General Endurance Training Plan 3: My Account (/My-Account/)

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General Endurance Training Plan 3

Route Climbing (/training-plans/?
 fwp_training_plan_subcategory=route-climbing)
aerobic power
(https://www.climbstrong.com/education-
center/tag/aerobic-power/), capacity
center/tag/capacity/), cardiac output
center/tag/cardiac-output/), Endurance
center/tag/endurance/), energy systems
 (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-
center/tag/energy-systems/), general
endurance
center/tag/general-endurance/), High Low
center/tag/high-low/), Power Endurance
center/tag/power-endurance/)
This is the third General Endurance Plan in the CS series, but isn’t necessarily a progression from GE 1 and 2…
This plan is simply one that utilizes some different sessions than we saw in 1 and 2. I’ll remind you that GE2 was a no-climbing-available plan.
This plan, although do-able in a gym, requires no gym, and can be done by a van-living dirtbag, assuming that dirtbag is motivated enough to
do an organized plan.
To review: There is a bit of a yin/yang relationship when it comes to energy in sports. You have to both have the capability of producing energy and the capability of utilizing
energy. Energy production is dependent on muscle fiber types and their size, nutrition (fueling), and energy system development. On the flip side, utilization is dependent on your
movement capacity, your mental performance, and your skills and techniques in the sport.

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The error we make as climbers is doing too much specific training, such as burnout laps or 4x4s, and try to weight all of our training to increasing energy utilization – getting
better at handling being fatigued. Where we should spend a large part of our time is creating a higher level of energy production. The bad news is that tapping out your pump
ability isn’t the way to do this. You do this by increasing your heart’s ability to supply blood to the tissues, but improving the delivery and use of nutrients, and by improving the
muscles’ ability to produce and use oxygen for fuel. In short, you train your body not to handle fatigue, but to avoid it.
In this training plan, we’ll be increasing your total work over the course of 4 weeks, maintaining a working level of strength and power, and
attempting to increase your alactic (short term) capacity.
This plan produces a lot of response in the cardiac output of the athlete (energy systems), and should enhance the muscles’ ability to take on
fuel and produce energy aerobically (muscle type/size), so we’re working pretty heavily on the left side of the graph above.
MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN
Second Tier
Week Tempo Intervals + Cardiac Output + Cardiac Output + Volume Redpoint
Rest Rest
1 Alactic Cap. Route 4×4 Alactic Cap. Climbing

Second Tier
Rest Rest

Second Tier
Rest Rest

Second Tier
Rest Rest

The Sessions:
Cardiac Output
We all know about “cardio” and its overall benefits to health. We also know that our bodies show some of the same responses to hard climbing
as they show to difficult cardiovascular training, such as sweating, fatigue, increased heart rate, and labored breathing. The idea of doing more
of this to get better at that is not a tough connection for most of us to consider, yet we have to be cautious. Simply adding in several hours of
running or cycling per week will not magically increase your ability to avoid getting pumped.
Although I argue against specifically using cyclic endurance exercises (running, cycling) to build climbing endurance, Cardiac Output training
has its place in your conditioning program. The cardiac output modes can be just about anything that increases the heart rate and is

sustainable for 30-90 minutes, but a few guidelines should be followed. By holding the intensity fairly low, your adaptations differ from harder
efforts. Long, slow training increases the stroke volume of the heart, which results in eccentric cardiac hypertrophy. This, in turn, improves
cardiac efficiency, decreases resting heart rate, and decreases working heart rates at any given level of work. Higher intensity exercise (tempo-
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in concentric hypertrophy – and instead of increasing stroke volume will
increase the heart’s ability to exert more pressure…essentially by increasing heart wall thickness and size. We don’t need this high-level of
cardiac development for climbing.
If we do interval-style efforts, we train the heart to contract quickly, often before the chambers fill completely with blood. This doesn’t allow for
the eccentric overload we are looking for. What we need is lots of slow, steady activity, preferably using the whole body. Don’t address this as
training for _______ endurance activity. You are only using this activity to build base conditioning for climbing.
For Cardiac Output sessions, follow these guidelines:
Do them 1-3x per week. If you are challenged by these efforts, more frequent and shorter sessions are the key. These can be done on the
same day as other training if desired.
Exercise for 30-90 minutes in as close to a non-stop mode as possible.
Cross-country skiing, swimming, rowing, or machine training that requires both upper and lower body involvement are the best. Hiking or
easy jogging are OK.
Maintain conversational intensity (being able to speak in full sentences), or a heart rate of 120-150 beats per minute.
Increase the training effect by adding more sessions or longer durations – not by increasing speed.
A final note: don’t try to add more of this kind of training in order to lose weight or to give yourself more leeway on your diet. If you need to lose
fat, do so through diet interventions and habit changes.
Alactic Capacity Circuits

