Tag: climbing

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If I’m serious about training to get better at everything—and I am—then I need to think seriously about how to fit in, and recover from, all that training. This post is my first cut at documenting some of my early thinking on how I might do that.

A plan to fit in everything needs to start with eliminating having whole days devoted to just one particular kind of exercise: strength days, running days, etc. Instead, most days will have to have at least two (hopefully complimentary) exercise activities.

I had already started work on thinking about the best ways to combine exercise activities in ways that would reinforce one another, based on the ideas of Adam Sinicki (aka The Bioneer). But more recently the work of Mark Wildman has provided what may be the solution: What he calls “the Tetris of training.” (That’s a link to the first of a series of videos where he talks about program design in those terms.)

The basic idea here is that you divide your workout into pieces: Maybe a kettlebell squat piece, or a single-arm club-swinging piece, maybe a running piece, etc. Then structure each piece as a specific block that can be done in a specific amount of time, and organize those those blocks into a sequence to make a workout that can be done in 30, 60, or 90 minutes (including a warmup at the beginning and a cooldown at the end), and lay those workouts out on a weekly timeline, with appropriate rest days.

Another key part of the idea is that each of those pieces should be its own progressive program, running on its own schedule, but arranged with the others so that they’re not all progressing upward at the same rate.

Me swinging an Adex adjustable club (adjusted to 10 lbs). Here I’ve just caught after an outside circle and have rotated back to center to prepare for the next swing.

This can (and probably should) get pretty fancy, because there are all kinds of considerations. You want to:

  • Cover all the basic movement patterns (walk, run, crawl, lift & carry, climb, throw & catch, etc.)
  • Hit all the large muscles in your body (glutes, quads, hamstrings, pecs, lats, traps, etc.)
  • Work all the basic directions of movement (Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Heave, Sway, Surge)
  • Avoid working the same muscle patterns two days in a row (to allow for recovery)
  • Make sure the important muscle patterns get hit at least twice a week

Besides all that stuff, I particularly want to include some “skills” training, where I’ll work on things like parkour, HEMA, rock climbing, fencing, etc.

I roughed out a plan along these lines, and gave it a try last week and this week. I have a couple of external constraints that I’m working around. One is that I want to be able to join my tai chi group in our Monday/Wednesday/Friday practice sessions. Another is that I want to include time each week for both a long run, and a long hike with Jackie—and both of those activities require flexibility related to the weather. Last week I ditched two of the tai chi sessions, but got in both a hike with Jackie and a long trail run. This week I couldn’t do one tai chi session because of rain, plus I had to take two unscheduled rest days because I tweaked something in my hip.

Today my hip seems to be recovered. I’ve done my heavy club swinging for the day, and I’ve gotten in a long run. Now I need to look at my draft schedule and see how to restart my workout plan, given all my many constraints.

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I’ve long struggled to program my training, a task that is difficult because I want to get better at everything. I want to be stronger and faster. I want to have more endurance for running and more endurance for walking (which turn out not to carry over perfectly from one to the other). I want to maintain and deepen my taiji practice and my parkour practice. I want to learn rock climbing and fencing.

This isn’t a new problem for me. As just one example, back in 2013 I was considering programming training not organized by the week but perhaps in 9-day training cycles.

There are at least two problems that I’m trying to address. One is just fitting in training for each capability I want to get better at. The other is how to not break down under that training load (which involves at least fitting in enough recovery time, but other stuff as well).

During the pandemic I’ve done okay, by focusing on exercise. Although I tweak things pretty often, very roughly I’ve organized each week to include:

  • 3 strength training workouts
  • 2 runs (a “long” run and a “fast” run)
  • 1 HIIT workout
  • 2 rest days

That looks pretty good until you do the math and see that it only works for 8-day weeks.

Besides that, note that this excludes my taiji practice (which amounted to more than 5 hours a week back in pre-pandemic days, because besides teaching I was engaging in my own practice). It also excludes my long, slow warmups (which I’ve started calling my “morning exercises,” since I do them pretty much every morning before proceeding with my “workout” for the day).

The way I’ve been making it sort-of work is by doubling up how I think about some of the workouts. A “fast” run with sprint intervals is a HIIT workout, and a HIIT workout with kettlebell swings is a strength-training session.

