Marvin Climbing - Climbing and Training

Some years ago they were given to know the effects of the intermittent training in the sport practice. I start Immediately applying the knowledge of the physiology from this type of training to climbing, obviously adapting them to climbing. What I denominate INTERBLOQUE (in Spanish) is the application of the intermittent training to climbing, specially training for boulder climbing.

The intermittent training implies short moments of effort (10 to 30 seconds) of very high intensity, with rests that take the relationship 1:1, 1:2 (for example: 10" x 10" or 10" x 20"). The intermittent exercise escapes to the classic explanations of the physiology of the effort that divide the energy production in three systems (alactic, lactic and aerobic) that come from cyclic sports.

What we get from this? The idea is stress to the maximum the fast energy production, starting from the rupture of ATP and its later resynthesis from phosphocreatine, and here is where the importance of this type of training resides.

Lets analyze some physiologic questions.

The muscle uses energy from rupture of ATP molecules (adenosine + 3 phosphates), when it breaks this molecule, the energy that maintained united one of the phosphates is liberated., leaving ADP (adenosine + 2 phosphates) and free phosphate(Pi).

The ATP availability is limited, and total content of it would allow 2-3 seconds of effort. So it is necessary to regenerate ATP quickly, using only phosphocreatine (CPr) that uses the energy of their link to recharge ADP (adenosine + 2 phosphates) again in ATP. But CPr is also limited, and alone it allows 6 to 10 seconds of effort. Later to it, the recharge of ATP should be made byof other processes like the glycolysis, but with lower effort intensity.

The duration of a boulder from 4 to 8 movements doesn't generally exceed the 10 seconds, unless the boulder is mainly technical and take too much time to send it. We would be using energy from the denominated ATP-CPr system. But what would happen if we increase the content of CPr in the muscle?, and if we accelerated the resynthesis processes from CPr?

This definitively would allow us to send maximum intensity boulders for more than 10 seconds (what is equal to 1 or 2 more movements), and in turn will allow us to recover faster between attempts. So we could send longer boulders with more intensity without generating excessive lactic acid, and in the case of a boulder comp to be able to recover between attempts and between boulders with more efficiency and this way perform until the end of the comp..

    Here comes intermittent training.

CPr content can be increased by creatine ingestion, or through the optimization of the creatine resynthesis using intermittent training.

    But not everything finishes there, the resynthesis of CPr is carried out from aerobic processes inside the mitochondrion (aerobic energy factories); this is denominated "phosphocreatine paradox." Paradoxically CPr works basically as a carrier of aerobic energy stimulating to the maximum the aerobic system and giving energy for anaerobic processes. All this takes place throughout the whole intermittent exercise.

The idea is to make 4 to 8 series from 6 to 12 boulders with 10 to 20 seconds rests between boulders and 4 to 6 minutes rest between series.

We can vary the rests periods and boulder intensities to ensure stay away from lactic acid, because when we begins to have muscular stiffening we have crossed the limit and we will be producing lactic acid.

As we n progress, we can increase boulders quantity per serie, the series quantity and diminishing the rests intervals.