GENERAL INFORMATION
Coming from the fitness industry, and as a certified personal trainer, I take a very structured and well-rounded approach to all fitness matters - even with respect to my climbing training. Strength Training and and Cardio, for example, have both helped me remain relatively injury free (knocking on wood even as I type). Strength Training with weights - and other methods - has helped me to have the muscular and connective tissue foundation I need for strenuous climbing climbing efforts; and the Cardio work has made me better able to process the pumpy lactic acid out of my muscles when I climb, or when I run the Half Dome trail.
Learning Objective:
What I have written here is important for every level of climber, any other type of athlete - recreational or elite - and for any fitness minded person. This article is meant to be a comprehensive explanation of how muscles work, what they need, and why they need it.
Other articles at Fitness Basecamp
You'll soon find articles like: A Sets-and-Reps Workout Prescription for several different types of athletes; more specificity on different types of performance enhancing goals; and more in-depth treatments of things like the Four Aspects of Muscular Fitness: Power, Endurance, Stamina (called Power Endurance" by many people), and Flexibility .
Introduction:
I believe that for many years climbers have had a "free-spirited" aversion to what they may see as the "conventional" structure of disciplined, structured training. As a result, we have been a pretty injury-plagued group of athletes; and I believe we have held our collective performance back as well. I think it's one reason that there's such a big gap between the top climbers and the rest of us. I think we could all close the gap (even if it's just a little) between us and the Tommy Caldwells of the world with a more disciplined approach to training.
I realize that climbing is a recreational, social, back-to-nature activity to many people. This article is for people who do in fact climb for fitness and performance-enhancement, as well as for all those other great things.
We are also a very bright group, so many climbers are in the last few years starting to discover, and be willing to do, the more "traditional" exercises like weight training, and the effects are taking them to the next levels. More importantly, that more balanced approach is helping them to avoid injuries. I've also been gratified to see articles on "supplemental training" take their proper place more frequently in climbing publications.
Myth-Buster:
Yes, it is true that building a body-builder's body would be counterproductive for climbers from a strength-to-weight perspective, as a doubling of the size of a muscle only increases its strength by less than 40%. But body-building is not the only way to train with weights. Most people aren't capable genetically to just "balloon up" without a concerted effort to do so - and over years of fanatical training and special "nutrition." This is especially true for women, so you need not have that fear, ladies, of "getting too big" like those bodybuilder women on TV. Your relatively low levels of testosterone will prevent this unless you are going way out of your way to become even an entry level female bodybuilder.
The Least We Need to Know - 'Opposing Muscle Group' Balance:
At the very least, climbers should make a point of doing regular "opposing muscle group" supplemental weight training - at least to the minimal intensity and frequency levels for "maintaining" fitness in those muscles so that we are not imbalanced at the mutual connection points that they share with our "climbing" muscles.
Some muscles - particularly the "push" muscles - see relatively little action in our "pulling" sport of climbing. Other muscles may see infrequent, but intense action in climbing for which they may not be prepared. An example would be a tough arête that suddenly requires a climber's little-used chest muscles to squeeze water out of the rock with a 100% effort. This can cause a chest muscle strain if you haven't been doing bench presses, push ups, or dumbbell flies regularly in order to, at least, tone those muscles.
I knew an 18 year old national level gymnast who had his career ended because his titanic abs pulled his spine out of alignment. All because he wouldn't do low back work to balance the opposing muscles' strength out. Football players have the same issues with hamstrings because their powerful frontal thighs overbalance their hammies - which are less fun to work out than doing massive squats. You get the idea.
A Climber's Overview of the Muscles That Need Special Attention:
There are many muscles I don't train at all with special attention (like biceps and lats) because my climbing more than takes of them. But as a climber you have to pay special attention to your chest, hamstrings (for those heel hooks), lower back and - above all else - your triceps.
A Closer Look at Triceps:
The triceps are the three headed muscle group on the back of the upper arm that shares a connection point at the elbow with our powerful climbing biceps (a two-headed muscle). Look at the arms of climbers and see how flat the back of the arms too often are compared to the front (bicep). Even a large number of the very top climbers exhibit this to some degree. This is evidence of insufficiently balanced triceps development.
