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The text came through with a photo of a bar chart showing Jonathan’s 9th grade sends. It was every 9a and harder he had ever sent, broken down by month of the year. The message simply said, “Help me make sense of this.” The next message said, “For some reason I am not sending in the fall.”
And the graph backed up what he was saying. In the early months of the year, he had sent ten or more limit level routes each month. He’s sent a bunch in the summer. In August, September, and October, though, the numbers dropped to half. He said he kept climbing a lot, he said he tried hard, but something wasn’t coming together.
I took it to the CS coaching team as a thought exercise (Jonathan is not unique in this), and they came to the same conclusion that Jonathan had thought…he was weaker at the end of a long season of sending. But how could someone who is climbing at that grade and climbing 5.14 on a weekly basis get weaker from just climbing?
I’ll answer that question as best I can in a bit, but the takehome is this:
“The idea that practice of a sport itself was sufficient conditioning for the sport became inadequate for preparing high-level athletes many years ago.” - Rippetoe and Kilgore
I have worked with different styles of programming and planning for climbers for many years. The goal is not just high performance, but also optimizing training for long-term results. One of the key considerations that many of us miss is not just “how will this affect my ability to send my next project,” but “how will this affect me as a performance climber in the future?” And not to be ignored: “How will this affect my ability to continue to be a healthy and functioning human being for the part of my life after I’m not climbing my best?” The latter is easy to dismiss, just like the advice to start, and max out, your IRA starting when you’re in your 20s.
When we look at athletic development in both the long and short term, we can see that there are certain practices that need to be addressed regularly that are not addressed by simply climbing. Instead of looking at a lens of all the things climbing can help us with athletically, we need to be honest about its limitations. And although it’s a great multi-movement, multi-system activity, it’s still not enough. When we’re young and weak, almost anything can help us get better, when we’re mature and starting to level off, the list of things we need to address shrinks.
In the fall, Jonathan still has work capacity, movement skills, and muscular endurance. He still, as noted, climbs the same amount. What starts to slip away are his general strength levels, specific strength levels, and explosive power. This is not surprising, as each of these elements of his fitness are hard to maintain when they are at high levels.
One solution is to keep hitting these facets of fitness in the gym week after week. Although potentially a better plan, many climbers rightfully want to be outside and doing the sport as much as possible, which starts to conflict with training time. A second solution is to split the training year into two phases, each featuring a performance period and a base-building period. In practice, this looks like three months of focus on gaining strength and power in the gym, two in the winter months, and one as a refresher in the summer. We then tag a building phase on right after the base phase, and use this to transition our gym fitness into rock fitness. And then we go out and send with the minimum of strength maintenance for the remainder of the months.
This doesn’t differ from most peoples’ seasonal planning, except for the summer block. And the summer block is how we climb our best in the fall. Summer, it turns out, is for training.
I’ve got news for you. Don’t take it the wrong way.
If you can climb the same grade from early spring through the late fall without any loss in performance, you’re underperforming the entire time. In order to advance our performance, we need to go out on a limb, physically. We need to push the limit of our potential for stamina, strength, focus, and more. And we just can’t do that for a long time. If you start to go “flat” in June after having a couple good months, you’re probably in the right zone.
Instead of doubling down on your project or starting a new diet or buying new shoes, I suggest you get back in the gym. For 4 weeks (I like July, but it’s up to you), we want to focus on rebuilding strength and power. We simply have to get back into a mode where force production and speed are emphasized in most of our sessions, and the work capacity and endurance we build as part of climbing must take a back seat. Plus, it’s hot outside.
Summer training should mimic your winter training, but should also address limiters that showed up in the spring. This might be particular hold positions, leg strength, or even tension. The key is to address a few specific things this month, and a few general things.
My preferred general set up is to do three gym-based strength sessions per week for four weeks, or twelve total sessions. If you get behind, focus on getting all 12 sessions in rather than just stopping because the calendar turned to August.
I like a bit of volume variation in the summer, and it’s really simple. You do a “normal” session on Monday, a long session (~20% more than Monday) on Wednesday, and a short (~20% less than Monday) session on Friday.
After Warm-Up, A simple session structure might look like this:
Press, 5 reps
Hinge, 3 reps
Core, 8-10 reps
Pull, 5 reps
Squat, 3 reps
Core 8-10 reps
General finger strength, 2-3 exercises. Can be hangs, pulls, or even general grip work.
These sessions should be short and very intense. Rest should not be limited.
A key in all of this is that these sessions are simply suggestions of structures that have worked for athletes in the past. It’s essential that you don’t come into reviewing an example, and get stopped by an exercise or a schedule example. “Squats hurt my knee,” is a terrible reason for ignoring your strength and power training. “I work a long day on Mondays,” is no reason to just not train this summer.
What worked for you last time?
What felt like it produced the desired results?
How can you improve and refine that training so it helps you this time?
With Jonathan, we planned a normal winter cycle, aiming toward high performance in the months of April through June. He’s been really successful here in the past. But after June, the plan changes. Instead of seeking out hard routes in Wyoming or Idaho, he will spend the next several weeks focusing on getting his strength and explosiveness up in the gym. He’ll focus on cleaning up limiters. He’ll spend a bunch of time holding onto plastic and wood and dreaming of rock. And next fall, he’ll go to the crag more ready than ever.
The essential part of all of this is to do the things you need to do when it’s time to do them. If you really just want to be outside and have fun with friends, a summer cycle might not be for you. If you like getting “in shape” for a given grade and then to ride that grade from March to November, that’s fine. But if you want to get to that point where it’s almost perfect, where hard moves feel surprisingly easy, where you sometimes just find yourself at the top of truly limit climbs without feeling the effort—you’ll have to pay the price to get there.