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Rough guide to training for rock climbing - page 5
Endurance
These days, most climbers use route climbing in indoor walls or sport climbing outside to improve their endurance. This is without a doubt the most efficient way to improve you ability to climb routes. There are some other methods too such as intervals on long boulder problems which have been described in detail in the magazines and climbing websites. In this section I’ll simply go through some the aspects that hold many climbers back from getting the most out of their time spent training endurance.
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Many climbers’ big mistake in deciding what endurance training to do is not thinking about specificity. You must always try to replicate your eventual climbing goal in your training. If you are preparing to lead long E3s next season, think about what will cause you to fail. If the answer is lack of endurance near the end of long pitches (which take 30mins-3 hours to lead), then you need replicate this situation by focusing more on high volume, lower intensity climbing. This could mean doing a wider, flatter pyramid of routes per session at the climbing wall. For instance, doing 15 routes (~ 225 metres) up to F6c rather than 8 routes (~ 120 metres) and trying to climb three F7as before feeling wasted and dropping to F6a.
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It’s quite common for climbers to use a certain cliff, or maybe even a particular route to build up their endurance on a seasonal basis (Hamish Ted’s at Dunkeld is a much abused route for this purpose). It can be good for the motivation to be on familiar ground and revisit a route you enjoy, and the routine of doing the same thing can be very effective for keeping people going. However, it is better to mix things up in the long run. The underlying purpose in training is to apply stress to the body as a stimulus. Remember – It’s got to be emotionally and physically hard work to force the body to react (especially if you have been at it for years). For some quite subtle reasons, training in exactly the same way, on exactly the same routes year after year, even if you are trying hard, can be ineffective for improving. So try somewhere new!
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To improve from year to year in climbing routes, you have to do more. You can increase the grade of the climb to create the overload. But because of the specificity principle this doesn’t always have the desired effect. Always keep in mind what you are training for and keep track of the changes in the intensity (grade) and volume (number of sessions and routes). This is easier if you write it down. Otherwise you can slip easily into a yearly process of going through the motions without any real progression happening.
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Training endurance doesn’t always mean getting pumped. If you want to get all round fitness for different types of routes, there are three main types of adaptation you need to stimulate.
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Anaerobic endurance training. This is the name given to the intense pump associated with short routes (i.e. anything from about 10 moves to 2 minute climbing wall length routes). The most efficient way to improve is by doing several routes not far below your maximum level. The first couple should feel comfortable, the new few should feel hard and the last 2-3 should feel desperate and right at your limit. The adaptation which takes place is an improved release of energy in large muscle fibres – You can get through a few more moves despite being very pumped.
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Aerobic Endurance training. This is the longer distance type endurance you need to do long sustained routes from 2 minutes to 3 hours long). It allows you to delay getting pumped and to recover quickly from difficult moves and handle a lot more of them. You can get this type of endurance by doing several different balances of route difficulty and volume. All of these will involve doing many routes and 2-5 sessions per week to get an improvement. The adaptations include more efficient energy release from all muscle fibre types and improved blood flow to the muscles (see next item).
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Capillarisation training. This type of training involves long sustained periods (20-60mins at a time) of relatively easy climbing. It causes the muscles to become chronically flushed with blood and stimulates the growth of a denser network of blood vessels in the muscle. This improves your endurance, especially the rate at which you recover from moves or routes. Another important benefit is recovery. It can help you recover from more intense endurance and strength training if you are training at an advanced level. Because you do a lot of moves in a low stress situation, you can use it to work on technique too!
How much time you spend doing each or all of these types of training depends on what kind of climbing you want to get better at. It’s also worth remembering the effect of strength on endurance. If you are stronger, each move is easier for you, so you will automatically have an endurance advantage (although this will not be the case if you have trained strength at the expense of endurance training).
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