Failure is a part of training. Not flailing attempts at mediocrity, but legitimate work that pushes a person to the limits of their ability. Every skill based activity is improved upon when we work at that cusp edge of failure. Honing our abilities by not doing things perfectly, but pushing for it.

Of course, that doesn’t always make for the best internet media.

We like blindingly stupid failures, we like great successes. If you are not in the latter, we group you with the former. So perhaps it is not a huge surprise that most of us aim to post videos and images when we succeed at some new PR or skill. We don’t offer up the work that came before that. The more I mull on it, the more that seems to lack authenticity. It never reveals the work that goes into skill improvement, and it glorifies success as opposed to the actual work that goes into creating that success.

So here, for your viewing pleasure is some footage of the carny failing. I have had a 56kg bell for a number of years, and I just haven’t had the confidence to even attempt snatching it. There is a lot that can go wrong with the lift, and it requires a lot of skill and strength. Two attempts this morning (this was years ago, I am old now.  I haven’t failed in years at this weight.  I have been too scared to try it *grin*) at that weight, and neither of them held. However, what surprised me was that the second failure was closer than it felt. Was it perfect, no. Will I get better at it by continually banging myself against that movement and failing, no. However, the goal is closer than I had thought. I have some skills to work on to pull off a long time goal, but I can feel the closeness. Rather than walking away and running from the failure, I am embracing it. At the end of the day, that is how we improve.

So I am back on a hunt for a triple body weight dead lift. At around 175lbs I need to pull 525lbs off the floor, which will not be an impossible feat but won’t be done in a day. So I am currently running myself through a deadlift rehab program. The four exercises I will be focusing on include the zercher deadlift, a box dead-lift, a rack pull, and the almighty classic dead with a straight hook grip.

Yesterday we did rack pulls from the center of the knee and I racked out our bar at 565lbs. Other than inspiring the purchase of more metal plates this proved to me that the finish was not the problem with my deadlift. It also ruled out my grip as being the weak link, as I was comfortable pulling and holding the weight at the lockout. This of course left the bottom end of the dead pull as my sticking point. My solution today was the zercher dead-lift. In other words I decided that I wanted to suffer.

The Zercher dead-lift takes a slightly wider than normal leg stance, and changes one other crucial factor: the grip. With the zercher dead you lift the weight from the crook of your elbow. For very obvious reasons this makes the lift far harder than the more traditional lift. I spent most of my day pulling triples in the range of 225-265lbs and at no point did these lifts feel easy. It may be that my CNS had not yet recovered from the heavy work the day before but with the low angle, open hips, rounded back, and longer pull this was a bundle of happiness.

For those trying out the zercher dead-lift I would recommend starting with a stupid light weight. If you happen to have access to bumper plates I would recommend starting as low as possible while still getting the bar set at the proper height. This lift will destroy your posterior chain in ways you can only begin to imagine. It is a good super set with one arm-pullups, one arm statics, or any of the whole wide array of pull-ups that I have mentioned in the past.

So I built a Bachar ladder this weekend. It is one of the old school training items, which much like campusing has often timed been left at the wayside as plastic bouldering gyms become more common and whiny complaints about tendonitis are more the norm. It was named for the soloist John Bachar and like the campus board is a phenomenal training tool. They stand in many ways as the unholy union of brutal training tools for all those people who wish to become exceptionally strong. Where the campus board is great for developing dead pointing ability, explosive pulling strength off of tiny holds, and due to ballistic loading, some exceptional gains in tendon strength the ladder is targeted towards the world of power endurance.

My first bachar ladder was about 18ft long, had a rung about 16 inches, and was made from $30 of 1.5inch dowel and 12m of retired climbing rope.  It took about two hours to make.  However, within a week of it being built, a 260lb male proved the point that the soft dowels can’t actually sustain too much dynamic load.  Some repairs to that kept that ladder functioning for another couple years, but eventually we proved the point that dropping onto rungs, or swinging on them too much could snap them.

My newest ladder was made with roughly the same specs, and also from retired climbing rope.  The difference this time round was that I went and bought oak 1.5″ dowel.  This cost me a couple hundred dollars, but the advantage is that they seem to be pretty bomb proof.  For a home ladder, it likely doesn’t matter what type of dowel you use.  However, if you have heavy friends, or larger neighbours, I would recommend spending the money on hardwood doweling to build your rungs out of.  If you don’t have nice high ceilings, you could easily hang it from a tree and anchor it to the ground (or a household pet).

