New Season

Fired up a new season of climbing yesterday. It was a start. It was not a good session.

S'posed to be "Outdoor Mileage", which should mock up the intensity and continuity of ARCing--except out of doors. But i couldn't get outside for the precip, so i did my 8 moderates in the gym. And i got my butt kicked. Everything in me felt tired, and i fell off of 5.9s and .10s.

For one, i didn't do a proper warmup, and just jumped on a route, and i got a mega-crazy flash pump that i couldn't seem to shake. But i also just felt .... i dunno .... stale. Arms felt dead, and i'm definitely not back to healed from the earlier workouts in the week. This has been the problem i've had in the past with trying to keep up the lifting whilst training to climb. They're both quite demanding on the muscle fiber front, and i find it demotivating to hit the iron for an intentionally sub-par workout. So i either go in and tear it down, and my climbing suffers, or i get tired of sucking and just stop lifting.

That's silly of course. There must be a happy medium. There must be because my climbing continues to suffer from my lack of discipline. So here's the plan: i'm gunna try to keep the heavy, gains-producing lifting up through the relatively shortened endurance period, and then through the strength phase this time 'round. The idea is that if i can coordinate 'em reasonably, my endurance form can suffer a li'l without seriously failing the goal (i.e. to build endurance), and the heavy lifting shouldn't affect the hangboarding at all. Then i can taper the lifting to a minimum during the power phase (when, hopefully, it'll have done me some good) and i won't have had a months-long lapse in lifting between ending and beginning. The trick here is to get set to kinda suck wind and feel a bit stale during my endurance workouts.

Really shouldn't be too hard, 'cuz i'm switching to the "intermediate" training plan for this season. That amounts to a shortened enduro phase and a lengthened strength and power phase. I'm super amped about experimenting with that, but it also (i'm hoping) suits my goal route for the coming season. Gunna get Three Roofs at Golf. Solid .12a. Yessiree Bob.