Elbow Problems:
The main reason that climbers get elbow problems is that the biceps get so beastie that they misalign things at the elbow by overpowering the opposing muscle, the triceps, which shares the biceps' connection point at that crucial elbow. So, we have to train these muscles. Every trained athlete knows the importance of doing strength-training in sports-specific, opposing muscle groups.
Calithstenics, Cross Fit, etc. are all strength training, and all are very effective. Also very good (and easier to write about in a foundational article) is weight training.
Free Weights or Machines?:
Though they have some applications, machines are typically less effective than free weights (barbells and dumbbells, kettlebells, etc), because machines do not require you to stabilize the weight you are moving with your bigger, 'prime mover' muscles. Thus, all the littler "stabilizer" muscles that are so crucial to core strength are getting short-changed when you use most machines.
To take this concept to the next level, dumbbells are even more effective at conditioning stabilizer muscles than are barbells; and doing dumbbell bench presses on an unsteady exercise ball takes all of this even further. Having said all that, it may be a good idea to gradually progress through these varied levels of stabilizer / core strength enhancing movements; so "starting out" on machines is not a bad idea if you are a new exerciser who is intimidated by the thought of a barbell hovering over your head! Just make a point to wean yourself off of these machines much the same way that you weaned yourself off of training wheels as a kid learning to ride a bike.
Having said all of that, there are some machines that are very helpful - especially the ones that use cables, because cables provide a constant tension that is lost with a barbell at some point in the movement when gravity takes the weight from your muscles. The top of a barbell bicep curl is a good example of this. Using a cable to do the same movement is an effective way to keep tension well past the "gravity point" where a barbell in the same movement is no longer working the intended muscle. Thus, the cable can give you a wider range of "motion under load" when used for bicep curling. As in most things - variety is also helpful in it's own right when you are working out. More on that later.
Core Strength:
As we alluded to in the last paragraph, this refers, firstly, to our stabilizer muscles that help give us the ability to do practical work, in the real world. I mean, if you try to lift something off the ground in the real world, there is no machine helping you to you stabilize the thing you're lifting as you lift it. That's why core strength is important; and why machines are of little overall value to us as humans, less so as athletes, and far less so as climbers - who are athletes who have to be able to move and use our body to perform very practical motions.
Secondly, core strength also refers to the body's stabilizer muscles' ability to transfer force through the body. To illustrate, a person could have strong thighs and calves for jumping, but if the core muscles in the midsection are soft and un-toned then much of the energy produced by the jumping muscles gets dampened and lost as it passes through the midsection. Think of a dyno here, of course.
Muscle Soreness: Good, Bad, or Ugly?
Even if you are a high performance athlete, if you have never weight trained before you will have some healthy soreness in the muscles you worked for 2-4 days afterwards. This is normal. It called "DOMS" (delayed onset muscle soreness). If it is painful, though, you are doing too much. Too many sets, too much weight, or too intense - maybe all three. DOMS is a relished feeling among bodybuilders, though, and so should not be feared. If you are doing an effective workout, your muscles will - and should - feel a little tight for the DOMS period. They will stretch the skin a little and make you feel a little more "swoll" the next day. And you probably are - literally - a little bigger in that muscle for those few days. Again, this is a good thing as long as it doesn't become painful.
How Often Should I Hit the Weights?
A good rule is to hit each muscle group twice - and no more than three times - per week. This doesn't mean you can only work out twice per week, just that each muscle group should be hit that often. You can hit the weights every day as long as you split the workouts up, working, just for example, chest and triceps on Mondays and Wednesdays; but hit hamstrings and low back on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Abs, calves, and low back - once they are conditioned - can be hit more often (5 days a week is not uncommon) because they are made up mostly of slow twitch muscle fibers that are Designed for high training volume. That's why you don't get a pump in your calves from walking across a parking lot; or in your abs from standing up straight. Imagine if your biceps had to do those jobs. It would make life pretty difficult! More on that a little bit later.
