This article is not so much an introduction to short interval training, but a “what to do next” article when you’re already implementing alactic intervals. Alactic intervals are designed to train your highest power system and teach your body to recover quickly from maximal efforts. These sessions also seek to increase the number of hard tries you might have in a session or day of climbing repeated hard efforts such as trying the crux of a project or competing in bouldering. A quick review of the concept: Improvements in alactic function are critical to sport performance, but you need to have a fair amount of discipline when it comes time to train, lest you end up seeking fatigue in the lactic “second gear.” Good programming will not only seek to improve your alactic function, but also try to improve the relationship between alactic and aerobic training. This is your “power at the crux” system: you know what trying hard feels like...so train that way.To increase the power output of this system (go harder), you want to keep the exercise set length short (3-8 seconds) and the effort very high (close to 90%), with long rests. To increase your capacity (ability to do many tries over a day), progress toward longer sessions at the high loads above, with efforts at 75% or harder. Longer total work time over a training cycle is key...so don’t shortcut this in favor of easier movement.Before you jump into some kind of alactic-only training phase, remember that the interplay of training for pure strength and power as well as development of the aerobic capabilities of your muscles is critical. When exploring the ideas that follow on training this system, keep in mind that this will only represent a portion of your training during specific parts of the training year. In general, an athlete should do at least one session of alactic work per week to maintain her ability, and 3 or 4 per week to develop either more power or more capacity.
The Starting Point
Typically, we’ve had the most success with doing intervals that are 5-10 seconds of effort, with longer rests of up to 4 minutes. This makes for a long session and it doesn’t feel like hard work. To address this, we started pushing different exercises into the sequence and then trying to overload the system by changing the work the body was doing during a shorter cycle. This led to doing work on a rolling 30 to 40 second clock. The specific template is as follows:0:00 <10 seconds Upper Body Explosive or Edge Hang0:30 <10 seconds Lower Body / Total Body Explosive1:00 10 second Edge Hang1:30 <10 seconds Upper Body Explosive2:00 <10 seconds Upper Body Strength2:30 rest full 30 secondsThere is not a lot of time for moving around the gym here. I suggest you grab a couple of tools and set yourself up by the Campus Board. My normal specific session is the following: 0:00 Campus Ladder 1-3-5-7-9 (on medium rungs)0:30 6x Kettlebell Swings (~½ bodyweight bell)1:00 10 second Edge Hang (bodyweight, 10mm)1:30 3x Campus Doubles (large edges or jugs)2:00 2x Power Pull-Up2:30 rest full 30 secondsThe first sessions are built on doing several rounds of 3 minutes, as described above. A series of rounds will be done back-to-back (usually 3-6 rounds per series), with a long rest between series. It is possible to change a few of the exercises between series, but don’t get carried away with chasing variety. You’ll want to see yourself progress in performance and this is hard to see if you’re changing things too often.
Errors in Progression
What is the goal of these sessions? We have to be careful when trying to make training harder that we make it harder in a way that is useful to us in performance. Too often, we do counterproductive things in order to feel like we’re going hard. If I put five hundred push-ups at the end of any session, that session is going to feel really taxing, but does it help me? Most of our mistakes are more subtle, and this is where it gets confusing.For example, we can start with our series above. One way to make things feel more difficult would be to reduce the rest period between efforts. For the most part, the exercises take ten seconds or less, so I run up the campus board, jump down and get about 20 seconds before having to swing the kettlebell. It’s close to 50 seconds total between the campus board and the edge hang. If I reduce the rest by going to a rolling 25 second clock, things are going to feel a whole lot harder. What is the effect of reducing rest between sets? If I am trying to get better at repeated hard efforts such as boulders or cruxes, I am driving the other direction. With less rest, I rely more and more on the second energy system, and I’ll find my ability to do the same difficult exercises round after round drop away. I will be improving my power endurance in some respect, but we have better methods for this and I probably want to be training this system later in my training year.What if I add more exercises to make the workout harder? Clearly doing a series of ten exercises instead of five would be more badass. Yes, more badass, but we start to deal with the fatigue issue again. We start taxing our capacity with longer series, and athletes tend to see lower overall work quality in long circuits. Logistically, it can be burdensome to keep track. Most challenging of all, we don’t revisit the same movements frequently enough.Another way of increasing difficulty would be to increase the reps/time per exercise. If I go to 12-15 second work periods instead of 10 second periods, clearly that will be harder. Much like the reduced rest periods, increased work durations lead to high levels of fatigue. The fatigue is not what we are chasing here, though, and should be reserved for power endurance cycles. If I can’t show similar levels of performance round after round in an alactic interval workout, I am likely training in the wrong system. To progress alactics, we really want to implement just one of two possible methods: increasing load or adding rounds.
