garage gym: Foundation Fitness

Friday, October 7, 2011

Foundation Fitness

“If a fitness program suggests that an athlete may achieve his/her highest level of performance by following a program to the letter then that program is bullshit. The key to improving fitness is not simply doing the training, it is understanding how one is responding and adapting to the training and modifying the program to meet individual requirement and reactions”. –Mark Twight.

Every athlete from elite to novice has to start somewhere. Building a strong foundation of fitness requires that each athlete make an unsentimental assessment of their current fitness and formulate a plan of measurable improvement. This assessment is usually conducted as a series of one repetition, or one set maximum test. This is where keeping a detailed training journal over several seasons really pays off. Foundation training usually lasts around 4-12 weeks and once the foundation level is achieved, more sports specific training can begin.

My foundation training used to involve doing the same tired routine during the winter months in anticipation of the spring climbing season. I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and basically, knowing what I know now, did very little to improve my sport specific (rock climbing) fitness. Every spring I would say that I felt fit, but not “climbing fit”. Whateverthefuckthatmeans!

The athletes who train at garage gym do a variety of mountain sports year round. But it’s mostly during the short stormy days of the Sierra winter that they are in my garage looking for something extra. It’s not uncommon to have people show up to workout before or after skiing.

The foundation phase I use now is modified from one I got from the Gym Jones Salvation Club. I attempted this three month plan (modified to my gear and goals) last year and got my ass kicked, BIG TIME! I also developed some elbow tendonitis. It made me realize that on a real fitness scale, not mine, that I was pretty weak. Around this time I was considering going to a Mountain Athlete Coaches Certification Course. For reasons based on nothing other than my own ego I assumed that the fitness test would be a joke, it’s not. Check this out!

Part (1) Be able to complete 4 Rounds of our Barbell Complex (DL, Row, Hang clean, FS, Push-press, BS, push-up x 6 ea) with this loading:

Men: 75, 85, 95, 105#

Women: 45, 55, 65, 75#

Part (2) Meet our strength standards in 2 of our 6 foundational lifts. You get to choose which 2. Here are the strength standards.

MOUNTAIN ATHLETE STRENGTH STANDARDS LIFTS

MEN, WOMEN

Front Squat 1.5x BW, 1.0x BW

Dead Lift 2.0x BW, 1.5x BW

Bench Press 1.5xBW, 1.0x BW

Push Press 1.15x BW, .75x BW

Squat Clean 1.25x BW, 1.0x BW

"BW" = body weight

Part (3) Finish this Work Capacity Event in a minimum time

Men - 12 minutes

Women - 13:30 minutes

3 Rounds

50x Step ups (25x each leg) M-40#, W-25#

3x Sandbag Getups each Shoulder (M-80#, W-60#)

5x Scotty Bobs (M-25#, W-15#)

Rope Climb (M-21ft, W-15ft)

These standards are similar to the prerequisites for the Gym Jones “High-Level” foundation plan. I feel that these are a good foundation of fitness, and that I have a lot work to do. I’ve scaled down the standard Gym Jones Foundation plan so that I can just get through the 3 month, 5 day a week program in one piece while still skiing, climbing and mountain bike riding. Then, I plan to try the plan again (Jan-March) staying as close to the stated weight, duration and intensity that my fitness allows while adding a little climbing specific training. I feel that following this kind of scheduled training plan, designed by those who have a long history of training athletes with good results, and modifying it to the individuals needs, is preferred over just “getting pumped” or training mostly by my own design. The reason for this is simple-we all tend to work our strengths towards the same old comfortable standard of fitness.

The number one question you should be asking yourself is “Am I making progress”? If so, how is it measured? If not, do something different.

Photo- The author on the 1997 first ascent of the North Ridge of Incredible Hulk by Hunter.

1 comment:

EMAFebruary 16, 2013 at 7:40 AM
Just looking through your blog for the first time. It sounds to me like you are "in-season" most of the year.Balancing training and sport is a tough one, no doubt. I live and train on The East Side. It would be cool to get together and geek out on training or climb some rock sometime!I think a lot of our training heritage is similar as I've trained at GJ and with Dan John (i'm from SLC) so it would be awesome to talk to a fellow training enthusiast!

regards, Ian
ReplyDelete

Add comment

Introduction

garage gym

I’ve always been a gym rat. I like to workout. In particular I’ve always been interested in strength and conditioning as a means to improve climbing performance. Bachar ladders, home made fingerboards, pull up bars, and crack machines have over the years littered my garages and lawns. In my thirty years of climbing I have almost always had access to a commercial gym. I have also accumulated a small library of books and articles on fitness and climbing performance. These include a dog-eared, twenty-year-old copy of Bill Pearl’s Strength Training, to my recently purchased copy of Eric Horst’s Maximum Climbing. After an extended lay off due to illness and pursuing other interests, in the fall of 2009 I began to train again.

After a few workouts at a local gym I began to question if it (a machine based circuit) was actually helping me. I was going through the motions. It was boring as hell. A few days later I stumbled upon an article in Outside magazine on GYM JONES the Salt Lake City based gym owned by famed alpinist Mark Twight. Since I’ve always admired Twight’s climbing, writing, and taste in music, I quickly drank the kool aid. The Gym Jones web site was a revelation. A short time later I discovered Mountain Athlete.com, Climbstrong.com and Cross fit. I soon realized that I had been wasting my time, and perhaps I had never really trained with any meaningful level of intensity. In Twight’s book Kiss or Kill Confessions of a Serial Climber he says, “…know the difference between working out and training”.

Since family, career, and other interests take up a lot of my time, I decided I needed the ability to train at home. Fortunately I have a large garage. I started with a pull up bar, fingerboard and a few dumbbells. Later I added kettlebells, a medicine ball, gymnast rings, a small climbing wall, and an Air dyne bike. The information age made it easy for me to find the books, websites, and videos by Paval Tsatouline, Dan John, Neil Gresham and others. Yet none of these training philosophies addressed the specific needs of my friends and myself, i.e. forty-something’s who climb Yosemite’s long hard free climbs and big walls in a day. High Sierra car-to-car, dawn-to-dark missions that combine ultra running/hiking with multi-pitch rock climbs and high ridge traverses (my personal favorite). We also skate ski, backcountry ski, as well as ride mountain and road bikes. Our training combines all these influences into a potent brew. The process is always evolving. We’ll try anything. Then we’ll evaluate it, modify it, keep it, or chuck it. Then try something else. The results speak for themselves.

Mike Davis RN

Truckee, California

Spring 2010