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Quote of the Month: Grip Training "There is a fair bit being put out there these days about improving grip strength. This is good, however the problem is most of it is wrong. Don't train strength and think you will get better endurance. Don't train grip endurance for time and assume that gripping power will get better. Different methods are required for building different capacities." -The Carny Focus "The ice is forming up. This means that in the weeks coming up I will be routinely scaring myself well past what is normally considered healthy. Though in my defense, there is something inherently terrifying about climbing on frozen water, attached to a rope, and covered in knives. The reminder here is that focus in training is as needed as it is on the ice. When terrifed we revert to our normal settings, the trick then is to make the 'normal' something better." -The Carny |
Training Vault
January 9th, 2011
This is going to be a rush. December 20th, 2011 How do you train fear? This has been the nagging question for me the past few weeks, I tossed up a quote about it earlier this month, and it contines to resonate with me. I have surveyed a host of climbers and the question still sits oddly with me, when the physicallity of climbing is no longer the issue, how do you train the mind? My training over the past few months in preparation for going to worlds has been an interesting road. I have worked laps of figure 4/9s; one arm lock offs; horizontal pulling and rows; endurance work up and down walls with a weight vest; heavy weighted pull-up volume work; levers of all varieties; lever pull-ups... and am now finding myself physically strong enough to do the moves that I need to. Yet now that all the pieces of strength and technique are finally falling into place I find that trusting those sharp knives in my hands is becoming the issue. Somewhere in the transition from working movements on points on a rounded metal ring over a concrete floor with no rope and better holds on rock with a rope my confidence fails me. A point shifts, I overgrip, my breathing starts to go, and then I find myself struggling, that notion of falling while wrapped around my axe, my rope tangled in my feet leaving me frozen. I may at last have found the item you can't just approach with a ferocious training regime, here is the element where you need the rock, the time on chossy holds that are liable to break. In chatting with Will yesterday on the drive home from the Cineplex [One day of which went great for pushing through that space of being uncomfortable, and one morning spent yielding to it.] I was told to go and do laps on moderates. To spend the time climbing up and down, not to work on power endurance so much as to train the mental endurance of trusting. So then the question has to be raised, what is it that I need to learn to trust? Am I to trust the rock? No, in the rockies that is simply foolish, rock will break on occasion, that is an issue of acceptance and moving forward. Am I to trust my axes? A given, they are manufactured to take far more than the load of a carny, even a short fat one like myself. No, I think this is a drill in trusting myself. So here I am, starting to wonder if the commentary in Arno Ilgner's book 'The Rock Warrior's Way is perhaps true, we need to climb, not for the grades or for the routes, but to know ourselves better. We shall see where that takes me in these last few weeks. In that I am going to treat this as an exercise in breaking patterns of not finishing, of not committing, and if that pristine zen like path begins to crumble I am going to turn my attention to the advice a far more experienced friend of mine recently gave me which was simply that "When you find the fear coming up, just tell it to f**k off", and just get it done. December 15th, 2011 We neglect horizontal pulling. When new clients are introduced, when possible we start them with some form of a horizontal row on rings, and then as they get stronger we progress them on to doing vertical pullups. This is where horizontal pulling ends for many of us. Perhaps there will be some unilateral rowing work with dumb-bells, but a body weight row is now neglected. This is a fascinating exercise exclusion, especially amongst climbers who so often seek after gaining a lock-off or oddly positioned pulling strength. Yet we are faced with the argument that there is little need for horizontal pulling strength as it is far more often that we are working on a slightly off vertical plane. Recently with the addition of dry tooling to my various climbing activities I realized the need to start training a pulling strength which would help when making moves back across roof problems. This is when I realized that my true horizontal pulling strength is limited, not only in terms of the weight I can move, but also in terms of my range of movement. While a 125lb weighted pull-up is relatively easy, as are one arms, lock offs, and high rep dead hang pull-ups, a true horizontal row is not easy. Assuming the feet are placed at a height where the body stays horizontal it quickly becomes apparent that some very different muscle groups are doing a lot of work. What is more, true one armed variations of the exercise are brutal. An obsession with training has rapidly progressed my capacities here, but I still find a limited flexibility in my anterior delt limiting the height of my pull [interesting that this is also an area that is regularly inflamed and in pain]. In addition, while I am now able to work a tucked lever variation of this pull, and have even tried it with a 40lb weight vest, I am far from a massive load pulled through a full range of movement. An issue indeed. When this whole dry tooling nonsense is over in two months I am going to return to this, as I think there is massive room for strength gains with big application in the rock arena if this strength is well developed. Thoughts folks? December 13th, 2011 Sometimes it is good to train the things that scare us. This is fear training.
