So the winter is here and its time to reflect on where we are with our climbing, where we want to be and how we are going to get there.
We firstly have to perform an assessment of our climbing. Then combining this with some climbing reflective practice we can assess our areas of improvement and we can form an overall plan.
Once we have an overall plan we can design our personal training plan. This is best done in stages by starting with a page detailing your weaknesses and how you are going to generally improve them under the headings ‘mental’, ‘technique’, ‘physical’.
Next you will need to set out a page with available days and times for your training and fit the items from your weaknesses page into these. Try to split your time into 10% conditioning, 40% training and 50% actual climbing which means that you train, but don’t forget how to actually climb! Your conditioning will consist of stretching, fitness circuits and work on the weights, bar, rings and TRX. Your training will consist of strength, power, endurance and stamina on the wall, hang-board and campus-board. Your climbing will consist of bouldering or routes to fill and build your problem or route pyramids.
Once you have a general plan of how your training will fit into your available time you can go about writing in exactly what exercises and climbing you are actually going to do. The exercises and climbing need to match what you found you needed to improve from your assessment and reflective practice that you did at the start. So if you noted small crimp finger strength as a weakness you might fit in a hang-board and a system board session within your training time. carry on in this way with each training area until you have a complete list of training and climbing for one week.
Finally you can schedule each session into your diary so that you know exactly what is coming up and what to do during each session. Run a plan for a minimum of 2 months and then carry out another climbing assessment and a further climbing reflective practice. From this you can see your progress and what now needs improvement, then once again start the whole process of writing a new training and climbing plan.
You will probably have noticed that the process repeats itself and that is exactly what you are after, every time you improve, you assess and re-plan to improve further. I guarantee that if you have the motivation and stick with this strategy you will improve time on time, so give it a try and see where it leads!
For further information or to access our training plans and coaching click the tabs shown above.