This
article is from Climbing June 15 1998 and its by Neil Gresham, a 5.13d
climber from Sheffield, England. Our Ratrace climbing treadmill or
bouldering walls are good places for the workouts he describes.
“Training
to Failure is Failure to Train – Interval Training for Anaerobic Endurance”
by
Neil Gresham
You're
a redpointer, an on-sighter, perhaps a competition climber. You tie
in below a route that is a fairly standard “middle-distance” affair: 50
to 60 ft high and sustained, with no particular crux, but no rests or easy
sections either. If you are going to send it you better move swiftly.
You give it your best shot, executing the moves well, but run out of gas
and fall just short of the anchors.
How
could this be? The move that spat you off was well within your capabilities
and was no harder than the other moves on the route. Stranger still,
you didn’t fail because you were excessively pumped – you were doing great,
and then without warning, your fingers uncurled and you were off.
Simply put, your anaerobic system failed. Anaerobic endurance is
perhaps your single most important energy system, because it fuels your
muscles in the absence of oxygen.
In
climbing terms, anaerobic endurance is the ability to do really hard moves
for a prolonged period of time. Anaerobic endurance becomes important
when you do between 15 and 30 sustained moves, at 60 to 70 % of your one
move bouldering maximum, for a duration of between 40 seconds and two minutes.
Sounds like the type of climbing challenge that has bouted us all at one
time or other. This is because our anaerobic endurance has a limit.
As soon as we cross this critical barrier, there’s no energy for our muscles
and we fail.
Training
for Anaerobic endurance
No
pain, no gain? How many times have we heard this cliché?
As climbers we have been conditioned to believe that by going for the burn
– maxing out and pushing ourselves to failure – we are going to get fitter
and climb harder. Unfortunately, when it comes to anaerobic endurance,
this belief is unfounded.
Let’s
take a step back. In order to tax and therefore increase your anaerobic
threshold, you must strike a balance between the amount of work you do
and its intensity. If the workouts are too intense, you won’t achieve
sufficient volume; too much volume and the intensity is compromised.
Consider
a typical and unproductive training session scenario: You start your gym
session by going for routes at your limit, and then drop your grade further
and further until you can barely get up your warm-ups. It feels like
the right way to train because its seriously hard work, but in reality
you are not spending sufficient time in the critical zone that lies close
to your anaerobic limit to make effective gains in your anaerobic endurance.
Interval
Training. Anaerobic endurance training is well understood in the world
of athletics. The way to develop anaerobic endurance lies in one
word: intervals. During a training session, no sprinter or middle-distance
runner in his right mind would dream of trying to run every repetition
of a distance (interval) at his absolute maximum. If he did, exhaustion
would cause him to drastically reduce his pace during the session.
Instead, runners decide on a constant pace, a fixed number of intervals,
and a set recovery time between each interval: they aim to complete the
session successfully – but only just. By definition, this means that
the first few work intervals will feel relatively easy; but as the session
progresses, they will come under increasing pressure, until they can only
just squeeze out that final interval. Hence the sessions heightens
progressively until reaching an intensity climax, and the athlete spends
the maximum amount of time training within his critical anaerobic zone.
In
recent years, top European climbers have applied this principle and made
astonishing increases in the standard of middle-distance competition and
on-sight climbing.
Interval
Training Guidelines
Volume
first, then intensity. Figure 1 illustrates several interval
training regimes. The idea is to start a training phase at the lowest
number of intervals and longest rest time.
Figure
1. Interval Training Regimes
| Work
Time (sec) |
40
|
60
|
90
|
120
|
| No.
of moves |
12
|
18
|
26
|
34
|
| Rest
time (min) |
1-2
|
3-5
|
7-10
|
5-15
|
|
No.
per session
|
10-16
|
8-12
|
6-10
|
7-8
|
During
subsequent workouts, you can start increasing the number of intervals until
you reach the upper limit. Then, work on reducing your recovery time
until you reach the lower limit. Only when you have achieved these
goals are you ready to start on a harder route or bouldering circuit.
For
example, for an 18-move (60-second) circuit:
|
Week
1
|
8
intervals
|
5-minute
rests
|
|
Week
2
|
10
intervals
|
5-minute
rests
|
|
Week
3
|
12
intervals
|
5-minute
rests
|
|
Week
4
|
12
intervals
|
4-minute
rests
|
|
Week
5
|
12
intervals
|
3-minute
rests
|
This
structure is based on the training principle of always increasing volume
before intensity. The idea here – and with any new training regime
– is to start with a broad foundation of quality based work on which to
build more refined and strenuous quality-centred training. Not only
does this method provide the best performance gains, it minimises the chance
of over-training or injury.
Gauging
the Difficulty. Choosing a route or circuit for anaerobic endurance
training takes practice and experience. The route should be sustained,
with no crux or rests, and of the right level of difficulty. As a
rule of thumb, if you have your training route wired, then it should be
a grade that you can occasionally flash, or redpoint comfortably within
two or three attempts. If you are less familiar with your training
route, however, then it should be quite easier than your hardest on-sight.
Bear
in mind however, that you may need to make your routes or circuits easier
as they get longer. Long routes produce higher levels of lactic acid
in your muscles, and dispensing it requires longer rests that can halt
the momentum of your session.
Choosing
the appropriate number of moves. If you are powerful but lack stamina and
have poor recovery for longer routes, you should emphasise longer (30 –
40 move) routes. Conversely, if you’re super-fit but weak as a kitten,
shorter (10-15 move) routes will be more beneficial. If you choose
to combine intensities, start the session with short intervals and finish
with longer ones.
Where
to Train? Inside or outside? Bouldering circuits or routes? The
medium and type of climbing you choose for your endurance training should
reflect your goals. Comp climbers need never venture outside.
Redpoint or on-sight climbers should try to train outside, on a specific
route or a specific climbing area. Both can, however, replicate outdoor
scenarios indoors: for example, by constructing indoor circuits that have
the same angle and use the same types of holds as the climbers’ current
project.
Number
of Sessions per week. Interval training is intense, and doing
too much of it can hinder your performance and lead to injury. Even
fit high-level climbers should not attempt more than four interval training
sessions per week. Three is a more realistic figure, although you
may need to cut back if your interval training is combined with other climbing
sessions.
The
Big Picture. Remember, interval training is just one foundation
for a balanced overall training program. Supplement it throughout
the year with other workouts, such as bouldering and campus board work
for strength and power, longer routes for building lactic acid tolerance,
and general cragging and technique improvement sessions.
Other
Tips
Redpoint
Intervals.
Working a hard project at the crag for days on end is a notorious way to
lose fitness. But by using an interval-training structure to perform
laps on sections of your project, you will not only gain fitness, but increase
your chances of doing the route.
Pace
Training. The pace of indoor climbing is nearly always faster
than that of crag climbing, especially when you’re sprinting up routes
or around circuits that you’ve got dialled. To make your gym training
more specific, slow down and try to hold each move for roughly the same
amount of time you would take on a red-point or on-sight. If you
are top-roping routes for interval training, leave the quickdraws clipped
to force you to climb at a pace that is more like real leading.
Summary.
If
used correctly and incorporated into a balanced overall approach to your
climbing, interval training is the most effective method for improving
the type of endurance you need for sustained middle-distance routes.
Remember: stick to routes and circuits without rests, maintain a consistent
level of difficulty, follow the stopwatch, and don’t burn out ‘til the
end.