Two months ago I did my first serious Beastmaker session. Then I decided to call it quits for a while, to recover my elbow, and dedicated myself to moving weights around in a dusty, dark and stinky gym. I have been doing this for the last month, three or four times a week, and I think I got some result. I immediately noticed that somehow, during the winter, I had retained the power I had put up in past summer's cycle. So I started again from there.
I have trimmed the session in this month, cutting off useless exercises (useless in terms of climbing training) and adding some others. In particular, I started training my back, and recently my triceps, with super sets.
So I first do parallel dips and then cable extensions for the triceps, and I do bicep curls with a dumbbell followed by one armed pulley machine or one armed lat machine. It's strenuous but effective. I hadn't felt my biceps and back this worked in a lot of time. I still am very very cautious with my right arm, I try to pull down but avoid the fully locked position due to my elbow, which, despite the repeated beatings I give it, is getting slowly better. The combined one armed sessions at the fingerboard I did all April, also gave some results. My left arm is definitely overally stronger and more stable, and my bicep has changed its shape, which is a clearly good sign.
Yesterday I did my second Beastmaker session of the past week. Progress. I am currently training with 6 sets of 10" hangs for each chosen hold and grip. Still refining the session to obtain the most from power and skin, yesterday was a good one. I did:
warm up; big rungs; 20°; 30°; middle two; slopey monos; front two on small ones; back two; back two on small ones; small rungs; back three small rungs; small rungs again. Felt good and satisfied at the end, with a decent volume of 11 clean minutes of deadhangs, and also a quite high intensity, working two fingers at a time is hard for me, almost never done it before. It's good to train this way because you can go at the limit without having to add weight or go one armed, two things that I don't want to do anymore (the frist one), and for the moment (the latter).
One other good (or bad, depending on your opinion) thing about the Beastmaker, is that it's widely popular among strong climbers, this allowing everyone to share data. Speaking with Tom the other day I realized (once more), how weak my fingers are. Seeing footage of Ned campusing between the 30° and the small monos in the Climbing Works video tour, made me realize how weak I am. Reading the Beasts' feats, made me realize how weak I am. The road is so long, steep and difficult, and it's so easy to get overwhelmed by other people's power. But, despite being so depressing, playing with the big boys is the only way to grow up stronger. I don't want to be the king of the gym, I want to go around and touch many different kinds of rock and climb many different, hard problems. I go to the gym to fail, to be shit and to feel shit. Not to succeed. Or not mainly.
Sometimes I am a bit sad because I feel the need to put more effor into my climbing: recently I feel like I've been a bit slack, not traininfgproperly or seriously, even though I know that this wouldn't be fair to say. I have trained as hard as I could with my injury, but this thought lets me not satisfied. I would like to dedicate my entire day to climbing and training, doing more and more, but sadly it's not possible.
Even having the time needed, I don't know if my body would allow me, but for sure I would try.
I have trimmed the session in this month, cutting off useless exercises (useless in terms of climbing training) and adding some others. In particular, I started training my back, and recently my triceps, with super sets.
So I first do parallel dips and then cable extensions for the triceps, and I do bicep curls with a dumbbell followed by one armed pulley machine or one armed lat machine. It's strenuous but effective. I hadn't felt my biceps and back this worked in a lot of time. I still am very very cautious with my right arm, I try to pull down but avoid the fully locked position due to my elbow, which, despite the repeated beatings I give it, is getting slowly better. The combined one armed sessions at the fingerboard I did all April, also gave some results. My left arm is definitely overally stronger and more stable, and my bicep has changed its shape, which is a clearly good sign.
Yesterday I did my second Beastmaker session of the past week. Progress. I am currently training with 6 sets of 10" hangs for each chosen hold and grip. Still refining the session to obtain the most from power and skin, yesterday was a good one. I did:
warm up; big rungs; 20°; 30°; middle two; slopey monos; front two on small ones; back two; back two on small ones; small rungs; back three small rungs; small rungs again. Felt good and satisfied at the end, with a decent volume of 11 clean minutes of deadhangs, and also a quite high intensity, working two fingers at a time is hard for me, almost never done it before. It's good to train this way because you can go at the limit without having to add weight or go one armed, two things that I don't want to do anymore (the frist one), and for the moment (the latter).
One other good (or bad, depending on your opinion) thing about the Beastmaker, is that it's widely popular among strong climbers, this allowing everyone to share data. Speaking with Tom the other day I realized (once more), how weak my fingers are. Seeing footage of Ned campusing between the 30° and the small monos in the Climbing Works video tour, made me realize how weak I am. Reading the Beasts' feats, made me realize how weak I am. The road is so long, steep and difficult, and it's so easy to get overwhelmed by other people's power. But, despite being so depressing, playing with the big boys is the only way to grow up stronger. I don't want to be the king of the gym, I want to go around and touch many different kinds of rock and climb many different, hard problems. I go to the gym to fail, to be shit and to feel shit. Not to succeed. Or not mainly.
Sometimes I am a bit sad because I feel the need to put more effor into my climbing: recently I feel like I've been a bit slack, not traininfgproperly or seriously, even though I know that this wouldn't be fair to say. I have trained as hard as I could with my injury, but this thought lets me not satisfied. I would like to dedicate my entire day to climbing and training, doing more and more, but sadly it's not possible.
Even having the time needed, I don't know if my body would allow me, but for sure I would try.
4 comments:
Hi Lore,
How much rest do you take inbetween hangs? I tried a slightly modified version of your hangboard workout last night as a change-up to my usual hangboarding routine and was basically doing the hangs on the minute (i.e. 50 seconds rest).
I was quite broken at the end.
ciao cipher,
and thank you for finding the time to read the blog!
i do exactly what you did, i.e. 50" rests in between hangs, and 5 mins between different sets.
as the sets go on, i take longer rests in between hangs to still maintain a high intensity. i can go up to a couple of minutes, my focus is finger strength, rather than power endurance, so high intensity is a must. and also skin can become a bit of an issue in a long deadhanging session.
i end up quite broken as well, but it's satisfying!!!
thanks again, and let me know your thoughts!!!
Hi Lore,
What I found useful was using the hangs on the big rungs and the 20 degree slopers as a warmup and then cycling through sets of the remaining hangs (I didn't do the B2 hangs on the small pockets) with 2 - 5 mins rest after every set.
Also, knowing that some of my grip positions are stronger than others, I would change around the order sometimes to prioritise the weaker positions.
All in all, it's a good, if long, workout.
Cipher,
you either were here when I was training, or, more probably, it's just that great minds think alike.
I do use the big rungs ans the 20° as warmups and then go through the other holds, addressing specific weaknesses, and thus changing the routine accordingly. for example, i did the monos early because last time my skin was poor when I wanted to train them.
I am sure it will pay off!!!
ps. I dream about rocklands!!!
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