Having recently sent my winter boulder projects I’m now switching attention to route climbing for the rest of the year. I leave for Kalymnos in 4 weeks (but have been training endurance since Christmas albeit alongside more of a focus on bouldering outside if I could get out), and so have 3 weeks left of full training load, then a taper week.
What do people think/have experience of when it comes to feet-on campus ladders to train route endurance?
Potential pros
- absolutely blasts the forearms in a super targeted way, getting maximum pump into the part of the arms most likely to be a weak link on limit endurance climbs
- I am prone to over-training and this is a high intensity but low volume (see below) exercise as compared to my usual default of 4 x 60-70 move circuit board laps at 20degree angle
- I once saw a Ste Mac interview where he said when he had kids to look after he often just did feet on repeaters and said it was a game changer
Possible cons:
- no skill improvement (not so important as don’t get much skill refinement from a dialled circuit?)
- neglects other muscles groups that will be relevant for climbing real routes, especially long Kalymnos ones
- the Kalymnos trip is to level up before switching to trad focus for rest of the year; is this kind of brutal forearm blasting overkill and insufficiently trad relevant
Thoughts?
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Two sessions completed this week, roughly as follows
set 1 - 2mins 20 secs
set 2 - 2mins
set 3 - 1min 40 secs
set 4 - 1 min
set 5 - 1 min
set 6 - 50 seconds
2 minute rest between each set