Training Plan and First Week of Training and Climbing

Hey everybody! Well, it's Tuesday Sunday night right now, so it's early into the end of my first week being 30, and I don't know whether age just kicked in or something happened in my brain, but certainly at least physically, it hasn't been easy for me.

Mexico trip training kicked off after work and driving Maria to her job, and I gotta say it was disappointing to say the least. It's really the first time I feel significantly weaker than I've been before- I have so far always made upwards progression and not only not having that but to be at a low point in 2013 at this stage is downright making me angry (strangely, I'm still psyched to continue training...).

Before I write about my failure, I'll describe my training plan that I intend to follow until we take off to Mexico. I'm not a specialist, so I'm not sure how it'll all go, but it'll be fun to see the progress in this little experiment for me. It's certainly not as intense as, say, this guy's (http://vimeo.com/66473915) or as gruelling as this other guy's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gMIUb4fb04), but it will certainly be a challenge for me as well as being a really enjoyable process. Also, before I describe my training, I must point out that my weakness in climbing is pure power (i.e. the ability to engage maximum strength really fast), and finger strength (being able to hold bad handholds) i.e. bouldery moves on bad (for me this means crimpy) holds, and therefore that is what my training will mostly target (within reason). This will be carried out in a periodized manner (loosely based on this good read: http://www.rockclimbing.com/Articles/Training_and_Technique/The_Making_of_a_Rockprodigy__258.html). I'm not worrying too much about endurance, as this has come rather naturally to me in the recent past (maybe I'm becoming one of those marathonic 80-year olds that swims lap after lap like a torpedo?) and I feel there is an obvious connection between endurance and technique (after all, good technique is just the ability to save as much energy as possible during climbing), so I feel that if I focus on technique, endurance shouldn't be that much of an issue. Another thing to point out is that I feel I often overindulge in the food department, and even though being 72 kg and 1.75 m isn't bad, I really feel like I can comfortably get a little bit lighter, and this goes hand-in-hand with improving at cardio (i.e. running), which should keep me in shape for the altitude climbing that we'll do. Flexibility is one of my advantages, being a little more flexible than the average person of my size, so I intend to take advantage of this by taking this asset as far as I can in these 3 months before going on our trip. Opposition training (working the antagonist muscles to those we use the most during climbing) is something I perhaps don't do enough, especially in the forearms, so to prevent injury, I will try and make sure that's taken care of. Rest is another biggie. I'm going to experiment with this one these 3 months, gonna try something newish. So there you go! I've posed the issues to be tackled: periodization, finger strength, power, technique, weight management/cardio, opposition training, flexibility, and resting. I'll describe my training as a function of these:

PERIODIZATION: Simple stuff, 5 weeks focusing on hypertrophy (finger contact strength, see FINGER STRENGTH), 4 on maximum recruitment (explosive power, see POWER), and 3 on power endurance (again, see POWER). All sessions in the gym are the same: 15 minutes of warm-up via traversing non-stop, 15 minutes of resting, 30 minutes of hypertrophy/maximum recruitment/power endurance, 15 minutes of resting, 1.5 hours of bouldering at my limit with roughly 4 minutes rest between decent attempts, and 15 minutes of stretching for a (hopeful) total of 3 hours per session. These sessions take place twice a week, Monday and Thursday.

FINGER STRENGTH: Like the aforementioned article by rockprodigy suggested, I'm roughly following his/her guidelines to get stronger fingers, i.e. deadhangs on the gym's fingerboards. This is my present stage. On each gym session, I chose 4 grips: a crimp, a sloper, a two finger pocket and a pinch, and I hang for 50 seconds in total in each in as little hangs as possible with minimal rest (like I said, it's supposed to last 30 mins.). The idea is to progressively get stronger fingers by hanging on to holds that you can at least hold for 2 seconds, but no more than 10. I "graduate" from a hold type when I can complete all 50 seconds in 5 hangs or less, so the next session I would add 2.5 kg on my harness on said grip type. This lasts for 5 weeks.

POWER: Again, following rockprodigys advice, on each gym session, I choose two campus exercises: a hard campus ladder that I do 4 times, 2 starting with the left/right, and another easier campus ladder with longer moves, which I do twice, leading once with each hand. Between these exercises I rest 3-4 minutes due to their intensity. After resting about 5 minutes, I then try to do one (or as many as possible) pull up on each of the 4 chosen fingerboard grips (with the last best extra weight hung with at the end of the hypertrophy phase) in the hypertrophy phase. This lasts for 4 weeks, and is typically when I expect results to show the most (at least that has been the case in the past).

TECHNIQUE: This aspect is taken care of whenever climbing, but especially in the 15 minute warm-up in each gym session, when the intensity is low and the most attention can be paid to technique. Also, because Sunday is the outdoor climbing day, the warm-up climb/s will serve this purpose as well, climbing in as diverse styles as possible.

WEIGHT MANAGEMENT/CARDIO: Tuesday and Friday are cardio days, consisting in running 5-7 kms outdoors followed by 15 minutes of stretching. Weight management is basic, consisting in having 3 meals a day, avoiding trans/saturated fats and snacking on healthy foods.

OPPOSITION TRAINING: Wednesday is opposition training day, consisting in 15 exercises performed 1 minute, 10 seconds each followed by 15 minutes of stretching: burpees, "clock" jumps (hard to explain and didn't find a video), forward and back jumps into a surface about 50 cms above the ground, 20 kg weighted lunges, 10 kg weighted squat holds (like this, but on a wall and with weight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5BFpmzzLbs), "spider man" push-ups (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKBeHALPsSU), lifting 8 kg weights with the shoulders by lifting the weights laterally and towards the front alternating with arms straight, dips, "bowls", 5 kg ball lifting with straight legs, leg lifts while hanging, 10 kg weighted ab crunches, front levers, human flags, and "supermans" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVpQizrTPKs).

