Kimmo

but before i ignore you completely, let me again tell you what a fool you are: most climbers i started climbing with, myself included, simply went out and climbed as hard as we friggin could EVERY TIME WE CLIMBED. YO FOOL, DO YOU HEAR THIS? i didn't read any effin theory, or damn training books, or follow nutrition guidelines or gym jones nonsense or "periodization", or "tendon development theory". shit, we climbed cuz WE LOVED IT. EVERY FRIGGIN DAY UNTIL OUR FINGERS THREATENED TO FALL OFF. and i got decent at it, onsiting up to 12b back in the late '80's, after a couple of years of climbing. no great feat, but ok for the time. occasional injuries of course, happens with climbing, but all ok. so please just stop with your nonsense. go back to your theory, go back to your v3 world, but just stop pretending you know it all, cuz you don't know poopydoop. ok you are now on ignore.

hey rocky joe, i have no interest in corresponding with you. you're a blow-hard who climbs what, v3?, and you think you're an expert. i don't have time for that. seriously. you and john frieh can go effin blow each other and trade notes on scripture, and in the mean-time, you are the first person in all my years here that i will put on "ignore". congratulations. effin 4 years for tendons to begin to strengthen. fool.

to improve your bouldering then? oi vei. so many options. how much time/desire do you have to put into it? 3 hrs a week? 5? 10? are you light and lean right now? body fat below 15%? can you do 10 good pull-ups off a 2 cm edge? if you are above 15% bf, then dropping 10 pounds (or more) might be all it takes to go up a number or two on the v scale, but this is probably the hardest option! my favorite thing ever that helped my gym climbing and was super fun to boot was static climbing. at first i picked problems that were relatively easy for me, and did them statically. completely statically. that means the only thing that would move when reaching for the next hold was the hand doing the reaching. and my reach would be controlled, always; meaning i could hold my body in that position in control while my hand reached. what's so fun and practical about this is that it teaches body awareness, core control and strength, optimal pre-move body positioning, mindfulness, lock off strength, toe hooks, heel hooks, , creativity, and is low injury risk. i think i started doing this on v1's and v2's an dthen moved up, and after a few months of two or three times a week for an hour or two at a time, was staticing v7's and maybe a v8 or two. it's so fun too! it was especially fun when stoned, although my speed went to silly sloth slow and people made fun of me....the control aspect was key though: i NEVER let myself cheat. if i couldn't do the move statically, i'd work just that move til i either got it, or moved to a different problem. for me personally, this period of "training" changed my climbing. the strength improvement and the awareness of movement were the biggest things. (but mainly it was fun!) oh and i did these mainly on the steeper walls. fingerboarding was a big factor in improvement at one point (and continues to be). my fingerboard was pretty simple: some plywood with 3/4", 1/2", and 1/4" edges. tons of good routines on line and in books, but i'd warm up well, maybe 10 or 15 minutes of slowly increasing intensity hangs, then start. i think at first i simply worked up to being able to hang the 3/4" for a minute and a half. maybe it took 2 weeks, maybe 3. i'd just start hanging til i fell off! rest a few minutes, repeat. 10 times. that'd be the workout. two or three times a week. semi crimp position. then moved to 1/2", started doing the same thing. can't remember the length of hang i worked to here. i think i had to crimp this, and the 1/4". then started adding weight so i could only hang the 1/2 for 5 secs. do once, rest a couple minutes, repeat. 10 15 times. workout done. then assorted stuff on the 1/4". get creative. at first this'll kick your ass and more climbing on these days will be hard to do, but you get used to them. again, i got big improevements, but: mainly it was fun! i think if you did the finger workout 2 or 3 times a week, and the static 3 times a week, you'd absolutely notice a big improvement in two or three months. sample schedule: Mon static climbing, 1 hour in evening, ~15 to 20 climbs. fingerboarding after, 3/4" edge. 5 hangs to failure. tues rest wednesday same as monday thursday rest friday same as monday rest weekend 2nd week, same as first, except hang to failure 10 times i think this might be a good place to start, and see if you are recovering well and staying relatively fresh. maybe it's too much, or not nearly enough. if you can, start doing more climbing per session, and add a saturday hangboard session. if anything hurts, rest it quickly before it becomes a problem. some aches are just part of the territory, but always better safe than sorry. whew. ok i'd love to hear if you end up doing this stuff, and the progress you make. 3 weeks to start noticing improvements, 3 months to really notice big jumps. but mainly, i'd hope you have fun with these.

another point: depending on the climb of course, but climbing can be broken down into some basic movements; get strong at these, and climbing is much easier. so in a sense, training is developing the strength to pull a somewhat limited repertoire of specific movements, making every climb somewhat rehearsed (finger strength being the most rehearsed algorithm, if you will). then there's the whole business of red-pointing, which takes rehearsal to a gymnastics level....

sorry, didn't see this. the above holds true in given situations, but is certainly not a hard and fast rule, applicable to all climbing situations. many boulder problems boil down to one single move that overshadows the others in difficulty. if you can't do that single move, you can't do the problem. heck, i can show you routes like that, where the grade is entirely based upon 5 seconds of effort. plus, peak strength development increases one's stamina (in some situations): if i only train one arms, by the time i can do one, you know i'll be able to do 20 two arm pull-ups without ever having done one. same principle applies to climbing, methinks.

