Anyone else seriously lift?

[cracked]

s lift very seriously.

[cj001f]

And please don't turn this perfectly applicable thread into squabbling over whose team is better... college is about who offers the best education; not whose football team is best. If football was what matter then how do you explain all the people who would go to Harvard or MIT if given the chance (does MIT even have a football team?)? If you want to debate football, please go to rivals.com.

 

Screw football, I wouldn't go to MIT cause I dig girls , not tools.

MIT's in downtown Beantown. There's some fly honey's down there. It also has/had the highest intramural participation in the US. Harvard has the Harvard Mountaineering Club.

 

As for the pontificating NOLSe - I went to a school with the best program in this country in my field, and a D3 football team that hadn't won a game in 3 years. WTF do you think I picked it

[Bronco]

Blake:

 

I've been lifting off and on for years (mostly off) and have found some good info on various lifts at www.testosterone.com which is mainly for powerlifters and body builders but still some good training advice to be found.

 

Some exercises that are less well known that the ones you mention (which are very similar to what I include in my workout) are:

 

Push press: Basically a "cheater" standing military press, take a moderate ammount of weight on a barbell and get set for a military press, slightly bend your legs and drive the weight up over your head using legs, calves, hips and arms (duh). The rep is completed when you are at full extension up on your toes with the weight as high as it will go. Doing 5 sets of 5 of this will beat you down.

 

Overhead squat: holding a moderate amount of weight perform an ass to grass squat holding the barbell over your head. Actually try this with a lighter weight first, it's easy to lose your balance while driving out of the hole and I've got the scars on my forehead and dent in the wall to prove it. Mainly craps out your lower back, stabilizers and core muscles.

 

Bent Press: Old strongman lift where you bend way over to the side and press a dumbell up in the air. Picture a straight line going from the dumbell, through your hips to the opposite foot. Makes your obliques hurt and a bunch of other muscles that I don't know the name of. That one on the exterior of your ribcage below the pec and slightly to the outside seems to get a good pumpin from the bent press.

 

I almost forgot this one, some call it a one legged squat, I call it "THE NINJA": Stand with arms exended out to the front and one leg straight out in front, (like a ninja) now squat down on the one leg (ass to grass) and stand again. the only movement is in the leg you are stanging and squating on. Body weight only to start. Actually, I've read some posts on testosterone.com that some guys who can squat 400lbs can not perform one of these one legged squats. Great for developing balance and strength for climbing (and NINJA stuff). Reminds me of some yoda movements I saw.

 

* Don't hurt yourself doing any of these lifts. If you do, don't sue me, go after the filthy rich owners of this website, it're primarily their fault for letting me run amok here spewing advice about stuff that I really have no idea about anyway.

[gotterdamerung]

I benched 415 the other day. Twice. I don't consider myself a serious lifter like I don't consider myself a serious climber though. Pussies.

[JoshK]

I benched 415 the other day. Twice. I don't consider myself a serious lifter like I don't consider myself a serious climber though. Pussies.

 

Don't believe this guy for a second. Go check out that picture of him, he's a stick figure! I bet you could bench 150 max!

[gotterdamerung]

Damn. Busted, I solo 3rd class.

[ashw_justin]

Yeah, sure you can bench 415 in the gym but we all know that's not real weight lifting... It's all about how much you can bench on a wilderness ridge in 50 mph winds and heavy snow with only a #1 stopper 30 feet below you and bla bla bla...

[gotterdamerung]

Yeah, sure you can bench 415 in the gym but we all know that's not real weight lifting... It's all about how much you can bench on a wilderness ridge in 50 mph winds and heavy snow with only a #1 stopper 30 feet below you and bla bla bla...

 

I actually prefer it when my forearms start pumping out on bad ice and I can't get a screw in.

[ashw_justin]

I thought that was the point of ice climbing? To get all sketched and pumped out and fearing for your life and all... man that sounds awesome! Who wants to go ice climbing? No, I'm serious, who wants to go?

[fern]

 

only 415? even this little swedish girl can overhead press a horse!

[JoshK]

I think the funniest shit is when the world strongman contestents squat the platform full of tons of asian schoolchildern. Now that is *real* weightlifting!

[cracked]

I thought that was the point of ice climbing? To get all sketched and pumped out and fearing for your life and all... man that sounds awesome! Who wants to go ice climbing? No, I'm serious, who wants to go?

ME! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

[ashw_justin]

But back on the topic of seriously weightlifting, I have this belief that lets me convince myself not to pump iron anymore, and it goes something like this.

 

Isolating a muscle group through an inherently confining and independent range of movement will indeed strengthen that muscle, but in a narrow and specific way. So you do a bunch of bicep excercises, great, your biceps will be stronger. But the problem is, you never use just your biceps while climbing, instead, nearly every move is a balanced and complex coordination of many muscles in your body, transfering forces from your fingertips down through your toes. Yes, your biceps are involved in this move, but not independently, as you have trained them in the gym. So you end up having to re-train these muscles to cooperate with the rest of your body, or else you're just carrying around a lot of inefficient extra muscle mass and trying to force a simple strength-based solution onto a complex balanced-based problem.

