[OliverL]

After starting to read the new alpinism and browsing their forums and these forums, I’ve come to realize that my aerobic endurance is highly deficient, made obvious by only having a handful of good attempts on whatever the current climbing project is before I have to call it a day, feeling wiped the day after any high exertion, and a winter ascent of trap dike with 3 others who all run marathons.  Despite mostly being a boulderer and sport/ice climber starting to dabble in more alpine style climbing I have realized I need to make some serious steps towards base aerobic fitness. However, there is a lot of conflicting opinions online about how best to do so, and was hoping for some guidance from anyone who has struggled with the same.

Before reading the new alpinism, I would typically run 5k once a week for “cardio”, which is apparent now not what I need. I enjoy running and hiking but I am definitely not training to ascend 4000m (yet). From reading forums I’ve seen whole body aerobic work like swimming or rowing recommended for climbing, and ARC training specifically for forearm endurance. I am wondering if there is any validity to this, or if at early stages of aerobic base training specificity doesn’t matter. I am also just wondering about ARC training in general, and how useful it is.

Thanks!

[Dave Thompson]

Hi OliverL,

Performance for each of the three: climbing projects; supporting high exertion recovery; long outings in the mountains, all are supported by your baseline steady state.  That steady state is specific to each activity. So training to support your climbing projects will likely not help you for long outings in the mountains such as you’ve described, and vise-versa. Accumulating volume below your limit level — for whatever your goal is — gives you capacity to try hard more often.  It is normal to only have a handful of good attempts on a climbing project that is at your limit. This will not likely change. What does change is your capacity, strength, and efficiency… and also the grade at which you consider a ‘project’.

Steady-state foot-based aerobic work of an intensity that you could do day-in and day-out can aid in all of the other more specific training that you do. Long second and third-class scrambles in the mountains will not make you better at fifth-class climbing (your limit climbing projects), but it will make you more efficient at moving in mountain terrain, and is good general aerobic training for the mountains. The tricky thing is to modulate your intensity from day-to-day, and week-to-week. A goal of 3-8 hrs of aerobic base work would be a good range to try to hit.

Climbing base work: focusing on 3rd and 4th tier and below terrain is a great way to train climbing endurance. There are a lot of ways to do this, and your projects can be interspersed with this volume. ‘Tiers’ here meaning a 1st tier route being something at your limit, on down to as many tiers you’d want to define. The ARCing that you are referring to can be a waste of time if it doesn’t include skill building, that is why I often recommend building lower tier volume where the climber can incorporate skill building and efficiency. This is all to say that building volume in an as specific way possible to your goals will take you farther faster than abstracting your activities away from those goals. So swimming can be a nice recovery activity, or perhaps can help general whole-body endurance capacity, but it will not make you better at climbing.

Hope this helps.

[OliverL]

Thanks Dave,

After reading more of the New Alpinism, and reading your response I am confident that foot-based aerobic exercise like trail running would be a really valuable cross-training method, especially for someone like me with terrible areobic efficiency.

Although it may sound immodest I believe my rock climbing skills are adequate, bouldering around v10 and sport climbing around 5.12. ARC training would be to help manage pump and fatigue, because like many boulderers my “endurance” limits me on routes, and after watching Dave MacLeod’s and others’ videos on circuit training (essentially ARC training) to manage pump I believe it would be useful.

[Author]

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