Endurance through Bouldering

In December 2008, Adam Watson won the British Team Trials for lead climbing at the EICA, Ratho, after almost exclusively training at Climb Newcastle. Adam tells us how he built endurance through bouldering...

The most important thing to remember with routes is that you have to be strong enough to do the moves, no matter how fit you are, if you can't do the moves you won't do the route.

So building strength for hard routes is very important. Then you need endurance. Here are some exercises I did at Climb Newcastle in the run up to the British Team trials:

Traversing: I would traverse around the pool area of Climb Newcastle until I fell off. If it was to easy I wouldn't use any of the holds from the easiest set. This is good because there is no specific sequence, so it is not as boring as going up and down a route. It also makes you hang on the holds longer because you have to figure out the sequence as you go. I would traverse low and high so that I climbed on all the different angles.

Image left: Adam on his way to winning the British Team trials at the EICA, Ratho.

Speed: I would do the pink circuit (fb 6a-7a) as fast as I could. If my foot or hand slipped I would try again but if I fell off because I was too tired I would move straight on to the next problem. It is good to have little rules and plans like this as it makes you more focussed.

On the minute: I would up the difficultly of the circuit to the orange/red (fb 6b-7b) and do each problem on the minute (ie you get a minute to climb and rest for each problem). I then had a specific rest time when I had done all the problems, and then I would do an easier circuit in the same style, and then back to the hard one after another rest.

Hard circuits: I set hard 20-40 move circuits at a level at which I probable would not finish. I would have 4 to 5 goes at it with a specific rest time in between, I would also get my dad and mates to set circuits to practice route reading - if you always set your own problems you tend to set them in your own style - having other people set them mixes it up a bit.

Volume: Comps are very long and stressful, even though you are only climbing 3 routes you often feel very tired. To prepare I had long sessions at the wall to build up fitness and a genral resiliance to climbing. I also did session where I had 20 mins on the wall then had 20 mins rest, repeating this 3 to 4 times. This increases the capillary network which improves recovery time.

Adam Watson is a coach at Climb Newcastle and one of Britain's most talented young climbers in both bouldering and lead climbing, in 2009 reaching the Fb 8b bouldering and E8 trad grades. Adam doesn't save his good moves all for climbing though, and is well known to be the party animal of the Climb Newcastle team!