Once you get to where the soreness period is shorter and less noticeable, you can do three days per week at a lower intensity, or stay at two days per week per muscle but at a higher intensity. I would say that a performance-enhancing approach would favor the latter, high intensity option; and someone who is "just looking to maintain the minimums" should do the three day, low intensity approach. Either way, there should always be - even after conditioning these muscles - just a little soreness the next day if you are doing it intensely enough. Just a little, though, again.
Fast Twitch vs. Slow Twitch:
You have probably heard of this. What it means is that there are different types of muscle fibers that are specialized for different purposes. Most muscles are composed of a mix of each - let's use the thighs as an example -so that we can run for short, powerful bursts like a sprinter does; or do longer distances, like a marathoner does. Those are the extremes, but we all are capable of some degree of each since we are Designed to be able to do both. That's why most muscles have a fairly balanced mix of fast and slow twitch fibers. Again with the thighs, most people are about 60/40% of each, with mutant examples like Olympic sprinter Carl Lewis being biopsied at 70/30% favoring fast-twitch. Like Mr. Lewis, many of us are genetically predisposed to one type of training or the other, but with work we can enhance any aspect of fitness despite our genetic preferences.
An example of how "fast twitch and slow twitch" applies to climbing is as follows: like the sprinter who does short, maximal efforts, a fast-twitch approach to climbing would mean an emphasis on Power climbing. Obviously bouldering comes to mind, but this would also include the development of contact strength - as in campus training, or Eric Horst's H.I.T. system workout (Hyper-Intensive-[gravity]
What climbers also need to know about muscle fibers is that our prime concern, the forearm muscles, have an inordinate amount of fast twitch fibers compared to other muscles. That's why your endurance fades so quickly over Christmas, or any other time you hang the ropes up in the closet for whatever reason. Our forearms are not naturally predisposed to long duration workloads, although endurance can be built with intentional training. This preponderance of fast twitch fiber in the forearms is also why new climbers have so little muscular Endurance in the forearms. They do two or three routes and they're cooked! Fortunately, the activity is fun enough that they will usually push through this and in a month or so have a noticeably improved Endurance threshold. Short answer, then, is that climbing Endurance takes both concerted effort to build, and regular maintenance to keep. I will go in depth into Endurance Climbing Training in another article on Fitness Basecamp, as it's my specialty.
Why We Need to Rest, or "Don't Climb Six Days per Week!"
All muscles need a rest period between workouts, or they will not build any aspect of muscular fitness - Power, Endurance, or Stamina (some call this Power Endurance). A workout is known to fitness professionals as a "catabolic" experience. That word is related to another word, "catastrophic," so catabolic means that workouts tear you down, not build you up.
Rest days, by contrast, are known as the "anabolic" phase - as in "anabolic steroids," just as a memory cue - which build you up bigger and stronger. During rest, your body not only recovers and repairs itself, but it "super-compensates" by building you up to a higher level of fitness than what you started with before the workout. That's how fitness improves, so if you short change the anabolic, build-you-back-up, rest phase then you are not being "hard core" - you are being over-trained....and your fitness will actually decrease.
Yes, you need a hard core workout once you've laid the groundwork to handle it. You need a hard workout to give your body a reason - a stimulus - to improve so that it's ready for your next hit. But you have to give it time to be ready - to super compensate. Ideally, your body has super compensated, is more fit than it was before your last workout, and is ready and waiting for another "hit" about three days after your last workout. If you hit it with another workout at that time, it will super compensate again to an even higher level of fitness, and so on and so on. This is the pattern for healthy training that will maximize your results, and Dale Goddard has a great chart in his book "Performance Rock Climbing" that graphically illustrates the process better than anything else I've ever seen on the subject.
Consistency
It is important to note that the opposite is also true. If you work out, but do not hit the muscle with a follow-up workout when the right time comes, the benefits you might have gotten from the previous workout will just fade away, as your body will just say "whew! I guess that was a one time thing, so I can now go back to the couch potato(e) comfort zone where I was before (s)he rudely awakened me." That is why consistency in training is so important. It shows your body that you are serious, and that you intend to hit it regularly, so it had better be ready next time, and the next, and the next.
