As we are exposed to longer term isolations, with less and less availability of climbing, the question “what can I do to not lose everything I have spent the last few years working towards?” comes up a lot. Here’s what you can focus on to come out the end of isolation with more capability than when the restrictions were first put into place.
STRENGTH,
While this can be scary for a lot of people in the beginning it will quickly become so much more fun than endurance training once results start to show up, (this will only take a week or 2 to notice). Getting results is what everyone trains for and seeing them quickly will help buy in, this means that you will be more psyched to continue training, increasing the chances of a training program being followed through to the end.
Strength training has a lower time investment than endurance training and often it will show a bigger return on investment, even if you are a route climber who “needs more endurance”, this means you can get a lot stronger utilising 2 or 3 30-45 minute sessions per week, training sessions of this time length are easier to build into a new schedule now that your normal lifestyle has been thrown out the window.
Hangboarding
Core
Pistol Squats
Weight lifting such as deadlifts, bench press
Antagonist training, finally get rid of those sore elbows.
LIFESTYLE,
Being stuck at home creates the perfect opportunity to focus on creating a healthier lifestyle, things like:
8 hours sleep per night
1 litre water per 25kg bodyweight per day
Better nutrition (no eating out) Do some reading, learn more.
Daily walks (60 minutes)
You don’t have as much exposure to outside influences such as dinner dates with friends or take away food so you can come out the other side of isolation healthier and happier with more of an athletic capability than you have ever had before.
MOBILITY,
One of the most overlooked aspects of opportunity for climbing progress (i’m mainly talking to the guys with this one), is improving mobility. The more mobile your hips are, the closer they can stay to the wall when required and the more opportunities for using different footers you will have on return, this means higher foot steps, bigger drop knees and better slab climbing.
While this isn’t as fun as strength training one of the ways to buy into it the best is to measure where you are at before you start then set a goal to improve, take the frog stretch for example, if your knees are 60cm apart now, aim for 65 cm in 4 weeks time.
BALANCE,
This is one of my favourites, it takes no time out of your day and you don’t need to warm up for it, its something you can play with anytime and anywhere. How well can you balance on 1 foot? if that’s easy then balance one foot with your heel off the ground, still easy? then close 1 eye. Even change the environment, have a wooden block to balance on.
Upper/Lower body balance, can you hold the push up position with left foot/right hand off the ground? this is also great for co-ordination and core strength.
MOVEMENT,
Learn to understand your body better, just like Ondra doing some ballet lesson, take the time to learn a new sport, maybe Yoga… maybe not, maybe Animal flow or ground force method, these are all great ways to better understand how your body moves, take no equipment just some floor space, and in turn will help you to understand and apply it better when walls become available again.
BUILD A SMALL HOME WALL,
While definitely not the cheapest option, its fun to do and will fill up a few days of your time just for the design and build, setting your own climbs is a great way to learn to understand movement or read climbs better, this will certainly help you in the long run and it also provides an opportunity to climb, my suggestion is the wall should be 35-45degs that way if you only have space for a move or 2 you can still get a lot stronger, the perfect board size for at home for strength gains is 4 moves. Enough climbing to feel like you get to climb but short enough that you can makes 4 really hard moves without pumping out. For me I built my wall with a 20cm kick board, 3m of wall length and it took 2.7m of height but smaller versions will certainly work.
GOAL SETTING,
Spend time finding climbs you want to try, this will keep the psyche high and help foster the drive to train.
MOVIES,
Climbing movies are a great way to fill time, they also have the added benefit of watching how people move on rock, increasing the potential of expanding movement awareness.
Hope this gives you some ideas,
Ash
