UKC

A new thread is posted each week on Sunday for anyone to jot down their previous week's activity. UKC fit club is a rich community with posters sharing their goals, noting successes and failures and offering support to those struggling to maintain motivation. Anyone interested in starting is very welcome to join, but to get the most of UKC fit club you should aim to post each week, every week, however little or much you have done. By making such a regular public record of your activities and by restating your goals every week this new habit will hopefully improve your training habits and drive you towards achieving your goals whatever the level of your chosen activity.

The following training article by Alex Barrows gives an excellent breakdown on training the four main "energy systems" specific to climbing:- http://alexbarrowsclimbing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/training-for-sport-climbi...     also this - https://www.instagram.com/p/CEGfCg7DbkK/?igshid=4a1o55jwpus2

For those wanting to find out more about training for climbing a number of physical training articles are linked here:- http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=274502

Psyche vid - I guess has to be Alex M on Bibliographie. youtube.com/watch?v=COuxNFuAS1Q& Looking forward to Seb Bouin snatching the second ascent next summer while everybody else is messing about in Tokyo

Last weeks post - https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/walls+training/ukc_fit_club_week_713-7278...

AJM - maybe time to re-read Dave Mac's thoughts on how maintenance is better than giving up when circumstances are not conducive. Re-reading 9 out of 10 being, of course, never a bad idea.

Ally Smith - good effort on the boards, finger- and moon. Especially the DIY/moonboard superset!

biscuit - ah, the tension between "stick with the plan" versus "what I think I need". Good luck with the routes trip actually going ahead.

Liam P - good luck with fingerboard endurance - personally I just do max hangs and hope/assume it will be possible to rebuild endurance post lockdown. "Accidentally" drank all the brandy???

mattrm - is the 1½ hour Y Fal target for the 11.5 mile, 450 metres of ascent version? Getting ready to be impressed.

Ross Barker - solid sessions there. If you're on +7kg max hangs, might it not be a bit early to think about moving to one-arm hangs? Careful with your shoulders if you do.

Si dH - sounds like a week of two halves. Careful with the neck.

Somerset swede basher - solid training week up to & not including the tweaked back. Hope it is just a tweak.

Steve Jones - "day off ... deadlifts"? "Lazy"?? But seriously, good effort on the pull ups.

the sheep - three runs is a solid effort

Tom Green - another one signed up to the "rest days are for the weak" school of thought! One core and general strength session is indeed infinitely better than none.

Tyler - thanks for checking in

AlanLittle - unexpected good weather and weekend days out are all very well, but you need to get a little more structure into your weekday activities, including more (than hardly any!) general strength & conditioning work.

Absent: planetmarshall

Thanks Alan.  Took it easier this week to give my pulleys a rest. No climbing on the board at all! My neck is almost fully better now, it's just stiff and slightly painful if I try to twist my head a long way leftward. Been like that for several days. The only problem is looking over my shoulder when driving. Not sure what caused it.

M: rest

T: 5*5 pull-ups with 23 kg then TRX exercises (upper body)

W: did six max hangs with 14 kg added. (Dropped from the usual weight to give pulleys a rest, I just wanted to do something rather than let them relax completely.)

T:  2*5 pull-ups with 23 kg then re-tested my 2 rep max. Managed to do bodyweight plus 40kg. Possibly had another couple of kg in me but ran out of time. Happy with that, 4+kg improvement since when I started doing the 5*5s 8 weeks ago.

F: rest. Got stressed at work so had a beer and too much home made choc brownie. 

S:  nominally another rest day, although it involved some quite physical gardening. 

S: first proper grit session of the winter! Went to Earl. Cold but only a very occasional breeze down below the crag and good friction. Managed to do Desert Island Arete (Bloc) (f7A+), which I'm pleased with as I had 3 sessions without managing it last winter. Being slightly stronger on the crux hold and finding a beta improvement made the difference. I also pulled on to The Flakes (7B) afterwards but immediately bent my right front 2 fingers backwards painfully in the starting pocket. I've bruised the backs of the knuckles quite badly so just hoping there is no lasting soft tissue damage. I suspect it'll be fine in a day or two.

Hoping my fingers feel good if I get back on the board/fingerboard this week. If tweaky I'll switch to some pocket work for a while as a change. Grit season always helps with pulley niggles as I don't use them much at the weekends.

Si

Thanks Alan. I’ll try to dig it out! 

Another busy week. 2 good fingerboard sessions but that’s it. I’m hoping that by the end of this week a bit of the pressure might have fallen away but I’ve been let down before!

Monday - half day off in an effort to try to catch up on life a bit. Obviously ended up being rather short as I was at work until nearly 2, but there we go. Amidst some admin, I also did some training. In fact I probably did more training than admin.

