Hey!
First off, apologies for the long break from posting anything. This article is going to cover something that I’ve gotten a lot of questions about over the past couple months, but have only recently been in a position to test out: What's the best way to get back into climbing shape after taking an extended break? In order of decreasing importance these are the things that I think are the most important to focus on for your journey back to good form;
So let’s take it from the top. 1) Managing Expectations + Mindset For me the hardest part about coming back in the past has always been being let down by the expectations for my own performance, based off of when I was strongest before my injury/whatever the reason for the break is. Obviously this is massively counter-productive, leaving every session with a feeling of disappointment. Recently, I struggled with this once again, after taking my longest break from climbing while living in Hawaii. Even though I tried to maintain my climbing fitness while there (with trips to Oahu three times over five months for some concentrated climbing), I still ended up losing a lot of ground. It didn’t matter how many pull ups I did or how many times I abused my body with core workouts, there was just no replacement for climbing and working on technique. Recently, this regression caught up with me, and I came face to face with my unrealistic expectations. After my most recent trip to Oahu I was setting off for some extended traveling before meeting up with the EKB crew for the CO trip. Before I even arrived in CO, I knew that it was gonna be a low rest, high climbing volume period for the five days. With that in mind, I put a lot of thought into how I was going to handle the period, knowing that I could be way too hard on myself and have a very dejected attitude. The solution that I decided on was to periodically (every two weeks for me) have days that were purely focused on establishing baselines (Finger strength and endurance, movement efficiency and flow, power, etc), then making any goals based off of those baselines. 2) Creating a solid base. For me, my first goal upon having access to regular climbing was to immediately start working on my endurance base. I will usually spend two weeks to a month on this phase. The main overarching theme that I carried into this was to constantly be attentive to how quickly I move, what my flow on the wall is like, and how efficient my movement is. This was a reaction to climbing on Oahu, and finding that my strength and power was pretty OK, but that the big thing holding me back (besides getting really pumped) was how slowly and clumsily I was moving. Here are some of my favorite ways to structure my endurance and power endurance sessions: a) 4x4's - Pick out four problems that are of a moderate to high level of difficulty, and climb each of them in a row with no rest between. Rest 2 - 5 minutes and repeat until you've done four sets. You can modify this workout as 3x3's 5x5's etc, setting it to a level that will always be difficult for that session. b) Climb Everything - Start at the lowest grade in the gym (or whichever grade you want to start at). Climb everything in that given grade; I like to do no to minimal rest (~15 seconds) between problems for this. After completing the grade rest 1 - 5 minutes and move up to the next grade. Repeat until you're too pumped to hold your phone. - For added mileage into the pain cave downclimb everything :D c) Marathon Boulders (for lack of a better name) - Pick 8 problems of a moderate to high difficulty. Climb each problem 3x in a row with no rest between tries. Rest 1 minute, then continue onto the next problem and repeat. - This can be modified to have anywhere from 8 problems to 88 problems, enjoy :) d) Bouldering Circuits - Pick out a range of problems and link them all together without getting off the wall. I think that the sweet-spot for this exercise is 4 - 7 problems linked up. If you find that you’re doing more than that in a circuit, you should probably try increasing the difficulty of the climbs in the circuit. I try to do each circuit between 2 - 5 times, resting 3 - 10 minutes between go I aim to do 5 unique circuits during each session. - This can be modified in a plethora of ways; my favorites are to limit rest times (say a maximum of 20 seconds of rest per rest position), try to rest using the worst holds possible, eliminate matching, when topping off a problem ignore the finish jug or top, and go from the second-to-last hold into downclimbing the next problem. 