Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 18, 2013 - 05:43pm PT
I know to climb a lot in order to prepare for climbing something like el cap, which i hope to do in my lifetime. However what kind of workouts etc did you all do to get your ass into shape for something like this. I've seen the workout from hell, and it looks like hell. Any other plans or things you have found to get yourself ready.
You should try to live a life where you never get out of shape in the first place. Many start climbing when they are young and continue with the pursuit throughout their lives . . . every day is a workout. Of course one needs to reside in proximity to some vertical topography, preferably thousands of feet of such. Living in Illinois, the best start would be to log some serious mileage on a road bike, 300-400 miles/month and balance this with extensive upper body training, 3 days/week, just to prepare for the physical demands of heavy load hauling and vertical struggle. This does not include the requisite time spent simply climbing, 1000-3000 feet/month. It is not an easy path.
You're undoubtably going to be doing it in conventional style. Being in good physical shape is important but not essential. Developing the appropriate skills is THE critical factor.
Chin-ups and pullups are a classic way to get in shape. Get to where you can do 15 to 20 in a row (per set - minimum of 10 per set) It's always good to have a base fittness level like being able to do at least 3 sets per day. When I soloed El Cap back in 1977 I made sure I could do 1,000 chin-ups in an 11 hour period. That's in sets of 10, about 9 sets per hour with 6 to 7 minuted rest between sets. That's really a mellow way to workout. I never really got tired or fatigued when I was up there on the wall. You need to think in terms of having reserve strength and endurance for when 'shit happens'. The accidents people have probably happen mostly after people get fatigued. For a base level of fitness, being able to do this for an hour is a good start. If you are young you can take it as far as you want, and like most sports you work out more as the event approachs. The most chin-up or parallel bar dips I ever did in a row was 37. If you can't climb to get in shape you should workout. Climbing big stuff can mess with you mind, so if your body is tough you have a good start.
If you live where you cannot climb, get into buildering, where you can do long traverses on brick or concrete holds for periods of time - on the sides of buildings or on road and freeway retaining walls. The challenge here is to find a wall where you can be descreet and the cops don't think you are breaking in. I have a secret wall that is 120' long that I traverse back and forth on. I can make it easy or I can make it kick my ass. Back when I was doing the pull-up program I described, I also buildered, ran, rode my bicycle, and climbed when I could. I lived in Boise Idaho at the time and there were lots of good buildings to climb on. El Cap is 3,000 feet high so I would make sure I could do 3,000 feet of traversing in a day! It goes pretty fast 100' at a time.
When you are young it is easy to build up if that is what you want to do. I went from not being able to do a single chin-up in the 7th grade to doing chin-ups with 100 lbs added to my bodyweight in high-school. Later I built up to 1 arm chin ups. Most top climbers can do these but it's certainly not needed to just climb El Cap in a standard fashion.
One fun or not so fun thing to do with a friend is to jumar up ropes hanging free. You just need something that is 20 feet high and your friend can lower the rope through a pulley as you go up. Be creative and there are endless ways to conquer the Captian, but like others have said, you have to find a way to learn to climb and learn the ropes too.
Maybe the most important thing in all of this is giving yourself plenty of recovery time after working out. Recovery is as important as the workout. Many training books do not emphasize this enough. It is very easy to pile workout onto workout until you do nothing but f*#k yourself up. You have to learn when you are recovered and stronger than you were before, before you hit it again. I have spent far more time recovering from workouts in my life than actually working out. Also, endurance low stress workouts are a very good base for building more pure strength later. People always want to go for the rad strength stuff first. Hard endurance workouts translate into strength just fine.
Last time I did that I lost - they call it road rage - separated shoulder! My alligator turned out to be a football player in disguise - outweighed me by 100 lbs.
If you're able to climb the equivalent of 10 full pitches of 5.9 or 5.10 in 6 or 7 hours and still feel pretty good afterwards, and you can repeat it the next day, I think you'll be fine physically. I'd also suggest getting hauling a bag wired, knowing how to jumar efficiently, and know how to pendulum without getting too excited.
I'd watch out with overdoing the pullups, shoulder tendonitis is a bitch!
Plenty of climbing in Illinois he's just in the wrong end. Lots of folks on the Taco have climbed in Illinois. Tell you what, come down to Jackson and run about 25 straight laps on "Group Therapy" you'll be ready.
I would guess most failures on El Cap are due to head games rather than fitness level. You have to prep the brain to be able to handle having 3000 feet of rock hanging over you. Don't discount this part of the "training", it is not insignificant.
