Training for climbing is a royal pain, unless you keep your objectives simple. It’s a Royal with cheese, if your expectations are too high.
A few months ago, I had a very good result in my climbing by taking a short cut. I relied on my base ability, did lots of climbing and then dumped weight. It worked, I got King of Kings, one of the best roofs in the world. But I knew I was going to have to start almost all over again to get the big grades.
My shoulders are weak in comparison with the rest of my body due to running and neglect, and the routes I want to do are very powerful and involved. Anyway I did some old nutty routines today and felt great. I say nutty because they are not supposed to work, like most of my stuff doesn’t work, ha ha.
The only thing that has gone super well to plan has been in increasing finger strength. The Transgression board really helps calibrate what’s going, I can see I am stronger on smaller holds. However most of my gains, I am assuming, are in muscle recruitment. So I will stay at this level of stress for 1 month, to try and make some genuine gains in forearm muscle, before I go up a notch.
Exercises I did today after some steep climbing:
where a few dead lifts at 320lbs,
a few heavy rows at 200
narrow grips power pulls at 100
stiff arm pull downs but inverted to the front
stiff arm pull downs to the side inverted
Burpees with dumbbells in hands, plus shoulder press, these made me feel sick. I supersetted these with, inclined sit ups with dumbbells, punch to the front, twist to side, super sickyiky.
Finished off with hanging knee raises on slopers, till fall off. Meanwhile my companion “thee Yoga teacher”, does a bit of gardening and redpointed an 8a today. I have been calling her Astrid the Asteroid lately because she put on some weight, well she put me in my place today, called me the “beefalow” as I failed to redpoint.
PS.Woke up today, stiff as Tutan kharmun’s pickled staff, moral of story is expect slow steady results, by slow heavy training.
