Page 42 - 2020 AMA Summer

MISCARTICLE
PERFORMANCE TRAINING AT HOME
By Patrick Snow
Introduction
On 28 Feb 20 I began a lengthy stretch of Shared Parental Leave to look after the toddler and baby, to enable my wife to go back to work. To kick the year off, we were due to spend all of April in Fon- tainebleau, mostly bouldering in the forest with the children. Instead, we began our self-isolation on 12 Mar 20 (after my wife got a fever) and, together with the rest of the UK, downgraded our plans. Although something of a #1stworldproblem, the resulting lack of access to modern training facilities or crags presents a challenge for those looking to push their climbing performance. Of course, the challenge of maintaining performance with very limited access to training facilities and no access to actual climbing will be familiar to anyone who has been on an operational tour. This article outlines some personal thoughts on how to maintain, or perhaps even improve, climbing performance in these scenarios. It is written from a boulderer’s perspective, although I hope it will be more broadly relevant. Should you wish to delve into greater technical detail (e.g. fingerboard routines, how to
build a climbing wall, etc), there are loads of useful resources available from experts online. I have tried to highlight these in the text and at the end.
Be prepared
There is no dodging the fact that maintaining or improving performance will be easier if you have access to a variety of training apparatus at home. A good (and reasonably inexpensive) start would include something on which to pull up, a means of training finger strength (e.g. fingerboard/ edge/pinch block), a resistance band, and some weights (whether gym weights or something more Heath Robinson). I have a fingerboard set-up, consisting of a Beastmaker (beastmaker.co.uk) mounted on a “Screwless Fingerboard Mounting Device” (from crusherholds.co.uk), which allows me to use a pulley system to offset weight and means I don’t need to screw the fingerboard into the wall. I have mounted the fingerboard somewhere accessible, so it actually gets used; this has the added benefit that childcare and training are no longer mutually exclusive (using the little people as weights is quite
There is no dodging the fact that maintaining or improving performance will be easier if you have access to a variety of training apparatus at home
Chausseur de Prises, 7A, Rocher Canon, Font
funny, but not recommended). Based on my experiences in 2020 thus far, I intend to buy/make a pinch block, which will be more useful when travelling away from home (if this becomes possible). In addition to this, I find a TRX to be very useful and have built a small garage woody (more fun than the fingerboard, but much of the training value could be replicated on the fingerboard). If you are interested in building one, the Metolius guide “How to build a home climbing wall” was of great help and is available for free online (www.rei.com). I would recommend something steeper than mine, which is currently 15 degrees overhanging.
Pick your battles
More so than many other athletic disciplines, climbing performance relies on a huge range of factors. Movement technique is a big one, with finger strength, power, forearm endurance, core strength, and flexibility all playing a crucial role depending on the problem. That is not to mention the non-physical skills such as mindset, tactics, gear placement, etc.
There is no real way of credibly training much of this at home, or when deployed. Even with a home wall, the technique gains to be made from movement drills or ‘just climbing’ are really limited. Similarly, it is possible to train aerobic capacity (as a foundation for endurance) on a fingerboard using lots of counter-weights but it is (in my opinion) mind-numbingly tedious and therefore at risk of being regularly skipped by all but the most dedicated. This management of decline, for skills that can be quickly regenerated anyway (endurance, movement technique), is also an opportunity cost, given that there are other aspects of performance that are well-suited to being trained at home – namely strength. Strength takes longer to build than endurance (and longer to fade), and is relatively easy to train at home
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