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

yourself to just one or two sessions per week, and cycle on and off campus training every two weeks.
    A few important training tips: Execute Double Dynos only on rungs that are 0.75 inch or more in depth. In terms of training stimulus, speed of repetitions is more important than the number of reps, distance traveled, or size of rungs. Specifically, strive to turn around the catch on the lower rung and lunge upward in about a quarter of one second (hard, but ideal). And, as stated earlier, it’s wise to firmly tape the base of your fingers (use A2 ring method in this case, depicted on page 228). Finally, terminate your campus training at the first sign of pain in your fingers, arms, or shoulders.

Forearm Endurance Exercises
     
    Endurance local to the forearm muscles, physiologically known as anaerobic endurance, is what enables you to hang on and pull through many hard moves in a row. Your ability to persevere through a long sequence of strenuous moves, despite a growing forearm pump, is a function of several attributes including your limit strength, your body’s ability to remove blood lactate, and the mind and body’s tolerance to the fatiguing effects of lactic acid. Central to the removal of lactic acid is the density of the capillary network that innervates the forearm muscles—the more capillaries are present and the larger their diameter, the faster lactic acid can be cleared from the muscle.

     
    Traversing is a popular method for training forearm endurance. Here Front Range icon Christian Griffith gets a pump on at Morrison, Colorado, circa 1998. ERIC J. HÖRST
     

    Simply climbing a few days per week is moderately effective for building local endurance. A few of the more popular strategies are climbing laps on routes, interval training on boulder problems, and performing long traverses. As long as your climbing activities produce a muscular burn and pump, you can rest assured that your body will adapt favorably to your endurance training. Following is a full breakdown of the exercises you can use to increase your forearm endurance.
TRAVERSE TRAINING
     
    Traverse training is an effective endurance-building strategy that dates back to John Gill’s training in the 1950s. Select a section of cliff base or indoor wall that will allow you to traverse for at least two to four minutes without reaching muscular failure or falling off because of technical difficulties. The ideal traverse will be hard enough to elicit a forearm pump, but not so severe that you pump out and fall off—you actually want to end your traverse before your muscles give out. Upon stepping off the wall, take a rest of about equal length to the time you spent traversing. Do three to five total traverses.
STRAIGHT-ARM FINGERBOARD HANGS
     
    Though it’s a very basic exercise, novice climbers can find it quite challenging to attempt to hang from a fingerboard or pull-up bar for a minute or two. An untrained forearm muscle will typically begin to burn from lactic acid accumulation after the first minute, making the second minute an exercise in stretching both the physical and mental boundaries. While you would rarely have to hang out on a single hold this long on a route, this exercise does seem to benefit beginner climbers by increasing forearm endurance and through the developed sense of just how long the forearm will perform while in the burning mode. Persistent hanging in a single position can cause injury in a small number of individuals with loose shoulders as well as in those who are significantly overweight. Cease doing these straight-arm hangs at the first sign of any shoulder pain.
    There are two possible training strategies. Many people simply time how long they can hang until muscular failure, then rest for five minutes and repeat for a total of five sets. A better approach would be to employ an interval-training strategy in which you end each interval before reaching muscular failure while decreasing the rest interval. In effect, this will increase the total amount of time you will be hanging and likely produce a better training effect. A true novice would want to do brief intervals—say, hang for twenty seconds then rest for forty seconds, and repeat ten to twenty times. As endurance improves, graduate to using the Tabata Protocol (see page 94) in which you hang for 20 seconds and then rest for just 10 seconds. Repeat this hang-rest interval for a total of six to eight sets before taking an extended rest of two to five