Hi Scott and Steve,
I know this thread is quite old, but I’d be really interested in hearing your thoughts on improving arm muscle endurance in a slightly different situation. For climbers interested in improving muscle endurance for overhanging climbs at lower altitude, would it be useful to engage our arms in our aerobic training program (high volume of training below AeT)?
Concretely, would it helps to substitute running or stair-master sessions with rowing at the gym or doing cross-country skiing?
Or would you recommend to have focused arm endurance training rather than trying to combine leg and arm endurance training in the same sessions?
My understanding from Training for the New Alpinism is that an important benefit of training below aerobic threshold is to improve *muscle* ability to use oxygen and fuel (improvement of capillaries, mitochondrial mass and enzymes, myoglobin) and it seems that bringing these benefits to the arms would be very useful even for single pitch climbs (and even more for long alpine routes, which is what I mostly focus on). After all, a long overhanging pitch can easily last several minutes and as you mention in the book, even an 800m runner spend a lot of time training their aerobic base even though their event can be below 2min for elite athletes.
Thanks for your insight
Nicolas