training without going Full Rockprodigy?

I'm trying to figure out how to build a training program with some of the periodization and training stuff, but without the full-on, hard-core, complete training dedication of the Rockprodigy program.

So: I've read pretty much every Anderson brother post on here, and bought and consumed their new book. First: it's excellent. I have been enlightened, many times. Second: I have no doubt that their program will produce results. Absolute trust. Third: it's not for me, I'm pretty sure, at least in its fullest incarnation.

The problem, for me, is that the Full Rockprodigy Hardcore involves dropping actual climbing out, for long periods of time - like, for instance, the hypertrophy phase. I'm largely convinced that they're right, and a pure hypertrophy phase will produce the optimal results. But I'm not willing to do it, because the main reason I climb - the biggest reason - is the extraordinary emotional effect climbing - regular climbing - has on me.

I used to be extremely moody, given to depressive bouts, a stress-case. In the five years since I've started climbing, the effect on me, and my mental everything, has been extraordinary. Some of it is just simple hard physical work. But a lot of it is very specific to what happens in climbing - something about the process of figuring out hard problems, the focus of sending - that does something magic to my mind, knocks me out of bad loops. The mid-week gym sessions do it quite well, and the weekend trips - they're like this magical reset. They cut through the mental mess.

So I'm not willing to give that that up. But I'd still like to start training - I've definitely been in the "go to the gym and boulder at random until tired" category, up until now. But I'm not willing to abate regular climbing, though I am willing to reduce it. So the question is: accepting that the results will be non-optimal, how do I weave things like hang boarding and campusing in to get some effect?

Or, to put it in the language of Rockprodigy: my primary goal is regular climbing for mental well-being and clarity, and improvement at climbing is a secondary goal.

I've been finding some notes about flexible programs on Bechdel's Climbstrong site, but it lacks a lot of details for a training novice like me.

The ideas I'm playing around with look like:

A. Tues: Moderate climbing volume followed by hangboard. Thurs: Boulder. Weekend: outdoor climb
B. Mon: Boulder. Tues: Hangboard. Thursday: Volume. Weekend: outdoor climb
C. Tues: Boulder. Thurs: Juggy system-board type stuff, Hangboard. Weekend: outdoor climb
D. Mon: ARC/hangboard. Wed: Boulder. Thurs: Volume. Weekend: outdoor climb

But really, I'm clueless. Will hang boarding once a week be enough? Or, if it has to be twice a week, is there any way to stack it with other climbing? The gist I get from the Rockprodigy book sometimes seems like: "if it's once a week, it's useless, and if you don't come in rested and rest afterwards, it's useless, so you better have pure hypertrophy phases." Is it really so strict? Help? Thanks so much!

Check out the Mountain Athletics videos from TNF. Good hangboard and campus workouts that are meant to be done once or twice a week.

Also, I've enjoyed the 6 week program from TrainingBeta.com. Kind of bought it as an experiment... No groundbreaking stuff but it's a nice little program that will get you in shape and allow you to climb as well.

Finally, if you haven't read the Self Coached Climber or 9 out of 10 Climbers... then you should start there.

No matter what you do, you need direction and purpose. Even if only to stay injury free.

I guess I can add: No, it is not that strict. You can see gains from hang boarding and climbing on the same day. Same can be said for campusing.

Just replace hangboarding with limit bouldering and campusing with dynamic bouldering. You lose the ability to track small progress but you gain sanity. Try to make friends with climbers 2 V-grades above you so you have plenty of true limit moves to try. The crux will be staying motivated while in the big-kids side of the pool.

Have you check out the forum for the book? This question might get a better answer there.

rockprodigytraining.proboar…

I personally have found that doing the outdoor mileage on the weekends and doing one set of ARCing as a warmup for hangboard hits the right balance of climbing and improving. The later phases like Power are just pure fun with limit boulders and campus boards. Those workout are fun.

You might try it for a week or two and see if it provides the mental clarity that you want. You may find that it is just a therapeutic as the normal boulder till tired method.

The Rock Climber's Training Manual has a couple suggested schedules for working outdoor climbing into your hangboarding phase. Also important to note is that if you havent trained a ton before, even using the RP program to only 60% of it max potential will help you improve an prevent injury a lot. I believe the section on trad/big wall climbing also works regular climbing into the hangboard phase.

I was really surprised by how much joy I got from the training that I expected to be super mundane and boring. You might surprise yourself with the interest you take in the actual training and end up getting a lot out of it mentally and emotionally, too.