sorry my bad. only homer i know. whether or not your post was serious, my response was. trying to outline some form of generic "improvement" program without knowing the goals of the individual is kinda tuff.

for who? Homer. stop eating so many donuts, and get new writers for the show. then we'll talk.

what seems to be the problem here, jon?

for who?

again, a generalization. technique is NOT 90%. the route will not give a goshdang about your "technique" if you do not have the strength to pull a move. In this situation, technique is a big fat 0%. again, a generalization. climbing more is not always the best way to train; the best way to train might be to train one specific move, or monos for instance, if the route one is trying has a section that gives one problems ("best" is entirely subjective, and applicable only to one's goals; even then it's sometimes hard to figure out what "best" is). agreed.

tendons are amazingly strong. look at what they do on a daily basis. what a load of crap. tendons take 4 years to BEGIN to strengthen? insane.

do you have a specific goal? or simply generic fitness for long trad climbs? goals kinda dictate methods.

explain please.

dude, it sounds like you've figured out! congratulations! but seriously, beyond the clionical theory tone, most of what you say makes sense. but again, it's not the end-all you seem to indicate.

oh my goodness. i see the problem here. you guys think i'm suggesting we all start powerlifting? READING COMPREHENSION, PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think again, that while the above might be the preferred approach for the majority of climbers, it isn't a hard and fast rule. there is no doubt that doing specific training preparation for a specific route can be the best way to spend one's time vs generic "climbing". hard and fast rules piss me off! get creative; it's the only way anything evolves.

i would add that all my commentary is geared towards bouldering and sport climbing, btw, not alpine or mixed or somesuch. side-note: john, you seem to present things as hard and fast rules, ie. you do this and this will definitely happen, regarding injury, bulking up, blah blah blah. the real world is a little more flexible than that. it seems you might have been one of the critics of abadjiev because he didn't conform to accepted theory (as his lifters took gold after gold).

but...above you said climbing wasn't a strength sport....you are contradicting yourself. you also haven't answered the question regarding resting in the "eastern bloc" approach to lifting, and the seeming contradiction the bulgarians present to this. and what is the "programming" i propose to achieve hard climbing? i would imagine him being unable to lift a water bottle over his head had less to do with pull pull pull than with actual injury. i only do pull pull pull, can do a one arm, etc etc and oh, i'm 43. damn short "career", eh? you seem to be an expert on theory, but how much of this have you personally experienced through hard climbing?

some top climbers train like maniacs. too many to list. as far as "rest" goes, the soviets periodized and used drugs; the bulgarians didn't periodize and also used drugs, and proceded to kick soviet ass. not too much "resting" going on in the bulgarian system, at least in a conventioanl sense.

climbing isn't rocket science. climbing is simply a technical form of weight-lifting. certainly technique is important, but in the end, it's about strength to weight ratio, with a large part of that equation being finger strength to weight ratio. i'm not meaning to disrespect your opinion, but your above statement calling climbing a "non strength" sport is laughable at best....

can one of you explain your "apples to slugs" comment, cuz i don't know what it refers to. thanks.

can you explain the specifics of this? you are lumping together different approaches when you say "eastern bloc". the soviets were into periodization, which is what bulgaria broke with. the soviet approach relied on lots of sets and reps and the necessary rest days, whereas the bulgs did way less reps but high high intensity, doing this multiple times a day on successive days (very little rest, in the traditional sense). what is it you mean? who are you thinking of specifically?

you mean weightlifting vs climbing? au contrair mon ami, i think climbing IS weightlifting, just simply a form where the weight being lifted is your own body. i think bouldering has the most direct relevance to the above theory, but i believe it can be adapted to other forms of climbing....

so anyone who's really into training has certainly heard about periodization, and how it's the holy grail of training scheduling. climbing books all seem to be on the bandwagon. there's some interesting stuff i read about it recently, and it turns out that it's not as accepted a concept as i once thought. ivan abadjiev was a bulgarian weightlifting coach who said he threw away the literature on periodization after reading it. he developed a system that had his lifters doing basically only the lifts they would do in competition, doing them often, and doing them very intensely, close to or at max. "often" being multiple times a day. year round. people called him crazy, but from the tiny country of bulgaria came what, 9 gold medalists in the olympics and 50 or 60 world champs. then it seems he might have been forced to quit: the soviet union couldn't be upstaged on the world stage like that! i think the same approach works with climbing, and training for climbing. don't let this silly fear of "over-doing it" that gets preached all the time get in the way. if your body can handle it, campus three days in a row, but don't do tons of sets. do finger boarding twice a day (i read that the forearm muscles recover quickly and can be trained multiple times a day; experiment.) in other words, don't spend time "building base" at certain times of the year; just mimic the type of climbing you plan on doing, the intensities required, and do so often.

why no hinged ideas? it's easy to incorporate adjustability into a home wall.... but if you must fix, i would make it at least 30 degrees, and no more than 60 degrees. for me it would be 60, but if you're more into alpine and trad, maybe closer to 30. this would at least theoretically force better technique while still working core strength, whereas the steeper you go, more core but less on-your-feet technique.