That's why consistency is more important probably than anything else, because it is the way to continued upward mobility for your fitness level. You could do a less effective workout consistently and get better long term results than if you did a "perfectly effective" workout - but less consistently. That's why when you ask a personal trainer "what's the best workout to do for __________" the best answer is "any workout that you like enough to do consistently."
Variety
Ah, yes! The spice of life! ...and of fitness training, as it happens. No matter how good your workout is, if you do it for too long, the exact same way, then your body's adaptative abilities will lessen that workout's effectiveness. Soon your body will yawn at you and say "Oh that again? Yea, I got that, and I can it with half my muscle fibers tied behind my back! Don't waste my time." In other words, it will soon get less stimulus from that workout to motivate it to improve.
I keep variety at the forefront of my approach, in that I don't even know what specific exercises I will do when I walk into a weight room or climbing gym. I just know which muscles I have to work. For the rest, I listen to by body and change up the exercises - and the tempo - every time. I never do the same workout twice! and changing the tempo works different fibers too, so it's like an all different workout if you do a movement slowly one day then fast the next - or if you shorten the rest periods.
Another example: There's a 5.12c in Alabama that's so much fun I have climbed it literally hundreds of times. Because of that, I have long been able to send it as a warm up, without even getting a pump, or after doing a full day of hard climbing. I have often done it off the couch, after months of not being able to climb at all. I can't do that on any other 12c....it's just that my body is too used to it. So it's not a good thing for me to do as a workout if I want to keep improving. But I'm still gona climb it because I love that climb!
Do What You Need to Improve - Not What You're Good At:
We've all seen him....that guy who weighs 400 pounds at the gym who camps out at the bench press and does benches because he is good at it - he looks and feels like a hero there because he can make the bar bend with the weight he's able to throw up. But we all wish he'd spend more time on an exercise bike to get his body fat down....because that's what he really needs to improve....and because we want him to clear out so we can use the weight bench!
In short, train your weaknesses if you want to improve. It takes a concerted effort. For me, that means forcing myself to boulder so I'll have power on a cruxy redpoint - even though Bouldering's not my bliss. Sending that cruxy redpoint is, though. Capice?
F3: "Form Follows Function:"
Basically, this idea relates to "specificity of training." Let me
illustrate: Even when I am in top climbing (gripping) shape, if I go
downhill mountain biking, my forearms get sore from squeezing the brakes all
afternoon! In the case of braking vs. climbing that's because braking is an
isotonic movement that travels through a range of motion, but climbing
requires the same grip muscles to work "isometrically" - holding a fixed
position. Even though the muscles involved are the same, the way they are
used is different enough that my muscles are not prepared for it.
In English, we see from the mountain biking example that the best way to be
a better climber is through climbing. Not grip-building "squeeze machines,"
not pull ups, not anything else but climbing. Will these other things help?
Perhaps. Will they make you send a higher letter grade? Almost certainly
not. Climbing certainly will. To further illustrate, we all know that good
climbers who can use their lower body effectively will climb harder grades,
so since you are using your lower body, should we do work to build up our
leg strength? No, because leg muscles are not the weakest link that makes us
fall off the rock. They are just something we have to know how to use, not
to build. Let's not confuse the need for utilization of a muscle with the
need to build it up.
While we're discussing specificity, climbing also requires us to train the
grip muscles in all positions if we want to be well-rounded. Even though
crimps and pinches both require gripping forearm muscles, they use them in
different enough ways that the benefits of training pinches does not fully
carry over to crimpers, as you may have noticed!
Hans Florine once had the "F3" label sewn on clothing that he had made,
because he knew that form does indeed follow function. In addition to what I
just said in the last paragraph, what "F3" also means to him is that if you
want your body to be capable of "A," then just keep doing "A" and your body
will continue to be capable of "A" performance. In short, if you want to be
a 47 year old who can repeatedly re-break your own speed records, then keep
doing that! The fact that people stop doing what they used to do once they
discover that they have a favorite chair is that....they stop doing what
they used to do! Age is not the excuse they think it is.
