ARC alternatives | Uphill Athlete

ARC alternatives

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    Topic
  • #11180
    vik.waghray
    Participant

    Like some of you, I live in a city with a pretty crowded gym scene. At the gym I generally prefer to do roped climbing rather than bouldering in order to train climbing endurance, however it is quite difficult to ARC/base build in a crowded gym space when people are waiting for you to get off a route. Does anybody have potential workarounds/tips for achieving a similar training effect as ARCing given these circumstances? One idea I am in the process of trying out is doing multiple shorter sessions on the wall (4-5 minutes each). I have tried doing high-volume/lower-intensity boulder sessions but that has not quite benefitted me as much as doing laps on longer roped climbs. Thanks!

Posted In: Climbing

  • Keymaster
    Steve House on #11220

    Hi Vik,
    I wish I had a great answer for you, and this is a real problem if your gym is crowded. Lacking a magic-wand solution (or installing a treadwall in a private space) here are some options:
    1) Try to do outside on the weekends, again going early/late to minimize conflicts. You’ll need a like-minded partner. This isn’t ideal since you should be doing these sessions multiple times per week.

    2) Bouldering up and down routes, of course this has to be continuous and depending on the layout of the gym’s bouldering area may or may not be feasible. This has the advantage that you’re moving all the time and so you don’t necessarily dominate one problem. The hard part here is that you have to keep the problems easy enough that you can stay on the wall. I have a treadwall and a moonboard in my garage; a luxury, I know. But the treadwall is perfect for this. And when it gets too boring, I do use the moonboard, sticking to easy problems, dropping off and getting back on quickly and repeating the same problem multiple times, usually at least 4 times, sometimes 10. The problem is I get fatigued on that specific range of motion the problem requires, so it’s better to switch to another problem quickly. obvously a moonboard with the LED lights in key for this.

    We haven’t received any hate-mail from climbing gym managers yet but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time!

    Good luck.
    Steve

    Participant
    vik.waghray on #11297

    Thanks for the thorough response, Steve. I have managed to take advantage of sparser crowds early in the mornings and simply traverse on small sections of bouldering walls. Mindnumbing at times, yes, but it gets the job done. One day I will definitely have to invest in a treadwall and/or moonboard!

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