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flesh
Jul 25, 2011, 3:24 PM
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Recently, I competed in a bouldering competition and have been watching all the world cup bouldering events which you can watch at http://ifsc.tv/.
My comp rules we're as follows:
6- boulder problems. 5 minutes to climb each problem with no time to look at it ahead of climbing. 5 minute rests inbetween. You get 25 exra points for a flash and you get deducted 5 points per attempt without success. Each hold has a certain point value, each problem is worth around 1k points total.
After watching some of the best boulderers in the world falling off v6's and v7's (my friends a routesetter and verified these ratings on some of the problems with one of the world cup routesetters) I was convinced that the biggest, fastest, comp gains would be in practicing onsighting. I thought, why not do mock comps? Practice with the same rules under the same conditions?
Fortunately, we have 4 different gyms in my area, so I asked my brother to help me. We went to any gym, not my home gym, since I know the problems, and I asked my brother to pick 6 v7/v8s that weren't very crimpy and on different walls, some vertical, some very steep etc. Some long, some short, etc. I had him brush the holds and told him not to give me any beta etc. I gave him my phone and used the stopwatch feature and told him to give me 5 minutes to try each problem with a 5 minute rest in between.
It's been a couple months since that comp and ever since I've been using this mock comp as a way to challenge myself in a different way. I believe it's helped alot with my onsighting ability in boulders and routes, when you only have 5 minutes, you've got to make your tries count! It's very fun also and I highly recommend it as a new way to train thats different and very mental. The pressure helps you push yourself and the creativity involved is hard and fast!
Anyways, give it a try a couple times and let me know what you think.
Make the problems around 3 grades lower than your absolute limit. 6 boulder problems total. You should be able to send about half of them within the 5 minutes. Adjust difficulty based on this.
It's amazing how worked you can get in just one hour when your pushing yourself to the limit on 6 different boulders!
Of course, make sure and warm up well beforehand.
(This post was edited by flesh on Jul 25, 2011, 3:42 PM)
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Rufsen
Jul 25, 2011, 5:31 PM
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I like this. Fun way to do a high number of quality problems.
I should talk to the other routesetters at the gym about this. Should be possible to rotate between setters and have a flashday each week. Setting 6-10 problems every 3-4 weeks isnt that bad.
I would probably rest more between tries, Unless of course spesific comptraining or enduance is the goal.
Yeah, I really like the general idea.
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JoeHamilton
Jul 26, 2011, 1:42 AM
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sounds fun.
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jbro_135
Jul 27, 2011, 1:54 AM
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I've done this a couple times before to practice for comps. It's a lot of fun and definitely helps you understand what to expect going into an onsight comp.
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JoeHamilton
Jul 27, 2011, 2:18 AM
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Wow, talk about a work out. I left work and went to the gym (metro rock in Everett ma ). Warm Up: traverse left to right, right to left , about a 100 ft in all, no break. Took 5 min when done, started hitting as many v0 as I could find. Not really resting longer then finding a new one to jump on. Then on to v1, repeating the same, throwing in 0's and 2's as I looked around. If i fell I moved on. did this for about an hour. DANG the rest and gator aid was so needed. After the break I just felt week,lol pushing for another hour anything I could pull off. I think I'll keep this in my work out plan at the gym, maybe limit it to 3 problems each working my way up the grades.
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flesh
Jul 27, 2011, 4:54 PM
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JoeHamilton wrote: Wow, talk about a work out. I left work and went to the gym (metro rock in Everett ma ). Warm Up: traverse left to right, right to left , about a 100 ft in all, no break. Took 5 min when done, started hitting as many v0 as I could find. Not really resting longer then finding a new one to jump on. Then on to v1, repeating the same, throwing in 0's and 2's as I looked around. If i fell I moved on. did this for about an hour. DANG the rest and gator aid was so needed. After the break I just felt week,lol pushing for another hour anything I could pull off. I think I'll keep this in my work out plan at the gym, maybe limit it to 3 problems each working my way up the grades.
Whatever you want to do is cool bro! But if you wanted to try what I described in this thread, you missed a important part it seems. You have to rest in between attempts!
The problem with not resting is that your making it an aerobic exercise, not power/power endurance. Also, you won't get the best onsighting experience because you will be so tired so quickly that you won't be able to onsight climbs closer to your limit. The harder a climb is, on average, the more difficult it is to forecast the movement. So you need to rest and get more experience onsighting climbs at your limit. This will help your onsighting ability more than what you did without resting. Does that make sense?
Because harder problems require a greater onsight ability, if you'll rest a bit, like 5 minutes between goes or close to that, you'll spend more time onsighting harder, more complicated problems which will help more with improving your maximum level onsight ability. Which is why I do this.
Trust me, even with 5 minuteish rests between goes, you'll still get worked quickly.
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JoeHamilton
Jul 27, 2011, 5:07 PM
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Cool next trip I'll try it with rest .v3 is about my limit at this time. Do you think I should skip the zero's and go straight for the 2's and 3's .
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flesh
Jul 27, 2011, 5:37 PM
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JoeHamilton wrote: Cool next trip I'll try it with rest .v3 is about my limit at this time. Do you think I should skip the zero's and go straight for the 2's and 3's .
First of all, warm up on your v0's assuming you can onsight them easily, if you can't warm up by traversing on jugs. Warm up for about 30 minutes. Rest between warmups so that when you begin attempts at your onsight limit, you are NOT pumped.
