Once I started to see that training worked, I was hooked.
I have related the story of one of my first classes at the University of Wyoming and how each student was issued a bound collection of class notes as well as an emery board. Each day of class, the professor asked the students to gently rub the board on the side of their second index knuckle for a few seconds. The professor would give a start and stop time and then would tell us to put away the boards. A few weeks in, one brave student asked if she could skip the exercise that day, as it was “starting to make a callus on my finger.”
“Exactly!” the professor replied. “You’re adapting to a stressor!”
He then, excitedly, went into how over and under-eating were stressors, how tanning was a stressor, and more.
“Basically anything you want to become better at handling can be done by progressively adding more stress,” he said, and that one statement launched my brain an all new direction. Never in my life had I understood that my own force of will could make me better.
In a way, all programming for performance is about trying to help the body focus on making specific adaptations. If the adaptations are few, we can see progress quickly. If we try to make too many changes—and this applies across broad domains—the progress is slow to nonexistent. There are certainly congruent activities, such as doing several movements in a strength session, where we can see improvements in many ways at once. The hallmark of a great athlete, though, is to chase only one new adaptation while holding ground on all of the others…or even allowing some to slip in favor of the work that is being done.
The Trick Is Not Minding That It Hurts
The problem with doing supplemental training is that we often don’t know exactly what to do and therefore are pretty non-committal. Every day in our gym, I will see a climber that is “exercise browsing.” They do a couple of exercises here, a couple of exercises there. Inevitably, they do some version of a concentration curl and maybe some pull-ups. Although what they might put together is not so bad, they won’t come back two to four days later and repeat it with progression in mind. I don’t want to say that they wasted their time, but individual random sessions that are done on random time intervals are probably best viewed as gentle exercise rather than training.
The solution for most climbers is to pick one exercise that is not pull-ups and to do it regularly and progressively over a 6-8 week period. I think most climbers tend to think of themselves as generally fit and of superior strength, although this might be the case when you are pulling on small edges on a 40° overhang. Experience shows that, by and large, sport climbers aren’t all that hardy.
Without further pigeon-holing myself as “the deadlift guy,” I would suggest that deadlifts, front squats, or Turkish get-ups would all fit the bill in terms of this single exercise. When you pick this exercise, you then would follow four simple rules.
Do the exercise two to three days a week.
Do the exercise for three to five sets.
Do the exercise for three to five repetitions, unless it is the get-up, in which case you will just do one per side.
When you can do each set perfectly for all of the prescribed repetitions, add load on the next workout.
It won’t take too long before you’re pushing loads that you really have to work for, and this is where the magic starts to happen. Your progress will start to slow and then it will plateau, and it will take some amount of willpower to consider progressing it even further when the time comes.
Eyes On The Prize
Your tendency might be to pick nine exercises and try to do them progressively over the course of the six weeks, three days each week, but you’re going to fail. If you aren’t in the habit of already lifting weights regularly, the change and the overload are just too much for almost every person. The sweet spot for progression is when the exercise added to your weekly routine feels like no big deal and doesn’t strip time from your schedule in a way that bothers you. I’ve just seen way too many people start strong, get to the middle of a decent cycle, and quit because it’s just too uncomfortable.
This is where I feel like a person needs to be a grown-up and say, “I am going to focus on this one movement for a short period of time and push it to the point that my body changes.” If I am chasing adaptations in three or four different movements and potentially chasing those same adaptations across different energy systems, I am going to end up frustrated, tired, and not a whole heck of a lot fitter.
One of the greatest lessons we can give ourselves when we start into any new program is to do few enough things to see progress. Once you’ve spent eight weeks mastering front squats at the end of each of your bouldering sessions, then you can consider adding in another exercise, understanding full well the value of regular and progressive overload and that you are capable of doing the work until the work is finished.