UKC

I'm due to have foot operation and will be in plaster. I'll need about three months before thinking about climbing again. I'm a regular at the wall, plus finger boarding and general gym work - all of which I use as a background to trad when the weather allows. As usual, I'm anxious about losing strength and fitness during this period.
Can anyone point me to info, books, videos, or even coaches, for inspiration on how to avoid stagnation during the "layoff"? I need to come up with an interim training regime.

In reply to tcb:

Check out Dave Macleod's blog - he recently had a lay off for ankle surgery, and think he did loads of feet off stuff.

In reply to tcb:

Imagine it would be hard to see where you were going....

In reply to tcb:

vimeo.com/42893621

In reply to tcb:

https://www.trainingbeta.com/dave-macleod-campus-training-through-injury/

In reply to conorcussell:

Genius!

In reply to conorcussell:

You beat me to it! That has to be one of my favourite 'training' videos out there!

In reply to tcb: You normally train at the wall, fingerboard and gym.

Well if you're foots kaput then you can still do the fingerboard and gym things, and you might figure out you can do sometihng at the wall too. So train away.....

In reply to tcb:

FWIW, I was off climbing for a similar amount of time after a foot injury and ended up coming back with stronger fingers than before.

So: fingerboarding you're doing already, but if you're not able to do any actual climbing, you can crank up the intensity and frequency of sessions because you don't need to recover from the physical stresses of climbing itself.

Plus, all sorts of pull-ups, hanging leg raises, lever work, etc.

(Just watch out so you don't bash your foot if you drop off unexpectedly.)

Gym stuff: when I was on crutches, I found that *getting* to a gym was way too much hassle (I don't have a car). But if you've got a few weights at home, you can do a tonne of stuff. This is also a good time for any rehab/prehab exercises that you may have been ignoring -- e.g. if your elbows can be a bit tweaky, now's the time to fix them.

Even if you can't weight-bear through the injured foot for a while, you can do any exercises that can be done sitting down or lying on the floor. Core stuff and flexbility work generally doesn't need feet! I even did one-legged planks and push-ups.

In reply to slab_happy:

Superb reply. Just what I was looking for.

In reply to slab_happy:

To add to that, you can also train in your head. I am not joking here, but you could try visualization exercises for moves you want to be able to pull off when fit again.

Never tried this for climbing, as I am just climbing for fun, but it definitely was part of injury rehab programs when I was seriously doing Judo competitions.

CB

In reply to cb294:

Good point. There's really fascinating research showing that visualizing yourself doing an exercise (in as much sensory detail as possible, in real time) actually produces some of the strength improvements that you'd get from spending the same amount of time actually doing the exercise (possibly through improving the brain's ability to recruit the muscles).

It's much less than the improvement you'd get from actually doing the exercise, but it's still significant, and it's interesting and surprising that you get it at all; people have been speculating on how to apply it to maintaining strength during injury, neurological movement disorders, etc..

I've played with watching clips of climbing footage with moves I find particularly interesting/impressive, trying to imagine the feel of doing that move as much as I can.

If nothing else, it's a good excuse to watch a lot of climbing films. *g*

(Which I also found morale-boosting when I couldn't climb, to help motivate me to doing training exercises I found boring or unpleasant, because it reminded me of why I was doing it.)

I recommend SteepEdge for all your climbing film needs!

In reply to slab_happy:

Also, I found that inviting climber friends round to eat pizza and watch climbing films helped stop me from going stir-crazy and was an excellent way to stay in touch with people who I'd usually only see at the wall or on trips.