If your redpoint limit is v3, you should be trying to onsight v2 I'd guess. A good way to estimate what you should be trying is that with 5 minute rests between, you should be able to onsight about half of the problems you try. So if you can onsight half the v2's you try with 5 minuter rests between, stick with that. If you can't, go down to v1's until you can.
(This post was edited by flesh on Jul 27, 2011, 5:41 PM)
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JoeHamilton
Jul 27, 2011, 6:07 PM
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Thanx
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flesh
Jul 29, 2011, 5:20 PM
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It's truly amazing to me how much this has improved my onsight abililty.
I've used this method 2 climbing days since I originally posted this. I changed it a little bit however, instead of giving myself as many tries as I want for 5 minutes, like the competitions, then a five minute rest, I give myself two total tries on any given problem before moving on and a 5 minute rest between every go.
This way I have a bit more energy without getting pumped, I get to try more total problems. If I have a comp in the future I'll go back to the comp rules because it is important you have more endurance because your giving more goes in a shorter period of time.
The other day after warming up on easy boulders for 30 minutes and then taking a 10 minute rest I was able to try 10 different, new, boulders, I sent 8 out of 10 about half of them flash and half of them 2nd try. ITS SO MUCH FUN TOO!
Just lots of new moves, never repetitive, tons of creativity!
You get super worked too because you never get familiar enough with anything that your climbing relaxed, plus because your under pressure and excited you really push yourself.
Right now I feel like this is really working for me, from time to time you've got to switch things up and generally the more psyched you are on whatever it is your doing at the time the harder you try and the stronger/better you get. Whenever I come up with new things like this (or my doubles/open handed/weight vest/campusing) I file them away and use them in the future as a way to mix things up. Like doing 4 x 4s, I think it's important mix things up in order to continually improve.
I'm driving 45 minutes to a new gym tommorrow to do it again.
Also, I'm going to FONT for a month end of october to begginning of november so if anyone wants to meet up hit me up. It's just me and one buddy as of now.
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damienclimber
Jul 29, 2011, 10:22 PM
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flesh wrote: It's truly amazing to me how much this has improved my onsight abililty. I've used this method 2 climbing days since I originally posted this. I changed it a little bit however, instead of giving myself as many tries as I want for 5 minutes, like the competitions, then a five minute rest, I give myself two total tries on any given problem before moving on and a 5 minute rest between every go. This way I have a bit more energy without getting pumped, I get to try more total problems. If I have a comp in the future I'll go back to the comp rules because it is important you have more endurance because your giving more goes in a shorter period of time. The other day after warming up on easy boulders for 30 minutes and then taking a 10 minute rest I was able to try 10 different, new, boulders, I sent 8 out of 10 about half of them flash and half of them 2nd try. ITS SO MUCH FUN TOO! Just lots of new moves, never repetitive, tons of creativity! You get super worked too because you never get familiar enough with anything that your climbing relaxed, plus because your under pressure and excited you really push yourself. Right now I feel like this is really working for me, from time to time you've got to switch things up and generally the more psyched you are on whatever it is your doing at the time the harder you try and the stronger/better you get. Whenever I come up with new things like this (or my doubles/open handed/weight vest/campusing) I file them away and use them in the future as a way to mix things up. Like doing 4 x 4s, I think it's important mix things up in order to continually improve. I'm driving 45 minutes to a new gym tommorrow to do it again. Also, I'm going to FONT for a month end of october to begginning of november so if anyone wants to meet up hit me up. It's just me and one buddy as of now.
Is the drive fun?
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flesh
Jul 30, 2011, 4:37 PM
Post #12 of 13
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damienclimber wrote: flesh wrote: It's truly amazing to me how much this has improved my onsight abililty. I've used this method 2 climbing days since I originally posted this. I changed it a little bit however, instead of giving myself as many tries as I want for 5 minutes, like the competitions, then a five minute rest, I give myself two total tries on any given problem before moving on and a 5 minute rest between every go. This way I have a bit more energy without getting pumped, I get to try more total problems. If I have a comp in the future I'll go back to the comp rules because it is important you have more endurance because your giving more goes in a shorter period of time. The other day after warming up on easy boulders for 30 minutes and then taking a 10 minute rest I was able to try 10 different, new, boulders, I sent 8 out of 10 about half of them flash and half of them 2nd try. ITS SO MUCH FUN TOO! Just lots of new moves, never repetitive, tons of creativity! You get super worked too because you never get familiar enough with anything that your climbing relaxed, plus because your under pressure and excited you really push yourself. Right now I feel like this is really working for me, from time to time you've got to switch things up and generally the more psyched you are on whatever it is your doing at the time the harder you try and the stronger/better you get. Whenever I come up with new things like this (or my doubles/open handed/weight vest/campusing) I file them away and use them in the future as a way to mix things up. Like doing 4 x 4s, I think it's important mix things up in order to continually improve. I'm driving 45 minutes to a new gym tommorrow to do it again. Also, I'm going to FONT for a month end of october to begginning of november so if anyone wants to meet up hit me up. It's just me and one buddy as of now. Is the drive fun?
On a scale of 1 to 1? It's about a 1.
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lazymonkey
Jul 31, 2011, 12:34 PM
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awesome idea.
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