[jake.barber88]

Good morning,

I have been training recently to do aconcagua this December which has now been cancelled and have now decided to focus more on sport climbing until theres more clarity on when we can travel.

The question I had was along the lines of how to mix the training so that I dont overdo it but also I dont want to lose all my aerobic training for next year. Currently I have started doing the following:

Mon – outdoor climbing 1 hour
Tue – easy yoga 20 mins, beastmaker fingerboard session 45 mins, jog to and from work (13 mins each way)
Wed – outdoor climbing 1 hour
Thu – easy yoga 20 mins, max strength workout (from mountaineering training plan) 1 hour, jog to and from work (13 mins each way)
Fri – rest
Sat – climbing 1 hour
Sun – easy yoga 20 mins, max strength workout

What i wondered was if max strength workouts were best for increasing my strength? I bought the intermediate rock climbing training program but realised my ability still isn’t good enough. I’m leading max 6a currently. Am I doing too much or too little? Plus I’m hardly doing any aerobic. My plan is to probably climb the Bolivian mountains in June. So would it be fine to just focus on climbing now and then maybe 4 months before I can change my training to the 16 week plan ive bought?

Thanks in advance
Jake

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on December 3, 2020 at 10:19 am #47762

I wouldn’t start strength training for rock climbing until you’re redpointing 7a+ (12a) and onsighting 6b+ (11a). The most important thing you can do right now is to improve your movement skills. For a skill-sport like climbing, the technique is way more important than strength, especially at the lower grades.

To compare, if you wanted to learn a backflip, would you focus on getting instruction and learning the technique? Or heavy squats to improve your leg drive? Both gymnastics and climbing have huge strength components, but without technique, the strength is useless.

So for climbing, I would focus on as much easy mileage as possible. Auto-belays are great for this. You could do 2x 20m with 10m rest and focus on precise footwork. Check out the Anderson training book for other drill ideas.

For endurance, don’t wait until 16 weeks out. Start now. 16 weeks is the bare minimum to see any appreciable gains in aerobic capacity. You can never have too much base, so the more easy training you can get in between now and your trip, the better off you’ll be.