With winter knocking on the door, I have headed inside for my annual training binge I have set my goal for next year, so have a real target to get my teeth into and motivate me on those long and tiring wall sessions. This year I am going to try and add some form of structure to my training, and to do so I have turned to an oracle on the matter, Bompa, who literally wrote the book on periodisation training.
What I am going to do is attempt to condense it into a single post. The general ideas is that through structured approach to overloading and recovery we can create a situation in which we improve to the best of our ability, before finally tapering to a specific goal.
The first stage is to increase your general physical training, by increasing the frequency and loads you can maintain. For climbing this can be achieved through climbing routes or bouldering. The idea is not to climb to your max at this stage, instead try holding back, or certainly not operating at 100% for too long. Try to increase the number of session from two a week up to four. I try to include a couple of general and specific climbing cardio sessions again aimed at increasing general fitness.
The next stage is start working on sport specific fitness, and for climbing this really needs to be aimed towards the major goal you have. So for me it is hard sports climbing, so I need to work on my strength and strength endurance, as well as working of enhancing technique. It is in this section of the training it is important to add structured overload. Now the research is based on sports that tend to use major muscle groups, as such there is a worry that because climbing uses predominantly the fingers and arms that we can increase our strength so rapidly that our fingers fail to support the increase in power. (see diagram of periodisation)
As such these schedules may require you to listen to your body and add longer rest periods or even less intense session to allow the tendons, ligaments and pulleys in the fingers time to adjust, which will take months as opposed to the weeks that it takes to make muscular strength gains.
There are other reasons that you might need to adjust the time it takes for recovery, based on the fact that it takes over 25 year olds longer to recover than under 18’s; females are slower to recover than men; cold weather slows recovery; knots in the muscle slow recovery; fast twitch muscle fibres fatigue quicker than slow twitch; endurance athletes take longer to recover than sprint; a happy state of mind leads to better recovery than a sad one, so using relaxation to reduce stress hormones can help recovery; injuries slow recovery; good nutrition speeds recovery.
Things we can do to aid recovery are active rest (20 minutes light exercise post training – <60%)
When you are at you starting to approach you optimum performance then start to include tactical practice like redpoint skills, route reading, finding and utilising rest, and dealing with the fear of falling. In the final stages of your tapering use mental and psychological skills like imagery, confidence, self-talk and relaxation, although these should also make up part of your on going training, if you have a mental weakness that requires their use to counteract and over come.
Remember to listen to your body though, injury which can often totally destroy you goals and ambitions don’t always just happen, a feeling of weakness, a constant ache in the fingers, a loss of contact finger strength when training, poor foot work are all pre-cursors to sloppy training and potential injury. Don’t necessarily stop training but consider very low intensity as a form of active rest.