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

interval-training program is to run alternating fast and slow laps on a track. Although you can also run intervals on a road or trail, the ease of setting a goal and gauging distances makes running on a track preferable. For initial training sessions, set out to run 2 miles—that’s an aggregate distance of fast and slow laps. As a rough gauge, your fast laps should feel like 80 to 90 percent of your maximum speed and result in your getting significantly winded. Try to hold the fast pace for a complete lap, and then pull back to a jog for the “slow” lap. Continue alternating fast and slow laps (or half laps) for a total of eight.

Stamina Training for Big-Wall and Alpine Climbers
     
    Big-wall and alpine climbing are obviously more about all-day or multiday stamina than possessing fingers of steel. If such stamina climbing is your cup of tea, your training should be specific to these demands. The two best training strategies here are high-volume climbing and high-volume aerobic exercise.
ALL-DAY CLIMBING
     
    This is a classic train-as-you-climb strategy. If you have the resources nearby, then no training could be more specific than chalking up many long days on the rock. You could do this in the form of climbing as many routes as possible from sunrise to sunset at a cragging area or by racing up a Grade IV or V big-wall route in a day. Ideally the goal would be to engage in two or three all-day climbing workouts per week—do this for a few months and you’ll develop amazing climbing stamina! For many climbers, however, it may only be possible to train this way a few days per month. In this case, you will need to engage in some high-volume aerobic training as an adjunct for all-day climbing.
HIGH-VOLUME AEROBIC TRAINING
     
    The goal here is to engage in four, forty-five- to ninety-minute aerobic workouts per week with a focus on mileage over speed. This could be any combination of running, swimming, cycling, brisk hiking, and trail running.
    As your conditioning improves, consider increasing the number of workouts to six or eight per week. To do this—and to help make these workouts fit with your other life activities—you will need to double up on some of your workouts. For example, you might go for a long run in the morning then an hour-long bike ride in the evening, or vice versa. If you engage in such two-a-day workouts, it is best to take at least a six-hour break between the two. This is clearly an advanced aerobic training program, but it might be just the ticket in the weeks leading up to a long wall climb or high-altitude expedition.
    Stamina-Training Tips
     
    1. All climbers can benefit from some stamina training. Boulderers and crag climbers will enhance recovery rate between climbs, whereas big-wall and alpine climbers will gain valuable general endurance for ultralong days and ascents at elevation.
    2. Boulderers and sport climbers will benefit the most from brief interval training (Tabatas) and running 2 to 3 miles of track intervals.
    3. The most effective stamina training for big-wall and alpine climbers is climbing for mileage—that is, putting in frequent long days on the rock. Alternatively, regular long-distance aerobic activities (running, cycling, hiking, and such) lasting forty-five to ninety minutes or longer will yield substantial gains in aerobic capacity.
    4. Two-a-day stamina workouts are especially effective in preparation for single-day wall ascents and high-altitude expeditions.
     
     

 
    Emily Harrington sending Lulu (5.14a), Rifle, Colorado. KEITH LADZINSKI
     

    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Climbing-Specific Exercises
     
    Training means not only knowledge of the things which will build the body, but also knowledge of the things which will tear down or injure the body.
    —Bruce Lee
     
     
    More than any other, this chapter details the exercises that most climbers associate with training for climbing. Given what you’ve learned in the first half of this book, however, you know that climbing-specific exercises are just one piece of the climbing performance puzzle. That said, great physical gains await if you regularly and properly use the exercises that follow. The key, of course, is to identify and execute the exercises holding the most value for you—that is, those that target the specific physical weaknesses you identified in chapter 2’s self-assessment test and from your on-the-rock experience. Chapter 8 will then guide you in crafting a maximally effective training