Background:
Last December, I transitioned from competitive strength training into the world of climbing. I live in London, UK so I began inside, and over the Winter I used guide services to build basic alpine, ice and mixed climbing experience in the Alps, Scotland and Wales. After several long Scottish walk-ins, I realized my aerobic base did not align with any of my mid-term mountaineering goals. In essence, my entire year programming has revolved around building an aerobic base and increasing local muscular endurance so as to not get mega pumped out when climbing. As a beginner, my technical grade for indoor sport, Trad and Scottish Winter and even bouldering, have progressed simply by just by climbing indoor 2/3 times a week and getting to an outdoor crag when possible too – Despite training concurrently with high (for me) running volume (4/5x a week up to 40km in a week). I am aware this won’t continue exponentially and thus am beginning to write out my next training cycles which begins with yearly cycle planning.
Next year’s aims:
Climb a classic Scottish V5 by March – trips Dec 18, Jan, Feb, March (current grade v4)
Be comfortable at E1 (current comfy lead grade VS)
1 week mountaineering in Alps – routes tbc, likely to be ‘easy’ classics achievable without bivvy at or around PD grade
My question:
Obviously from above my climbing tech grade will require the most work, but I’m also very keen to maintain and grow my newly developed aerobic base. How would you structure cycles of both technical climbing grade improvement and developing aerobic fitness, to continue to maximize performance gains in both, throughout the year? Alongside this – during a climbing intensive block, how much running volume will serve as maintainance and Vica- Versa? also, what kind of length training cycles are appropriate in preparation, when moving to a different goal?
Additional info:
Typical schedule is –
Monday rest
Tuesday – ME workout AM, climb indoors PM
Weds – Run pm
thurs – run AM, climb pm
Fri – run AM, ME workout PM
Sat – run or climb outside
Sunday – run or climb outside depending
On Sat activity.
If you read this far, thanks! Look forward to people’s contributions.