- Fingerboarding on pockets again. Hangs up to bw+11.25 on front 2 and bw+6.25 on middle 2 on the lower rung pockets. Personal bests on both I am pretty sure.

- at the end I had a quick go on the 10mm crimps just to remind my fingers how - I did think at some point I should maybe do some AnCap fingerboard work and that this might be a likely candidate - and did a few hangs up to about bw+15.

Tues-Fri - too busy. Full days of work followed by dinner/bedtime for the little ones followed by more work. I had Thursday afternoon off, in theory (I had about 3 hours out in the afternoon but then worked all evening, so it was more of a time shift than time off), so I did manage to take miniAJM to the beach for a bit which was good for the soul. A restorative felt more useful than trying to stress finding away to squeeze climbing into a narrow window with miniAJM.

Saturday - fingerboard. Did hangs on the 10mm crimps and the bm2k rails to bw+15kg, but my shoulders were feeling weak. Moving to lower total weight to try to sidestep the shoulders, I tried some hangs on the 35 degree slopers to bw+5kg and managed a 2-finger & mono hang (the  middle rung bm2k 2 finger pockets and the bottom rung mono) on both sides - my right hand middle isn’t very happy but I can use index, left hand I can use middle or index. Much to my amazement, on my strongest combo - front 2 RH and left middle - I can do maybe 4-5s using the bottom row pockets and mono. Pretty pleased with that!

Sunday - not a lot. I did get some new rubbish footholds for the FoC delivered - I bought some 30mm wooden hemispheres from amazon which I’m going to drill and screw on - so looking forwards to trying those out next week. Having done a few of the lower intensity 5-3-5-3-5 sessions now which has hopefully helped me up from a zero start point I might start mixing in some of the more intense 1-on-1-off stuff in now too.

Goals for the week - some of:

- pockets focused fingerboard or ancap on the 10mm crimps

- 1-on-1-off trying out some of my new rubbish feet

- go outside?

- some sort of weighted pull-ups or other shoulder exercise

- make some progress on the remaining “making” tasks.

effort! I’m a long way from that. 

Cheers Alan.

All things considered, I haven’t had a bad week. I’m really missing the walls but trying to maintain as much gainzzz as possible by using the hangboard. Psyched to discover a big weakness in endurance and a good way to train it. Although that’s the extent of my training this week.

STG: week 1 (of 2) of the endurance phase of Eric Hörst T4C Programme. 10min set of moving hangs.

MTG: Lead 10x VS by end of 10week cycle. Still on 1/10 done and running out of time!

LTG: Solid on HVS/E1. DoWH HVS 4c being a goal for next Spring.

M: Hangboard Moving Hangs 5-3-5-3-5. I put my feet on a small stool but got pumped pretty quickly.

T: rest

W: Hangboard Moving Hangs 5-3-5-3-5. Left my feet on the floor but fully weighted my arms. Got a decent pump at the end of each set.

T: Crimpd Finger Strength Test. Total Weight: 106kg (123%) on the 27mm edge. Not sure if this is good or bad? 
Went on to 3 sets of 6 repeaters (7/3) at BW (4mins rest between sets). Crimpd said to take off 30kg and do more reps but I don’t have enough free weights.

F: Hangboard Moving Hangs. Feet on the floor. 5-3-5-3-5. 

S: Rest

S: Trip to Swanage to tick more VSs but it was damp/raining. Ended up aiding an A1 cave roof crack “The Pod” at Hedbury. Good fun but zero training benefit.

The Christmas Pudding’s second feed went well and the Port appears to be lasting a lot longer than the Brandy. Should be able to get another week out of it at this rate.

Have a good week - hopefully the walls reopen on the 2nd!

Thanks, however, I find your 11kg front 2 on those smallest pockets fairly mind boggling, I cannot even hang bodyweight from front 2 on them at the moment. I also find bodyweight on my 10mm crimps the living end, although admittedly they are more like 9mm and slightly rounded. So, each to their own...

Thanks again Alan for the continued effort on the threads! Yeah might seem a bit soon to get on one handed stuff, part of it was just my curiosity of how well it works with my current set up, don't think I'll be regularly doing them for a while yet. Could possibly be a usable system for one armers on a bar though.

Last week:

M - Rest

T - Rest

W - One armed hangs. Managed 3 reps RH -10kg, almost 3 LH -10kg, so did two more each side with -12kg. Not very scientific as my pulley system comprises of a static rope and a carabiner. I think before I can realistically train like this I need to sort out the swinging of the hangboard itself (and get stronger!), the instability is too great.