FLEXIBILITY: My flexibility is developed by stretching and one day a week of yoga (Saturday). My stretching consists of 20 seconds holding each stretch, starting from the neck, working my way until the achilles tendon, too many stretches to describe here, but nothing out of the ordinary. For those that have been in the adult squad in Urban Climb, you know what it is.

RESTING: So, on one hand, I am now experimenting with 2 (climbing muscles) rest days between the first and second gym day and between the 2nd gym day and the outdoor climbing day, but no rest days between the outdoor climbing day and the 1st gym training day. The idea is that the most intense days will be Monday and Thursday, so I want to be as "fresh" as possible, and at the same time I want to be as rested as possible before climbing outdoors, but because climbing outdoors is often not very intense, I decided that to follow the outdoor day by a gym day... I'll see how that works out soon enough! But really, there are no total rest days! Every day I'll be exercising something (hopefully!). I know this is not really related to resting, but I will also incorporate omega 3, glucosamine and chondroitin (dunno if that's spelled right!) tablets every day for tendon and joint recovery. Icing my fingers each rest day for half an hour has proven fruitful in the past, so that's also something I'll do.

The first week of training went so-so. The focus was on fingerboards, of which I chose the following (sorry about the crappy iphone pics!):

Smallest campus rung in the gym:

I went from being able to make solid 9 second hangs on these to getting down to a maximum of 6, and struggled to get those. Bummer.

45 degree sloper on the beastmaker 2000:

On the other hand, I was surprised that I could hold on to these guys at all! 2 seconds FTW!!

Shallow 2 finger pocket in the beastmaker 2000:

These used to be my forte, and used to be able to hang 15 seconds with 15 kg extra weight. No longer! Back to square one, with a max of 9 seconds.

Flat wooden beam (pinch):

Again, another pleasant surprise, I graduated from this hold right off the bat. Normally I would have to flex my biceps to 90 degrees to compress, but now I can get these in 5 hangs with straight arms. Woo!

Bouldering went sh*t as! Started trying V5's but made little to no progress (this from being able to pull them off in one session), and at first I thought they may have been sandbagged, but when I saw a bunch of people sending them, I realized that the problem was me. I even struggled on V3's, which is typically my flash grade... I think I totally forgot how to flick the "on" switch in bouldering, that psyche that gets you all aggressive and explosive. I feel that my body is in a very very mellow mode right now, very Bob Marley-like (when I actually need to be Bruce Lee-like...).

Cardio was pretty average and so was flexibility, the one motivator I have right now is hope that things will get better!

On the weekend, Maria, Jin, Kimberley, Jason, Alyssa and I went to Mount Ngungun, one of the most underrated climbing spots in the Glasshouse Mountains here in Southeast Queensland. We decided to go there because it's a really chill climbing area where Alyssa would be more likely to have a better time than, say, Slider wall in Mount Tibrogargan (the approach alone gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush!). We did just that, went first to Andromeda wall, a cool little buttress with sport (read: Aussie sport, i.e. you need to place the bolt plates on the bolts) climbs of difficulty 11-18. It's a nice spot to chill and have a few climbs before the sun is upon you. Alyssa managed to top rope her first outdoor climb to the top and Jason got introduced to the featured trachyite of Ngungun by making the hardest climb in this buttress look like a walk in the park. After this, we headed to a crag called "owl pillar", so named because it is a free-standing 10 m-high boulder that is the shape of a sitting owl. It has three really cool climbs in it (22, 18 and 19, left to right), all of them bouldery at the start with really unique moves, all of them run out and a bit iffy in terms of safety, but when adequate precautions are taken they are well worth the risk, especially considering the view at the top of Mount Tibrogargan. Jin and Kimberley started trying the 19, called Midnight Makeout (or is it Morning Glory?), which starts on a series of slopers and sidepulls with lots and lots of heel hooks that you use for balance. Both made good progress, but Kimberley got a bit of a scare because of not taking an essential QD with her at an already run-out spot! Even Jin let out the token scared whimper when he managed to top it out! See Maria looking at the owl pillar:

Me, I decided to try my new project in the ravine close to the owl pillar, a gently overhanging line following a sloping crack (which you can see through the very distant other side out in the open!) called Idaho Sunshine, grade 28. I haven't done a 27 before, so I'm skipping that grade, and this may explain my tremendous difficulty I am having with this climb, definitely feels like another level, and mentally it didn't help that I had done so badly in training that week! I had already dedicated one try to that climb before, not going past the 4th bolt because of a tricky crux. I was really happy to get past that crux and the one after that, which only left one more bolt to go and then anchors, and this bolt I know I can do because it is also part of another climb that I've already done! This climb has 5 cruxes in 20 meters, two of which cash in in about V4. I found one of them was really original, involving a big throw to a 3/4 pad sloping crimp from a big sloper and bad feet, then matching the bad feet, and effectively "throwing" the left foot to a side sloping big crack where you can just wedge in a good knee-scum that allows you to throw for the only jug in the climb! It may be a really unique beta for me. I was really happy with this progress, and Maria was kind enough to take a few pics:

Crankin' through crux #1:

Crux #2:

At some point it'd be great to do a vid of this classic! BTW, I took numerous 7 m falls... It's run out!

Good times at Ngungun always deserve a good dinner with friends at Quan Thanh in West End! Makes me almost forget the previous week's groundfall incident involving Anri... But let's not remember that! Psyched about next week's training!

See you next week!