Still, there’s no hope to make something like this work if I want to add in parkour, rock climbing, and fencing. Likewise, I know from experience that I need a full day to recover from a very long (14-mile or longer) walk, so doing one of those requires devoting two days out of the week to just one training session.

So, I’m left in a quandary. How can I get better at all the things I already do and add in some additional activities as well? (Just before the pandemic I’d started taking an aikido class; I’m sure I’d enjoy finding a local group that plays Ultimate Frisbee….)

Happily for me, Adam Sinicki (aka The Bioneer) has written a book that addresses exactly this issue. The book is Functional Training and Beyond: Building the Ultimate Superfunctional Body and Mind. It starts out talking about “functional training,” and about the history of “getting in shape” i.e. “physical culture.” Then it runs though all the most common training modalities (bodybuilding, powerlifting, kettlebells, crossfit, etc.), before proceeding to talk specifically about how to take the best from each one, and then how to program it all into a workout plan.

His thinking on programming is pretty straightforward: You don’t just add everything together. Rather, you look through all the exercises you might do and pick the ones with the most cross-over benefit relevant to your goals, and then build an exercise program out of those (and you sequence them correctly to maximize your gains in terms of strength, mobility, flexibility, skills acquisition, speed, power, hypertrophy, etc.).

I’m going to spend some time (and some blog posts here) thinking over just how I want to do that.

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Thanks! Turns out Urbana Boulders has a “starter kit” with a 5 visit punch card, 5 shoe rentals, and 1 hour of instruction, all of which sounds like exactly what I need.

Happy New Year to you too!

You’ve had a terrific 2017, Philip! Happy new year! You should totally get that climbing pass at UB and give it a shot.

Source: You’ve had a terrific 2017, Philip! Happy new year! You should totally get that climbing pass at UB and give it a shot. My wife

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I ran 7.73 miles a few days ago. As best I can tell from my fragmented records, that’s my second-longest run ever, after an 8-mile run I did in 2004 while getting in shape to do the Lake Mingo Trail run that year.

In an email discussion, my friend Chuck lamented that he wasn’t currently in shape to match my feat, blaming part of his circumstance on trying to add mileage too quickly, leading to hurting himself. Looking at my running log, I was surprised to see how few runs I’ve taken this summer—I’m really just averaging about one run a week. I knew in theory that long walks would replace runs to a certain extent, in building and maintaining the fitness needed to go for long runs, but am surprised it replaces them to this extent.

One thing I don’t get enough of around here is hill climbing—it’s just too flat. However, there is one reasonably large hill close to me, in Colbert Park.

The hill at Colbert Park
The hill at Colbert Park

I’ve long wanted to do hill repeats here—run up the hill hard, recover while jogging back down, and repeat. But it’s just far enough from home that on my previous runs to the park, I didn’t manage to do repeats—just up the hill, back down, and then home again.

Today, though, I did five runs up the hill.

Both to and from, I pass Prairie Fields Park, which has a pretty good playground, including a climbing wall.

Playground climbing wall and Prairie Fields Park
Playground climbing wall and Prairie Fields Park

On the way to the park, I paused to do a short wall-traverse, just working my way around the corner there. After I did it, though, I realized that I’d cheated—I’d climbed up to where I could use the top of the wall as a handhold, which made it too easy. So, after my hill repeats, I returned here and did it again, this time avoiding using the top of the wall. I worked my way around the corner okay, but found myself stymied when I wanted to traverse the next segment, where there’s a gap in the bottom. I’ll have to try that again next time.

Back in Winfield Village, I visited one of our playgrounds, where there’s some bars set up for brachiating.

Bars for brachiating at Winfield Village playground
Bars for brachiating at Winfield Village playground

I’ve been working up to being able to swing from bar to bar, but had imagined that I’d need to be able to hang from one hand to be able to do it. Turns out, to swing from one hand to the next you only need to be able to hang from one hand for a moment, and I can already do that. I went from the ladder to the platform, turned around and went back about two bars, but didn’t make it all the way to the ladder. Next time, or maybe the time after.

From a different playground, the one right behind our townhouse, I practiced jumping down, first from a lowish level, about two steps up, and then from slightly higher, about three steps up.

All in all a very satisfactory morning of movement. Plus, in the afternoon, we got in a bit of a walk with Jackie’s mom in downtown Champaign.

Here’s the view from the top of the hill at Colbert Park. It looks like there’s yet another playground going in there as well!

Looking back down the hill
Looking back down the hill