Realize that no matter how strong you are at your local areas...you're gonna get pumped blind and flail your first couple of days.

I've found that there is no climbing area that mimics the Red...for a good 13a...try Snooker, or the Force...pretty easy to read and not too hard.

I hear you, ghost. How I got there was to start with easier routes, and climb faster. Moving quickly and without overgripping is pure gold on radically overhanging terrain, and the only way to get that relaxed is by drilling laps til it becomes commonplace to be inverted. Puzzling out moves is not and should not be a part of running laps.

To get things rolling, step WAY back. Pick a juggy 5.8 or nine and try to climb it five times in ten minutes. Then 15 times. The idea here is to generate as much actual climbing fitness as possible by getting maximum mileage at speeds that should require you to be sweating hard as you would while booking it on a treadmill.

For perspective, I was on a really masochistic Mark Twight bent when I started all this, was working for a tree service and commuting by bike everywhere I could, and was fit to start out with. No one's climbing 300 5.11s without a platform to get there, so ratchet the difficulty down, crank some tunes (my favorites for training are fast+very rhythmic-early Meshuggah, Slipknot's Iowa album), and bring a towel to the gym for in between sets. Set of five, water. Set of ten, stretch. Now that you're warm, do sets of 20 to failure. If you're doing sets of more than 20 at a time you're probably needing to bump the grade up.

Doing the 300 took hours on end (most of the day, I recall, and over ten belayers) but I had already climbed the crack 500+times for training prior to this, so there was nothing stopping me but my endurance limits. Comparing the Nose record is pretty laughable compared to my little workout, but to understand the pace you want to be training at, it is instructive to watch the Hubers do what they do on video-they're jugging and jamming at AEROBIC levels, again, if you're not stomping the gas, you're not getting the benefit from the training. The Red will show you what your endurance limits are; if you're not tired when you hit the crux, you won't have to dig deep for more power to get through it.

Nice work man! Just think what you could do with a few rest days!

Amazing you climbed all this stuff one month in the future!

Killis: I assume there are autobelays or something at the gym where you did this sort of training?

Nope, and the gym rules favored ATC over gri-gri, as well.

Had a lot of great friends and helpful training partners back then. Maybe one day when I get back east I'll get to catch up with some of them.

Having a training partner means you don't have to count your own laps (extremely helpful if you're bleeding sweat and dizzy from hyperventilation and overpump), have a cheerleader/coach, and a good excuse to recover a bit while they interpolate their sets. Some of my training partners climbed 12 or 13 when I was still stumbling up 11s. Many of my best training partners started in the single digits but saw the results I was getting and got on board.

I have climbed one pitch in my life on an autobelay, and that was quite enough for me.

Great job B! Isn't 40 oz rad? I think that's one of my favorite routes at the red.
Let me know when you decide to come back.

Killis really? Dam that's a lot of vertical.

Hey Mono, any chance you're Slade bound in the next few weeks? Im heading there next week to remove fixed draws and hord human feces.

Too late Ryan, I took the last perma draws down after I onsighted every route in the Madness Cave....

grayhghost, I am pretty damn impressed that you managed to climb 5 days in a row and send on every day, especially day five. Good job! How on earth did you manage to recover??? I've been staying at the Red for awhile now and it's been a struggle to find top fitness and send my selected projects, even with all the time I have to climb. I've never trained though. I think the next time I come here I'm going to do an all-out Rockprodigy-style periodized plan. I'm seriously convinced that the gym is the best way to prep for this place and I won't even bother climbing outside. Just out of curiosity, what were some of the main things you learned from your trip, like training a preparation wise? Would you do anything different next time?

Many, many people at the crag. Every route taken. 7-deep line on 'Golden Boy


This is why I've bailed on the Red for a good long while. The New is where it's at!

Would you be willing to break down some of the exercises for your days of HIT, PE, and campusing shown on the calendar images. Did you always do the same exercises on these days?

You can see the details of the exercises in my first post/start of the thread.
Upon further training plan refinement, System Wall sets with 10-20 moves is way too much volume for a hypertrophy phase. Shooting for 2-3 moves is better. Now I do this using hard (for me) boulder problems in the 2-3 move range. If you wanted to, you could cycle through the System Wall, the Hangboard, and Bouldering during this phase to keep it fresh.

HIT strips are worthless for anyone in the 5.12 range because they are just too big/easy without adding ridiculous weight.

Campusing has endless variations, with the main idea being to fail in the 4-8 move range. I don't campus anymore, but am now focusing on 4-8 move dynamic boulder problems.

The classic Power Endurance exercise is the 4x4. You can also do Treadwall intervals (I did 1min. on, 1min. off, 2min. on, 2min. off, 3min. on, 3min. off, 4min. on, 4min. off, 5min. on, 5min. off, 4min. on, 4min. off, 3min. on, 3min. off, 2min. on, 2min. off, 1min. on, 1min. off) or Fartleks while staying on the wall the whole time. There is now an entire book on the subject so you shouldn't have a shortage of exercises.