3) Safely Building Finger Strength and Stability Imagine this: You're walking into the climbing gym for the first time in a few months, you've watched your favorite EKB videos to prepare, and the psych is high. After giving a cursory warm up on some juggy problems, you hop on something too small/tweaky/pockety/unhappy/etc... While pulling hard, you suddenly hear the dreaded pop of a tendon going. Maybe you’re lucky and you avoid a serious injury, but you still finish the session with a few fingers that feel tweaky, and you spend the next few weeks climbing with something being not quite right with your fingers. Thankfully this doesn't have to come to pass. Utilizing a training plan that gradually ramps up the intensity over, say, a month long period will be much more effective than lightly screwing around on a hangboard then suddenly jumping into a heavy one-arm deadhang program; taking the time to build a thorough strength base will give a much stronger platform to form your training around. For the first week, I will usually do some hangs on the biggest edges/holds on a hangboard for my warm-up, but I will otherwise stick purely to climbing. During the second week, I'll start a 2-4 week endurance hangboard cycle, consisting - for the most part - of lots of repeaters). After I finish this phase, I can go into another endurance cycle, but the majority of the time i’ll move into a power-endurance or strength cycle. 4) Proactively working to strengthen areas that are prone to injury on climbers. Climbing places an incredible amount of strain on the body, and there is a plethora of issues that can arise as the body is exposed to that level of stimulus. In the past for me, beginning climbing after a break was always marked by slight elbow, shoulder, wrist, etc issues from pushing the body too hard too fast. So this time I made sure to place extra emphasis on supplementary exercises for shoulder and rotator cuff stability (the one that plagues me the most) as well as a good spread of antagonist exercises. My go-to resource to learn and find new exercises is the Youtube channel Athlean-X. As he’s both a personal trainer and a physical therapist I really like the way he dives into and explains the biomechanics and science behind everything that he makes videos on, would highly recommend checking out what he has on his channel. :) The other aspect of training that I'm putting a lot of focus on is mobility and stretching. I had someone recommend Sean Vigue's youtube channel, and have found that to be everything that I need. Have also found yoga to be enormously helpful with evening out some muscle imbalances that have developed over the past couple months. I’ve found that around a half hour of yoga combined with a good blend of foamrolling and pressure point release (with a lacrosse ball) keeps my body performing at the level that I want it to. Thanks for reading! Hope that this is helpful for some of you, but by no means is this the only way to go about getting back into strong form for climbing. I tried it out this time and have been pleased with the progress so far. If anyone has any tips or tricks for this kind of thing drop them into the comments below, would love to see them. Thanks for the support and much love.
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For the first installment for hangboarding I figured it would be the most valuable to people if
I started with when to start hangboarding, how often to do it, how to build an effective plan, what to keep in mind, ideal body position, etc. Getting this all out of the way then jumping into the work outs themselves. Disclaimer: A lot of the information and methods came from reading Will Anglin's (@captainwa ngles) old blog, and it's with his permission that i'm writing and sharing all of this, so would highly recommend checking out his stuff, you'll find it on the Tension Climbing website, https://www.tensionclimbing.com/ :) When to start? I would recommend looking at hangboarding after 1 - 2 years of climbing, at this point most people's tendons will be strong enough to safely train, but please please please listen to your body, it's can be very easy to get injured or make an existing injury worse. How Often? Hangboarding can be massively beneficial done just once a week, or can be done 4 - 6 days a week. It all depends on how hard you can/want to push it and the goals that you're working towards. Again (and i'm going to sound like a broken record), make sure to give yourself time to recover. All the finger training in the world isn't going to help you if you're not taking the time to let your body and tendons recover and grow. Step 1: Establish Goals! As with all climbing and training in general, having goals to work on and strive towards is crucial. Take a look at what you want to improve on and go from there; Can I hold all the holds on my project? Am I pumping off halfway through the crux? Do I just want to increase general finger strength? Asking yourself (and answering) questions like these will help you decide what exercises to do on the hangboard, as well as the frequency and intensity of said exercises. Step 2: Plan it Out! When it comes to hangboarding (or just about any training) i'm a big fan of periodizing my training cycles. I usually shoot for 3 - 4 week cycles, followed by 2 - 5 days of rest before moving into the next cycle. When I'm planning for a longer amount of time (usually to prep for a competition or trip) the setup will usually look something like this: Endurance Hypertrophy Strength Strength Endurance Taper Venga! Step 3: Increasing Intensity One of potentially most frustrating parts of hangboarding, can be knowing how and when to change or increase the intensity. For just that reason I like to use the RPE scale (essentially a standardized scale in exercise for determining an athletes perceived exertion) that's called the "Borg CR10" it's gonna look like this (plus, all subsequent hangboarding posts will be using this measurement system for the program notation). 