Training Day – Part 5 Shake the Pump!

The words of the late Jimmy Jewel have stuck in my mind for many years and what he said is what most climbers dream of. “If I can stick the hold, I can hold it forever”.

Jimmy was a renowned British solo climber back in the late 80′s and what he said has been an ambition of mine ever since I heard it, I don’t want to get pumped! If you have been following some of my tips so far you should feel a lot stronger on the rock. Now the problem will be, how does one keep that pump at bay.

Stuart on his route 'Firestarter' (29) at Waterworld

My personal break through into the higher grades came only once I had learned how to train endurance. I was as strong as an ox back then in the late 80′s. I could do one arm pull ups left and right, I could do three sets of eight pull ups with 34kgs of extra weight and I could hang on the smallest holds, but I could only climb grade 20, max! I just got pumped out of my bracket after 8 -10 moves, that was normally after clipping the third bolt. Climbing friends of mine couldn’t believe how badly I did on rock.

Having seen me training, they thought I must be up there in the big grades. They were surprised and I was desperate for an answer. I read my first training book by Wolfgang Gulich and started thinking and training like an athlete.
For me and for most climbers the answer was quite simple, get a stop watch and train for endurance. If you want to run a marathon you need to run more than a few kilometres in your training.

On the boulder wall this athlete mind set would equate to climbing for 20 minutes non stop. This would mean combining laps on easier problems with long traverses and throwing a harder problem in to the mix every now and then for some spice. It helps training with a friend as it can get monotonous and some good music helps too.  After having done your 20 minutes a good rest for full recovery is needed and then it is back onto the wall for the next 20 minutes. You and a friend could alternate 20 on 20 off.

On a climbing wall where the route selection is probably easier than on a boulder wall 40 minute work outs are required. Once again alternate with your climbing partner and climb up and down routes on lead and top rope, change from one route to the next as quickly as possible. Ideally you should try and find 3 or 4 routes of the right grade next to one another and just top rope up and down them. Choose routes that are easy enough so that you do not fall off and try not to have a definite crux in the route, if there is a crux then use other holds to keep the flow and right intensity.

The aim here is to climb until the alarm on the watch goes, do not stop earlier, this is what the mind will want to do. Your body can go further than you think, you just have to believe that now. This kind of training is not very hard on the body and a full days rest is required before you train again. What I do is warm up well then do some hard problems, maybe half a boulder session, then finish off with 1 – 3, 20 minute non stop bouldering blocks.

Watch how your endurance picks up and amazingly you start feeling good on the rock as well. The long climbing sessions teach you to flow, not over grip, milk the rests and climb in balance at all times. You start to climb automatically with a kind of instinct as your engram’s are awakened and body memory takes over.

The vertical now becomes your world and you will find the pump takes a lot longer to set in and when it does
you can shake it off with one or two shakes of the arm to carry on up to clip those chains!