(1) get a solid partner; (2) spend a month or more in the valley getting used to the rock and gear techniques; (3) start going up one of the routes. If you fail it won't be because you were out of shape.
I wouldn't be ragging on the Midwest, guys. Remember those guys who went to Yosemite from there and did a pretty decent job crushing the Nose in Day recently?
You're right Mark, but climbing the Nose isn't an adventure race or some event where working out.....getting awesomely fit is the key. I knew a guy in Lander who would do sets of pull ups shouting "Walker Spur" with each one. Yep, he was training for the Walker Spur....nope, he didn't climb it because he didn't have the proper skill set. But damn, he was honed and could do a ton of pull ups.
Successful climbing requires good physical conditioning but the emphasis should be on developing climbing skill, and, concerning the Nose, learning the techniques a climb like that requires.
Maybe I'm the only one here who actually subscribes to supertopovideo on youtube, but Chris MacNamara has been posting instructional videos every week for the last couple of months. There's no end to the number of tips and tricks in this game.
The thing about El Cap is that people always want to climb it before they are ready. When we were young, and when El Cap was less crowded (late 60s), we could partially get ready by just going part way up. I was 17 when I made my first trip up to the ceiling on the Dihedral 6 or 7 piches up. We used to go up to Sickle ledge pretty frequently it seemed - just for the view. I checked out the West Buttress once with Mike Dent. I even almost wrapped off the end of the rope once coming down from Sickle! I was in awe I suppose, no knots on the end of the rope, when I realized I was 10' past the next rappel bolts.
But damn, he was honed and could do a ton of pull ups.
I did not mean to emphasize the fitness training over the climbing. The pull-ups were alway just supple'mental' and I did not spend that much time with them. When I actually did my 1,000 I simply could not sleep that night so I went out and burned it off. We have all known people that were real pumped up but could not put it all together.
It must have been about the time I did those 1,000 chin-ups that I wrote one of the few poems that I have. It was 2 years earlier when I was 23 that I did my first serious solo atempt of the Dihedral when I was 23. That time I quickly built up to 800 chinups doing the sets of 10 thing. I got iced off that climb. I think I was on Spring Break at school. Anyway, here's the poem;
Pullups
Bleachers
Pullups
Bleachers
What is
This strange creature?
It was also at this 'bleacher' period that I showed up at an all-comers track meet and ran a 2:09 half mile. That was pretty exciting, and with just 3 guys in the race. Seems like I took second in that - I remember chasing. Jim Ryan was one of my heros at the time. Much of my training then was also for cross-country ski racing so I had reason to have some upper body strength other than for just climbing.
I hope I have this memory straight, but hanging out at Stoney Point I overheard Don Loria, or maybe it was Ken McNutt relaying it, that Don and Dennis, as part of their North America Wall training did all the 5.6 climbs at Taquitz, the all the 5.7 climbs and so on. I also remember that Don could run a 36 minute 6 mile run. It was exciting being at Stoney Point and hearing that they made it up the NA. I think the way this played out though, was that I learned the other stuff later. The excitement about the NA was palpable that day at Stoney. I don't think I even knew what the NA was at first - but it seemed as though it was a big deal! I remember too that I got into running to Stoney from my home in the Tarzana-Woodland Hills area and that Westridge Mountaineering would not hire me because my plan was to ride my bicycle to Santa Monica to work! Perhaps they were the realistic ones!
The first time I did El Cap I had just completed my second Workout From Hell tour. As a result the physical part of climbing The Nose was no issue. One other workout that proved successful for me was to put up a crack machine and do laps. With a crack machine it is easy to calculate footage.
Schaumburg, IL is in a good spot - less than 3 hours from Baraboo, WI (home of Devil's Lake).
Get out to Devil's Lake and climb dawn to dusk.
Devil's Tower, too.
Get together with the Chicago Mountaineers and find a psyched multipitch and big wall partner! http://www.cmcwebsite.org/
One of the things I really regret is spending a lot of time doing pullups, etc., rather than just climbing. Work at improving skills and gain strength through time and practice on the rock.
Well, they're probably only as dumb as the person doing them. I don't agree that they are a total waste of time but I gave them up after a serious shoulder separation 12 years ago and do just fine without them. I'll agree that the more specific the exercise is, the better. That's why I like to builder. When I cross-country ski raced, I built what amounted to todays Total Fitness machine to simulate double poling. All the dips in the world could not produce what it did, but doing various kinds of dips as second best was not 'dumb'. I have known a few people that wanted to climb El Cap, but just could not seem to get off their ass to do the work.