Progression
Before we look at increasing loads or adding rounds, let’s consider the length of an effective training cycle. Although there is no clean answer to this question, I look at all of the facets of our fitness in two respects: development or retraining. If we are developing an ability for the first time (which most climbers will be with alactic-specific training), the cycles have to be longer. If I am rebuilding to a previously built level of fitness, the cycles can be shorter.Cycle Lengths:
- Developmental: 12-24 sessions over 6-12 weeks
- Rebuilding: 8-16 sessions over 4-6 weeks
Note that although it looks like I am recommending 2 sessions per week in the developmental phase, you may be slightly above or below that number. You may be able to do 24 sessions in 8 weeks if you are young, fit, and focused on training in the gym. Likewise, a climber might only be able to do this training every five days or so, and thus take 8 weeks to do 12 sessions. The important thing is that you stick with it long enough to look back on your first workouts and laugh at how easy they would be to repeat.The sessions should follow a generally upward trend in difficulty, and this difficulty should primarily be a function of adding greater load. Adding load increases the work we have to do each set, and adds up to a much higher demand for work output per session. We can’t continually add load, however, so a gentler way to ask your body to adapt can be to add rounds to the workout. Remember that adding rounds functions more to increase work capacity, but it is still an effective way to add overall alactic endurance, so should not be seen as an easier or less effective option.Remember that we set up a round of training to be three minutes in length (five :30 work sets, and :30 rest at the end). We typically start with a series of three rounds, for a total of 9 minutes. We rest at least half the work time, so a minimum of 4.5 minutes, though I suggest you make these longer if your series-to-series work quality declines. I like to set the workouts up in a simple format like this: Session #Work PeriodLoading12 series of 3 rounds Starting loads22 series of 3 rounds Add load in 2-3 exercises32 series of 3 rounds Add load in 2-3 exercises42 series of 4 roundsHold loads from previous session52 series of 4 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercises62 series of 4 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercises73 series of 3 roundsHold loads from previous session83 series of 3 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercises93 series of 3 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercises103 series of 4 roundsHold loads from previous session113 series of 4 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercises123 series of 4 roundsAdd load in 2-3 exercisesAfter twelve sessions, we stop, take a look at which exercises are providing the least stimulus or difficulty, and make some changes. We also change the exercise order or selection if necessary. Occasionally, we’ll use an exercise quite effectively for 12 sessions but it doesn’t make sense to continue to use it because of its difficulty to progress, such as a box jump or medicine ball slam. If we are doing more than twelve sessions we need to consider the goal of the program when it comes to the latter twelve sessions. If I want to continue to increase my power and strength or want to continue to add in other training, going back and repeating the same structure, with higher loads, is appropriate. If we are aiming to build even more capacity and are looking to translate this fitness into lactic (power endurance) efforts, adding more series and rounds is the best bet. You can probably do up to five rounds well, but any more than that and we start to see athletes get sloppy. My suggestion is to always go back to more series, with 3-5 rounds each.
Progressing Load
I mentioned that one might increase load in 2-3 exercises per session. This doesn’t always occur, and it can be more subtle than you think. In the chart below, I’ll give you an example. Remember that we are not machines, and some days you might find yourself at the gym with a little less to give. It’s OK to stay flat for a session or two, or to even back off a bit if necessary. A 6 session example:Session 1Session 2Session 3Session 4Session 5Session 6Campus Ladder1-3-5-7-91-4-6-8-101-4-6-8-111-4-6-8-111-4-6-8-111-4-6-8-10 (smaller rung)Kettlebell Swing5 x 24kg5x 24kg5x 28kg5x 32kg4x 36kg4x 36kgEdge Hang10sec / 12mm10sec / 10mm10sec / 10mm10sec / 10mm8sec / 8mm10 sec / 8mmBox Jump5x 24’’5x 24”5x 24”5x 30”5x 30”5x 30”Pull-Up3 / bw3 / bw3 / bw3 / bw3 / bw3 / bwIf you find yourself unable to progress load at all, the next goal is to add rounds. Even one more round of training, while maintaining load, will result in progress. Eventually, we all reach the end of the line when it comes to adding anything more to a session. The reason we set these up for 12-24 sessions is because that number is typical for when athletes start to level off on their performance. Once this point is reached, a couple of sessions at the same load can confirm your fitness for you, then it’s time to move on to other foci.
