From Bouldering to Route Climbing Part 2: Training Details

[PE] workouts from Thursday to Wednesday. I make this change so that I can fit in two full rest days before trying to send on a Saturday. Eventually, when I am really close to sending or if I’m feeling run down I skip the PE workout all together.

In other words, take this schedule with a grain of salt. I would guess that only 60%-70% of my weeks fully match this plan and I believe that this willingness to be flexible based on how you feel and the availability of good conditions is extremely important.

Hangboarding

Okay, time for the nuts and bolts…

Whether I am training for routes or for boulders, hangboarding makes up the core of my training program. The reason for this is that the strength of our tendons develops much more slowly than that of our muscles, so it makes sense to continually work at it.

There are lots of different hangboard workouts out there and there isn’t one “best” protocol. When training for routes, I follow a modified version of the “Advanced Hangboard Routine” from the Anderson Brothers’ The Rock Climber’s Training Manual.

Essentially, each repetition in my routine is 7 seconds on with a 3 second rest. I perform three sets in total where the first set is 7 reps on each grip, the second set is 6 reps, and the third set is 5 reps. As I drop the number of reps between sets, I add weight to increase the intensity.

The only change I make to the Anderson Brothers’ protocol is that I only train three grips (half crimp, front two 2 finger pocket, and middle two 2 finger pocket) rather than the seven grips the Anderson Brothers recommend.

There are two reasons I made this choice. First, I climb a lot on pockets so I really wanted to focus on training them. Second, I wanted to keep the overall volume of hanging low so that I can hangboard and limit boulder during the same training session.

The reason I chose this protocol over other max-weight protocols is that I feel like it is more specific to route climbing. As the Anderson Brothers note:

“This seven-second dead-hang/three-second rest (7/3) timing was selected after experimenting with 6/4 and 5/5 timing because it is more specific to the duty cycle used by advanced climbers during performance, produces the right amount of metabolic stress, and it equates to the initial period of contraction in which muscles can produce maximal force (before high-frequency fatigue sets in).” – Mark and Mike Anderson

In other words, I feel like while I am primarily working on finger strength, I am also putting my forearms through the same type of contractions they will go through when climbing on a difficult route.

The first time I completed a 6-week bloc of fingerboarding with this protocol I went outside and was shocked at how much fitter I felt. Most importantly, for the first time in my climbing career, I felt like I could actually recover at rests that weren’t arm-swallowing jugs with ledge sized feet.

For anyone looking to move from bouldering to route climbing, I cannot recommend this repeater-style hangboarding enough. While you are definitely working on finger strength, I feel like these workouts had the added bonus of helping my endurance and on-route recovery as well.

Power Endurance Circuits

If there was any one change I made to my training that I felt made the biggest difference for my route climbing, it would be the inclusion of power endurance (PE) circuits.

I started circuit training because even once I felt like I was comfortable climbing on lead, I found that I was constantly getting pumped.

Essentially, I have a 27-move circuit on a 52-degree board (I chose 27 moves because it was what an up-down-up linked lap added up to). The moves itself are fairly consistent (probably around v4-v5) and I try and climb it without stopping to shake or chalk.

To start out, I timed how long it took me to climb the 27 moves, which was approximately 1:30. I then rested 3 minutes to make a 1:2 duty cycle. After a thorough warm-up, I would try for 6-10 rounds on the circuit, stopping when I failed before the 75% mark.

As I became fitter and was completing 10 rounds, I gradually started to reduce the rest with the goal of doing 10 complete rounds at a 1:1 duty cycle.

As of now I have not yet completed 10 full rounds at 1:1 so I have not increased the difficulty of the circuit itself. Once I do, I will switch it up so that I am linking together harder boulder problems.

My reasoning behind this approach was that with my bouldering background I knew that I could do hard moves and it was more important for me to focus on reducing the amount of rest between sets rather than making harder links. This way, I would be training myself not only to be able to keep climbing when I was pumped, but also to recover more quickly.

If you are struggling with power endurance, give circuit training like this a shot. The workouts feel hard and you will be pouring sweat by the end of it, but it definitely produces results.

ARCing and Energy System Work 

At this point, you are probably thinking, “Huh, he’s talking about training for routes as a boulderer and he hasn’t included any endurance training in his program?”

Ultimately, this is for two reasons:

• First, since I am attempting to get outside and climb routes twice a week, I feel that I get my endurance work through simply climbing.
• Second, endurance and fitness are fleeting. What this means is that you can put in the work and improve them pretty quickly, but you will also lose them quickly once you stop consistently working them.

That being said, ARCing and endurance system work is something I am still experimenting with and I don’t think I have figured out exactly where it fits into my overall training strategy yet.

My latest approach, though, was to kickstart moving from bouldering season in the fall to my winter route season by spending two full weeks on a tread-wall.

During this period I would climb two days on, one day off doing intervals. Each interval consisted of 4 laps on the tread-wall (~52 moves) separated by 12 mins rest.

When doing these workouts I was looking to sustain about 85% effort to target the anaerobic energy system. I got this idea from Eric Hörst and his new book Training For Climbing.

Obviously, 85% effort isn’t a scientific measurement as it is completely subjective. However, over the two week period (8 sessions), I was able to both reduce the rest between sets from 12 minutes to 8 minutes and to increase the difficulty of the “routes” I was climbing.

I did these workouts during the last two weeks of December and can safely say that I felt much fitter when I started my Sinks Canyon season in January.

Despite these gains, I have still not added them into my weekly program. The main reason for this, again, is that I am trying to climb outside twice a week and I feel I get a good amount of endurance “training” doing so. However, if I lived in an area of the country with a true off-season, I probably would.

Final Thoughts

I hope you find these workouts and my general training schedule helpful. I encourage anyone training for a route season to try them out. However, I want to emphasize the underlying philosophy behind this program:

Strength is still the basis of hard climbing. Even though I follow this program to train for routes and not boulders, half of my training days are still focused on finger strength and limit bouldering.

This may seem silly for someone who always complained about failing because I got too pumped, but the stronger you are the easier moves feel and the longer you will be able to hold on. In other words, by training strength you can actually improve your endurance as well. The way this work is that as you get stronger moves require less of your maximum ability, and as a result you are able to climb for longer before being pushed into the red zone.

Additional, finger strength and power are harder to develop than pure endurance. At a minimum I want to not lose ground in those areas, having spent nearly the last decade working hard to improve them for my bouldering.

For boulderers looking to improve their sport climbing, definitely don’t skip the power endurance and energy system work, but don’t stop working on doing hard moves either.

The converse is true for anyone who only climbs routes. While you may feel working your endurance is the key to your success, don’t forget that climbing requires us to have strength, power, and endurance all at the same time. After all, as the legendary Tony Yaniro said, “If you can do those moves, then there’s nothing to endure.”

Cover photo: (The author on Single Cell 5.13b; photo credit: Savannah Cummins | @sav.cummins)

About The Author

Matt Pincus is a boulderer and a sport climber living in Jackson, Wyoming, and sometimes in his van on the road. He’s responsible for most of the blog posts and social media posts for TrainingBeta. He’s constantly changing and tweaking the ways he trains as he learns new things. Always motivated, you will find Matt underneath his current project doing his best to figure out what he needs to do to send.

(Matt Pincus climbing Training Wheel 5.13b, Lander, WY | Photo: Liz Schafer)