I attempted to do the Muir Wall in 1990. My friend and partner was going to just follow me and clean, and because he never really knew what it took endurance-wise, even after coaching him, we had to bail after the 7th pitch. It's easy to underestimate what the work really takes. I'm sure if he had done his 'homework' we would have been fine ( I was in Washington and he was in Califirnia while we 'trained' - he was even in Yosemite and got to look at El Cap every day!). It was just 'dumb' for me to go up there with somebody that didn't get it.
As a footnote, my friend had never done a wall but wanted to. It was dumb for me to do what I did, and it became apparent after just the first day. I'm glad I was able to give my friend his El Cap experience though - he died 5 years later, out of the blue, because of an aggressive brain Tumor at the age of 48.
I never could do more than 7 pullups-never. Going on 67, I've been training pretty hard all winter; since I've got the time and motivated, and can probably squeeze out ten now.
When I did the Nose, in 1971, I was a weak scrawny kid. I still feel the mental "challenge" is more than half the battle, in doing any big wall.
Focus on climbing/moving efficiently for 12 hours at a time on the rock.
Sleep not more than 2 nights on the route. More than that and it becomes crazy work (man do I know this!) 3+ nights and u'll b hauling a junk show like Hud does nowadays :-) PITA.
If you climb fast for many hours at a time, you will be covering so much stone u will be in shape and you will be a better climber.
"3+ nights and u'll b hauling a junk show like Hud does nowadays :-) PITA."
Even as impressive as Hud is, even he didn't take the junk show when he did his recent Nose in a Day. He had a photo of not nearly enough gear and I was thinking, crap, where's the rest of it! LOL! That's just badassed to do, not just at his age, any age. He trained his ass off starting in Feb. for an Sept or Oct ascent well in advance though. Do a search and find that thread, good stuff.
I've never done ten pullups in a row in my life. I hope I don't get in trouble for having climbed the Nose a couple of years ago.
Your biggest asset will be familiarity and confidence in the systems you choose to use, and a general level of good fitness. Ie. Just get outside, or to the gym and ride, run, row, climb, whatever. just get active, shed any pounds you know to be unnecessary, and eat well.
I've seen the workout from hell, and it looks like hell.
I went back to the OP and read it again. There's really no reason to make it like hell. The people that responded to this thread seem pretty mellow, and look, they climbed El Cap....even the scrawny weak guy. Even when I did pull-ups I was pretty mellow about it. You just do stuff untill you are too tired to do more stuff. You rest and let your muscles recover and get back to normal, and then you do more stuff until you are too tired to do more stuff. No matter what it might seem like hell. Most people that have done it for awhile, know how to make working out fun and know just how much they need. The main thing is just to do the workout and then the energy takes off. You have to think of the things that will make you strong - and then do them. If you don't get them out of your head, that's were El Cap will stay too! Even if you get all of it out, El Cap will probably still stay in your head. So, workout to your hearts content without fear that you will ever HAVE TO climb El Cap. The really nice thing about El Cap is that it makes everything else seem small ans doable.
I'd say it depends a lot on the style you want to climb it in. I didn't see much info on your fitness, experience and preferred style.
If you're doing it multi-day, aside from having basic fitness, the most important thing is to have the system down. Inefficiencies can be really exhausting: unnecessary wrestling with the pig, futzing in your aiders, carrying too much, over-gripping, thrashing your hands, wasted movements, poor jugging technique, poor rope/anchor management.... And the emotional stress of that much extended exposure can really add up. With the system down, an otherwise mediocre climber off the couch will be perfectly comfortable; otoh, it takes a lot of fitness to compensate for poor technique. If this is your first wall, and you have your doubts, I'd recommend some shorter walls first.
If you're doing it in a day:
1)Refine your system: block climbing with short fixing saves a ton of time, work out your transitions, study the route, know exactly what to bring, practice your french free technique on harder stuff (there's more to it than simply "pulling on gear"), know how to keep moving...
2)Lot of climbing. Extended gym sessions are good, with the goal of climbing every 5.11 (plus every 5.12- is better) route there.
FWIW, I probably have the speed record for the slowest Nose in a day, 23h45m.
Reminds me of the homeless people who have more than one shopping cart full of stuff. The weight is mostly water and the idea is to get to the top before it runs out.
Let us know!