By Steve Bechtel
It seems weird to start looking at time off from outdoor climbing right in the middle of the outdoor season, but I think it is more and more essential to come into each season—even the off-season or training season—with a solid plan to help you get the most out of it.
When building a plan for an off-season, there are four primary questions an athlete should ask:
- How was my performance this year? Did I reach my goals?
- What sort of issues came up last season? How might I address these in the coming training phases?
- What do I want next year / season to look like?
- What things do I want to avoid next year? Negative results are as profound as the positive ones.
Let’s look a little deeper at each of these, and then we’ll look at how to build a better plan next year.
How was my performance this year?
I have spoken to athletes who have had amazing years and want to “start over from scratch” next season. They are entranced by new methods, things they perceive as weak points (but are not), or by training their friends are doing. If you had a great year, chances are what you did last time is close to ideal preparation. No matter what a coach or pro tells you, real world results will always trump theoretical plans. Thus, if it went well, let’s build from there.
I’d overlay this year’s plan on the calendar from last year, including the days you trained, the durations, and the types of training you did. We’d then look for things that did not work so well, and make slight changes in the program.
If your goal climbs differ, we’d still want to base the training on what you did before, but make specific changes as needed. For example, if your season last summer was working onsights at Ten Sleep, and next year you’ll be redpointing at Ceuse, you’ll want to think about your work day / rest day plan, the strength you’ll need for the harder cruxes, and not worrying so much about that onsight-level of stamina. Otherwise, the bones of the plan can stay the same.
If you fell short, it’s useful to unpack what exactly happened. Did you climb as planned? Did you get to the rock as much as you had hoped? Importantly, did you train as much as you had planned - not over and not under?
It doesn’t take long to sort out where a person’s plans and actual preparations diverged. In most situations, it’s not the details of the training, but rather it ends up being daily habits, mindset, or crag behaviors. It’s complicated, but here’s where you need to take an honest and overarching view of your season coming up. You may need to plan on less training. You might want to plan shorter sessions. You may need to figure out a method of holding yourself to a schedule.
This is THE thing for most climbers. Doing it the way you did last time, despite not loving your previous results, is the definition of foolish. Make the changes, and be reasonable about the plan.
Not sure where to begin?
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What sort of issues came up last season?
Clearly, injuries are a thing. If your training or schedule resulted in overuse injuries, you overused something. This might seem flippant or overly simple, but it's what happened. Your planning for the next season should address this. Most overuse injuries are due to doing too much volume, not too much intensity, so anything that hurt you should be addressed in your planning.
For example, I used to suffer from medial elbow pain that was exacerbated by (an d probably caused exclusively by) pull-ups. At the time, I did pull-ups for 100+ reps a week across three or four sessions. Despite my pain and the knowledge that it was caused by the pulls, I just couldn't make myself drop them—I thought they were essential to my training.
They were not. After nearly a year off of climbing and lots of pain, I realized I'd have to rebuild carefully. I went close to 8 years with no pull-ups, and when I brought them back it was with purpose. For climbing, I realized, I didn't need to be able to do 15, I just needed to be able to pull hard once in a while. Now I do sets of two, twice a week, and am just as strong as I was 15 years ago. Also...when I feel like testing, I find I can still crank out 15 of them anytime.
Other issues can be scheduling problems. If you found sticking to the plan last year was a chore, moving your days around might be helpful. If you constantly change the plan, push training back, you might look at whether this training really is that important after all. The problem is this: badly executed training depresses our motivation, kills the effectiveness of the program, and creates a cascade of quitting going forward.
It's much better to under-schedule and then add "bonus training" than to miss out on planned sessions.
Other issues can be phase lengths, weather problems, session logistics in the gym, commute times, and more. Think about what sucked in your plan last year, and address it ahead of time.
What do I want next year / season to look like?
Most of us start with goals, but as you can see, this is our third question. I do this on purpose, since eliminating issues and assessing past performance are ultimately more useful than dreaming big. This is a huge issue for me, personally. I get a spreadsheet built out, start putting sessions in, start thinking of routes I'd like to do, and soon I have twice as much gym time as last year—and a tick list as long as my arm.
Unless you had significant time off from climbing, or were coming off of an injury or illness last year, this year should look pretty similar, with just small increases in the time you plan to put in and the routes you plan to send. I hate to be discouraging, but if you only sent five projects last year, doubling that number is not realistic this year. Similarly, your gym time can only go up so much before you risk injury and overreaching issues. The 10% Rule is a good one to keep in mind: Don't increase total training time per phase more than 10% season-to-season. Intensity can be increased more than this, but should be increased instead of volume, not in addition to it!
Did my schedule work last season?
Did I ever get burned out or have big dips in fitness?
What are my big trips or comps?
What climbs am I really inspired by?
What sort of habits or behaviors showed up that I want to reduce?
Which habits do I want to reinforce?
Who do I want to spend more time with?
This part of the process can start with a huge blank piece of paper with "2023/2024 Season" written at the top. A few performance goals written near the top are good, and don't need to just be sends. Other ideas:
- Do at least three ten-pitch days this year.
- Send 40 V4s outside.
- Climb sixty days.
- Onsight five 5.11s.
Yes, redpointing sport routes or sending hard boulders will be most of what we want to do, but the reality is that it is just a small part of what climbing is, and if you're not in top-shape, you still want things that drive you.
Some training goals are good, too. These are markers in the gym that show progress, such as a new max lift, new max number of reps, or the like. We would call these secondary goals, and want to keep them there. There is never a good excuse to prioritize training time if you still consider yourself a performance rock climber.
What things do I want to avoid next year?
