We all know the stories of climbers who built exact replicas of projects in order to prepare for them.
We know of climbers who radically transform their bodies in order to adapt to climbing a particular style or at a particular crag.
And we all know a third kind of preparation, the kind in which we train for literally everything, at all times.
The interesting thing is that all of these paths are the correct path. It's more about figuring out which path to take at a given time. In the world of high performance sports, we see athletes take large chunks of time away from developing the fitness needed for their particular event, and instead develop more general qualities to support that fitness.
Figure skaters do gymnastic movements and explosive leg work off the ice. Powerlifters do hip and shoulder mobility work, hard triceps and core work, and even bodyweight drills. Cyclists hit the weight room. Skiers get on bikes. And everyone, across the board, understands the value of being stronger.
GPP Me
All of this "stuff" we do to prepare not for our sport but for being a more functional, durable, and enduring human being is called general physical preparation, or GPP. For many rock climbers, this facet of sport preparation gets overlooked in favor of hanging on tiny edges by our fingertips. A lack of GPP, though, shows up in three major ways:
An increased chance of injury due to muscle weakness, imbalance, or immobility.
A lack of work capacity for climbing itself.
An inability to do very powerful or strength-related movements, such as topping boulders, high steps, and roof moves.
It also makes you a less functional human. It seems like a thing gym people would say, but being strong makes you less likely to get injured in accidents, less likely to be injured in training, and less likely to die by way of the main ways most of us die: heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
And yes, it gets overdone. Much of my coaching work is about redirecting the overpsyche of the fitness enthusiast. Having to feel tired after every session is a psychological issue, not a training need. Not feeling right without a daily run is the same. In fact, so many of us overdo the general physical prep part that we never get to feel the fruits of a peak of fitness.
So how much GPP does one need? The real answer is "just enough." But then we get into how much is enough? And then into the specifics of "What percentage of my bodyweight do I need to be able to do in x exercise?" And then into "According to what that guy over there can do, where am I?"
So here is my prescription:
Two separate months of the year, you should reduce your focus on performance (sending), and spend three days per week getting stronger and more powerful in the weight room.
Focus on being able to do full ranges of motion in major movement patterns without pain. If this isn't possible, this is a major clue as to what you should be addressing in your normal training or mobility work.
Pay attention to where you are weak. Spend time there. If you feel pretty good on pull-ups, deadlifts, and bench press, but can't quite nail a full squat, work on it. It will pay off.
The other ten months a year, we can work on specific physical preparation and even the next tier up, simulation.
SPP
Specific Physical Preparation is the next step of the pyramid. When we are doing specific physical prep, we are doing what most climbers think of as training for climbing. This includes contact based training such as hangboarding and campusing. It includes bouldering on a fixed board. It also includes high intensity core work, upper body strength, and maybe even specific single leg strength.
Most importantly, the exercises start to mimic the movement patterns of sport, and the duration and intensity of the movements start to become specific to the performance environment. If we are planning on bouldering as our primary performance in the sport, we work toward doing boulder problem-duration efforts. If we are sport, climbing, we start to do longer efforts during the SPP phase. And if we are alpinists, we need to start thinking about how to exercise all day long.
As far as scheduling goes, an SPP phase can be 4 to 6 weeks long and generally follows a GPP phase. Far too often, climbers will overdo the duration on this kind of phase because the training is super fun. Instead of continuing SPP, though, I suggest you get out there and send.
But What About Simulation?
Building an exact replica of a project works so well that it should almost be considered cheating. The number of climbers that have moved well beyond their pay grade by training very specifically on a simulator is high. The downside? Very specific fitness. We've all experienced this at some level… maybe you spent a full season working a project at a crag and then pretty much couldn't climb anything else. Maybe you spent a ton of time working on lock offs and crimps and then couldn't climb on anything else with much strength.
At my home climbing area in Sinks Canyon, Wyoming, there is a challenging endurance route that starts with a difficult boulder problem. I had a friend who spent more than a month trying a simulation of that boulder in the hopes of sending the climb. The problem, though, was that although he could do the boulder problem multiple times in a day after the training, he had neglected to build the stamina required to do the much easier climbing above. So it goes.
Simulation is a specialized tool. We should not overemphasize it as a regular part of training and might only come into a climber’s training cycle once in several seasons. Other climbers who have highly developed GPP and SPP might end up building simulations two or three times a year for some specific projects. As with the GPP-SPP relationship, simulation without the other two is a short road to nowhere.
The most important part of any training program is to understand that we are only guessing and doing our best at that. As things come up in your preparation, a high commitment to adaptation and to changing what you're doing is a key to moving forward. It's likely that you will never feel like you quite got it right. However, building a framework in your mind of different possible training modes and addressing different facets of sport throughout the year will get you a lot further than just trying to go harder day after day.