T - Rest

F - Rest

S - Rest

S - Western grit. Arrived at  Newstones and Baldstones and was horrified at the sheer quantity of people out and about, so sacked it off to  Ramshaw Rocks. Was still a bit busy there, but towards the far end it quietened up a fair bit. I think Covid had a pretty lasting effect on my general fitness, was very tired after the approach! Did a couple of warm ups and had a look at California Screaming (f7B+), doesn't it look amazing?! Also looks nails, so didn't actually pull on. Gave a solid flash attempt and a good few burns on Lust Left-hand (f7B), but skin on my fingertips just couldn't keep up, so had to move on. Considered Tierdrop but from experience it doesn't treat thin skin lightly. Went back to Newstones as it has quietened down, had a few tries on a few things but didn't get anything of note done.

To conclude, skin was shit, didn't get much done, crags were incredibly busy, but it was nice to get out again at least.

Next week:

M - Rest

T - If I go out on Thursday then I'll take it easy, maybe just some general conditioning. If it falls through then board session most likely.

W - Rest

T - Very tempted to try book this off work and get outside, weather looks glorious! Keen to finish off one of these goals...

F - Rest

S, S - Hopefully decent enough weather to get out somewhere, but if the previous weekend is anything to go by we need to go very esoteric.

Goals:

Tierdrop

Suavito

Old King Cascade

Unnamed Local Project

There's a bit of me that sort of knows that whilst I think of pockets as a weakness compared to edges, I'm still ignoring the elephant in the room/real area of weakness that is my shoulders/back/core chain.....

Cheers Alan. Not a very eventful week again. Got 4 runs in averaging around 10km a pop. Trails round my way are getting very muddy now. Have taken to standing in the stream that runs through the village to wash the mud off before i get home   

Hi All. Thanks Alan for continuing a solid run of stats.

Not all of my 'training' days are real training -the prehab days are pretty low workload, so essentially are rest days. My body definitely disagreed that one strength sesh is better than none -ferocious DOMS from including TRX in the sesh for the first time in months!

Week 47:

M: Board sesh. Limit bouldering -mixed success, progress on one problem, backward progress on another (I suspect my finger strength wasn't good enough after max hangs the previous day)!

T: Hill run. 44 min Z1. 7km, 255m vert. Cut short as knee was sore on the downhill.

W: Max hangs. Core and strength. TRX feels shockingly hard after not doing any for a few months.

T: Rest day.

F: Prehab.

S: Hill run. 73min Z1. 10.6 km, 432 m vert. 

S: Dry tooling. Fun sesh at Masson Lees. Felt less strong than a couple of weeks ago (maybe a bit less rested?) but got to the last clip before the chains on Heavens Above (D7+) so hopefully next time will arrive there with a bit more in the tank for the last hard move.

Week 48:

The usual plan: 2 Runs, 2 Core sessions, 2 Climbing sessions, 2 Prehab sessions, 2 Strength sessions.

I've sneakily extended the STG/MTG periods as it became obvious that they weren't realistically going to fit in with life/weather/etc...

STGs (End Dec):

BW <72kg -need to start paying more attention to this.

Max Hangs +4kg

Pull-up 2RM 90kg total

Curfew (6b+) The Day of the Triffids (6b)

Black Wall (E1 5b)

Run Edale Skyline

MTGs (End Feb):

Max Hangs +8kg

Pull-up 2RM 100kg total

Grid Iron (6c) The Deep (6c+)

Black Wall Direct (E2 5c)

Run Cheshire Gritstone Trail

LTGs:

7a, 6C.

33 E-points in 2021 (to beat current best year).

Run Welsh 3000s

Revisit Cairngorm Classic Rock in a day

Long alpine rock routes off my to-do-list?

Nearly forgot my own contribution!

STG: Get through Lockdown 2.0 with sanity intact. Ideally also with some fingerboard gainz. Zellerwand 7a project, weather permitting
MTG: Do a beginner ski tour in spring 2021
LTG: Be a confident, well rounded low to mid 7's sport climber by 2021. For measurable definition see Fit Club 658

M: 
T: 
W: 40 minutes bike ride
    Beastmaker max hangs
T: 40 minutes mobility, shoulders, wrist extensors
F: 
S: Zellerwand. Sunny and - later on - much warmer than the forecast low single digits. But I acquired a mild but persistent flash pump from the morning cold start, so no projecting today. Still got some decent mileage in on pleasant easier routes - and every day out right now is an unexpected victory snatched from the jaws of oncoming winter and lockdown.

S: Zellerwand. More perfect autumn conditions, another visit to The Proj. Harsh lesson on the difference between doing all the moves separately, and actually being able to link them. Plus when & where to do the non-optional mid crux clip (no idea as yet). A good day. 

Cheers for the stats Alan

Week 47

M – Core: 4x 10 leg raises. Bench: 5x 8rep @ 55kg. Pull-ups: 5x5 on-the-minute @BW+7kg. Tendon density: F3SC (BW-10kg; hard – surprising what a difference 2.5kg can make. Maybe back to -12.5kg and do 40s instead?) and f3 drag (BW; also hard). Finished with 4x 10s on-the-minute 1-arm shoulder engagements on a jug. Right controlled rotation just fine, but was rotating on left for 3rd & 4th reps. Forearm COMPEX capillarisation.