We all understand that 4×4 intervals wreck us and we get super sweaty and pumped doing them. My question is this: did my endurance
improve? The answer is a “probably yes,” but 4x4s only attack one half of the endurance equation. Instead of getting better at tolerating pain,
at climbing while wickedly pumped, we should focus the majority of our training on teaching our bodies not to get pumped in the first place. By
focusing our efforts on improving the capacity of our alactic energy system (the one responsible for strength and power efforts), we can
effectively set a great base level upon which to train power endurance sessions later in the season.
Alactic Capacity circuits feature high-intensity efforts performed for 5-10 seconds, and followed by passive rest. Sport science taught us that
these efforts done on a 1:5 or longer work:rest ratio were best, so for many cycles we trained by doing a 5-10 second effort each minute. What
we slowly realized was that alternating the focus of the efforts from finger-specific to total-body movements allowed us to cheat the work:rest
ratio a bit, and thus the intervals on a 30 second clock were born.
Each set of intervals features 5 exercises done in sequence. You start each exercise at the beginning of a :30 repeating clock, then rest the
remainder of the time. In general this gives you about 20 seconds to move to the next exercise. After the 5th exercise, you’ll rest an additional
30 seconds, thus making each round 3 minutes in length. The general template is as follows:
0:00 >10 seconds Upper Body Explosive
0:30 >10 seconds Lower Body / Total Body Explosive
1:00 10 second Edge Hang
1:30 >10 seconds Upper Body / Total Body Explosive
2:00 >10 seconds Upper Body Strength
2:30 rest full 30 seconds
In the other GE sessions, we use a Campus Board or short boulders to train the fingers. In this plan, I am assuming you have only a hangboard
or a doorjamb edge.
0:00 4x Power Push-Up
0:30 6x Kettlebell Swings (~½ bodyweight bell)
1:00 10 second Edge Hang (bodyweight, 12mm)
1:30 5x Ball Slam (light ball, go for speed)

