With all the information on training and all the exercises you”should be doing,” it can be hard to know how to fit everything in without turning your sessions into 5 hour marathons that leave you wrecked for a week. Additionally, during really long sessions you can only feel fresh and strong for so long which can compromise the training you are doing towards the end of your workouts.
While, ultimately, the answer for most climbers is simply to pair down your training program and really focus on some key areas like finger strength and any glaring weaknesses, this doesn’t satisfy everyone. For advanced and elite climbers with a solid training history, one solution to this dilemma is to split some of your training days into morning and evening sessions.
To highlight how using double sessions can be effective, here’s an excerpt from French world cup competitor Mathilde Becerra TrainingBeta Podcast where she talks about how she often trains twice a day as a way to fit in all her training while still giving herself enough time to recover between exercises.
As a top world cup competitor, Mathilde is an elite climber with a long training history. We are definitely not suggesting that her training approach will work for everyone or even most climbers. However, her thoughts on split sessions will give you an idea of how to organize your training if you are going to give it a shot. Just remember, it’s always better to under train slightly than to over do it and end up hurt!
If you like what you see here, be sure to check out the full interview/transcript by clicking through below!
Mathilde Becerra on Double Sessions:
Neely Quinn: So you would train, actually, five days a week. Were you going in more than one time a day to train, or were you just going to the gym for hours at a time, just one block?
Mathilde Becerra: When I could, when my schedule would allow me to, I would try to go twice a day because I think it’s nice to train in the morning and then at night. When I couldn’t, I would just go at night for two or three hours.
Neely Quinn: Why do you think it’s nice to break it up like that, to have two sessions? What did you gain from that?
Mathilde Becerra: I think, when you have two sessions in a day, you can definitely do more than if you just did everything in three hours because you actually have time to rest in between, which is really key, I think. Right now what I like to do is, I like to do my physical exercises in the morning, like pull-ups, front levers, everything that’s just not really climbing related and then I have a few hours’ rest and then at night, I go and actually climb. Because I’ve rested, my climbing is actually much better. It’s just more efficient.
Full Episode and Transcript: TBP 052 :: How Mathilde Becerra Is Top 10 in World for Lead Climbing
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