A lot can be said just for reading the book, understanding the concepts, and using those concepts to plan your recreational climbing schedule to be better suited to improvement. Its obviously less effective, but it will allow modest improvement for a while. And if you're young and injury free and bounce back quickly, you can probably go with less rest than the Andersons. Myself - i need all the rest for sure!

Whatever you decide, have fun trying new things!

Wow guys - thanks for all the help. This is really useful. And I hadn't even looked at the Trad/Alpine sections, because I don't do that stuff.

Daniel - Yeah - I was less worried about the Power section, because limit bouldering is something I already do naturally, and counts as pure fun in my book. I'm definitely going to try the ARC then hang board thing...

Adam - maybe you're right, and hard training would have the effect. I'll certainly give at a go at some point. But I've done other kinds of pure physical training before, and it doesn't have the same effect on me. It's not just the intensity - it's the skill component. A yoga writer I love says something like: the point of a hard yoga pose isn't to do some crazy pose. It's feedback for your mental state, your focus. Something about really complex motor stuff forces a particular kind of focus on me, and that's the key, I think, for that magic thing that climbing does for me. If my mind is off even a tiny bit, then the climb boots me off, and I can find my way into the right mental state with that kind of feedback.

Ryan - thanks, I'll check those out.

Last question: if you hangboard and climb on the same day: hang boarding second? And do you think it'd be better to Climb/Hangboard, rest a day, then climb again, or climb, hangboard, climb on 3 successive days?

Thanks!

I do outdoor climbing followed by brutal campusing workouts on the same day all the time. Not that I'm any sort of climber to emulate, but a year of doing that hasn't gotten me injured, and I am making steady measurable progress - (despite being over forty years old, so some authorities say I shouldn't be doing campusing workouts at all).

Oh yeah ... next day I rest completely from any sort of climbing, and I don't do another hard campusing workout until the third or fourth day afterward.

Ken

I second (third?) the Self-Coached Climber book - in addition to a lot of other good information, the section on training is great. It gives you some suggested training plans, but more importantly it tells you the how and why of each part, and helps you to build your own training plan tailored to your needs and limits. No one plan is going to be ideal for everyone.

Do the full program. From someone into climbing for climbing's sake, I also found the training to be way more engaging than expected. I would get just as psyched for hangboarding as climbing outdoors! It's also true that, unless you're climbing at an elite level, you can add outdoor mileage sessions (sub-max climbing) that likely won't be overly detrimental to your workouts in the more intense phases. I think you'll find that the end results make climbing so much more enjoyable (my experience thus far)!

OP - to answer your last question, I would say that having that one full rest day every 3rd day is the way to go. This is coming from a guy who has had lots of overuse injuries, though. One thing to keep in mind is that training is when you break down the muscle and stimulate adaptation, but rest is when you actually get stronger. Stretching my forearms and shoulders at least twice a day has also helped keep chronic injury at bay.

Not to take away from the OP but I've got a related question/concern. I've only been climbing for about a year and I feel like I'm hitting a plateau in my route climbing. I have can have sent up to V5 boulder problems both outdoors and in the gym but I still have yet to send higher than 10b (at the Red) and found my on sight limit around at 9+/10a at NRG. Seems like an endurance problem so I'm wondering if I need to start a more specific training regimen. The problem is it seems like most programs include hangboard and campus workouts, which I believe are not recommend for someone who has been climbing less than two years ("How to Climb 5.12, Eric Horst). I just bought "The Rock Climber's Training Manual" yesterday, so I'm not sure if this is addressed in the book or not. Should I just start adding in a couple days per week of ARC training. And leave the hangboard/campus training for next year?

Antonio

Here's Steve Bechtel's video that make a lot of sense after some experimenting on my own:
vimeo.com/67435188
That being said, most training plans seem to work until you hit the proverbial plateau. I imagine the full rockprodigy is probably the best way to break through if you are stuck in one.

If you don't want to dedicate 2 long sessions a week just to HB/campus/limit bouldering (I don't), I'd recommend doing 2 short ones toward the beginning of the workout (right after warm up) that concentrate on certain types of grip/movement and then pick climbs that takes advantage of what you've just worked on.

Antonio
You state that you boulder v5 and are topping out at 10B.
You need to work on efficiency and resting on routes. Are you getting gripped and wasting energy? Your movement quality is probably below average,right?
1. Start doing sets of linked problems for endurance. Climb up a v2, down, climb up a v1, down etc rest and shake if you need but stay on the wall.