10 - MAX Effort Activity (nearly impossible to maintain for more than 1 - 3 reps) 9 - Very Difficult Activity 7 - 8 - Vigorous Activity 4 - 6 - Moderate Activity 2 - 3 - Light Activity >1 - 1 - "alright guys, time to get off the couch" For this scale to be the most effective and accurate, I will devote one day per training cycle to determine what all of these numbers will be for me. Especially for hangboarding, it doesn't really work to just guesstimate what these vales will be for you. For hangboarding to be the most effective it's best to be in the 7 - 9 range, and when the difficulty drops to 5 -6 it's necessary to look at your plan and figure out how to up the intensity, this can be done in a myriad of ways, not least of which is: -Smaller holds -Slopeyer(I think is the spelling :D) holds -Increase weight help -Increase repetitions -Increase sets -Decrease rest between repetitions -Decrease rest between sets Just look at all those fun ways to make your fingers and forearms just love you! Real talk tho, considering the stressful nature of finger training, increasing the intensity to hit the 7 - 9 sweet- spot should be done in the smallest increments possible to avoid and mitigate injury. Final Thoughts: To be the most efficient and to get the most out of this training, it's key (vital, necessary, mucho-importante, take your pick :p ) to consistently record every session. What you should be recording is: -Date -Number of Sets and Reps -Intensity (edge depth, weight added or removed, edge slope, etc) -Whatever else you deem to be important (personally I will usually include starting weight for the day before I eat anything as well as how much sleep I got) Finally, don't forget to climb! Seriously, I love the training aspect of climbing and being able to geek out over it, but climbing is a high skill activity that relies heavily on problem solving, technique, and effective motor patterns. Shockingly enough, these are not things that you will find yourself training on the hangboard ;) Thanks for reading, and again, big shout out to Will Anglin for giving me permission to write and share his stuff that I've been using for years! Cheers, Nikken (and for getting this far here's a picture of a fuzzball :) So this'll be a two-part post, half of it being what goes into my everyday training "quiver". For this i'll be splitting it into the two categories that I like to put my things into, things that are
purely training focused and things that are more rehab focused. The other half being my warm- up routine and the mindset that I like to maintain for it. So onto Part 1! Training Essentials: Training Focused: 1) Climbing shoes! Rather self explanatory. I always have between 2-3 pairs with me for the session, one will be a pure warm-up beater shoe, one will be the performance oriented shoe, and one will be the shoe that I use for all of my volume and mileage. 2) Chalkbag. Never use one personally, in love with the sweaty, cesspool-like feeling that the absence of chalk gives my hands. 3) Dank brushes. We all want to channel our inner thunder god, for this I love a good boars hair brush, honestly have never found a synthetic brush that maximizes the #brushinggains. 4) Sandpaper Pad. You know that flapper from a jug that put you out for a week? Totally (for the most part) preventable. Use it to keep your skin nice and smooth so it's not getting snagged on holds. 5) Pre Work-Out, Creatine, BCAA's, Protein Powder. These all kinda speak for themselves, to be completely honest, haven't used these for my climbing/climbing-specific training. However, have been loving the addition of these to my lifting and can't wait to also use them for climbing :). 7) Training Journal. Will do a much more in-depth post on this. Suffice to say, if you're serious about climbing training and improving, keeping one of these will be well worth your time. 6) Water. H to the 2 to the O, keep your body happy and hydrated. I will always (ALWAYS) try and drink between 2-4 liters per day. Rehab Focused: 1) Yoga mat. Also rather self explanatory :). 2) Foamroller. Have you ever felt like there isn't enough self-induced torture in your life? Well look no further! For the low cost of rolling yourself across a piece of (albeit hard) foam you can bring yourself to tears in seconds! Really though, I love these things, will spend 10 - 20 minutes on one everyday. 3) Lacrosse Ball. Continuing in the same vein of self-torture, you know all those hard to reach spots and knots you thought were safe from the foamroller? Well now you can vanquish those with pinpoint accuracy! 