-
This plan is designed to be used by a wide variety of ages and ability levels! The only limitations are as follows:
- The sessions are to be performed at an indoor bouldering wall.
- There is some basic climbing knowledge required, so we recommend a minimum of 3 months climbing experience before engaging with this plan.
We expect that this plan will be most useful for climbers operating in the V1 - V5 area, as it is more common for climbers of this experience level to have less confidence with dynamic movement. However, the drills and exercises contained in this plan have been incredibly useful for V10+ climbers if they were lacking in confidence and skill with momentum; climbers of all ability levels are likely to see a jump in performance by improving their fluidity whilst climbing!
-
To start practicing, simply follow session plans shown in the Session Plan pdf. The sessions have been divided into 4 separate weeks, with 3 sessions to follow in each week. Don’t worry if 3 sessions per week is too much for you; simply work through the sessions in chronological order, and expect that your practice will last for longer than the scheduled 4 weeks!
Each session has a column of detailed guidance on which drills / exercises to do, for how long, and at what level of difficulty. Alongside this is an additional column of notes from Louis, with further guidance as to what to focus on whilst going through your planned sessions.
Every drill and exercise contained in the plan has extensive additional details and video demos, which can be found in this Reference Document! We’d recommend reading through each of your upcoming sessions ahead of time so that you can read through/ watch any required video demos ahead of time, and minimise the amount of time spent looking at the reference document during your sessions. At first, you may find yourself referring back to this document repeatedly for details, but after a little while the exercises will become familiar, and you’ll need to refer back to this document less and less.
A thorough warm up is included at the start of each session, in addition to a stretching cool down at the end of each session. If you had previously not been doing any warm up or cool down as part of your climbing sessions, including these is essential! If you already have a warm up and cool down routine which you are comfortable with, please continue using this. -
- In week 1:
In the first week of sessions, we’ll be getting to grips with the basics of timing our use of momentum and building confidence. We’ll be doing a few basic movement drills on easy climbs, before spending the rest of our sessions working on projects, with more and more time spent on projects requiring dynamic movement toward the end of the first week.
- In week 2:
In the second week of sessions, we’ll be working on coordination and starting including some more complex movement drills, which will give lots of opportunities to practice more coordinated movement on the climbing wall. We’ll pick back up with a drill from week 1, but this time with some additional challenges to focus on, and we’ll spend yet more time working on challenging climbs involving dynamic movements.
- In week 3:
In our third week, we’ll start introducing some powerful dynamic movement. This will involve warming up with some more movement drills, before working on our “contact strength” (our ability to engage our grip strength quickly) and our precise use of momentum when jumping for target holds…
- In week 4:
In our final week, we’ll be tying the previous three weeks of practice together! We’ll challenge ourselves to be consistent whilst under pressure in a fun challenge, have a final run through of the most important drills from this plan, and spend a last bit of time working on dynamic projects!
- Overall:
When learning something new, it is common to feel as though you are doing it all wrong - especially if you’re learning something which you know to be outside of your comfort zone.
Don’t worry if you’re finding the drills and exercises difficult and awkward at first, or if you’re struggling to complete the goals of the various challenges, because the aim is just that; to be challenged!
The session plans you will go through are designed to challenge you, and through being challenged you will learn LOADS; all you need to do is enthusiastically go through each session, focusing on learning rather than focusing on outright success.
-
If you are uncertain about any aspects of this plan which aren’t answered by the Reference Document, if you are struggling to access any video demos relevant to the training, or if you’re unable to perform one of the drills/ exercises and are uncertain why, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via email at enquiries@catalystclimbing.com.