Periodization - Timing Your Workouts and Your Rest:
Managing the timing of your catabolic workouts and your anabolic
rest periods is called "periodization" and all intelligent athletes maximize
the effects of the process. As climbers, who I believe are among the very
most analytical of athletes, we should be doing this better than anyone, and
I believe we as a group have been in recent years.
World champion bodybuilder Dorian Yates was the first to articulate and
illustrate the effects of smart periodization in his field, which is of
course a field from which we can all learn a lot about how muscles respond.
He had already won the top contest several times, and so was already at a
high level where dramatic additional improvement had slowed down. But when
he returned one year to the Mr. Olympia contest to defend his title - he was
at a much more massive bodyweight than just the last year. He had built a
couple dozen pounds of LEAN, high quality muscle mass in that short of time,
and he stunned the bodybuilding world with it. When asked how he did it, he
said simply "I started working out less."
You see, before Dorian's effective use of rest periods, bodybuilders like
Arnold had lived by the "more is better" approach. If bench presses were
good, then 20 sets of it must be better. If three days a week of biceps
training was good, then five days per week is even better. If steak and eggs
build muscle, then I'll have a 10 egg omelet today! I am actually not
exaggerating. Dorian had learned to let his body maximize the super
compensation, anabolic process of rest, and he changed bodybuilding forever.
Whether you like that look or not is irrelevant. The point is that we can
see in the extremes of anything the easiest illustrations of what's
effective.
To that end, look at the sheer mass and low body fat of body-builders today
compared to those of the 70s. Yes, there are other factors too that have
contributed to that, but most of those things were being done "back then"
too. The variable in Dorian experience - and other people's experiences
since, was REST.
How Do You Know if You're Overtraining?
Well, first of all, your performance will decrease. Or, you may
improve somewhat (after all, our bodies are Designed to move, so anything is
better than sitting on a couch) but you may not be improving your
performance as well or as fast as you think you should be. Further, if your
resting heart rate is faster than normal, that is a sign of overtraining. If
in doubt, ease back - rather than ramp up - your training and see if you
don't improve. My bet is that you will. Learn to listen to your body,
through trial and error.
Training Volume = Intensity x Duration x Frequency:
"Training Volume" is the effective - or "net" - "amount" of exercise
you do. Said another way, it's a way of expressing the sum total of the
exercise you do. There is an actual formula, that goes like this: Total
Volume of Training = Intensity x Duration x Frequency. In other words, you
can increase the effectivess of your workout by increasing how hard
(intense) you work out; or by how long (duration) you work out; or by how
often (frequently) you work out. If you have only 15 minutes to work out,
you can get the sufficient training volume from that workout by increasing
the intensity. Or if you want to do more frequent workouts that week, you
can avoid overtraining by decreasing the intensity of each. Maybe you like
going to the gym to see your friends more often, for example; or you are on
a road trip and you don't want to have to find other things to do rather
than climb - just to keep from overtraining. To avoid overtraining, maybe
you should select routes that are below your difficulty threshold so you can
climb on more days, saving hard redpoints for "max days." Often you'll climb
a lot better with that approach anyway, and return home with some bigger
numbers (and more routes logged) than usual.
How Many "Days On" for Climbing?
Try not to be that guy who climbs six days a week, and then is
frustrated because you're not getting better. It's tempting to do that, as
our sport is a lot of fun to do and is very social. But I have found that
three days per week - four if one or two of those days is lower in intensity
- keeps me optimally primed to send my hardest, and I know many climbers who
are now only climbing twice per week.
Conclusion
You have to find the right combination of intensity and rest for
both your body and for the type of climbing you are focusing
on...Bouldering, Roped Difficulty Climbing, etc. You have to experiment to
find out what is optimal for you, but I hope this article gives you a
framework and a context to understand how and why your workouts are giving
you the results that they are, and will give you the knowledge to make the
appropriate adjustments.
Well, I've spent the whole morning sitting here writing this. I need to go
work out!
Happy Cranking!
- Marc
| Concepts |
 Cycling
|
 Triathlon
Fitness Challenge!: Do my favorite workouts |
Strength TrainingFITNESS TIPS THAT APPLY to EVERYONE
(above): active.com for Info and registration for any sport, any place, any time