Date: September 29th, 2009
I love training. There, it’s out in the open. A lot of people have this hang-up that real men don’t train, that somehow if you’re really good at something you just are good at it naturally, and that training is, well, weak. This viewpoint is usually held by people who also believe that the olympics are full of talented amateurs, that pro cyclists don’t dope and that anybody can be a champion in any sport. To quote my favorite musician of the 90s, Ice T, shit ain’t like that. If you want to approach your sports like most of us approach badminton at a family picnic then no training is necessary. Drink some beers, be happy if you finally beat your sister, and it’s all good. For everything else there is training, and I like it. I feel so much better now having shared that.
Early this morning I was doing a sport that required shorts bursts of concentration followed by 200M runs to examine the results. I ran the 200M both directions, and felt great. Low heart rate, strong, easy. I know this feeling; I usually get it when I’m doing a lot of hard mountain running, something I have NOT been doing lately. I’m going to attribute this directly to Crossfit. You don’t run much in Crossfit, but you do go at a workout with intensity, that chuck-a-lung intensity that normally only comes when you’re chasing or being chased. In fact, I can’t remember the last time running felt so easy. Uphill and down. I don’t think I would do very well in a long mountain race right now, but I’m surprised with how my 1500M or so of running felt today. I’ve had a lot of situations in the last month where I’ve thought, “Hey, I do this in my workouts a lot, no problem.” Based on the fast results, wide range of applicable fitness and general, “I feel good doing this” I’m going to say that I think Crossfit is the best possible “generalist” workout I’ve ever done. I’d put money on Crossfit’s athletes in almost any non-skill situation. Pick that really heavy box of books up and run it up four flights of stairs. No problem. Pick your motorcyle up after you drop it. No problem. Wrestle your topper on and off your truck. No problem. Boulder V5. Problem. Boulder hop a creek. Problem. The last two are learned skills based on practice and specific strength, and nothing but doing the activity is going to give you that. But I sure do like how my body feels and performs (that being a relative word–I’m at a family badminton game level in most things Crossfit) these days. I first started doing Crossfit specific workouts in Brazil a few years ago with a friend who was into it, and loved it. It’s been in and out of my life since then, but it’s just a good thing, especially for those of us who still want to be athletes as we age. I have no fucking intention of giving up being an athlete anytime soon, I expect Crossfit will help meet that on-going goal.
“Functional” gym workouts. These are relatively new; I first started seeing people doing bicep curls and lateral raises on beach balls maybe ten years ago. Now there’s a whole whack of ball-based moves. I keep looking at people doing this stuff and thinking, “Ah, when was the last time I did anything in sport where I was rolling around on a ball as I did it?” It’s like learning to make love by masturbating on a beach ball or something. Yes, it’s maybe better than sitting on a bench to do bicep curls, but why not just DO whatever motion it is you’re trying to insert a beach ball between you and the movement? I don’t doubt you can get a good muscular burn (Ah, I’ll admit it, I’ve done my time on a beach ball) with a ball, but attempting to simulate a more “life like” movement pattern by using ball just doesn’t make sense. Do the movement, a ball just gets in the way. Pullups, presses, squats, running, situps, lunges. No ball required to make any of these more “life like,” they are moves you do in REAL LIVE LIFE! Amazing.
Traditional 3×3 (or 5×5 or whatever) sets of a lot of different exercises that, cumulatively, equal whatever motion it is you want to be stronger at. This is the muscle head way forward, or some variation of it. It demonstrably builds muscle. It does not demonstrably build useful strength. Most exercises are very specific; this can be useful if you’re seeking that specific strength (lock offs for mixed climbing, but even those are likely better trained using bands and other techniques to reduce the load). I have had luck rehabbing some injuries using very specific shoulder exercises to isolate damaged or weak areas; I’m not sure how these injuries would have responded to other forms of rehab as I don’t have a “control,” but they did seem to work. I don’t think I’m going to be doing a lot of traditional weight room time ever again unless it’s for specific injuries.
