There is a great quote from a book I read a few years ago (Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
"The word priority came into the English language in the 1400's. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next 500 years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities."
I remember in my sports performance classes discussing the energy systems, the impact of training order and such things, as well as long discussions about strength vs fitness. All in the pursuit of understanding our training focus, what was MOST important to train. The difficulty of course is that time is limited, as well as energy, which means that we have to make decisions on what to train and how much to devote to it. The order of our training also impacts our outcomes. It is very hard (impossible?) to train power after an exhaustive endurance session for instance.
We navigated this by the introduction of linear periodisation, or really periodised training in general, where we split our focus temporally. So perhaps we started by trying to get stronger, then after a period of strength training, switched to endurance training to try and get fit before we ‘lost’ our strength gains. I put “lost” in quotations, because it seems now that it is very difficult to lose strength if we are continuing to stimulate our muscles for long periods of time. Usually what happens is the effect of the training changes how we ‘express’ it, co-ordination changes or the system is fatigued, but i digress.
As a coach, this is where I spend most of my time. Firstly trying to understand the priority, the focus, the main objective. Then attempting to keep it as the main objective with all the complications of life, emotion and training requirements. In general I believe that many high performance climbing athletes over train. They and their coaches get lost in volume and miss the main focus. They lose the priority and are too enticed by the feeling of exhaustion they expect to feel at the end of a training session. In addition to this, I think many climbing athletes also over train to reduce weight. Hard training is a great appetite suppressant, and at the moment we see a lot of very light climbers doing really well on the international circuit. Once again, I digress.
So when building a training plan, the most important aspect should be the priority. What are you trying to achieve from this block of training. These sessions should then be prioritised in addition to the recovery required to perform them at the intensity required. At this point it is important to point out that no matter what you see on social media, climbing is not an endurance sport. The duration of our efforts (at least in the indoor space) is not long enough to require us to focus on endurance. Our efforts are generally anaerobic and strength / power based. The science typically requires a rested and recovered system to train this effectively. Strength training usually requires 24-48 hours in order to recover optimally, so you can stimulate those muscles again. So if we take the low side of this (24 hours), and climbing is generally a strength and power sport, you can fit, at most, 3 sessions a week if your weeks are static, or 4 if you can change them. Which is strange, because most top athletes I see are training 5-6 days per week……..
So when it comes to planning your sessions, what does all this mean?
Think carefully about what you are trying to achieve
Optimally, have the sessions that will help you the MOST to achieve your goal, after a rest day
Have rest days and don’t be afraid to actually rest. Running is not resting by the way.
Test and tune - if you know what you are trying to achieve (like climbing a route you like), make sure you are making time to try that route at least after each training block. Then you can see if your training has been effective.
Obviously, all rules are made to be broken, BUT I would consider very carefully how to break them and when, which is why a coach can be helpful.
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