“Planning is an unnatural process – it’s much more fun to do something.
The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and desperation”
- Sir John Harvey-Jones 1924 – 2008, Industrialist

I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while but life and work have gotten in the way so it’s been a bit of a long road to getting to it! As mentioned on another interesting blog for those motivated by the sport of climbing, Doylo’s Blog had a good personal reflection on his own past year, and the lessons he learned and the forthcoming strategy for 2010. As it happens, Dave seems to have remembered he has a blog and decided to update it also with his own current plans and process he’s going through right now – sounds pretty organised!

I mentioned it a bit here when I took a longer-term view of my own progression from when I started climbing all of 11/12? years ago – sheesh! – and even on reflecting about my experiences so far in Sheffield and the potential for increases.

so, looking back on 2009, I can only say it’s been insightful also in so many ways. I’ve learnt what my natural baseline is now (after going for months of just intermittent climbing) and what many of my strengths were for this reason. I’ve also learnt of the weaknesses – imbalance of pocket to crimp strength, lack of power for burly moves, a lack of belief for harder routes sometimes. All good experiences and brilliant to reflect on now so that I can improve in the future. I was at a seminar today in relation to my course and one of the quotes was “when you share your learning, it grows instead of getting less” (an old 5th century Tamil poem). Well, to the two top-level climbers who answered my calls for advice, I owe you one and to keep the karma going, I’ll continue to share my learning on this blog and a bit on irishclimbingcoaching.ie so hopefully some of it will be of use to someone! LOL Having said that, I’ve always got a lot to learn myself, most notably in getting strong not just in your fingers so I’ll be picking some people’s advice

So, in taking another quote from the seminar – “the future belongs to those who prepare for it today” (some bloke called Malcolm X made that one – like Dave’s post, I have a rough plan to follow for the forthcoming months to prepare for my summer plans (so would probably benefit most people in my hemisphere). And in the interest of sharing, my next couple of posts are going to be my own plans. As part of those posts though, I’m expecting comments and thoughts – this discussion is a two-way thing. Hopefully you’ll get ideas of my own plans, and hopefully some can advise on what they think I should really be focusing on……

The topics (and I’ll update as I finish more)
- overall training plan for 2010
- strength work-outs (fingers, shoulders, etc.)
- fitness
- things that haven’t worked and failures

Are the Amazon links at the bottom of my posts annoying/useful/distracting?

Good training books from Amazon:
9 Out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes: Navigation Through the Maze of Advice for the Self-coached Climber

Performance Rockclimbing

Self-Coached Climber: The Guide to Movement, Training, Performance

Jerry Moffatt: Revelations

LIMERICK, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching) – Continuing on from our theme on ‘Motivation and Goal Setting’, we’ll move and deal with something that ties the psychological side of climbing and training (i.e. the preparation and mental side of things) with the physiological side (i.e. physical exercise). Though the two are very firmly intertwined in reality, it is far beyond the scope of these articles to go into it (guess you’ll have to come on one of our Coaching Workshops!!) As the step in developing your goals and maintaining your motivation, we are going to deal with the Periodisation. Periodisation is the method of varying your training periodically to prevent ’stagnation’ of the exercises and ensure the body is always having to adjust. It can be used to help maintain motivation levels and stave off boredom by changing things around every now and then. This is achieved by breaking your training into different phases, depending on the goals in mind. There are a number of different periodisation models and though all effectively achieve the same goal, research is conflicting as to which is best at eliciting gains (e.g. Buford, Rossi, Smith & Warren, 2007; Rhea, Ball, Phillips & Burkett, 2002). For the sake of simplicity, here we will deal with the most basic model, a Linear Model of Periodisation.

Macro, Meso and Micro-Cycles
In order to periodise your training, you need to break it down into ‘Blocks’. These blocks or cycles are targeted towards a specific goal and will contain the relevant training / exercises to realise your goal. A macro-cycle is a long cycle which may for example, last an entire season. This will contain a number of meso-cycles, shorter blocks of training which may last a few weeks and will each have a specific focus e.g. endurance, power-endurance, finger strength, slopers etc. Micro-cycles are then the shortest cycles and for this example will last a day/a few days.

Linear Periodisation
In a linear periodisation model, within a full macro-cycle, each meso-cycle builds on the foundations of the previous one. In climbing terms this may start with a 4-6 week stint of general whole-body conditioning, micro-cycles within this may only last one/a few days and may involve running/other cardio. activity or general low-intensity strength work. Each micro-cycle would vary slightly in activity, though still maintain the focus of generally conditioning the body for later training. This is a good time to start correcting any potential sources of injury that may strike later on. The next meso-cycle would then focus on long-term stamina training i.e. for long routes that generally don’t ‘pump’ you out too much. Building on this may be a meso-cycle of arm/shoulder strength whilst maintaining a few sessions to keep the stamina levels ‘topped-up’. So the basic concept is to start out with high-volume, low intensity activities and generally progress to lower-volume, higher intensity exercise. This all depends on the goal you are training for though, so again, must be directed towards your goals!

The Benefits of Periodisation

As well as keeping you ‘interested’ and maintaining your motivation levels, periodising your training keeps you more focused on your goals, makes your training more effective as your body is constantly having to adapt to changes and helps prevent injury and burnout as you’re not working the same thing all the time. This may seem complicated and may take a short time to get your head around it, the easier option is to just get a Climbing Coach to do do it for you…. Also it isn’t just something for elite climbers who train, it is very applicable to climbing itself and all levels of ability.

References:

Buford, T.W., Rossi, S.J., Smith, D.B. & Warren, A.J. (2007). A comparison of periodisation models during nine weeks with equated volume and intensity for strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 21(4), 1245 – 50.

Rhea, M.R., Ball, S.D., Phillips, W.T. & Burkett, L.N. (2002). A comparison of daily linear and undulating periodised programs with equated volume and intensity for strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 16(2), 250 – 55.