Climber September/October 2017

training
& skills
the climber’s coach
with Tom Randall
and Ollie Torr
How to Perfect
Your Power
Endurance
Earlier in this series of articles we looked at the basic
methods of improving endurance of the forearm. One
of the main points that we made was that people spend
too much of their time in a ‘pumped’ state and working
the middle ground of intensity. One of the reasons for
avoiding this range was to hold off on this type of
training until the power endurance phase. This is exactly
the type of climbing we want to be doing when it comes
to reaching peak physical form for sport climbing. It’s
the time of the year where we’re aiming to bring all of
our fitness and strength together to hopefully produce
the perfect combination and maximum force and
endurance – this equals higher grades with any luck.
Dave Mason timing his rests
between circuits. Photo: David
Simmonite
One of the key problems we do see
these days is the lack of correct training
facilities for power endurance. Most
of you out there will want to be able
to get to a lead wall perhaps three times
a week. This is all very well, but it also
requires quite a lot of time to be put
aside and it requires a belay partner.
Fortunately, an increasingly common
facility is coming to the rescue – the
traverse wall/looped circuit board.
Circuit boards are now found in many,
many climbing walls across the country
and cross the disciplines of bouldering
and sport climbing – on one hand it is
low level climbing, like bouldering, but
the number of moves carried out is more
similar to a sport climbing experience.
For this reason, you can easily train
your sport climbing fitness (or in other
words – power endurance) with the
convenience and ease of going
bouldering. You don’t need a climbing
partner, a rope or huge amounts of time.
This combination, I think, is great for
those climbers out there pushed for time
or on a budget. We’re going to look at
power endurance training and how you
improve for sport climbing routes.
What you will typically find if you
lack power endurance for a route is
that you fail due to an unbearable
pump – your forearms are rock hard
and even though the moves in their
singularity are reasonable, you can’t
do them.
If your power endurance is lacking,
you will find that all moves are straightforward
to do very quickly, but linking
20 or more of them together is very
hard. This is typically what we encounter
on routes that are fairly sustained in
nature, with no stand-out crux move
that is way harder than others.
Working on your power endurance
will have the effect of improving both
your on-sight and redpoint grade.
I’m going to run you through two
different power endurance exercises,
one of which works well for improving
your redpoint grade and the other
which is more focused on improving
your on-sighting. That said, there are
mutual benefits for both, but I have
found with experience that each has
its own particular focused benefits.
64 Sep–Oct 2017 www.climber.co.uk