Endurance: I used to race Cross-Country skiing (without much distinction but slightly better than family badminton level) and have done a lot of really long days in the mountains. Based on a few endurance athletes experiences with Crossfit I’m likely to continue with relatively high volume low-intensity work for these cycles of my life. There was a University of Utah ski team member who posted up my last post on this subject; I’d really welcome his take on the combination of Crossfit and XC racing–being on the U ski team means you’re very, very good. I’m doing a lot of reading on training for 24-hour endurance stuff at the moment as that’s what my next three goals revolve around. We’ll see what develops with that… I also suspect that the thousands of hours elite XC skiers spend sliding over the snow is also about building an absolutely massive internal matrix of “moves,” just as a climber does. The ability to ride a flat ski on hard, soft, inconsistent or just plain old icy snow is critical, as is the timing of every input in so many conditions and situations. Same with cycling, especially at elite levels–Lance didn’t just win because he was damn strong (ignoring all allegations and denials for the moment), he also won because he could read the situation and stay safe in the peloton… The hours of endurance training aren’t just about developing wattage.
Sport-specific training. Unless your sport is simply too dangerous or possibly inaccessible to practice and train hard at then I believe this should be the vast majority of your “training” time. Only when there is excess time would I add in other stuff. For any sport at all. If you do ten sports reasonably often or don’t know what life is going to through at you then Crossfit is likely the best solution. If you don’t have a primary sport you’re attempting to reach a higher level in then some sort of general life-training such as Crossfit is likely the answer. But if you’re trying to be good at one single sport then train intelligently with the moves and specific requirements of that sport.
I used to really covet a gym with a full rack of barbells, a nice lat pulldown machine, a bunch of those Nautilus machines and a bunch of other stuff. My ideal training environment is a lot simpler now. More on that next time, I’m outta here for a few days, thanks for reading this. These posts aren’t magazine articles, they’re how I try to figure things out. Write it down, see if it makes sense to me and you, the reader who just slogged through this epic, try it out, see if works, revise as necessary…. Nothing is constant, no achievement or system permanent.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 28th, 2009
I’ve been training at one sport or another now for 25+ years. I first started thinking of physical activity as “training” during high-school sports; but the focus was always more on “practice” than on “training.” I think this is an important distinction. We “train” for things like running, lifting weights, etc. etc. We “practice” yoga, archery, medicine, many martial arts and so on.
There’s an old adage that to get good at something you have to practice, practice, practice, and practice some more. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” book he figures that about 10,000 hours of practice will produce mastery in any given field of endeavor. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, if you haven’t done the practice then you won’t be any good at something.
Taking this idea farther, most sports may fall on a spectrum defined by straight skill on one one side and pure power on the other end of the spectrum. Target shooting might be the ultimate “skill” sport, olympic lifting the ultimate power sport (although skill obviously is required in even the most power-based sports–in fact, it looks to me that skill often wins out over straight power even at the olympic power lifting events). But, as a way to think of sports, I could put “skill” on the far left of the spectrum and “power” on the far right. Most outdoor sports lean heavily toward the “skill” side of the spectrum. Being a linebacker also takes serious skill, but do you damn well better have some power and mass to back that skill up. Far right of the spectrum.
The strength requirements of “skill” sports also become increasingly specific. For example, a climber needs to have tremendous specific hand strength (the ability to apply strength to a hold in any of the three common grips and their sub-grips), something that just having tremendous general hand strength won’t provide (nordic skiers used to win the hand strength tests, not sure if that’s true anymore). Without very specific and sufficient forearm (“finger”) strength every bit of strength training is close to completely wasted. If you can do 50 pullups but not hang on a half-inch edge for 30 seconds then you’re the equivalent of a car producing 500hp but spinning bicycle tires–there’s no way to apply that power, not enough friction with the road. This is why so many gym-based exercise routines are completely useless for climbing. 99 percent of the time I–or almost anyone I’ve ever witnessed climb–fall off it’s because I can’t hang on.
So, for sports requiring very specific skills or far to the left on the skill vs. power requirements more time should be be spent practicing the sport than training for it.
There’s another axis to the spectrum as well; the variable nature of the apparatus. If you’re a target shooter then things stay relatively familiar. If you’re an olympic lifter or gymnast you pretty much know what you’re going to be dealing with when you walk out the door to compete or train. But if you’re a climber or a skier then the the apparatus is going to be wildly different, and will require a much larger set of ingrained skills.
