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Rufsen
Feb 3, 2011, 3:58 PM
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So i just came back from a great roadtrip and have 2-3 months of indoor climbing before the season starts here in the north. I have goals for bouldering and sport, but the goals for sport should be easy to reach since my endurance is lagging far behind everything else.
So i started using some principles from SCC, and was wondering what peoples experience with CIR/VIR bouldering was. I have a few issues i need to figure out.
1) No grades at my gym. It’s just sorted into easy, medium, hard and projects. Stuff i can do in 1-3 attempts is easy enough to follow, but its not possible to say that everything i try on a given day is V5. Can CIR be done with such limited info?
2) Progression. More volume, less rest between boulders or add harder boulders (turning it into VIR)?
3) VIR without knowing the grades. Just do 9 boulders that i can do in 1-3 attempts and add one (or more) that will require more effort.
4) Ratio between boulders you know well and new boulders in a session?
Obviously movement skills and such will be worked on, its the majority of my training right now.
Goals for the summer. Increase bouldering grade to 7C+ (V10) and redpoint grade to 7c+ (.12d?)
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kachoong
Feb 3, 2011, 4:47 PM
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I'm certainly no bouldering expert but my take on doing CIR/VIR is you need to do routes you know well and will most of the time get your first time, so that you can continuously climb to finish the sets. So onsight grade.
You may want to try out as many of the problems as possible to get familiar with them and find at least one you can use for your sets. With a limited number of potential problems then Continuous Intervals are your best bet.
Best would be to find four problems with sequential grades so you can also do your VIR, even if it's easy, medium, medium, hard or easy, medium, hard, medium. Remember you want to be failing as close to the end of the last set as possible. With the problems being up for at least a month you should be able to utilize these well-known problems during this time.
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dugl33
Feb 3, 2011, 5:45 PM
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Rufsen wrote: So i just came back from a great roadtrip and have 2-3 months of indoor climbing before the season starts here in the north. I have goals for bouldering and sport, but the goals for sport should be easy to reach since my endurance is lagging far behind everything else. So i started using some principles from SCC, and was wondering what peoples experience with CIR/VIR bouldering was. I have a few issues i need to figure out. 1) No grades at my gym. It’s just sorted into easy, medium, hard and projects. Stuff i can do in 1-3 attempts is easy enough to follow, but its not possible to say that everything i try on a given day is V5. Can CIR be done with such limited info? 2) Progression. More volume, less rest between boulders or add harder boulders (turning it into VIR)? 3) VIR without knowing the grades. Just do 9 boulders that i can do in 1-3 attempts and add one (or more) that will require more effort. 4) Ratio between boulders you know well and new boulders in a session? Obviously movement skills and such will be worked on, its the majority of my training right now. Goals for the summer. Increase bouldering grade to 7C+ (V10) and redpoint grade to 7c+ (.12d?)
I'm not great with training but I think you need to reread those sections. You need to be picking problems you can do without falling on and without getting a pump, in other words relatively easy for you. You should be a good 1/2 or 2/3rds through your repetitions before things feel challenging, and reaching nearly impossible (but not impossible) as you complete the last rep.
With VIR you are going to have to select routes with a progression of difficulty but you'll still need to know the moves of the hardest problem in your mix. I think its ok that the hardest problem took some work to figure out, but for the exercise you should no longer be falling off the problems.
Remember, this is endurance training...
Just my .02 
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jt512
Feb 3, 2011, 6:06 PM
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Rufsen wrote: So i just came back from a great roadtrip and have 2-3 months of indoor climbing before the season starts here in the north. I have goals for bouldering and sport, but the goals for sport should be easy to reach since my endurance is lagging far behind everything else. So i started using some principles from SCC, and was wondering what peoples experience with CIR/VIR bouldering was. I have a few issues i need to figure out. 1) No grades at my gym. It’s just sorted into easy, medium, hard and projects. Stuff i can do in 1-3 attempts is easy enough to follow, but its not possible to say that everything i try on a given day is V5. Can CIR be done with such limited info? 2) Progression. More volume, less rest between boulders or add harder boulders (turning it into VIR)? 3) VIR without knowing the grades. Just do 9 boulders that i can do in 1-3 attempts and add one (or more) that will require more effort. 4) Ratio between boulders you know well and new boulders in a session? Obviously movement skills and such will be worked on, its the majority of my training right now. Goals for the summer. Increase bouldering grade to 7C+ (V10) and redpoint grade to 7c+ (.12d?)
