Day 27

It is here. That fateful day. With today’s training, you will have completed the final edition of the Gripped Power Cycle. For those of us with safe access to climbing, we will be physically primed for maximal results and should find ourselves, in some ways, stronger than ever before. Allow yourself a day or too to remember technique before fully testing your abilities, but also approach your projects with confidence for you are strong. You got here. You did it.

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I’m going to try to start posting a weekly #trainingtip every Wednesday! For the first one, I thought I’d share my off-the-wall warm up routine because I’ve always gotten a ton of questions about it. Scroll through to see it all. I use the blue theraband that I got on Amazon, it’s the second highest tension band in the set. It’s important to always make sure your shoulder blades are down and back (don’t let them “wing out”) while doing these exercises (see video two to see my shoulder position)! I usually do ten reps of each before I even touch the climbing wall. 1: over the head “dislocates” 2: shoulder position for all exercises 3: front of the body extensions 4: over the head shoulder press keeping tension in the band 5: shoulder rotations keeping the elbows in to your body 6: bicep curls and tricep pulls 7: finger curls 8: wrist curls with the stretchy band rolled up 9: leg kicks 10: calf raises and single leg calf raises Sorry for the descriptions! I don’t have names for all of them, but if you have any questions I’ll answer them in the comments!! Hope this is helpful and I’d love to know what you guys would want to see next week!

A post shared by Kyra Condie (@kyra_condie) on May 6, 2020 at 11:58am PDT

Climbing: Going Forward

So much of training is just showing up, session after session and giving it your all. Though climbing is an exceptionally technical sport, it is also built upon mental fortitude. By committing to consistent training, your head space and your body should be stronger and more dependable. Your forearm power-endurance will, at this point be relatively weak as we have not climbed, but your raw power should be fairly high. As you begin to climb again, strive in your early sessions to get moves in and increase the length of time you are able to climb on the wall. This is not to say that you should run power-endurance all of the time, simply climb as you would and strive for longer sessions. It will take about a week for your forearms to recover assuming that you are climbing two-days-on and one-day-off over this period. If you are a stronger climber, it could take up to two and a half weeks.

At this point, listening to your body will be essential for progression. If you are feeling tired, rest. If you are feeling strong, climb. If you cannot climb and wish to begin another training cycle, give yourself a day or two to decompress and wait for the moment in which you are excited to train again. Training is most effective when you are excited to be doing it.

Training: Going Forward

For many of you, climbing is not yet an option. For those climbers, it may be worth spending this time on a round of conditioning, especially if access to crags is close at hand in your area. If access appears further down the road, perhap it is worth taking a week off of the fingerboard to complete some basic fitness, and then return to this Power Cycle for a second round. Finger strength is always important, and this format can be applied to many different grip types. We focused on four-finger half-crimp and four-finger open-hand because it is widely presumed to be the safest hand positions to train. Though that may be the case, spending time exploring various hand positions, increasing the weight, decreasing the edge size, or increasing the number of sessions can really benefit your climbing.

No matter how you may end up pursuing it, do not rush finger strength. Strength builds on itself and takes time. Though there are those that do not require the same recovery time as others, do not presume that you can fingerboard three times a week just because your friend can. In either case, you have done well. You deserve to feel stoked on your progress because this training was not easy. It is difficult to push through, especially when each session begins to make you feel weaker with increasing fatigue.

As this is the end of our deload week, today’s training will be minimal. Move through the repetitions with good form and allow yourself the rest. There is no need to complete additional exercises today. Click here for Day 1 of the Conditioning Cycle. Click here for Day 1 of the Power Cycle.

Warm Up:

• Warming up will likely differ between people, but these are a few good warm ups.
  • Shoulder rolls
  • Rotations: hold arms out perpendicular to the length of your body. Your arms should be parallel to the floor. Begin by rotating your wrists clockwise while your arms are straight. Then increase the rotation from the shoulders, maintain g your straight arms. Steadily increase the radius of rotation until your arms are wind milling, then reverse the direction.
  • Hang on a bar and retract and relax your shoulders
    • Complete a number of pull ups that would warm you up but not tire you out

Agonist muscles:

Once your biceps and shoulders are fully warm, or so warm that you could pull as hard as you would want, begin lock-offs.

Lock-Offs:

Rest for five-minutes and begin your lock-offs.

Try and hold a lock-off with one arm bent at 90-degrees. If this is too challenging, complete the exercise in a full lock-off on one arm. If this is too difficult, complete ten negatives.

• Negatives: Hold a full lock-off with two arms at the top of the bar. Let one arm go and try and resist gravity with the other arm. You will either hold the lock-off or slowly descend to a straight arm position. The goal of a negative is to increase the time it takes to descend.
  • Complete ten one-arm negatives on each side
• Lock Offs:
  • If you are able to complete the lock-off, then…
  • Aim to hold lock for 10 seconds. 3 sets a side.

Core:

Front Levers:

To complete this exercise, hang from a bar and strive to pull into a front-lever-like position. A front lever is primarily defined by straight arms, a straight body, and the plane of that body as parallel to the floor. Remaining parallel to the floor is the most difficult part of the lever, so to train it we will pull into as “high” a lever as we are capable, and then we will hold it as hard as we can.

• Ideally, another person will hold the timer for you so that you can close your eyes and try super-hard. With an exercises like this, trying hard is essential.
  • If you are unable to come anywhere close to maintain a lever, strive to do this exercise with a leg retracted
• Complete 6 front levers at 10 seconds a lever.
  • Rest 3 minutes between each lever

Antagonist Muscles:

Push-ups: High Intensity

Complete 5, 7, or 10 repetitions depending on your skill level per exercise on Day 25. Once that is established…

Complete the following exercises three times in a row for a total of nine sets. Your total push-up count for the day will be either 45, 63, or 90 repetitions.

• elbows-back push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds
• diamond push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds
• archer push-ups: complete 5-10 then rest 30 seconds

Flexibility:

Day 27: Hold each stretch for 15-30 seconds:

• Straddle Splits: This stretch is important to climbing as it increases a climber’s lateral flexibility for moves like stemming in a corner.
• Hamstring: keep your legs straight and bend down to your feet. Keep your back flat for an alternate version of this stretch.
• Hip-flexor: Flexible hip-flexors allow a climber to high-step.
• Quadricep: preventative against injury
• Triceps stretch: preventative against injury
• Shoulder stretch: increases mobility
• Calf stretch: increased heel-hooking mobility

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WOOOW!!! ??? Thanks everyone for sending in so many #carrotsforpower pictures!! I was blown away by the ideas people came up with! The jury is coming together now over a bowl of carrots to decide and announce the winner by tomorrow evening! @patagonia_climb @redbullgermany @goretexeu @tenayaclimbing @cafekraft_nuernberg @sterlingrope @dmm_wales @fazabrushes @frictionlabs #stylefirst #carrotsforpower Pic @jenya_kazbekova

A post shared by Alexander Megos (@alexandermegos) on Apr 13, 2020 at 11:25am PDT

Featured photo of Drew Ruana by Alton Richardson.