With summer approaching, many climbers’ training focus begins to shift towards power endurance to help fight the pump on those routes.

Here are 5 easy tips for maximising your aerobic power training:

1. Mimic the Style

Make sure that your indoor training sessions mimic your project or the general style and length of the climbing that you are aiming to perform in.

If it’s steep, train on steep terrain; if it’s crimpy, get on crimps; if it’s 30 metres long but your indoor wall is only 15 metres long, do double laps!

The more similar it is to your project, the more effective your power endurance training will be.

2. Pacing

It’s really easy to get an indoor training route really dialled and climb it faster and faster.

What was a pumpy 5 minute climb has become a super fast 60 second race of maximum efficiency.

The issue with this is that if you don’t climb at this speed when you are outside, you will find this doesn’t transfer as well as it could. So try to keep the pacing similar to how you’d climb your projects and you’ll be amazed at how well it transfers.

3. Rests

If your project has crucial rests, you might want to think about mimicking those rests, especially if it’s an awkward rest, or perhaps a core-intensive rest, like a steep kneebar.

Incorporating these rests into your power endurance training can be game changing.

4. Intensity

The key to getting the intensity right is to make sure that you are either approaching or getting extremely close to failure in these workouts.

For most of these, you will be getting pretty pumped and possibly powered out.

If you’re never reaching failure then you won’t be maximising adaptations in this area.

5. Diminishing returns

Aerobic power can be really quick to build, however, you will hit a ceiling with it much quicker than other areas, such as aerobic capacity or strength.

There’s not much need to do it longer than around 6 to 8 weeks.

Conclusion: How to Maximise Your Power Endurance Training for Routes

You can prime your body for your project by mimicking it’s style, pacing and rests in your power endurance training. Remember that aerobic power training needs to be high-intensity, where you’re very close to failure, and should be for a shorter period of time (6-8 weeks).

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