Transition
One thing that is indisputable is that there is a lot of repetition of workout structure and specific movement in these sessions. Although it can be helpful to have some degree of repetitiveness, it is by no means necessary. The simplest solution for adding breadth to a cycle is to do an A/B split between two workouts. In this situation, you would do the exact same progression of load and volume as you would in a single session plan, but alternate between two sets of workouts. For Example: Session A:Campus Ladder 1-3-5-7-9 (on med. rungs)6x Kettlebell Swings (~½ bodyweight bell)10 second Edge Hang (bodyweight, 10mm)3x Campus Doubles (large edges or jugs)2x Power Pull-Uprest full 30 secondsSession B:4x Foot-On Campus Doubles (large rungs)2x Trap Bar Deadlift (1.5x bodyweight)10 second Hang, Front Three (bw, 16mm)5x TRX Inverted Row5+5 sec Lock Off (90 degrees, pull-up bar)rest full 30 seconds Each workout would follow the prescribed format above, and you’d end up doing 24 total sessions before switching out the progression rather than 12.
Changing Exercises During Training Phases
More often than stopping a series of exercises completely and starting a second series, we try to do a smooth transition between two phases by changing exercises gradually. This serves the dual purpose of letting an athlete get more out of some movements as well as giving the body time to adjust. If we switch an entire workout too often, the athlete ends up sore and over fatigued. This state, although seen as an indicator of a superior session, can be damaging to the training process.Let’s use five exercises as an example:Session 1:2x Front Lever10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power CleanThe athlete would probably do this same format with a few time adjustments for 5-6 sessions minimum before switching gears. Then we’d start with small changes:Session 7:5x Hanging Straight Leg Raise10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power CleanSession 8:5x Hanging Straight Leg Raise10 second Hang, Back Three5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder5x Box JumpSession 10:5x Hanging Straight Leg Raise10 second Hang, Back Three5x Ball Slam2x Muscle Up5x Box JumpSession 12:5x Hanging Straight Leg Raise10 second Hang, Back Three2+2x KB Snatch2x Muscle Up5x Box JumpAfter session 12, the athlete would hold the same five exercises for a few weeks before making another change.
Adding Exercises to a Session
Another effective way to increase the total work you’ll do is to extend the length of the rounds. You’ll want to have areally good reason to do this, as the longer circuits tend to result in worse single-exercise performance. Using the exercise sequence from the example above, we’d slowly add an exercise to be sure the athlete can handle the load.Session 1:2x Front Lever10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power CleanSession 3:2x Front Lever10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power Clean1x Pull-Up I add these carefully, just one or two reps, since the overall load becomes quite high—adding just one pull-up to the basic level adds six total to the session. Some might scoff at this conservative approach and think they can handle six measly pull-ups or bigger jumps in load, but you have to remember that we are looking at the big picture, and small increases help us make big adaptations over the long haul. I have yet to see an athlete that made huge jumps in volume sustain any kind of fitness level after 8 or 10 weeks...they usually lose enthusiasm, get sick, or blow an elbow.Session 5:2x Front Lever10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power Clean2x Pull-Ups Session 7:2x Front Lever10 second Edge Hang5x Ball SlamCampus Ladder3x Power Clean3x Pull-Ups
Adding More Series to a Plan
If we start off with two series of three rounds, most climbers are finished in around 25 minutes. This works well in combination with a skill-focused bouldering session or even a route day. If we are seeking to add capacity or the athlete is focusing heavily on the alactic system, we should feel OK about increasing the volume of the work in these intervals. Above, we added volume in the form of an additional exercise. Here, we’ll look at keeping the rounds to five exercises (3 minutes each), but try to push volume of quality work.For the first few weeks:3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes) = 23 minutes totalThen, 2 sessions of:3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes) = 37 minutesFinally, we’d go to:3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes), rest 5 minutes, 3 rounds (9 minutes) = 51 minutes total.Since the total exercise volume increases so much, we don’t increase the number of exercises per round, push the loads up, or try to add rounds within a series. —No matter how we decide to progress, we need to give our bodies a chance to adapt to the new levels of output. Going harder in load, volume, and round duration all at once is a great way to feel sore the next day, but ends up, at best, at an early plateau. The whole goal of alactic intervals is not some kind of fitness peak, but a foundational change in the way our bodies produce and deliver energy. It is essential to “let” this training occur, and save your A Muerte for the peaking sessions and sends to follow.