In this post, I'll briefly go over what I'm imagining for this endurance block that, checks watch, starts today.

When I worked with Patxi Usobiaga, ARCing and high volume incredibly low intensity hangboarding on small edges was the cornerstone of my training program. Back in 2023, I spent a week in Spain at Patxi's house, training and climbing. Our big takeaways from that week was that a) I have awful footwork and b) on a scale of 1-10, my endurance is at a 0. Believe it or not, Patxi and I had similar finger metrics from what I remember. He weighed 10kg less than me at the time (I think I was pushing around 78kg, whereas my "performance" weight is around 72kg), but nonetheless, it wasn't necessarily a finger strength issue. When we did something akin to a critical force test where we did as many repeaters as we could until dropping below a threshold, he blew me out of the water. After all, he has 5.15 endurance. He programmed an insane amount of endurance work for me, something along the lines of 4 training days a week with the expectation to climb or kilter on the weekends. It was grueling and wickedly boring. However, it worked. It worked insanely well. I finished my block, went to Rifle, and was astonished at the fact I could attempt 12d without getting pumped. It also improved my bouldering too. Anyway, this is all a long way to say I need endurance and I know it. "Building endurance is boring, having it isn't" - Steve Bechtel.

Unfortunately, the volume was frankly too much and I left the two blocks with pulley sprains. I feel guilty because this wasn't Patxi's fault, but rather my own due to inability to speak Spanish well enough to describe what was going on, and the life events at the time. I learned a lot though, and would like to try out something similar with modified volume and intensity.

The Plan

Here's the Google doc with volume planned out. It will be pretty straight forward. I'm essentially following Bechtel's Full Tilt Redpoint plan, mixing in some extra arcing for aerobic endurance. Weekends I get in fall practice.