Doug McConnell’s Current Training Schedule: Behind the Scenes

Doug McConnell:

A little perspective: For the last 2.5 years I’ve spent about 10 months a year climbing outside on rock with minimal, if any, indoor training during that time. For most of that time I have focussed on projecting hard (for me) sport routes.

I’m primarily interested in rock climbing performance, which I define as getting to the top of hard rock climbs. This makes it simple for me, if I’m not trying to do a hard rock climb, my training is directed at preparing me to be ready to try hard when I am. Indoor is training for the real thing. Old school I know.

General Training Routine

Can you describe a typical week of training for you?

Currently I’m in a training camp style mode, where I’m not climbing outside at all and focusing on addressing the aspects that I feel get overlooked when only climbing outside. Basically, simple bouldering and general strength and conditioning. This will last 6 weeks in total.

How many days a week do you train?

Actually it doesn’t fit neatly in a week. I train for 2 days then have a rest day and repeat this cycle. The reason is that I feel like if I try hard on a board (Moonboard, spray wall etc) I need two days for my fingers to feel fresh enough to try that hard again.

How do you structure your training sessions throughout the week?

Day 1 - Bouldering. I’ll do something like a 2 hour session of trying really hard, with lots of rest. I also do a small amount of off the wall finger training and some strength exercises.
Day 2 - Weights room. A mix of strength exercises that generally don’t look much like rock climbing but are aimed at making me generally more robust. Some low intensity finger exercises and some targeted stretching.
Day 3 - Rest. Maybe some walking, mobility, stretching. Maybe not. Repeat.

What are your primary goals for your training block?

As with all my training periods my priority is to reduce my injury risk when trying hard on rock projects. I’m aiming to make myself robust enough to be able to try really hard on the rock without breaking.

I know this doesn’t sound as exciting as “I want to do 1-5-9” or “8C on the Moonboard” but for a long time I’ve recognised that for me, all I need to be able to climb better than I have in the past, is to be able to climb consistently, in an uninjured state. Specific climbing performance improvements are secondary to injury risk reduction.

Specific Workouts

What types of exercises or workouts do you include in your training?

Limit boulders. I’d hazard a guess that most people reading this know how to do this better than me so I don’t have much to add here. I’m still trying to learn!
Specific strength exercises. I like to enter a training period with one or more specific projects in mind. For example right now I’m preparing to try something that has a hard heal-toe cam. So I’m doing a bunch of strength exercises for my knees. Also, I am usually carrying some sort of niggle or minor injury so I’ll try to address that here.
General strength exercises. I know it sounds wanky but the older I get the more I feel the importance of being an athlete first then a climber. I know that if I do some general strength exercises I’m less likely to be injured. Doing a bunch of this is also a way to increase my work capacity without needing to be on the wall. A lot of the cave climbing I’ve done recently has looked about as close to a rack pull as it has to a moonboard boulder!

Right now my general strength exercises include:

Rack pulls
Rows- slow, heavy
Dumbell bench press
Full range, feet elevated push ups
Weighted box squats
Split squats with TRX
Nordic curls
Copenhagen planks
TRX Ts and Ys (chest and back)
Wrist flexors and extensors with dumbells
Core on parallettes
Heavy band pulls for Tibialis anterior
And various shoulder exercises with bands and dumbbells.

Yep, I feel a bit like a crossfitter at the moment.

Finger strength. Two months ago I started a training program from Ben Cossey aimed at rehabbing and strengthening my middle fingers for monos and generally everything in an open position. I found that by doing a targeted 15 mins twice a week I’ve made gains every week. I’ve started looking for low hanging fruit in a more closed grip position too.
Finger health. About an hour a day split into low intensity tendon hangs and “no hangs” with the goal of keeping my soft tissue healthy.
Stretching. The best climbers in the world are flexible. I have a couple of stretch sessions focused on doing the middle and front split. 45 mins every 3 days is not that big a sacrifice.

Do you focus on different aspects (e.g., strength, endurance, technique) on different days?

I prioritise my bouldering session and then work down the scale of most intense to least intense work. For example finger strength work is done before the tendon hangs.

I don't do any endurance because normally, if I can do the moves, I can do the route.

How do you warm up before your training sessions?

Before bouldering I like to warmup slowly with a combination of feet on the floor fingerboarding (lots of finger curls on an edge) and feeling holds on the board I intend to climb on. I’ll progressively increase the intensity until it feels natural to be taking my feet off the floor.

With the weights, I’ll normally progress a couple of the more whole body exercises from say 60% up to the day’s working weight and then usually I feel ready to go for the other exercises with specifically warming them up.

What cool-down routines do you follow after your workouts?

Currently have a good routine of stretching after the weights work. A long shower cycling hot-cold always makes me feel refreshed after training.

Do you have goals for your training workouts?

Not specifically. I’m looking for progression in all aspects but not too concerned about how fast it comes. I think in the past I’ve injured myself by being too aggressive with trying to progress workouts quickly, now I’m ok with going heavier when I’m ready. That said, I still try fucking hard at everything!

Time Management

How long does each training session typically last?

4-6 hours. This sounds huge but it's really not. There’s a lot of time spent warming up, resting between attempts or standing with 8kg hanging from one fingertip.

Do you have a specific time of day when you prefer to train?

When the gym’s not busy! In Spain that’s during siesta between 1 and 5pm.

Variation and Progression

How do you ensure variety in your training to avoid plateaus and do you track your progress and make adjustments to your training routine?

