in a high-skill sport that uses all of the energy systems and that is different every single time you do it (speed climbers - don’t read this), you need to be pretty strong with pretty good endurance, and then go out and give it hell.
If we study the elites, we see that many top level climbers will have 6-8 months of very good performances each year. This is where we should all aim with our training: to train to a point of good fitness, go out and be a performance climber for several months, and stay strong enough during that time that we don’t have to start all over every single year.
Simple. Not easy.