So now the spectrum looks more like a piece of graph paper with “skill” and “power” defining the X axis, and “familiar” and “unknown” defining the Y axis. I would argue that the time spent “training” will be highest in the low-variability, high-power sports, with the time spent “practicing” proportionately greater in the high-variability, specific power sports.
OK, there are a bunch of holes in the above, but I’m doing a lot of thinking on the subject as I go through another round of Crossfit action. Crossfit is training, but it also has elements of practice (the gymnastic moves, olympic lifts), etc. Yesterday I did my workout in yet another strange gym, and was so stoked to make a complete retard out of myself in public yet again. Nothing like hucking a lung while lifting exactly one bar in a room absolutely full of fancy machines and nice people nicely using the machines.
In my next post I’m going take aim at various common “training” strategies… Let’s just say that I will never do another set of bicep curls again.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 25th, 2009
So I bust out today’s X-Fit workout as hard as I can. I’m doing squat cleans alternating with some sort of ass-backards situp thing that fully messes me up. I’m grunting, dropping weights, sweating like a pig and generally making a scene without even trying. It’s about as much fun as I’m going to have in a gym actually, mega. But as I cooled down I started thinking why it is that I’m in a gym on a nice day. I also got a couple of email comments this morning from people asking about winter and training plans, with a few links to various programs. I’m going to rant now:
I’m going to get real blunt here: If you want to be a better climber then damn well go climbing. Especially a better rock climber. I would bet any amount of money that if a person spent, say, 20 hours a week training and climbing hard in a structured climbing program (rock gym and outdoors) and an identical person spent 20 hours a week in a weight gym (even one promising some sort of climbing-specific program) that the actual climbing effort would destroy the gym program. Absolutely destroy it, as in 5.12 vs. 5.9, as in sending like a fiend and falling off before the first bolt on the same route. I guarantee this.
For skill-based sports, as in Glassman’s quote from yesterday, practicing the sport will likely provide the strength and fitness you need (especially at a relatively low level). If you want to be a better ice climber then climb ice. If you can’t do that, and it’s harder because ice isn’t as common as a good climbing gym, then a weight training program will help. A specific program, not a general X-Fit sorta thing (which, while it will help, I don’t believe it will help as much as a focused program).
There was one program on the web supposedly designed to improve one’s performance for climbing desert cracks. That program was only slightly more useful than going to a 24-hour fitness and doing bicep curls. I would take somebody and put them on a crack box for three hours a week and he or she will absolutely DESTROY any sort of non sport-trained climber (given a reasonable base fitness level…). But the funny thing about training is that we become invested in one idea about it, and the more effort we put into that idea and program the more we become invested in that idea… I’m sure everybody felt like the program worked, but only because they didn’t have a control group who spent their time climbing crack boxes to then publicly kick their collective asses. Or a group that actually went outside and got coached on how to climb cracks, even better…
I do Crossfit and other forms of training for a lot of reasons (’cause it’s fucking fun being a good start), but not to be a better technical climber. Time to go stack some firewood on my deck (hey, Xfit will be pretty good training for that, or is it the other way around? That’s what I like about Xfit…). I train in the gym and outside of it to provide a base foundation of strong movement for all my sports and life. I expect that, in the time I spend re-building this foundation every year, my technical skills will actually become worse. Yes, worse. But I will be able to refine my general strength into specific strength and “applied strength” in the form of my various winter and spring activities. And my training will become more specific as needed. I have beaten hundreds if not thousands of athletes over the years who spent a lot more time than me doing bench press (although I have also done some of that).
This is turning into a long post, but I think all of us need to think about what we are training for (very specific to very broad goals), and honestly look at our programs to see if they are producing the results we want. And we need to measure these results as objectively as we can. For example, is the bumbly who came into your climbing gym a year ago now climbing circles around you despite all the sets you’ve done of squats? If your goal was to be a better climber then the bumbly has just shown he has a better program than you do. If we don’t do this examination and evaluation of results then the guy pumping his tenth set of bicep curls to look better on the beach next spring is not only training more effectively than we are but also with more honesty. In fact, I’d respect Mr. Bicep Curl a lot more than the guy or gal who is doing a set of weighted pullups and claiming to be training for hard sport climbing. Seriously.