2:00 2x Power Pull-Up
2:30 rest full 30 seconds


After one round you should feel pretty good. Used some power, not sucking wind. The progression of loading in a General Endurance plan is to
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add more total work in the form of more rounds. Increasing intensity, decreasing rest, or adding duration to the sets will start to force you into
the gylcolytic zone and cause a power-endurance peak, which will not serve you at this point in the year.
The sessions are built on doing several rounds of 3 minutes, as described above. A series of rounds will be done back-to-back (usually 3-6
rounds per series), with a long rest between series. It is possible to change a few of the exercises between series, but don’t get carried away
with variety.
You must continually assess whether your strength and power are staying up. If you start to see a notable decline in output or in exercise form,
it’s indicative you’ve reached the end of the effective session length. Going deeper into the training will be counter-productive. In the
progressions below, understand that almost all of us will hit a level where we should not add more work, and should stick with the same
session for a week or two. This session is appropriate once per week. If you do decide to do this style of session more frequently, only
advance the session weekly, not each session.
Being a grown-up about it rather than charging forward into tiredness will produce better long-term results.
Progression is as follows:
Session 1: 2 series of 4 rounds with 5 minutes between. (29 minutes total)
After session 4, increase loads and follow the progression over again from the beginning.
If your form breaks down or you are unable to complete an exercise, don’t follow the progression. Back off on the exercise, reduce the number
of reps per set, or reduce the load. Your feeling at the end of any of these sessions should be tired and powered down, not nauseous and
pumped.
The whole idea here is not to increase your ability to handle highly glycolytic (pumpy) sessions, but rather to complete a lot of hard and
powerful work without going into that zone.
Route 4×4
Pick a route about 4 letter grades below your onsight grade, lead it, then toprope it 3 more times with no rest. After these 4 laps, rest and belay
your partner for roughly the same amount of time. If you are on the autobelay, simply rest for as much time as it took you to do the first 4 laps.
Most people will get this done in a gym in roughly 10 minute on, 10 off intervals. Outside it will take a bit longer. Repeat this for 3 more times
on routes of similar difficulty, getting a total of 16 climbs in. You should not get super pumped, but just warm. If you go through the whole thing
easily, up the grades slightly, but don’t reduce rest or add sets.
Tempo Intervals
This is nonspecific cardiac work. This is essentially a small progression up from Cardiac Output sessions. In this session, you should find a
steady, easy pace of activity (cycling, hiking, rowing, aribike, etc.) that you can sustain at a heartrate of 120-140 beats per minute. Once you are
warmed up, do a slight acceleration for 10 seconds, taking the HR up by 10-15 beats, then slow for 60 seconds. Repeat this 10 second interval
with 60 seconds between for 10-20 intervals, as prescribed in the plan.
Training Detail:
Week 1, Monday: Tempo Intervals, 10x :10/:60. Alactic Capacity, Session 1: 2 series of 4 rounds with 5 minutes between. (29 minutes total)
Week 1, Tuesday: Rest.
Week 1, Wednesday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Route 4×4.

Week 1, Thursday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Alactic Capacity, Session 2: 2 series of 5 rounds with 5 minutes between. (35 minutes total)


Week 1, Friday: Rest.

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Week 1, Saturday: Volume Climbing ~800 feet at easy level
Week 1, Sunday: Second Tier Redpointing. Work on RP routes that are 2-3 grades below max.



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Posted in:
Tags: aerobic power (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/aerobic-power/), capacity

(https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/capacity/), cardiac output (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/cardiac-
output/), Endurance (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/endurance/), energy systems
(https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/energy-systems/), general endurance (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-
center/tag/general-endurance/), High Low (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/high-low/), Power Endurance
(https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/power-endurance/)

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General Endurance Training Plan 3: My Account (/My-Account/)

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General Endurance Training Plan 3: My Account (/My-Account/)

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General Endurance Training Plan 3

MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN

For Cardiac Output sessions, follow these guidelines:

Alactic Capacity Circuits

0:00 >10 seconds Upper Body Explosive

0:30 >10 seconds Lower Body / Total Body Explosive

1:00 10 second Edge Hang

1:30 >10 seconds Upper Body / Total Body Explosive

2:00 >10 seconds Upper Body Strength

2:30 rest full 30 seconds

0:00 4x Power Push-Up

0:30 6x Kettlebell Swings (~½ bodyweight bell)

1:00 10 second Edge Hang (bodyweight, 12mm)

1:30 5x Ball Slam (light ball, go for speed)

2:30 rest full 30 seconds

Session 1: 2 series of 4 rounds with 5 minutes between. (29 minutes total)

Session 2: 2 series of 5 rounds with 5 minutes between. (35 minutes total)

Session 3: 2 series of 6 rounds with 5 minutes between. (41 minutes total)

Session 4: 3 series of 5 rounds with 5 minutes between. (55 minutes total)

Week 1, Tuesday: Rest.

Week 1, Wednesday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Route 4×4.

Week 1, Friday: Rest.

Week 1, Saturday: Volume Climbing ~800 feet at easy level

Week 2, Tuesday: Rest.

Week 2, Wednesday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Route 4×4.

Week 2, Friday: Rest.

Week 2, Saturday: Volume Climbing ~1000 feet at easy level

Week 3, Tuesday: Rest.

Week 3, Wednesday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Route 4×4.

Week 3, Friday: Rest.

Week 3, Saturday: Volume Climbing ~1100 feet at easy level

Week 4, Tuesday: Rest.

Week 4, Wednesday: Cardiac Output, 30-60 minutes. Route 4×4.

Tags: aerobic power (https://www.climbstrong.com/education-center/tag/aerobic-power/), capacity

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