[Roberttaylor]

Just wanting to get one or two things straight in my head.

On page 191 weeks 6-8 require functional strength sessions rather than general strength sessions that are mentioned in 1-5. What’s the difference?

If I do a strength/aerobic session on the same day would you advise me to do the strength first or the aerobic first? Same question with muscular endurance and max strength.

Say I do a session at the wall, should I count only time spent on the wall?

Based on the ‘climbing as training’ part near the back of the book, I’m looking to add in bouldering in liu of some strength sessions and route climbing in liu of some muscular endurance sessions (about 1/3 of them). Have you had success with this?

Cheers,

Robert

Topic

[maxf]

maxf on September 17, 2017 at 1:14 pm #6098

Hi Robert,

I realise these are probably aimed at the authors, but I’ll hazard a guess…

Your first question has been asked previously, if I remember correctly the answer was they are the same and it was a typo.

Re: climbing – the answer seems to be – count it, but 4 hours at the wall is unlikely to be equal to 4 hours running. I think as long as your consistent in logging it doesn’t matter. Personally I tend to log about 1/3 of the time at the wall/gym. I keep meaning to calculate actual time moving but haven’t yet done it.

I’ve always seen it recommended to do max strength before muscular endurance. Or strength before aerobic. Interested to hear the “official” answer on this.

I had good results doing bouldering sessions followed by a few sets of squats or box step ups and maybe some weighted pullups if there was anything left in the arms.

[Roberttaylor]

Roberttaylor on September 17, 2017 at 1:48 pm #6099

Hi Max,

Thanks, questions were aimed at whoever could give me answers! Your input is appreciated.

Robert

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on September 17, 2017 at 5:15 pm #6104

Robert

Max nailed these answers and gets a gold star. There were a few typos in the book that slipped through. General and Functional were 2 names we were using while trying to decide on the one we’d stick with and some places it didn’t get changed when we finally settled on General.

Be consistent in how you log your training what ever it is. Belayed climbing we normally suggest counting as 50% since you are probably standing still half the time.

Strength, Power or Speed should be trained before endurance typically.

Max Strength before ME? I’d answer an qualified yes because I am not sure when you’d be training these 2 qualities at the same time. Read below.

Max: You can use a Max strength session after bouldering? If you are doing endurance bouldering then the short (non exhaustive) Max session can act as a recovery workout. We often do a max strength workout after hard intervals to speed recovery. If it is Power/strength bouldering session then it may be that your fingers gave out before the big muscles in your shoulders/back and arms and “finishing” them off with this type of thing makes complete sense.

Thanks for the great questions,
Scott

[Peter W]

Peter W on September 18, 2017 at 1:37 pm #6116

Robert,

I’ve typically found that a TSS-type approach is the easiest way to keep my training log relatively consistent. I do this approach instead of just dividing by 2 or 3 because its easier to differentiate between different types of climbing and the systemic fatigue they build.

For ex. I’ve assigned 100 to my AeT level workouts, so for volume climbing (as a 5.12/V7-8 climber this is 5.11A and easier) I use a TSS of 50, for hard onsight/redpoint days I use a value of 80, and hangboard+mobility sessions get a value of 30. I’ve settled on these values based on fatigue, but the seem to make my weekly total TSS a better summary statistic than just volume.

Due to time/commuting constraints I often find myself able to only go to the gym 2x during the week. Typically on these sessions during a base period I’ll end up doing some combination of endurance (volume climbing or run/walking) as well as strength work. When I tried do the strength work at the end of the sessions I found that the pre-fatigue has sapped my top-end so I was getting max-strength mental exertion at lower than expected weights and not really improving. When doing strength then endurance, I felt my numbers were more consistent and progressed more steadily. Also, I really make a conscious effort to really focus on my technique during these climbing sessions so I’m not accidentally learning bad form while tired.