December 8th, 2011 Well the last week has seen some big changes in programming to deal with some big flaws that I ran into in the past few weeks. This weekend we'll see how that programming has paid off. Should be all kinds of exciting. Other than that, the goal is still to one day actually finish developing the host of useful content I have to put up on here. However between work and training these days I haven't had a huge urge to do too much more on the side. Hopefully this month will offer me some chances to get something done. November 28th, 2011 I figured it was time to toss up something a bit more light-hearted than usual, something that involves footage of actual mixed climbing, and that gives an idea of what all the training of the past few months has been for. For those of you who have ever had a chance to climb at the Cineplex in the rockies... you will appreciate this, for those of you who have not... here is how to find it. Again, a big thanks to the boys for Sunday, it was a pretty epic day.
November 22nd, 2011 So this is one of the new training series videos for dry tooling. Nice and easy. Horizontal rows.
November 7th, 2011 Okay. So here is open access to the testing of a new dietary protocol. Feel free to jump on board and see how it goes for you. I am curious as to how results will go for people. For the details in writing, click here. The following is an attempt to clarify the writing. November 2nd, 2011 So, a bad idea. The new series of dumb things we are doing training in the next few weeks. Here is dry tooling after two hours of training... with a 20lb weight vest. Nobody dies.
October 29th, 2011 Well... early season ice in the dark is in. Which sucks. Then after another day of work and limited sleep it was off to the playground for dry tooling. M10 crushing until bat guano took me off the wall... so after no sleep again last night it was time to crush the new toolin route in the gym with proper matching on the tools. This went well up until the end where everything started to fall apart. Scary. Hard. Effective.
October 28th, 2011 It appears some people are making some basic mistakes when doing a figure 4. While many people might not care. Here is a quick video on doing them better.
October 25th, 2011 The new training course is finally put together. Don't have the bouldering wall up yet... but here is a clip of the carny running through the course. Total time is just over three minutes. It sucks. Worst three minutes ever. Fueled by rage, creatine, and strong coffee.
October 24th, 2011 Well we have a guest article on hand/forearm care that has just gone up on Giryagirl's site. While the site is focused on a lot of bell work, the article is focused on soft tissue work in the forearms and so has a fair bit of crossover to the climbing world and anything else that relates to grip strength [so in my mind pretty much every type of sport]. Jump on over there and give it a read. October 20th, 2011 So an RKC cert in Chicago, two months of training, some back trauma issues, and a week of suffering under food poisoning. This has been a fun month. Not a lot of excuses for not having stuff up, but it has ben a bit. Here is a clip of some of the fun new work that came out of the RKC weekend for those guys looking to build the good ol beach arms. ...and yes, for the record, we were put up to this. It is a girl's fault. Also, I am hoping to actually get a (P)Rehab seried of videos together. Might take a bit of time, but the hope is to get some resources out there given the amount of questions I get. September 6th, 2011 Training update from the diary: Tuesday: Still feel a bit sick, less congestion, but more acid bile in the throat. Need to eat some more real food, the shake really didn't help at all and I have been burping it up all morning. So far today I have just worked a bit of straps with Chan while he was training, though it was more demonstration than anything else… disturbing though how easily the movements were. Also not overly sore, which means I need a heavier load with all the movements today. Definitely going to aim to get in some endurance work today, and hopefully a three hour boulder endurance/technique session. Sickness has receded after three hours of training. Started off with some good shoulder warm-up with dislocates on a broom stick, ring flys, and some casual pull-ups. The first work set included doing archer presses with 60lbs for a maximal of three reps [with static], dragons from my knees, followed by heavy weighted dips [90-135lbs] and ring flys. Finished up with more archer presses, and elevated feet ring flys and 88lb kb swings. Second set included figure 4 reach work [haven't done enough of that recently, easy once the form clicked again, but missed it the first couple reaches before I really pulled up into it]. This was followed by a series of lock off work [which was easy, hit ten seconds on both arms], some with the reach, some without. It isn't a 30s hold, but once we hit 15s I am going to add the ankle weights on all the time, need to increase the degree of recruitment on my movements. A couple one arm finger pull-ups finished the whole fun training set off, and went far easier than one would expect given how trashed my arms are. Note that I am feeling like the loading is going to become a bit of an issue, if I can do 60lb presses at the beginning of my 3rd week there is only so much farther to go before I run out of weight [potentially another 20lbs in the vest and ankle weights could put me at 90lbs]. The current volume of work I am doing is getting excessive, yet I feel like I am still recovering from it rather quickly. Not sure what kind of rep/weight scheme I need to be working to still be making strength gains while limiting mass gain. Certainly the cardio needs to be pushed up a lot [100 swings straight with the 88lber should make that catch up quick], and overall endurance as well. I think the next goal will be trying to hit 40 figure 4 reaches without a break. Given I am sitting at 4 on the rings and 4 on the bars I have a long ways to go. Wed: I did not sleep last night. Felt better once I was up and moving, but it was a rough night last night. KB swings for the first time in a while took some toll on my hammies and lower back, need to rehab today. So after a morning of stress dealing with admin stuff I decided to do nothing today. However by 4:00 I was feeling a bit antsy and gave the 100 swings with the 88lber a go again and actually managed to pull off 100 