2. Read the beginner section on HB in the Anderson's book and start doing some HB. Don't push it since you are relatively new climber.

3. Practice how to move on rock. Yes, easy to write, hard to do. But go to the gym and practice drop knees, flags, quiet feet.

To the OP:

I think you can build a program with outdoor climbing involved. The Anderson's have this in their book and they talk about JStars program which was a combination of climbing outside and training.
You can continue to cycle through periodization. For example spend a month focused on strength, then move to power, then PE and still climb on the weekends.

I don't know what your goal is? That would help determine the focus. Are you working a pump fest with 24 moves. Or a 100 move endurance climb or are you trying to do a v8 boulder problem. The focus of your training should reflect this.

Hangboarding- I think you need to do this twice a week. YMMV.
Limit bouldering is a super fun way to build hand strength if done correctly.

You asked about the ordering - I like to warm-up (ARC one cycle) then HB. I don't climb after HB but do some other drills.

rorschah wrote:Wow guys - thanks for all the help... Last question: if you hangboard and climb on the same day: hang boarding second? And do you think it'd be better to Climb/Hangboard, rest a day, then climb again, or climb, hangboard, climb on 3 successive days? Thanks!

You need full rest days. Most people need at least 2 a week. If you're not concerned about performance, you can do core work and/or cardio on those days, but if you have climbing goals that week you should probably juat rest.

Campusing, system board, hangboard, etc should all be done after climbing for the day is finished. You are more likley to strain and push too hard during climbing, making injury more probable.

Ryan Williams wrote:Campusing, system board, hangboard, etc should all be done after climbing for the day is finished.

Says who? All studies I've read recommend strength/power workout when you are relatively fresh for the best gain. Injuries occur when you are over doing it. Turning up intensity at the end of a workout w/ strength/power training seem like a really bad idea.

@ OP: I totally agree with your sentiments regarding training. I've enjoyed reading all of the literature out there these days (including the Anderson Bros. stuff) but don't want to give up regular climbing entirely. I've been on this schedule:

Monday: Hangboard (~45 min.), Hard Bouldering (~45 min.), Weights and Core exercises (~45 min.)

Tuesday: Easy mileage (TR laps, long traverses, etc.)

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Hangboard (~45 min.), Hard Bouldering (~45 min.), Weights and Core exercises (~45 min.)

Friday: Rest

Saturday: Climb outside

Sunday: Easy day outside or rest

The schedule has been working well for me. I'm seeing improvement and I don't feel like I've completely sold my soul (with nothing but respect for those who have :) ). I'm using a Transgression hangboard because my gym has one. The prescribed workouts are short but seem to be effective.

Also, I thought that hangboarding/campusing/etc. should be done before climbing while you are fresh. These workouts are most effective when you are working at 90-100% of your max effort. I find that I can still get a decent bouldering session in following a hangboard workout, but not the other way around.

It depends on who you read. I shouldn't have said that repetitive strength exercise should always be done after climbing because that is obviously a matter of opinion.

One of the programs I mentioned above recommends that you do strength after the climbing part of your work out. The other one recommends that you do strength on days that you are not doing any climbing. Dan Hague says in The Self Coached Climber that you should do strength first, while you are fresh. Dave MacLeod says the same thing, although he says it is ideal to do strength on non-climbing days.. I'm not sure what the Anderson program says but it sounds like they want you to do repetitive strength exercises on days that you don't climb.

So there there are a lot of opinions.

I know I have read somewhere exactly what I said above: that you should do any climbing first because that is when you can potentially push to hard (because you want to send). I can't remember where I read that… but I don't think I am making it up.

The way that I understand it is that "climbing" means "sending." This kind of climbing shouldn't be done after any kind of intense workout because if you really want it, you are going to redline and put yourself in a position to get hurt. That is what I thought of when I read the OPs post because he mentinoed "climbing until tired."

If we are talking about specific drills, these are more calculated than "sending" and can be done after the repetitive strength exercises.

Ryan Williams wrote:... "climbing" means "sending."

This alludes to a good point: if you back off of trying as hard as you can every time you get outside, it should be possible to carve out a lot of time for effective training. Especially for us mortals. Certainly be attentive to overuse injuries, but if you climb trad there's not shortage of awesome, easy trad lines to do that shouldn't introduce too much extra strain. And if you don't climb trad, well, use those days outside to learn to climb trad!