I’ll give two answers, firstly more generally about life on the road and secondly about this training block.

When climbing on rock I like to have a decent chunk of time in a place, say 3-6 weeks. This lets me choose a project or two that will be hard but perhaps doable in that timeframe. A good, hard sport route then works like a mini training block - something that will take 8-12 days of work seems about right. The first few sessions are spent doing individual moves or a few moves together (bouldering on a rope). This progresses to making bigger links (analogous to power endurance work) and finally when I’m trying to put it all together, its working the continuity or endurance energy system. The beauty of this is that, as opposed to indoor climbing, it’s obviously very specific from a movement and skill acquisition perspective. It’s actually doing the thing. And there’s natural variation inherent in trying different routes at different crags on different rock. After a few months of this it does feel necessary (for me anyway) to step back and do some more foundational strength work like what I’m doing now. In an ideal world, I’d do a board session every week or two to keep that “current”, but in practice I usually get deep in project mode and don't want to miss a session on a project.

During this current “training camp”, I’m quite methodical about recording sets and reps of weight work and finger training and noting when it feels like I can go up in either intensity or volume. I’ll treat the 6 weeks like two three week builds where the volume will be dropped to say 60% at the start of the second block. With respect to the bouldering I’m using this to train finger strength, movement coordination and try hard. I’ll do 12-14 sessions in 6 weeks. I don’t think I need to do anything special to progress my bouldering in this time, beyond being focussed in the sessions and staying injury free.

Recovery and Rest

How do you incorporate rest and recovery into your weekly schedule and do you have any specific recovery techniques or routines you follow?

Beyond actually resting on rest days I don’t do much. I feel like good sleep is really key but whether or not I sleep well seems to rest in the hands of the gods.

Nutrition and Hydration

How do you manage your nutrition and hydration around your training sessions?

I eat a lot. Always have a decent meal an hour or two before and then have lots of (mostly carb) snacks for during. Sometimes a sports drink too - especially if it's warm. I always have a serve of protein straight after the session. The main thing is I don’t want to be hungry while I'm training hard.

Do you follow a specific diet or nutritional plan to support your training?

I had a plan in the past but now I just follow those general principles. If in doubt I err on the side of eating too much over not enough.

Challenges and Adaptations

What challenges have you faced in your training, and how have you overcome them?

Years ago I would have said time. Training got squeezed into the time available after (or before) work. But having moved to Spain I’ve got the opposite problem that I probably go climbing too much and should train a bit more! So I guess I overcame my challenge by moving to Spain.

How do you adapt your training routine when faced with injuries or other setbacks?

There’s always something to train. Right now I have some strange shoulder impingement issue. I can’t do pullups but I can do rows… I think the key is to not stop because of injury, rather modify what you’re doing and keep going. Consistency is king. Finger injury? Climb cracks. Shoulder fucked? Sort your footwork out…etc.

Mental and Emotional Aspects

How do you stay motivated and mentally focused throughout the week?

For me its important to know what I’m going to do in advance. I like having a plan for the training period and then it’s just a matter of executing it. My brother said it well. He was getting up at 430am to run for 2 hours every day before his kids woke up. I said how do you motivate yourself and he said

It’s not motivation, it's discipline.

For me it’s important to have goal in mind while training. When the session is tough or I feel like I’m not trying as hard as I can, I think about that goal and how what I’m doing now will help me achieve that goal. It helps put things in perspective.

Do you incorporate any mental training or mindfulness practices into your routine?

Not formally. But thinking about this I realise that I’m often visualising myself climbing my projects while I’m training. Especially during the mentally easy exercises. I like to stay present - to keep my mind thinking about climbing even when I’m stretching or doing weights.

Additional Activities

Do you participate in any cross-training or complementary activities?

I feel like a cross fitter at the moment with all the weights I’m doing. Otherwise, I don’t want to waste the energy doing dumb shit like running (which I used to). If you think watching cricket is complementary, then yes.

How do you balance training with other aspects of your life (e.g., work, family)?

Well family commitments are pretty low given I’m in Spain and they're in Australia…I work remotely and it can fit in before or after training.

Advice and Insights

What advice would you give to someone looking to improve their training routine?

Do what you need to - not what everyone else is doing. Everyone has different goals and objectives, and comes to climbing with a different story. You get rewarded for knowing yourself and your objective well, recognising the gap that training needs to fill and then acting on closing that gap. It should be quite individual.

Step back. Are the big ticket items covered? The individual session doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you do that week, which doesn’t matter as much as how your month was etc…I like to think in terms of priority of factors that will improve your climbing.

In order of most to least important it goes:

Health - can’t climb if you’re in bed
Injury free - can’t climb if you broke your pulley on the Beastmaker
Consistency - get to the crag and climb something regularly
Specificity - if you Moonbard 7A but redpoint less than 29/8a, go rock climbing you clown
Training - you only get to train if boxes 1 to 4 are ticked

Are there any resources or tools you find particularly helpful for your training?

For the last 5 years I’ve been in regular contact with Steve Bechtel from Climb Strong. I credit Steve with putting me on the path to being more robust which has been one of the real keys to climbing better into my 40s.

Extras

Have you read/listened/watched anything recently that you think others would enjoy?

I rate Steve Bechtel’s monthly newsletter. A nice reminder to keep it simple.

Who’s training schedule would you like to hear more about?

Seb Bouin

Follow Doug McConnell on Instagram.