T – Nothing beyond some bodyweight squats to get the blood moving during a whole day of teleconferences. Stretches.

W – Short board session. Managed a stout 7B (Califfone; multi-session siege – easily 7B+) a soft 7B (Captain Fitzroy; 3rd go) and a sneaky 7A+ (Ultralight).

T – Revisited a bunch of benchmark 6B+’s to warm-up on the board, then cranked it up to repeating individual moves on 7A+/B to get recruited for 1-arm hangs. Worked well; Crimpd 1-arm; 10s x6 @BW-11kg. Hard, but kinda to be expected 2nd day on. Ticked 2x benchmarks and logged my own 7B problem. 3x 10 leg raises and COMPEX core/groin rehab. Lots of stretching.

F – Lots of work – beer consumption was essential to compensate for the caffeine intake over the last few days

S – Gardening and DIY extravaganza. Culminated in sloe gin filtering and bottling; obviously needed sampling for quality assurance

S – Wet peak, so warmed up on Moonboard for an hour; got 2x new 7A+ benchmarks done before heading to Roaches after lunch. Absolute shit show of parking. Tetris block thankfully quiet. Did Four Lions (f7B) with the proper (hard) finish. Tried the sit (Tetris) start a few times and got close.

Thanks Alan, great work on the stats.

Mon. 6 set of BW repeaters on the 20mm edge - felt easier than last week.  Not sure how i should make this harder, another rep on each set or another set?  5x5 BW on the min pull ups. 3x10 press ups.

Tues. An hr of 10min on 10min off in the attic.

Wed.  6x10sec max hangs at BW+21Kg.  Felt ok, will put another kg on next week.  5x5 BW+9kg pull ups.  Felt better than lastr week, will put another on enxt time.  3x10 pressups.  8km run in the eve.

Thus and Fri rest.

Sat.  Burbage was pretty wet when I drove home late Friday night so nipped to cemetery park between showers.  Managed Upan Dat'em (f7A+) and The Infinite (f7B+) which are both things I've tried before but not been able to manage.  Excited to try the linking Infinite into The Power (7C) mostly because it has the obvious and awesome name of Infinite Power (7C+/8A).  The link move does look hard though.

Sun. 9km trail run.

Lots of variables to play with here, depending on what you want to achieve.

...Assuming you're doing the classic 7s hang / 3s rest x6; rest 3min, repeat:

1) Increase intensity:

- Adding weight

- Decrease edge size (personally wouldn't recommend - skin will scream)

- 3-fingers instead of 4 (how'd you think I ended up favouring back-3 over front-3...?)

2) Increase time under tension:

- 8s hang / 3s rest

- 7x 7s hang / 3s rest

- Do an extra set

3) Decrease rest to 2min between sets (challenges an-cap by making subsequent sets harder as you won't have recovered)

It all depends on what your weakness is and how you want to improve? 

Thanks Ally,

Yeah, I've been doing the classic 7s/3s x6 rest 3mins.

I'd like faster recovery so I think I'll try knocking 30sec off the rest period next week and see how it goes.

Cheers Alan. S&C work is what has busted me through my plateaux I believe. Little and often is all that's needed. It adds up over the weeks. Get on it!

I decided to stick with 'the plan' rather than panic and adapt it. I'm doing Lattice Lite as a bit of an experiment so i need to follow it through. The obvious issue is that now they are bringing in route pyramids and doubles etc. Hard to replicate outside in the rain, or on a fingerboard.

I got all my conditioning done and had two trips to the Red Traverse (7b+). It's great for building a pump and recovering at various intensities. It's known as almost perma dry but even this was wet in patches so i just climbed from the start to the resting holds after the crux a couple of times each visit. Next time i'm going to try and reverse from there.

I then had a go on Shallow Grave (f7A+) after traversing. First session involved me trying a half pad mono move that didn't feel like i should be doing with a trip coming up. Second session i made the filthy crimp work, but i can't reach the next pocket. You tube and asking around reveals that being tall deffo helps. 

This week will again be heavily loaded in the second half of the week due to work in the first half. But i should get stuff done. Just waiting for the walls to open next week to get pumped.

True dat. I have been working on shoulder mobility (2-3x a week) and strength (mostly overhead pressing, 1-2x a week) pretty consistently for a while now, and my shoulder health is definitely on the up.  But other body parts are available ...

Lost track of what I was doing last week, but did have a good session at  Harland Edge on Sunday. 

The Peak is just astonishingly busy at the weekends at the moment, so having to search out some of the quieter spots.

Next week

Keep a better record of what I've been doing. 

More of the same really