With a new baby at home it’s tough for me to get to the gym so I’ve been figuring out how to train more at home. I built a 4 ring campus board with oversized rungs to give me something that I can build endurance on, but I’m not sure what the best protocol is to use on it. so far I’ve done a couple interval workouts 30s ladder:30s rest and another of 45s:30s.
Anyone played with this kind of training? Thoughts on good protocols? Thanks!
I know Steve McClure has talked about this type of training quite a bit.
One of my best summers of sport climbing training was solely on 4 strips of campus rungs and 1 day of outdoor climbing (circuiting moderate routes) per week.
I was doing lifting circuits that would be 5 total rounds, and the campus part was going from rungs 1 to 4 and back down (like the big move campus endurance test that we do in the assessment) for 60 seconds. I would do a 4 second pause at the top rung where I’d take my low hand off.
Basically, it would look like 5 total rounds of:
4-5 lifts with as much rest as I needed between them (These were mostly kettle bell and ring exercises)
a 15 second max hang
with no rest after the max hang I would do the 60 seconds of 1-4 foot-on campusing.
In total, it was probably close to 10 minutes between my foot-on campus sets
I was training for Zookeeper in the Red at the time which is why I did the hang directly before the power endurance work.
I did that twice a week, and at the end of the summer my ability to climb hard for 60-80 seconds was terrific. If I were to do it again I’d add some super low intensity endurance work throughout the week too, but for the amount of time I put into it I felt like I got a lot out. I ended up doing two 14a’s and a 13d that fall which remains one of my better climbing seasons.
Thanks @njdrolet, that sounds like a good workout. I’ve been climbing so little on routes that I want to develop a base so that I can enjoy the rare days that I manage to get outside this year. Do you think the 1-4 reaches are more in the power endurance area and smaller laddering would be better for base level endurance?
I do think that the 1-4 reaches are in that power endurance area. For base endurance, small laddering, and maybe even with your feet flat on the ground to take extra weight off would be a solid way to go. Even something as simple as a minute on, minute off would be an easy staple workout to fit in.
@njdrolet In your circuits, were you doing 4-5 reps of a single lift or 4-5 exercises with multiple reps? I like the idea of doing circuits but often times I’m lucky to get 10-15 minutes to workout so a larger circuit might not fit in.
I was doing multiple exercises with multiple reps. If you just have 10-15 minutes then you’d be better having a shorter modified version. Maybe something like supersetting your endurance with mobility since that won’t fatigue you or drive your breathing/heart rate up between sets
@njdrolet thanks for all the info. I think this could be really effective for me, not because it is so much better than other methods but because I’ll be able to do it regularly. Hopefully the baby eventually learns to nap for longer than 20 minutes and I can do bigger circuits
I did foot on the ground campus laddering for a while. I would do this 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off. I assumed if I could do it for multiple minutes in a row, that it would mean it was probably targeting aerobic endurance (which is what I wanted to train)… it wasn’t very precise, but there’s some auto regulation going on so I think it does work!