Training is a funny thing. For the past few months my training schedule has lost structure and direction, and its starting to show in all aspects of my life. During this past semester, my training regimen is what kept me sane and strong while I spent my free time studying and sleeping. I became a gym rat. I spent three months doing nothing but ARC traverses, interval bouldering and antagonist work while contemplating cell biology. It wasn't bad; I was seeing gains in my strength, technique, and GPA.
These gains have slowed since school stopped and summer started. While the weakness spiral began as a semi-intentional rest period slash training-intensity-decrease its been ironically interrupted by my recent employment at a climbing gym known to the Orange County bro-brah locals as Sender One.
Since then, I've tried to steer my training mode into an endurance oriented one; swapping out 4x4s in the dingy bouldering cave for doubles on tall, clean and sporty 50ft routes. The idea stems from an amazing piece of literature titled The Self Coached Climber by Douglas Hunter and Dan Hague, as well as from a blog "Becoming a Rock Prodigy" - where the authors present several training periodization schedules. What's interesting is that, no matter what phase the schedule emphasizes, they all start with an endurance phase at the beginning. The schedule I intend to follow starts with the standard endurance phase followed by a power phase and ending with a power-endurance phase that grants you permission to sit on your ass for the next few months before you start the whole thing over.
The problem I seem to be encountering is one that I don't think I'm alone in having. I'm off track. My "training" is haphazard at best; I have no consistent partners, I don't organize my workouts like I used to, and I have no specific goals or trips to motivate me. All of this has caused me to say "fuck it" to recording my workouts in a notebook or giving a fuck in general to my training routine. It sucks.
Alright, enough with the whine tasting. *This is the part where I get off the couch and do, like, 50 pushups and then yell at the top of my lungs like a yeti*
This is how its going to go down: Summer will continue to be a loosely-organized surf/climb endurance boosting fiesta. Once August starts, the gym will be settling down and I'll have a partner (hopefully) who will be willing to start doing serious 3+ hour training days.
A Muerte.