Construction aside. Build one. Then get on it. The aim is to pull hand over hand with no feet from bottom to top in as smooth a manner as one can make possible. I aim for either working on pure one arm pulling power, or use this as a tool to build that elusive push/pull combination that is so crucial to being an effective and powerful climber.  Once you hit the top lower down through lock offs. Here again is a chance to work on a number of different angles of loading for your lock-offs.  Once you are at the bottom, hover above the ground and then head up for another lap. If you can make a couple laps you get to watch your pulling power vanish in a rather amusing way. Plus, here finally is a great way to start developing that explosive power endurance that is so hard to get without just climbing lots.

Workouts to try:

1: Power Endurance Training
A tabata protocol modified slightly.
Do 20s of climbing then rest for 10s with both hands on a rung and a foot on the ladder.
Try to get through the full 4min (8 sets).

2: Training for explosive pulling: Speed Climbing
As aforementioned, speed climb up… however rather than lowering slow, speed climb down. Then repeat for as many rounds as possible. When your speed dies hop off, take a rest and do it again.

3: Lock off strength
Get to the top in whatever manner you can. However on the way down skip rungs and hold your lock offs as tight and long as possible. If your rungs are as far apart as mine this is going to force you to train a far higher one arm lock-off than you would otherwise train.

Ah well. I am off to campus… and maybe attempt a few more climbs with the broken rung.

This post came out of the Irrational Fitness archives, having first been published on April 28th, 2012.  I updated it and modified it a little, but on the whole I believe the statements still hold true.

SHOULD WE JUST BE CLIMBING MORE?

Traditionally, the long standing rule for climbers was that the best way to improve at climbing, was simply to climb a lot. That was the solution: climb hard, and frequently.  Sadly, for many of us in countries that experience winter, getting on rock all the time isn’t an option.  As such, the gym climber was born, with its own host of limitations and issues.  Is all we need to be doing more climbing to really push farther forward as climbers?

In the days prior to gym climbing, a 5.12 was hard. In the past decade, an entire new generation of climbers have been able to put in a huge amount of time honing their skills, and as a result have pushed the sport forward. The 5.12 grade range is no longer something reserved only for the worlds most elite climbers, but rather is something that is accessible to more and more people.  Arguably, a focused individual who trains appropriately, should have no issue reaching well into the 13s.

The question that I have struggled with is whether simply more climbing is the best way to move the majority of people further forward in their climbing journey.  I suspect that for many people, it is not the best solution.  Easy access to a space with limited guidance seems to be a breeding ground for inefficient movements, and with an increase in mileage without any kind of focus or planning, a host of injuries have developed that might have been avoidable.  It would seem, that while climbing gyms do allow people to improve their climbing, that the lack of focus or intention to how people use that space largely sets people up more for injury than actual improvement.

The boys have joked that I perhaps have swung too far to the other side, with far less actual climbing in my training for climbing than is at all reasonable.  My only counter to that which I am left with is that I am retired, and now just approach climbing as a great space to harass my friends and eat pie.  However, as a coach, my aim is to give people the gains in strength, flexibility, gripping power, and overall muscular endurance that they need to break into these harder, and far more rewarding climbing grades. However, beyond that, the real goal is to minimize the likelihood of getting injured in training for climbing.  The huge amount of volume that people can now put on their bodies in a climbing gym leaves climbers horribly imbalanced and prone to a host of injuries.  A big part of training for climbing needs to be focused on ensuring balance throughout the body so people are not side lined for entire seasons with nagging injuries.

We have to minimize the likelihood of getting injured in training for climbing.

Intention is everything

I am going to be the first one to say that training should be fun, that we should look forward to it.  However, quite often it is easy to get stuck in the attitude of needing to succeed at climbing a problem in the gym (or for that matter outdoors), regardless of how well we do it.  I think this is one of the great lost opportunities in climbing of all kinds.  I would say a desperate finish of a climb doesn’t teach us anything.  The goal should be to find how to unlock the movement puzzle that a climb offers, and determine how to do it the most efficiently, using the minimal amount of effort required to complete a problem.  Every nuance of footwork and body positioning is a chance to hone our climbing skills.  I think that we would all benefit from a greater degree of intention in our climbing.  If the betterment of a skill, or an improvement in movement quality becomes the goal, our entire approach to how we climb can shift towards one that will let us move far further in the long run.

I certainly don’t have all the answers when it comes to the best methods of training climbers.  I do however think that understanding how effective movement patterns can reduce injury risk, and improve our climbing, can go a long way to lengthening our climbing careers.  If you are interested in what might be limiting your climbing, or what might be keeping you from moving forward, drop me a note or come visit the facility.