swings straight. The last fifteen sucked a fair bit, but they were still swings. The result was cramping in my hamstrings, blurred vision, and that weird fuzzy hearing thing. On the whole a complete success. A cold shower and an hour of light stretching and I actually felt somewhat recovered even though my traps and erectors are still feeling it now. Of course the cold symptoms always abate after exercise so I might go and do some climbing in the hopes that it will help loosen my body up a bit if I work some varied movement patterns. Mayhaps that and some quality stretching might help. Definitely doing the melatonin and eight hours sleep tonight though. Need to beat Gord's tool record tomorrow. Thursday: 8hrs of sleep, wasn't the deepest given how sore my back was, however it was consistent. So here I am feeling a lot better energy wise today, though my body still feels like it has been shit kicked. That is the problem with missing a day of sleep, can't determine how much of the pain is from training load, and how much is from the kb work… and how much is from the heavy loading on tuesday. Too many new factors to determine the worst item in there, that being said, the 100 straight swings had some obvious and immediate physiological effects so I know that they must have played some roll in fucking me up. Friday: Yoga for an hour and a half… was likely good for me, but there is something about yoga that just makes me angry. Hippies. Two hours of bouldering and that was the training day. Super light load, getting to that end edge of where I need a couple days off. I worked on doing more controlled static movements, and flowing without putting any effort in. Some great successes over the course of the session, but I was just tired overall. Saturday: Rest day. Only eight hours of sleep straight, but then went back to bed for two more. Sunday: Rest day. Ten hours sleep. Woot for feeling better after that much rest. Slowly the body is getting everything back. Monday: I had intended to go climbing out on rock at the playground but after only a few hours sleep I decided against that idea [though it took two hours of driving to decide it]. I did end up putting in a bit of time working straps with the Chan on his weekend odyssey of training. In there was some stretching, a bit more steaming… but not a lot else. Trying to finish resting up and healing in time for this upcoming weekend in Chicago before I head into full time serious training. August 31st, 2011 Hmm, one more video for the week from the training archives this week. Might actually start posting on here again *grin*.
August 30th Oh that isn't good. Summer months are here and I miss getting a single update in for a month. Perhaps too much on my plate, but that is uncalled for. What I do have is the addition of my training notes for the past half month as I have begun to train for a potential worlds spot. The adaptation rate has been ridiculous, and I have had a couple days where I have been more sore than I have been in ages. Lots of fun though. My apologies now for language, grammar, and profanity... this is just a straight copy and paste from my training journal. Oh and for those who don't want to read that much... here is a video.
Training Log for Dry Tooling July 26th, 2011 Keeping with the trend of training for the alpine/mixed/ice season ahead this week has seen a bunch of work on the axes. Been doing a lot of lock off work on one axe and then reaching up to full extension before pulling through again. There has been a mix of various pull-up work, and of course a number of variations on complexes that aim to work the core, pulling strength, and technique. The following video is of one of the last sets of one of those complexes. July 20th, 2011 Just happened to see the new edition of Breath PK. Not only is there an article in there by The Carny, but it looks stunning. Check the site, find where you can get one, then do whatever you need to [read: fight bears, steal, light fires] to get a copy of this magazine. Awesome work to the staff over at Breathe. July 19th, 2011 I blame the weather being decent on my entire inability to get anything posted recently. Toss in the fact that I have actually been working a lot, and that the training has been taking me off to actual mountains and the result is that I do no work on the site at all. What I do have for you includes more false promises about the one arm pull-up article, and some clips of the new dry tooling/ice climbing board that I put up this week. It still requires the addition of some more stuff to make climbing it harder, however the board works well. Here are some clips of BD and The Carny doing some laps on it. June 28th, 2011 Actually took some time this morning to write. This is an excerpt from Forcing Evolution. I find myself sitting across from yet another person who is in abysmal shape, we have just spent fifteen minutes talking about the damaging effects that grains can have on the intestinal track, and then comes the statment that I have been expecting since the conversation began; "I can't give up grains, I just love food way too much". The dam breaks, the flood of rage is unleashed from the pit of my soul, and the rant fills the coffee shop. I hear this lie again and again from people who spend a lot of time shoveling food into their mouths, barely chewing before they swallow, washing it down with some delightful drink that could be used to clean engines. Most people don't actually like food. Rather they are junkies looking for the next insulin spike and the subsequent big wash of dopamine to hit the brain after consuming a dizzying amount of sugar in the form of a healthy-high-fiber-whole-grain-super-good-for-you-please-believe-us-we-have-acai-berries cereal or pasta. I happen to know people who like food. They eat slowly, savoring a single mouthfull. These people do not sit down and consume an entire box of pasta in front of a television during a commercial break...keep reading... Oh and someone asked for a link to this weekends training day. Here it is folks, our good ol time on gap peak. June 23rd, 2011 Here are a couple training videos from the week. The first is Tim doing some phenomenal alpine training we have been putting together recently. This set with rope climbs is awful. We might get some more clips of that over the course of the next week. The second clip is of the carny doing some stupid cooldown stuff at the end of a one arm pull-up session. It is all kinds of happy training love.
