Pre-Work Out Stretching by Maria Cheng
Me stretching out on "Spoon" (7C) at Ezemvelo. Photo by Calvin Kemp.
On another note, I've been trying to boost my power in my bouldering, its something that I've wanted to do in order to give me that boost on those harder problems. Sometimes my slightly shorter reach makes moves that much more difficult, but hard dyno problems also feel out of reach. I've managed to get the technique right for dynos, by staying close to the rock, and trying to engage the arms and legs fully, I just lack the raw power to go far enough. So the best option to get there at this point in time is hyper-gravity training, which is basically just training with a weight belt. This isn't a very good idea if you have any finger or muscle tweaks, and is best done when you're feeling in good shape, and now after a season of boulder league I think all the components are in good enough shape to handle the extra weight. I have been training at the UCT wall with a weight belt here and there, trying to repeat boulder league problems with the added weight of 4kgs, which certainly makes everything harder. The belt doesn't sit at your centre of gravity, and so on more dynamic moves you can get thrown off quite a bit. The article I'm talking about here mentions three ways to boost strength through hyper-gravity training, and the one I'm most interested in are the basic weighted pull ups. All it takes is adding sufficient weight to your weight belt so that you can't do over 20 pull ups, and then doing three sets to failure, with your third set probably failing at around 10. If you can't do 20 pull ups its probably best to start doing them without weight, and building up until you can do over 20. So all this sounds like so much fun, and I'd rather go to the wall or even outdoors for a night bouldering session, but end of the day it can be a very quick session at home on a pull up bar that can get you strong quickly. When you lack that time during the week, and have to try fit in everything you want to do after work, it can really help.
Developing Uber Strength by Eric J. Hörst
Luke Gregor hitting the dyno on one the the Boulder League problems at the UCT Wall.
Photo by Calvin Kemp
Hey Woody, also read that article - Seems contradictory! Anyways, in my 12 odd years experience I would be very careful with weighted pullups as they can do terrible things to your elbows. However using a weight belt while training on a wall or system board isn't too bad.
ReplyDeleteThanks Greg! Yeah I've had the weight belt for a while now but haven't used it due to those never ending finger tweaks, but now it seems like everything is holding together. The elbows are definitely an issue! When I started climbing I was almost put off when both elbows packed up, only to finally sort them out with some rotator cuff strengthening. I have managed to maintain weighted pull up sessions in the past without any tweaks, but at the moment I think my main goal is fitting this type of training in between my climbing, rather than focusing solely on the pull ups, to hopefully avoid any overuse of the elbows!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I have a scientifically-minded climbing friend I can gain all this knowledge from :) i would never know these things otherwise!
ReplyDeleteNice blog btw, good luck at nationals ;)
If you want some other views I have some of my own training philosophies at http://thestreakybloc.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteIf we share with each other hopefully we can learn quicker!
Cheers