4) Rubber Bands. Was unsure of what category to put these under, great for both warming up and resistance training, as well as stretching. Warm Up Routine: Cardio: 5 - 10 min. I always like to start my warm up with some cardio to get the blood flowing, not really rocket science. Personally, I like rowing and jump roping, but could really be whatever works best for you. Recruitment(?): 5 - 10 min. After getting my body moving I like to do a couple different sets of push ups, pulls ups, scapular hangs and stretching with a rubber band to start getting the body recruited for the session. Personally I put a lot of time into making sure my elbows and shoulders (places of repeated injury) are completely warm before moving on. Fingers: 5 - 10 min. For this I will pick three grip sizes/types to warm up on. Always starting with the largest and working down to the smallest (obviously). I will do all of these hangs with activated shoulders and in half-crimp position. I will do all hangs for between 6 - 10 seconds, with 3 hangs per grip size, and 2 - 5 seconds rest between hangs. Climbing: 5 - 10 min. Finally the fun part! will usually spend 5 - 10 min climbing things in the 5 - 6b range going fast, controlled, dynamic, lock offs, etc. Just getting into the flow of climbing, will then work my way up to the difficulty range of climbs that i'll be working on for that session. To Conclude: I will warm up for around 30 min - 1 hour (depending on my mood and goals for that session). When it comes to my warm up, something I really try to stay away from is setting a time limit (ie. 10 min) and after that time is up I start climbing regardless of how warm or ready my body actually feels. Instead I try to hold the mindset that my warm up is a time to make myself feel as great as possible, and so by the end of it I should be ready to pull as hard as I want or need to for the session. Hope you've enjoyed reading this and let me know how this works for you if you decide to incorporate it into your training! Cheers, Nikken :) When it comes to climbing, and climbing training I've tried just about any and every
combination (random or intentional) that I could dream up. The classic being (I think all climbers can relate to this) climbing seven days a week, projecting everyday, never working antagonist muscles and not taking rest days; then wondering why I wasn't seeing improvement (shocking I know). These days I primarily use two different schedules for climbing, depending on my goals for that period and how much time I want to, and can dedicate to training. Note that these plans are purely training oriented (meaning that they don't factor in days or time for climbing outside), so that'll be up to you to tweak the plans as you see fit. Schedule #1 (Shout out to the sensei, Eric Karlsson, for turning me onto this one) For this schedule, there is climbing and training three days a week (I do Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. NOTE: Day three is going to be followed by two days of rest). The focus for this schedule is building POWER POWER POWER and max strength. What I like about this schedule is that only training three days a week means you're always going to be well rested to go 110% for that days session. After following this schedule for a couple months there were four benefits that I hadn't anticipated, but massively enjoyed; 1) This schedule almost completely eliminated bad climbing days that would arise from over - training (for me this was one of the hardest things to dial in, had a hard time cutting back from six days of climbing to only three days). 2) Increased motivation, focus and STOKE for my training days since I wanted to make the most of my three sessions a week, also made me look forward and value those days more. 3) My over-use injuries went way down (crazy what resting does right?). 4) I suddenly had a lot more time to put into other things, stretching, foam rolling, yoga, studying, etc. This is what the schedule looks like: Warm up: 30 min. (For me this is going to be cardio, usually 5 - 10 min of rowing/jump roping. Combined with light shoulder work and mobility, followed by warming up on the hangboard (very light up to full recruitment of strength.) See the post on what my warm up routine is :) (Optional): 15 - 30 min. Depending on what skill/specific strength I am currently working on. Will put work on that strength, or a progression for the strength, I need (most recently this has been one-arm and or weighted pull ups). Hangboarding (Strength): 15-30 min. Kinda self explanatory, I like to put this before climbing to avoid tendon fatigue (as with all finger training. Be careful and listen to your body. If something doesn't feel quite right, take a break and skip the session. Personally: I have had too many times where something didn't feel quite right and decided to push through anyways making me perform at 70%, then would have some problem or nagging ache for a few weeks keeping me from climbing and training at the capacity and frequency to sustainably improve /end rant. Climbing: 1 - 3 hours. Focus on projecting and limit bouldering for half the time (for me I look specifically for moves/styles in which I want to improve), the other half