Now train. Effectively.
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 24th, 2009
“ The need for specificity is nearly completely met by regular practice and training within the sport not in the strength and conditioning environment.”
That’s an interesting quote from the man behind Crossfit, which is, for those who aren’t aware of it, a sort of physical self-torture program that claims to be all things to all people (yeah, I’m being a bit sarcastic). The more I play with Crossfit the more I realize that their training ideas both contrast sharply with my own training over the years and also meet it in places. For example, I have always trained as intensely as I can. I’ve bitched about the lack of intensity I see in training on past blog posts. I’ve always tended to train with “super sets.” Doing combined sets of exercises just made sense to me, it’s how my sports work. I don’t do a pullup then rest on a climb, I do a pullup then a row movement then a leg press etc.
But I’ve never even thought about doing a deadlift–that shit hurts your back, right? So why I am so damn stoked to have deadlifted 265 (that’s about like doing five pullups for those who don’t know the weight. Maybe three pullups…). Why does my back feel better than it has in years? Why do I feel good physically despite all my nagging injuries?
Something interesting is happening.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 21st, 2009
We’ve all been on outdoor trips where the whole situation gets a bit sideways, or at least requires operating at a high output level for longer than is comfortable. Here are three rules for these kinds of trips:
1. Move the team forward. If you’re sitting on your ass or standing around blankly you’re doing something wrong. Figure out what will keep the team and yourself moving forward, even if a very small amount, and do it. Multiple one to ten minute slow-downs add up to hours and days very rapidly when on a long climb or trip.
2. See and accept the situation as it is. Improve it. If it’s really bad think of Shackleton. See, not so bad.
3. You can complain, but it’s gotta be funny or it’s just whining.
I remember reading a story years ago about a friend, Barry Blanchard, suffering on a climbing trip where he wasn’t up to the climbing standard. He cooked more, dug more caves, stacked ropes, did whatever he possibly could to move the group forward. That story stuck in my mind as a standard to try and follow–Barry is normally one of the best alpine climbers going, but on that trip he wasn’t. He was still a very valuable part of the team. My best climbing and adventure partnerships have all broadly followed the three “rules” above. A fourth rule is that sometimes you can’t live up to the first three; try and do better when you can.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 19th, 2009
Crossfit should be banned. It’s a drug, it’s a form of self-torture, it’s a damn curse on my body’s weakest parts. I tried to do this today:
21-18-15-12-9-6-3 rep rounds of:
Handstand push-ups
L-pull-ups
Sounds simple, eh? That’s only about 84 pullups and pushups. Oh, wait, that’s L-sit pullups and HANDSTAND pushups… I cheated so hard on this workout. I piled stuff on the floor so I didn’t have to go as deep on the handstand pushups. My elbow’s still a bit sore so I did some other lat stuff, the cheating just went on and on… And it was still all I could do to “finish” it. Yeah, I know I could have scaled it etc., but I didn’t. Damn. If you think you’re fit have a go at this workout. Oh, and it’s for time, meaning you go as hard as you can, not pretty little sets where do a set and then pose. Give ‘er.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 17th, 2009
I woke up this morning in a hotel room, but it took me a minute to realize that I wasn’t going to put the same non-dry dry suit back on and beat through the woods for the day. I was kinda sad when I realized my day would be spent eating up the Trans Canada Highway instead. Right now there are big salmon spawning up the Atnarko, Grizzly bears feasting on fish, the cry of a loon and the roar of a river crashing through a burned landscape. Right now.
