[xcskier]

What would good local muscular endurance exercises be for the upper body,
core and for the lower back?

The the TftNA book there’s a brief mention of hand walking on a treadmill.
Is it wise to do two muscular endurance sessions in a day (for legs/arms)
or even in the same session? It seems that it would be ok since you are taxing
only local muscles, but there could be a significant hormonal cost to doing
two of these sessions in a day.

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on April 2, 2018 at 7:02 pm #9050

Yes you can do arms and legs ME in the same day. For XC skiing the best LME upper body workout is poling in more difficult conditions. Most specific: Double or single pole uphill on roller or snow skis. In the gym use the lat pull down machine and do standing double pole pull downs.

A roller borad is great for this. A C2 Skierg works well but its hard to add enough resistance for true LME work.

Scott

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 3, 2018 at 9:52 am #9063

Let’s talk about Muscular Endurance Training (ME Training) as it apples to Rock Climbing, and all the same could be applied for ice climbing as well:

The basic concept of Muscular Endurance is to do the sport specific work in ‘more difficult conditions’ (to quote the god-father of ME training, Verkoshensky’s, definition). You simply overload the working muscles beyond what you’d ask them to do in the ‘race’ or ‘event’. I first witnessed ME training in Rock Climbing way back when…(early 90’s, I’m not sure exactly) watching (slack-jawed) Scott Franklin doing laps on Churning in the Wake, a 5.13a wearing a weight vest. Soon after that Scott Franklin became the first American to establish a 5.14a.

ME Training works, but it has to come on top of solid fitness and health. I’ve heard Scott J tell a story about a very strong British climber that used to do laps on the traverses around boulder wearing a diver’s weight belt though most climbers struggled to finish the same traverses unencumbered. I’ve seen a lot of other good rock climbers (5.13+ climbers) doing this at Smith Rock over the last two decades.

Climbers have to be careful that they do this at an easy-enough grade relative to their maximum grade to make sure they don’t hurt their fingers. They also need to be smart about applying this type of training at the right time in the training, it has to come on top of a regular diet of high-volumes of climbing

I myself have done this workout on my Treadwall, using finger friendly holds. We’ve also had a lot of people doing this type of climbing with a little weight in the backpack (it doesn’t take that much weight!) I know that Josh Wharton who also does this type of ME training on his Treadwall.

A bit off topic. Scott Johnston reminded me of this: Eric Horst, author of Training for climbing, uses extra weight for his ‘max strength’ type training with a systems wall. He uses a max strength protocol (few reps, lots of rest) but keep in mind that this is very different than a ME workout. An ME workout would need to be have ‘on times’ close to the length of the event, so climbing 30 meters, then resting a shorter period, then climbing 30 meters again would be a sample ME protocol.

[Peter W]

Peter W on April 4, 2018 at 10:47 am #9092

Steve/Scott/knowledgeable people,

I’ve been wondering about doing the type of weighted traverses (easy to do w/o a partner) or climbs that Steve mentions above for ME work. I know there’s a relationship between weight added and difficulty climbed but where would suggest the best safety/stimulus weight and relative grade combo is? I.e. at 1 number grade below onsight max add 10-15lbs?

Relatedly, if ARCing by traversing at some point the gym hug haul is too low intensity but the system board is maybe a little too difficult. I feel like this happens to a lot of 5.11/5.12 climbers. I’ve been thinking about adding weight to easy ARC traverses as a way of increasing the intensity but it seems that this is going to be too hard on the skin/tendons relative to just upping the intensity of the climbs even if the set’s duration has to be cut a fair bit at first. Seem right?

Thanks!

[bretparkhill]

bretparkhill on August 16, 2021 at 4:11 pm #56410

If using the treadmill hand walking as ME is there any issue with increasing volume from 2 sets to 3 to 4 to 5 etc? Would I be better served by staying at 2 sets and putting my feet on a swiss ball?