UKC

Hi all,

I've got 4 weeks to try to improve my strength and power (I think they're different things?).

The good thing is that I can get down to the wall most evenings and at the weekend if the weather's bad but the bad thing is that I don't know the best way to train when I'm down there. Should I boulder? and recovery times? vary the problems during each session? or have a longer term projects? perhaps steep one week and fingery the next?

Has anyone any ideas? Of course I could just go bouldering and hope for the best but I have Neil's Masterclass articles on power endurance and putting some structure to the sessions has really helped.

Thanks,

Doug

In reply to douglas:
Boulder lots, leave fresh, 1 days rest between, eat well, sleep lots. Why 4 weeks?

Take roids.

In reply to krank: because I'm doing 4 week blocks. Thanks for those points. Is leaving fresh to avoid injury or something else?

In reply to krank:
Training power and strength.....leave fresh? are you sure? I think you mean leave absolutely hammered.
D

In reply to douglas:

do you have access to a campus board?

4 weeks with an emphasis on that and you'll be pulling harder (as long as you don't forget to use your feet).

In reply to douglas: I don't think 4 weeks will be enough for both as you'll need a good rest day in between each session. Would like to know what progress you make though

In reply to dirtbag1:
I was always under the impression that leaving fresh would allow better recovery which would allow the next session to be sooner. My sessions consist of warm up then an hourish of high intensity training then warm down and go home, leaving relativly fresh.
What do your (and presumably the british teams) power/strength training sessions consist of?

In reply to krank: Go to failure and then more failure and when you're to tired to fail get your climbing partner to help you fail some more.
If you go to a weights gym and do five bicep curls and then go home you're not tearing the muscle fibres, you need to damage the muscles to cause hypertrophy. In four weeks that'd be too short a time for noticable muscle volume increase, the OP would be better increasing recruitment of the muscle tissue he already has, very low rep (1-2) + very high intensity......don't get me started on training, I've got work to do.

In reply to dirtbag1:

Any chance you could post some of your training ideas up on your site? I've followed some of your posts re: training and they've been very practical.

In reply to dirtbag1:
Ok im fine on the recruitment side, it makes sense. But i would have thought that hypertrophy was not the desired target as muscle is heavy and adding loads would make you heavy, strong but heavy.
Are you meaning training with weights or training by climbing ie hard boulder problems or system training? Would the muscle mass added by climbing training be low enough to not matter? i would have thought lots of hypertrophy through weight training would lead to becoming a meathead?
I am trying to avoid work i think you should have a break and share the knowledge

In reply to krank:
Putting muscle mass on is not a problem for me as additional shoulder bulk would be welcome, but for some folk, if already well developed, it could be a issue, this would be quite rare though (you'd have to be pretty butch).
I really have to work....
Training stuff will come onto the website one day, but until then anyone can feel free to contact me for specific advice (ideally by phone, two-finger typing takes forever).
http://www.homemadeclimbingstuff.com/contact.htm
Drew

In reply to dirtbag1:
Cheers Drew, i will be in touch.

In reply to krank:

To build size, like a body builder, you'd be doing 8-12 reps & putting lots of foreign substances in your body! On the other hand doing low but heavy reps will increase your power without adding to much bulk, think little Turkish Power Lifters. So much stronger pound for pound than bodybuilders! For stamina you'd be wanting to do high reps with much lower weights

In reply to Bill Davidson:
Yep, i know this all ready.

In reply to krank:

i would have thought lots of hypertrophy through weight training would lead to becoming a meathead?


Well I was replying to this. Unless I misread it.

In reply to Bill Davidson:
My reply sounded a bit off hand it wasnt meant to, i have to post quick to avoid the boss.
Hypertrophy is the increase in muscle size through training. Recruitment is the increase of usefull muscle fibres leading to an increase in muscle quality, giving you more recruitment of your existing muscle fibres and not increasing size but increasing power/strength.
I think

In reply to krank:

Steep intense bouldering is good for hypertrophy judging by the physiques of dedicated boulderers.

In reply to Simon Lee:
I do alot of steep bouldering and in a couple of years have not put on any muscular weight but have got much stronger. I would therefore have thought that steep bouldering at your limit was better for recruitment than for hypertrophy.

In reply to krank:

I am definitely not a training guru, but I would have thought that it's not so much a question of avoiding putting on any muscle mass, as putting on the right muscle mass.

Even though muscle increases in weight faster than it does in strength, I would have thought that most people could stand to put on muscle mass in their forearms and shoulders (to a lesser extent) and still improve their strength to weight ratio, as the weight in your forearms and shoulders is low compared with the weight in, say, your legs, that you need to carry up the climb with you.

Just to make some numbers up - let's say your forearm muscle mass is 4kg out of a total body mass of 70kg. Let's say you improve your max load by 10% but put on 50% additional weight - that's increasing your body mass from 70kg to 72kg or 3% overall. So that's a 10% gain in strength for only a 3% gain in weight overall.

I don't know what actual numbers are, I made those up. But make sense in theory?

In reply to dirtbag1:

This is absolute rubbish. What research have you got to back this up? This goes against all current thinking about training for power and strength training! How can you still be training power with extended session?

Are you getting confused with overload and exhaustion? It's possible to stress muscles into hypertrophy without working to failure (exhaustion) but by overload.

I can see that an occasional session could boost you out of a plateau but bodybuilders are the only people I know who would use this approach all the time and they are not know for their power/strength compared to say weight lifters

In reply to krank:

I take your word for it - individual responses are diffrent - but no extra muscle is unusual - not even your back and lats ?

In reply to dirtbag1:

That's old school meat-head thinking, Hypertrophy is thought now to be caused by hormonal responses/disruption to the Phospho-Creatine stores.
Remember the wise words of Malc: "Stop strong." Any more than that and you're just giving yourself more to recover from.
Little and often.

In reply to dirtbag1:
BTW, I wasn't implying that you are a meat-head.

In reply to Serpico:
That was my thoughts on it.

In reply to douglas: if you email me I will send you through a simple training plan I use for the kids as they run into the few weeks before comps, we usually roll it out on a monthly basis and it works on a 4 day training week.

In reply to Theclimbinglab:
What do we mean by working to failure, is it can't do any more reps or can't move arms/fingers anymore?
I have read in numerous places that strength training should be done exercising high intensity over high volume.

In reply to james oswald:







Working to the stage where you cant do another rep on your own without assistance. IMO its not good to train to failure all the time, as you'll end up overtraining.

In reply to douglas:
To those which didn't take part in this thread (i know Krank and Drew did) this may be useful http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,10280.0.html

In reply to douglas:
Also this was taken from Neil Greshams guide to hangboarding
Rest and sets

"Rest periods between deadhanging sets should be sufficient to enable you to make quality attempts. For the 'alternate arm' work, this would probably mean at least 5-8 mins between sets, and for the single contractions, 2-5 minutes. If anything, do less rather than more as it is always best to stop when you still feel strong' rather than allowing your performance to drop significantly."

In reply to douglas:


What happens in 4 weeks?

PP.

In reply to Ian Black:


and getting injured

In reply to mrjonathanr:




Aye they sure go hand in hand.