 

Of course this is not true of all gym excercises. Pull-ups obviously are a coordinated effort. But "preacher curls" are not. And then take bench press. Pectoral muscles are important in many climbing movements, but there are very few times when the situation demands that particular movement. What, are you going to have to push yourself straight out from the wall with great amounts of force for some reason? So why do you train those muscles for that particular range of motion? If I was going to work pecs I'd chose some more climbing-related movements instead.

 

Basically this is all based on my belief that muscle training is movement-specific. My problem with gym workouts is that the goal of most excercises is isolate one particular muscle group and work it by itself, through one particular confined movement. I think if you can just train by climbing, and maintain the same intensity as you would with a gym workout (maybe that's the hard part), you're at least as well off or better for building climbing-related strength.

That's why everyone should cancel their gym memberships and use the extra $$ to build home bouldering walls instead. And invite me over to climb so I get the big crazy monkey strength.

[cracked]

Will Gadd has a nice write-up on gravsports.com on this theory. He tells a story where he decided that to climb harder, he needed to be stronger. So he lifted for six months, and improved. Then he noticed that all the French World Cup climbers were way weaker and were kicking his ass. So he spent six months focusing on movement, and improved a lot more. Interesting.

[cracked]

http://gravsports.com/Climbing%20Stories/climbing.htm

[ashw_justin]

I have a boulderer friend who really likes to say "it's all about core strength!" and "you just gotta keep your body tight!" but then, his forearms are like the jaws of life and his legs are built like a 12-year-old's. Hmm.

 

But the point is, the only non-climbing workout he does is pull-up variations and hangs. I think he benches like, oh, 140 or so.

[JoshK]

I'm of the opinion that just doing whatever it is you want to do over and over is the only way to get stronger at that. I lifted quite heavy when I first got into climbing. I weighed 15lbs more than I do now, was a lot "stronger" when it came to lifting weights in the gym, but it didn't much at all for climbing. I can't think of any time during a climb where I say "gee, if only I was stronger I could do this"...it's more "gee, if I didn't suck at climbing I could do this"

[Drederek]

I just lift to eliminate "gorilla posture". Shoulders and back one day, chest one day and arms if I go a third time. I do 3 sets of 15 at 4-6 stations alternating pushing and pulling. I try not to do very much weight at all. Do abs every time sets of 30 or failure. Warm up with 30 mins on the treadmill at max tilt. I mostly lift in the winter as it definitely does not raise my climbing standard while I'm lifting. The main benefit I see is a complete lack of neck pain since I started and the pack does not wear me down as much.

[gotterdamerung]

Ashw_J hit the nail on the head I think. Lifting weights does not seem to enhance climbing ability except for correcting a few postural deficiencies or inequalities.

 

Before I started climbing I lifted 5 times a week and ran 4-5 times a week. I had excellent strength for some things like....lifting weights...but that strength did not translate well when I started climbing seriously. I found that the 'pump' so eagerly sought after in weight lifting was a serious detriment to climbing. I had to quit lifting entirely and it took me several years to develop the proper endurance and contact strength to be a somewhat efficient rock climber. The mass I had built up from 10 years of traditional sports and exercizing never faded, and as a result I was never able to climb anything harder on rock then about 5.10 or a really soft Smith Rocks style 5.11.

 

Climbing, bouldering, yoga, martial arts,and doing long hikes are about the best training tools for climbing. All the same, it seems difficult for most people to get into the mountains or even the rock gym 3-4 times a week so it would make sense that a light weight high rep work out on the weights would be a good way to maintain muscle flexibility and vascularity.

 

Drederek has a good approach to weight lifting.

[assmonkey]

I periodize my weight lifting into climbing. Right now I'm hitting the weight room 3-4x per week and will for about 4 more weeks. Lifting improves vascularity and helps me prevent injury (Over the past 3 years: tendonitis in the form of tennis elbow, shoulder injury, and numerous finger injuries) that comes from muscle imbalances that arise from just climbing. I lift puny weight (compared to all the muscle-bound gym rats at the gym I go to) and aim for high reps. It has a huge positive effect on my climbing, it seems to provide a physical strength base that allows me to build climbing specific strength rapidly. Lifting also has a noticable effect on my climbing endurance.

 

This combined with a focus on skill-building in the climbing gym (as opposed to focusing on strength building in the gym, which is what I use to focus 100% on, and is probably what led to all my injuries (plus my age, I'm 35)) has helped me break through personal plateus and has helped me avoid additional injury. Plus, I just like lifting. It makes me feel healthy.

 

The other thing I started doing was being disciplined about taking rest days. That made a big difference too.

 

- a s s m * n k e y

[jon]

I'm not sure if lifting really increases vascularity that much, and that was something that I disagreed with in Long's deal. My understanding of capillary development is that it only happens under conditions where there is little lactic acid, which isn't the case in lifting. You are primarily using your anaerobic atp-creatine pathway when lifting.

 

If you want to increase your upper body endurace swimming is the way to go.

[gotterdamerung]

Have you ever seen that thing that is like pedalling a bike using only your arms? Try using that thing. You'll get smoked.

[Harry_Pi]

Hello capitalist!

I've used that pedaling arm machine for years. I now rock climb like a little monkey, never having to use my legs.

Thank you fou allow us to post.

[mtnmedic]

I'm in the gym bout six days a week. I do mainly the basics squats being my favorite, sure has made a difference in my life got tons of drive(which is needed here at sea level)not to mention the looks ya get at the beach..lol.