Recently I began learning more about nutrition and the essential role it plays not only in general health but in physical fitness as well. Fortunately, I have for a long time been a fan of eating healthy, such as eating organic foods, eating a ton of vegetables and fruits every day, etc. But as I learned more, I realized that I needed to learn what my body needs in order to stay fit, and most importantly in order to be a strong climber. When coupled with a solid training program, eating properly can help you make significant performance gains. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it would be helpful to share some quick ideas this morning on how to squeeze in climbing training into a busy schedule. Ideally, all climbers would be able to climb 4 days a week, workout most days, etc. But in reality, for most climbers life is too busy to make that a reality. I thought I’d share some quick ideas on how to fit training into your schedule. For the sake of keeping this article short, refer to TrainingForClimbing.com, and PodClimber.com to get details on what some of the workouts I refer to are. Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled across this and thought it would be a great tip to share for Friday’s Climbing Training Tip.

This site gives some great options for doing Yoga while in your office and at your desk. I’m sure you’ve seen my postings on how Yoga is essential to climbing improvement. Now there’s even more opportunities to practice it!

Yoga at Your Desk

One of the most effective means of training stamina is to perform exercises that do the following:

• Increase Capillary Size
• Increase the Body’s Ability to Remove Lactic Acid from Muscles
• Build aerobic endurance
• Keep off excess body weight

Other than being intentional in sport-specific training (more details on that next week), training with running intervals accomplishes ALL of the above objectives.

Running Intervals

1. Choose a running route that will give you some elevation change (hills)
2. In the beginning, start with 30 minute sessions 4 times per week, eventually turning 2 of those sessions into 1.25 hour sessions. The goal is to really push yourself, so if you start in week 1 with 30 minute sessions, by the end of week 3 you should be pushing yourself to 1 hour sessions, and then 1.25 hour sessions by the end of week 4.
3. Start out your run with a 3 minute jog. Then run hard (at 90 percent of your max) for 5 minutes. Then back to a 3 minute jog, then 5 minutes hard, etc. Repeat this pattern for the duration of your run, allowing for a 5 minute jogging cool down at the end.
4. If you do this for a 10 week period, you will notice incredible climbing performance improvement, as well as increased all around health!

You can read more about this and other running ideas at the Running Blog posting on VO2 Max and Intervals.