of the time I spend repeating boulders that are at or right below my redpoint limit (I like this because a) it allows for muscle memory to be built on moves near your limit. b) provides more volume to improve and practice technique and movement). The mindset I like to carry into a session like this is for every try to be a 100% quality try + extreme attention to body tension and playing with doing things slow or fast, controlled and static or dynamic. Campus Boarding: 30 min - 1 hour. (Immediate disclaimer. Training on the campus board carries a higher risk on injury than a lot of other climbing-specific training. Introducing a dynamic load onto the tendons means that focus and form is paramount throughout the session. The reason I have both strength hangboarding and campus training in the same session is because I felt like I had been stuck at a plateau for a couple months, and needed to test a new intensity of stimulus. Would highly recommend reading Will Anglin's posts on campus board training, found here: https://www.tensionclimbing.com/tension-climbing-blog/2017/2/12/campus-101 https://www.tensionclimbing.com/tension-climbing-blog/2017/2/12/campus-201 To Finish: I like to finish out these sessions with doing core till failure mixed with stretching. For these days I expect on dedicating between 4 - 6 hours to complete the training, this will depend a lot on my energy for the day Schedule #2 This schedule has a more balanced approach to how the climbing is broken up, with equal time given to both strength days as well as endurance days. This will look like having two days on, and one day off (personally I like starting all of schedules at the beginning of the week, thus Monday and Tuesday on, rest Wednesday, etc). Day #1 will be the strength day, it will almost be the same as the days in Schedule #1, however there will be some slight differences. Day #2 will be the endurance and volume day. Day #1 Warm up: 30 min. (For me this is going to be cardio, usually 5 - 10 min of rowing/jump roping. Combined with light shoulder work and mobility, followed by warming up on the hangboard (very light up to full recruitment of strength. (Optional): 30 min. Depending on what skill/specific strength I am currently working on. Will put work on that strength/a progression for the strength I need (most recently this has been one- arm and weighted pull ups). Hangboarding (Strength) OR Campus Board Training: 15 min - 1 hour. This will be the biggest difference between the strength days, will choose between hangboarding or campus board training. Climbing: 1 - 2 hours. Focus on projecting and limit bouldering for half the time (for me I look specifically for moves/styles in which I want to improve), the other half of the time I spend repeating boulders that are at or right below my redpoint limit (I like this because a) it allows for muscle memory to be built on moves near your limit. b) provides more volume to improve and practice technique and movement). The mindset I like to carry into a session like this is for every try to be a 100% quality try + extreme attention to body tension and playing with doing things slow or fast, controlled and static or dynamic. To Finish: Will finish these sessions with core and/or light lifting. Day #2 Warm up: 30 min. (For me this is going to be cardio, usually 5 - 10 min of rowing/jump roping. Combined with light shoulder work and mobility, followed by warming up on the hangboard (very light up to full recruitment of strength. Climbing: 2 hours. The goal for the climbing on these days will be to climb between 40 - 80 problems over the two hours. Can be any range on grades and styles, the emphasis and mindset that I like to carry in for these is to climb everything as perfectly as possible with as much flow as I can. Because of this, I will frequently do the same problem again and again till I'm satisfied that how I've done the problem fulfills my goals for the session. If you need inspiration for climbing things with flow, just watch any video with Fredrik Serlachius (I like this one :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QiRUwd6uus ), the man is a GOD at climbing things perfectly. Hangboarding (Endurance or Power Endurance): For the endurance days I like to put the hangboarding after the main climbing of the session. I do this for two reasons; a) allows me to climb with much better control as i'm not worrying about carrying a pump into the session. b) I can get as pumped as humanly (and inhumanly) possible since this'll be the last section of the day. To Finish: Will finish these sessions with core and/or light lifting. There you have it, let me know how you enjoyed the article and if you decide to test out the schedules let me know how they work for you! Cheers, Nikken |
So this is going to be everything training related that i'll be putting up on the website. I'm starting with fleshing out the training series I started on Insta and expanding from there. If you have any suggestions or requests DM me on Insta or go into the contact page :)
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