I often have conversations with climbers regarding their training programs and the nature of their focus, i.e. strength training in the gym, hangboard repeaters, hangboard max hangs, campusing and projecting all in a week. A little bit of everything training, the generalists approach.
Training is a lot like cleaning a house, you can either go room by room ensuring every room is clean before moving onto the next one or you can clean every room a little bit more often.
A couple of things jump out at me with this analogy.
One of these options is a lot more time efficient than the other
Having a completely clean room is nicer than a bunch of half clean ones.
Personally I find that these 2 different approaches to training have 2 different purposes, a little bit of everything at regular occasion is a maintenance program, you may get a little bit of progress but the main focus is to not lose what you already have, for real progress I believe that a training program needs 1 major thing. Specificity.
Over the past 5 years of coaching I have found 2 things to make consistently fast progress.
Specifically focus on your goal.
Work on your lowest hang fruit first.
Your lowest hanging fruit are your biggest areas for improvement or your most noticeable lesser strengths also often called weaknesses. (You don’t have a stronger arm and a weak arm, you have a strong arm and a stronger arm haha)
The human mind loves to do things its good at, it relishes in its own ego at the way you can perform when you are doing well, it takes a strong person to be able to focus on something you aren’t quite as good at or doesn’t feel as natural. Last week I saw a climber campus the crux moves of a V7 overhang climb and yet they fell on a v3 slab, for me I would rather be a V5 climber across all wall angles and styles than to have such a big gap in my skillsets, for me the climber who is skilled across all styles is a better climber.
The tricky part is either being subjective enough, knowledgable enough and know your ego enough to be able to write yourself a training that actually focuses on your lowest or you can get a coach, a coach has the added benefit of having their own data set, they have trained numerous people and have the information to see what improves who the most. Or you can have a maintenance focused program, the generalist approach, this I find I have noticed in route climbers the most, their fear of losing endurance while building strength keeps them at maintaining their Endurance but not really gaining any strength. Often then climbers and run laps on a boulder that is close to their max but they can even touch a climb that a grade or 2 higher.
Often these climbers will gain more endurance from a focused strength program than they will from trying to maintain endurance at the same time, why? let me explain.
These are only generalisations to make a point, not specifically science to suit these numbers.
Lets say there are 2 climbers, Climber 1 can hang on the hang board with bodyweight plus 20kg but is relatively unfit or their endurance is not great, climber 2 can hang at bodyweight but it super fit. Now, here’s where the subjectivity on the nature of the route would step in but hang with me…..
Climber 1 may be climbing a grade 27, for the course of the route they are operating at 60% max effort, they can find recovery here and there, they are not super stressed or operating near their limit.
Climber 2 on the same climb, may be fitter but they are operating at 80 or 90% max effort, they cannot find many rests and the additional stress of operating so close to their limit raises cortisol levels which in turn makes them more tired.
I know which climber I would rather be….
Focusing on strength for a few weeks and you may not lose any endurance because you get so much stronger than you were that you are operating at a lower RPE (rate of perceived exertion) than when you were less strong, then you change and put in a week or 2 or endurance before your trip and suddenly your route climbing ability jumps a grade or 2 or 3 depending on how you adapt to the new strength and technique and your ability to apply it to the wall.
Personally I would rather train specifically in cycles than to generalise but each to their own, where’s your training focused right now?