What was supposed to be a reasonable two to maybe three-day 40km river trip morphed into a four-day battle involving epic amounts of flatwater (couldn’t drive as close to the river as I had hoped, so we paddled across a big lake), a really, really big grizzly bear with a salmon over a meter long in its mouth standing 5M in front of me in the river (and I didn’t have anywhere to go but toward the bear in a creek less than two meters wide–I decided flipping over would be the best move if the bear got surly), more log jams than I can remember, hundreds of portages around log jams, getting lost in a swamp, loons, and the general realization that paddling rivers through recent burns is likely a bad idea. But I loved every minute of it. For some reason I need to get way off the grid both mentally and physically at least a couple of times every year. There’s just something deeply meaningful about traversing wild country that resonates with me. Life gets very simple, and the goal everyday is very clear: to make progress, and to survive. That is enough, and everything.
South Tweedsmuir park and the Chilcotin have really seized ahold of me. It’s a truly wild place with engaging terrain and a real frontier feel about it. I saw a few other things in the area I need to get back and check out, I’l get on that as soon as the bruises, cuts, and tendon issues heal up. I’m thumped, and slowly heading home. It’s really amazing how comfortable and pleasant driving my truck can seem after a good solid bit of recreation. I definitely do not need any more recreation for a week or two.
Thanks to Mark at
Redshreds in Williams Lake (cool store and owner, stop in if you’re in the area), and our stellar driver, Clint Fraser with Pine Point Resort, and Rolly of the same. It was a rough trip, especially if you were expecting more of a vacation-style river, thanks to the team we got down the river with. It was not an easy situation; I think I often “recreate” with a group of people who come from an alpine climbing or general background of, “It’s going to suck, the only question is can we handle the suffering or do we have to pull the pin?” I’m starting to realize this is not a normal attitude in the non-alpine climbing world. I don’t go out into the bush or the edge my known mental operating zone looking for “easy,” I go looking for what’s there and then deal with what I find. The process only gets more interesting as what I expect and what I find become more divergent. For me it’s all about seeing things as they are, not as I want them to be, believe them to be from the outside, would like them to be, or think I deserve. What it is is what it is, now get ‘er done. I think this is a common ethic in very narrow climbing world, but perhaps not so much in the rest of the world. I will do better.
One thing I will say is that the last couple of months of hard Crossfit workouts were great training for the trip. Crossfit is all about moving things around, pulling yourself up and down, jumping, and general “power” fitness. I had another physical gear on this trip I haven’t had in the past, and it really helped. I don’t think Crossfit is the solution for very specific fitness needs, but it’s damn effective at prepping for the unknown and the general demands of life. I noticed that doing everything from putting heavy boats onto the roof of the truck (a clean and jerk) to powering up a shitty hillside through thick brush was easier. I’ll ease out of Crossfit as the climbing season develops, but it’s a good base to start from for sure. It also really shows me how lousy I’ve gotten at certain fundamental skills (jumping, squats, deadlifts). It’s really easy to compensate for poor strength and skills without even knowing you’re doing it. But if you’re following an organized plan then those weaknesses are immediately shown, and you can fix ’em. Cool, I have things to fix…
Note–I don’t have anything to do with Crossfit other than having done it at various points in my training.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 12th, 2009
Well, we’re headed northwest to try and run the Atnarko River! Five of us, boats on the roof, game on! The Atnarko is the river we flew along on the way in to scout Hunlen Falls last year. In January there was enough water to run the multiple drops and slides, so we’re hoping to have very low water in September—the Atnarko peaks at some insane flood level every spring, we’re hoping to have literally a tenth or less of that water. The gradient is about 200 feet per mile for the first ten miles, and it looks like the drops comes in pool/drop form. I haven’t tried a first descent in many years, this should be a good one if the water level is reasonale. If you Google Charlotte Lake you can see where the Atnarko flows out of the west end. There’s enough resolution to see individual drops, pretty cool! We’re figuring three days on the river including the flatwater and a hike up around Hunlen Falls. I can’t wait to see what the falls look like in summer, they were so wild looking in winter when we had a go at climbing them.
Tweedsmuir Park has really gotten under my skin; this is my third 14-hour drive to the park this year, it’s just an amazing place. We made nice short film about the winter climb of Hunlen Falls, but we’re not making a formal film this trip, just a good crew heading down river! See ya in a week…
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 9th, 2009
For sending his long-time climbing project. Yeah Gord! Now it’s time to get back at the training, no slacking.
Posted in: Blog
