Over the past 10 weeks, I have been in involved with a training program at the local rock gym (cityrock). As my session starts to wind down, I thought I’d type up a little bit of my experience with the program. Back in early March, I was pretty low-average by normal climbing standards. Bouldering, my levels were around v2 and pushing v3 max after projecting. In the gym, I didn’t do much wall climbing, but I think I could scum my way up a 5.10b but be very tired at the end of one climb.
The program was led by Nathan (a pretty awesome instructor) and started to help me focus on a lot of my technique and build endurance. The first couple weeks, we focused on the basics and built up the endurance of your climbing. This starts with climbing 5 routes at go, around 2 grades low than your repoint level. Here is also where we concentrated on flagging, inside/outside edging, and precious footage. All of which I was pretty sloppy at in the beginning. After just 4 weeks, I felt much stronger and could start to do routes with easy and not be winded.
Then we started the power section of the workouts, for the next couple weeks we focused on power bouldering and HIT workouts. The bouldering consisted of doing a couple warm up climbs and then climbing at you max level. You have 5 chances on a given route then have to move on to another problem. In one night you were expected to climbing anywhere from 25-30 problems. The HIT workouts were different beast all together. Here we concentrated on the system boards and sloper grips, building finger strength and dynamic muscle movements. Also, there was a regiment of strange pull-ups and core workouts. All of which broke you down.
That last couple weeks we went back to the full climbing wall. Here the focus was on lead climbing techniques. The first day the requirement was to take a bunch of big falls while on lead. Basically we keep climbing a route until our muscles fail and peel of the holds. This really helps the mental game because you begin to trust the ropes and your partners. Also, we have to pick one route to project a climb on, mine is slightly overhung 5.12a. I’ve made it to the top in pieces, but have yet to figure of one move, so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll miss the last week due to a business trip, but I’m really glad I got to this training, and it has paid of greatly. I am looking for to round two in the future.