Negative results are as profound as the positive ones. I prefer approach goals, trying to get things done like drinking more water versus trying to avoid things like eating sugar. Why? Because approach goals are easy tick marks and can be done almost anytime. Avoiding things has to be done all the time.
I use an analogy from hunting here. I spend a lot of time each fall hunting elk in the Rocky Mountains. There are elk all over, but they are hard to sneak up on. When you do see them or find sign, it's an approach goal, trying to go get the elk. At the same time, you have to be aware that there are grizzly bears in those same woods.
You're not trying to go get these animals, but rather avoid them. The problem is that we get complacent, stop paying the closest attention, and occasionally come face-to-face with what we're trying not to find. This is an avoidance goal. Find elk, avoid bears. Find fitness, avoid bad behaviors.
What behaviors were troublesome last year?
Sessions that went too long (and led to overuse problems)?
Late nights that led to poor recovery?
A crazy work schedule that kept you from climbing as you'd have liked?
Bad planning or partner selection that railroaded your days?
Clearly there are hundreds of possible things to avoid, so just list out the big ones that still burn in your memory. What made you sad/mad/frustrated last season?
These factors and the aims for your training go into the next step, which is articulating what you're going to do this time.
The Macro Plan
When we are planning a season, there are two main ways people can, and should, look at their training. To keep the image simple, let's call them "bottom up" and "top down." In essence, top down planning is building out a calendar of phases, goals, long-term adaptations, and the like. It's the spreadsheet you build now to refer back to each week for the next several months to keep you on track.
Top down planning is what coaches do when they publish a program for the masses or build a template to work from. It assumes ideal conditions, equipment availability, and motivation. In short, unless you are a very special athlete, you probably won't be able to hit the mark that you had planned when you built the spreadsheet.
On the flip side, we have bottom up planning. In this model, you are building your program based on what you have in front of you, the time that you have today, and in the next few days, and on the motivation that you have for the session right in front of you. We all can imagine an ultimate training set up where we have several fixed boards, a campus board, a half dozen hangboards, and a full weight room. In an adjacent room, there is someone waiting to help us stretch, and the sauna is waiting for us at the end of the session.
Then, we go out to the hot garage, look at the six dumbbells sitting in the corner, move the bicycles out of the way of our homemade spray wall, and have to try to become a better climber with the tools we have.
Real world planning takes both of these views, and brings them in to play each time we write down the sessions for the coming period. The first step in this planning is to sketch out what your off-season calendar looks like. Let's say it is six months. You should print out or write out a full calendar for this time. I prefer to use a spreadsheet where each week is given a line and I can detail out what is going to happen during that week.The next step is to write out the non-negotiable commitments you have. This will include family commitments, work travel, other activity that precludes your normal training, and more.
Next, we go back to the things we want to make happen. My favorite way of organizing. This is to write out your five biggest needs in training. It might be something like finger, strength, hip mobility, better, momentum, or footwork. Once you have brainstormed your top five, think about them very carefully and organize them in order of importance. This is a critical step, and you should be quite careful in recognizing your prejudices. More often than not, climbers will gravitate toward trying to improve some thing that they are already really good at. You're going to probably make the biggest improvements off-season by doing something that is actually limiting you.
Once you have your list of five things to work on, cross off the bottom four. With your remaining single focus, you can then start to build out your training sessions for this phase.
Months, Weeks, and Sessions
There are, again, two ways of looking at your training plan. You can start at the session, or you can start at the season. Once I have the one thing (you'll still have 2-3 on your mind and think you can work on them all, and then in a few years you'll look back and think "I should have been more focused..."), I look at each month coming up. For me, finger strength is the main goal. Mine dropped off in a big way the last couple of years.
If my season of performance lasts until the end of October, my rough plan gets listed out by month:
November: Recovery, general fitness, build winter training habit
December: General Strength, Large edge finger strength
January: Specific Strength, Higher finger strength volume
February: Short climbing trip, Specific Strength, Applied finger strength
March: Maintenance Strength, Boulders, Build Volume
April: Maintenance Strength, Start projects
"But you have more than one thing!" Yes, we'll be doing more than one thing, but the chasing of improvement and focus will be firmly on fingers.
The weeks are built around the month plan. Most of us have a fixed 7-day schedule, which has nothing to do with performance in sport, but we're stuck with it anyway. I like to write out a week's calendar, note the time I have and the facility / place I can train, and then start to place the sessions.
Things will change. Once your "boots are on the ground," the schedule will get banged around by all your other living...but the key is to minimize distraction, be realistic in your planning, and keep with the plan.
Your session durations and sequencing will be dictated by your schedule. A big waste of time right now would be to detail out the sessions for February. Instead, let's just let that month sit out there "in pencil" and only worry about the sessions for the upcoming month.
Clearly, session design is its own science, but I urge you to start with sessions similar in duration and intensity to what you did last season. Place these carefully and conservatively into the calendar. I like to under-plan the training, and then put in some "bonus" exercises if I get done with the planned session and still have time/energy left. These are usually assistance exercises, core work, or mobility drills.
In the end, the plan is a map. It is a reminder of where you were and where you are going. It's at this point I remind my athletes the sage advice of Morpheus, "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
ABOUT STEVE BECHTEL
Steve is the founder of Climb Strong, and is proud to be the worst coach on the Climb Strong team. A climber for nearly 40 years, he has traveled to globe bouldering, sport climbing, and doing first ascents of some of the world's biggest walls.
Steve has a plan for this winter, subject to change starting tomorrow.
He is education director of the Performance Climbing Coach organization, and is the author of several books on training for climbing. He is slightly taller than Charlie Manganiello. He lives in Lander, Wyoming, with his wife Ellen, and children Sam and Anabel.
Tags: limiters, Periodization, Planning, Steve Bechtel, weaknesses