Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

training at progressively higher intensity and with heavier loads cannot be overstated. This is best achieved by adding extra weight to your body while performing certain controlled, sport-specific movements. As a result, your fingers (and other upper-body pull muscles) are exposed to a load and intensity not previously experienced at normal body weight. The extra weight simulates a greater-than-normal gravitational pull (hence the name hypergravity ). After a period of hypergravity training, you will return to the rock and feel like you are climbing on the moon!
    The dramatic gains in strength produced by hypergravity training are the result of neural and muscular adaptations (discussed earlier). In particular, it likely triggers a higher degree of disinhibition and hypertrophy that may never result from climbing at the lower resistances of body weight. I also suspect that hypergravity training may trick ST muscle fibers into acting like FT fiber—more on this later.
    As a disclaimer, it must be pointed out that hypergravity training is an advanced strength-training method to be used only by well-conditioned and advanced climbers with no recent history of injury. Chapter 7 discusses the four best applications of hypergravity: weighted pull-ups, weighted fingerboard hangs, weighted bouldering, and Hypergravity Isolation Training (HIT).
FUNCTIONAL ISOMETRICS
     
    Functional isometrics involve superimposing one or more isometric contractions within the concentric or eccentric phase of an exercise motion. This strategy has been shown to provide significantly greater strength gains (16 percent more in one study) than those achieved by doing the same exercise without intermittent isometric contractions (O’Shea 1989). Greater overload during the isometric contractions is what stimulates the muscle for enhanced strength gains. The overload is created by removing the load-lightening effects of momentum and use of stored potential energy (a benefit of the elastic properties of muscle and tendon).
    You can best leverage this method when training to strengthen your pull-up and lock-off strength. Superimposing numerous lock-offs (isometric contractions) within a set of pull-ups will produce surprising gains in absolute strength. And unlike hypergravity training, even novice climbers can safely incorporate this strategy into their training regimen.
    Tips for Training Maximum Strength
     
    1. Train with high-intensity exercises that produce muscular failure in three to ten repetitions. With body exercises, add weight as needed (hypergravity training) to meet this training criteria.
    2. Isolate movements and grip positions to maximize specificity and best target your training.
    3. Seek out (or set) burly, nontechnical boulder problems that will test you physically.
    4. Rest at least three to five minutes between exercises. Quality maximum-strength training requires fresh, full-on efforts.
    5. Regularly vary your workouts and cycle your training focus every two or three weeks. Occasionally employ functional isometrics and hypergravity training to mix things up and generate progressive overload.
     
     

Power Training
     
    When climbers talk about “power,” they are typically referring to the need to make quick, strenuous reaches or handhold grasps on steep terrain. This type of movement is the stuff of steep sport climbs and V-hard boulder problems. As I explained earlier, power is the product of strength and speed as expressed by the equation: power = strength x speed (where speed = distance/time). Since you have just learned several leading-edge methods for increasing strength, we now need to consider ways to effectively train the other factor in the power equation, speed.
    First, you must recognize that there is an inverse relationship between force and velocity—creating maximum force, as in high-load strength training, can only be done at relatively slow speeds (see figure 5.9). Conversely, performing an exercise at high speed demands use of relatively light weights (low force production). The problem is, in climbing (and training for climbing) we are usually dealing with the weight of our body and exercising with movements that are difficult or impossible to do at a high rate of speed (compared with, say, a sprinter training on the track). The most effective and practical approach, then, is to try to train at the highest speed possible at less than body weight, or with moderately fast speed at body weight.
BOULDERING