June 20th, 2011 Wow, it has been two weeks since the last update. Somehow the entire world stopped for two weeks, no updates, no articles, no strip videos. This is not good. However to appease you all, a new section is soon to appear here on the site. A trip report of sorts from some of the various adventures that all this training is for. The first short clip giving a brief sample of what is to come is here for you all today.
May 31st, 2011 The gainer shake is available for those who want it. I am useless when it comes to website design so you will have to go to the nutrition section to have a look at it. Also I am aware that I have promised some training articles and they are yet to exist in the training vault. Life is busy. We'll see if I can get off the campus board long enough to do them today. May 30th, 2011 Someone whined about me eating food in front of them today. The recipe for said creation just went up here. If you want more recipes, or more footage of the camps board let me know at ian@irrationalfitness.com. Oh and for those who have been confused by the various pull-ups in some of the recent workouts here is a quick video sampler of some of the work. Should clarify some items for everyone. Also, if I get some requests I might start posting some climbing specific workouts again. We can start AMRAPing one arm pull-ups on campus boards *grin*. For more details on these pull-ups, as well as a comprehensive list of some of the other options I have been working with recently check out the vault. May 25th, 2011 It has been a month since anything new came up. I blame this entirely on a couple weeks of nice weather during which anyone who was inside on the computer to much could be considered to be a fool. However given it is currently raining this seems like an opportune time to post some new footage, a slight commentary on designing strength workouts, and a couple recipes. First for those who only come here for the videos... is the much demanded, Campus Strip Tease. Well damn. Youtube doesn't like my first song choice, so here is a copy of the original with the first horrible soundtrack. While the above clip is to appease the copyright gods, this is the original Campus.flv. The rest of the goodies can be found where you would expect, recipes here... and article on training in the vault. April 28th, 2011 I should probably right some indepth instructional article on how to train for one arm pull-ups, but given my usual interest in simply posting shiny videos because it is easier than writing out full articles I am going to just give a shiny video this week. Perhaps during the course of the day I will be deeply inspired to write something informative for everyone. For the time being though, here is this weeks fun. April 16th, 2011 I figured I would toss up another recipe for those trying out the joys of paleo. This Grilled Turkey Dish is not only delicious but gets to showcase cauliflower posing as rice. So for those who are having some serious withdrawls from the good old land of grains give this one a try and let me know what you think. April 11th, 2011 It looks like all my hopes of March were dashed by the decision to spend more time climbing ice and less time doing actual work. WIth all the playing that has taken place in the last few months I have forgotten to point out that Irrational Fitness is now powered by Precision Nutrition and that we are now offering Nutritional Coaching for performance and overall body composition changes. The packages we are going to be offering are going to be guaranteed so if you don't get results you will get your money back [ed note: This of course assumes compliance on the part of the people trying out the programs]. For more information check out the Nutrition section. Plus I have a couple new paleo recipes going up on the Forced Evolution page as well. March 16th, 2011 I have been thinking that we need to actually start posting some tutorials and useful information rather than just putting up cool stuff. The problem is of course that that requires time which I would rather spend on doing cool stuff. My solution for the time being is to think about posting some useful tutorials and indepth articles and for the time being just put up this great video of the carny doing a 125lb TGU. Not mention the fact that we also now have some wicked video of Seinen crushing the same weight and making it look easy. Should have some new TGU videos up for you next week... and eventually we might toss up the failiure footage compilation which is almost more fun to watch than the successful lifts. March 11th, 2011 I should have a whole series of soft tissue work out to everyone over the course of today. We'll see if I get it all done. At this point I have both som stretching and foam rolling stuff up. Might be all that goes up this weekend. Check it out on the rehab page. In other news I just realized the info@irrationalfitness.com email address wasn't set up properly. If you haven't been getting responses from us it isn't actually do to our hate of you. It should work fine now. Looking for old news and cool videos? Check here. |