Your bouldering grade is way high compared with your route grade. Why then emphasize bouldering in your training regime, rather than improving route climbing factors, such as endurance, power endurance, and movement skills on routes.
Jay
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DouglasHunter
Feb 3, 2011, 7:46 PM
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Rufsen, I think your questions about CIR / VIR are good ones so let me add my 2 cents.
1) No grades: Its a little problematic that your gym does not have grades but you probably know the V scale well enough to make your own decisions about how hard the problems are. Frankly this is something that we all need to do even in gyms with posted grades as gyms grades tend to be highly variable. Posted gym grades are a guide, but the climber has to confirm the grade. If a problem feels too easy or too hard for the grade, then the problem should be dropped.
Also, there is some wiggle room in a CIR. We don't expect that every problem will be exactly the same difficulty, or that they will be difficult in the same way. When I am doing CIR VIR training (as I am currently) I know that some of the problems will be spot on but there are going to be some that are a half grade hard or soft, which is o.k. but I do try to weed out the soft ones.
2) Progression: The big "don't" here is to limit your rest between problems. This is a repetition training method, not a interval training method so you always need to allow for complete recovery. More volume is a good way to go, if you are completing 13 problems at a certain level try to go to 16 or 18. Adding harder problems making the workout a VIR also works. In fact this is what I personally tend to do. Since I just started climbing again here are my first three workout which were CIR / VIR.
1/20/11: 14 X V2 (including 9 flashes) & 2 X V3 for a total of 16 problems.
1-26-11: 12 X V3 ( 4 flashes), 2 X V2 and 1 X V4. for a total of 15 problems. The V4 was an easy V4 and I liked the looks of it so I included it for fun.
2-1-11: 13 X V3 (3 flashes) & 3 X V4. In this workout I dropped a number of the easier V3s and made sure I did all the harder V3s in the gym.
My goal for my next workout will be 7 X V4 and 7 X V3.The workout after that I will try to do 15 X V4. The problem I face is that the gym has almost no V4s so I will be talking to the course setters and modifying some easier problems to get them up to V4.
4) Problems you know well VS new problems: I always like to include both. I don't think I could get through 15 problems if they were all new, but I like to include new problems and flashes as often as possible. A high number of flashes of new problems indicates your readiness to include harder problems.
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Rufsen
Feb 3, 2011, 8:58 PM
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jt512 wrote: Your bouldering grade is way high compared with your route grade. Why then emphasize bouldering in your training regime, rather than improving route climbing factors, such as endurance, power endurance, and movement skills on routes. Jay
Bouldering season starts earlier, I still have 3-4 months to prepare my sportclimbing fitness.
And the majority of my training will be focused on movement skills on routes. By climbing a high volume of 5.10 and easy 5.11 routes while focusing on technique my endurance will probably increase as well. I'll try it out for about a month or so and see if i need to add some more intensive endurance workouts.
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Rufsen
Feb 3, 2011, 9:00 PM
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Thanks Douglas. Great post.
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ceebo
Feb 3, 2011, 11:58 PM
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Rufsen wrote: jt512 wrote: Your bouldering grade is way high compared with your route grade. Why then emphasize bouldering in your training regime, rather than improving route climbing factors, such as endurance, power endurance, and movement skills on routes. Jay Bouldering season starts earlier, I still have 3-4 months to prepare my sportclimbing fitness. And the majority of my training will be focused on movement skills on routes. By climbing a high volume of 5.10 and easy 5.11 routes while focusing on technique my endurance will probably increase as well. I'll try it out for about a month or so and see if i need to add some more intensive endurance workouts.
You could consider somthing slightly more clinical. Instead of bouldering, do targeted wieght training sessions with hangboard routine on same day. Then good volume of low/ mid level endurance routes on climbing days.
Would get 2 solid strength sessions in and 3 good endurance sessions per week.
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DouglasHunter
Feb 5, 2011, 11:42 PM
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no problem man, good luck!
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