Hi,
I’m trying to build a base of climbing and approach fitness for some trips late this summer and fall. I’ve always been a strength/bouldering biased climber so I’m focusing on longer Z1 workouts with a pack and getting in a lot of volume climbing. Sadly, of my two most regular partners one is a lawyer whose caseload has increased a lot this spring and the other is in grad school and hard to make reliable day-to-day plans with. This has cut down on the frequency I’ve been able to rope up from 3-4 to 1-2 times a week.
I’m still focusing on building my base and was wondering what the best ways to keep doing this are if I cant rope up as often. My gym can be used for some traversing early in the morning and also has a great bouldering area and system walls. For reference, i have a consistent onsight level around V5/V6 boulders and 5.11+ routes.
I’ve been able to think of 4 ways to try to keep building my climbing base:
1. Doing larger numbers of easy (1-2 grades below onsight and easier) boulder problems?
2. After an extensive warm-up, doing a smaller number (10-20) of problems at or just below my onsight grade? I know this definitionally more of a ME workout but I feel like its usually built-up fatigue not a pump that limits these sessions.
3. Tons of easy traversing when the gym is dead quiet in the mornings.
4. Sadly, the easiest difficulty on the system boards seems to be too high for standard ARC sessions but works for 3-5min long “tempo-intensity” blocks.
Just a function of holds in the gym it often feels like options 1 and 3 are bigger tests of skin than muscular endurance, at least without adding any additional weight.
Any other thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. I feel like this is a problem a lot of climbers have at some point but I’ve never heard any real solutions tossed out there.
