Power Training ?

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Elcapinyoazz

Social climber

Joshua Tree

Jan 24, 2008 - 12:55pm PT

I think it would be a serious mistake to look to naturally, genetically gifted superstar climbers for training ideas.

As Randy said, Chris don't train. He's commonly quoted as saying his "training" takes place on the route itself. I mean the kid was pulling the hardest stuff in the world at 16, well before he went into his years of exclusively bouldering.

Similarly, Dave Graham. As a 17-18yr old, with pretty bad technique and only a couple of winters climbing on plastic, sending the hardest stuff out there. At the time he said something like "we don't really train, we just go in the gym and climb and boulder and have fun". But the kid had genetically freakish grip-strength to weight ratio to begin with. They were climbing 5.13 in the first year.

It would be much more instructive to look at the guys and gals who were more "normal" to begin with and trained their way to hard stuff. That's one reason I cited the Mike and Mark Anderson stuff.

Broken

climber

Texas

Jan 24, 2008 - 12:55pm PT

Nefarius-

What tests are you talking about? I vaguely remember hearing something about some tests on grip strength/weight ratio performed on top climbers recently. I haven't heard anything about the lactic acid.

And while I think Sharma can hang around for quite awhile, I've never noticed that he was particularly better at that than someone like Yuji.

My impression of Sharma was always: power. I was at Rumney the day he almost flashed The Fly (V13/14d), and it was stunning. I'd watched Tony Lamiche climb the route in less than a week just prior to Sharma, which I thought was pretty impressive. My partner and I speculated whether Sharma could do it faster, since he supposedly wasn't "that strong" on crimps. The first few moves are hideous. Even after work, they were desperate for Lamiche.

Sharma did those moves in what seemed like total control on his first try! He fell off up high on his flash attempt, then sent within his next 2-3 tries.

It is shocking how strong he is.

Watch Lamiche on The Fly here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thw8DQexMHw

Nefarius

Big Wall climber

Fresno, CA

Jan 24, 2008 - 02:33pm PT

I think they talk about the tests in "King Lines" somewhere, I could be wrong about that. I'll give it a peak again tonight and do some research to see if I can find something about it. I've also heard other people talking about the same thing though, so it's not something i heard wrong, etc.

They definitely talk about his ability to hang out on climbs all day, pretty much. Klem talks about his amazement at that. Plenty of people have talked about and have noticed that in the past too. Seeing Chris climb, in person, is a rather amazing thing.

burp

Trad climber

Salt Lake City

Jan 24, 2008 - 04:52pm PT

JB,

Arriving a little late in this thread , but …

It's probably an understatement to say that you seem to look at things somewhat academically. This is the way I tend to look at it, since I’m most interested in the sport science behind athletic training. I’ve collected a few articles that I’ve found interesting over the last couple of years that I could e-mail to you. Then if you found any of it interesting, you could share it with the forum. I wouldn’t know where to start, if I started posting it all here.

BTW, I’m not a big fan of Horst’s book (no offense to anyone) … I felt like I learned more about training itself from the small chapter on training in your book “Free Climbing with John Bachar”. I’m a big fan of Fred Hatfield (and others) who has a Ph.d. in exercise science along with practical athletic experience as an athlete and a trainer.

Regarding limit strength … not sure how you used to train, but it may have been somewhat linear in relation to weight increases. Some of the not so new ideas in the powerlifting world involve wave type programs where the weight and/or volume are not linear from workout to workout which allows enough stress to make gains while avoiding overtraining. Here is an example of a 5x5 program calculator … http://www.joeskopec.com/five.html . You may have used similar set-ups in the past. You’ll notice the weight differentiation (up/down) from week to week. One ends up blowing through their max in a couple of months. There is a powerlifter in Florida who hits a new max every month (maybe an example of an extreme form of this) and does it naturally (steroid free) without injury.

Workouts like Crossfit and such seems to focus mostly on pushing the Anaerobic threshold back (being able to use maximum strength over and over ad infinitum) from what I understand is more of an energy system adaptation. This seems to fit with most climbing outside of bouldering. But I don’t know a whole lot about Crossfit.

Anyway … some RANDOM thoughts for now … .

Enjoy!

burp

(edited: grammer/spelling)