Alex Barrows’s Current Training Schedule: Behind the Scenes

Alex Barrow's:

I started climbing at 17 (20ish years ago) as a trad climber, and gradually migrated towards being more into sport climbing, bouldering and training while at university. I’d call myself a sport climber, in that it’s what I love doing and where my goals lie, though I actually spend quite a lot of time bouldering. This is partly because UK sport climbing isn’t great (and is wet for 6 months of most years), and partly because bouldering is good for my sport climbing. Onsighting and flashing is really where my heart lies, preferably on long, pumpy, steep, full-body kind of routes. Love: kneebars, toe hooks, friendly holds. Hate: choss, sideways heels, small tweaky holds.

If I have a philosophy in terms of training for climbing I guess it’s just to follow sensible principles and avoid getting sucked too far down any one path.

What you do you become. If you want to be good at something then do that thing.
Don’t get sucked into training at the expense of learning to be good at doing (for me climbing rock, and executing when it matters). Most good rock climbers have done a lot of rock climbing in their life, and a lot of executing. The few exceptions are usually those who have a huge skillset from climbing on a wide variety of indoor styles and performing under pressure indoors (I’m thinking comp climbers here).
But, don’t get too sucked into always doing (performing) at the expense of never having periods where you accept you might be training more or beating yourself up a bit and feeling off your best.
There is no “the way”, and if someone says otherwise it’s best to treat them with scepticism. Including me!

General Training Routine

I normally train for trips to Europe and climb things locally for fun in the meantime. At the moment I’m training for Spain in a couple of months’ time. I’ll usually climb or train either four or five days per week - both days on the weekend and then either Tues/Weds/Thurs or Tues/Thurs (but double sessions if only doing two midweek days). Whether I’m climbing outside or “training” inside depends on time and weather, but I don’t like to make a distinction in that way - if you’re purposeful with your choices in what to climb on outside then it’s still “training” in my book. I think this is especially true for strength - bouldering on peak district limestone is as good a strength session as most boards. In a base phase I might well boulder outside then do aero cap inside in the evening on the day before a rest day.

I have a pretty classic way of splitting things up - a base phase involving slightly more high-volume strength stuff, anaerobic capacity, aerobic capacity. Then a phase to focus more on power endurance and snappy high-end strength as I get closer to when I want to be good.

At the moment I’m experimenting with doing a higher volume of low-end fitness work (aerobic capacity and ARCing) than I’ve ever done before. For onsighting and flashing I think that kind of fitness is so important, and I wanted to try something a bit different. I’m not getting any younger, and it would be dumb to look back in my 50s and think “I wonder what would have happened if I’d tried doing a lot more of that one year”. If it doesn’t work I’ll just drop back to something less tiring next time around. I think for me, trying to get better needs to be a mix of knowing myself and trusting that I have an understanding of what works for me, with being prepared to try new things. Not necessarily the easiest balance to strike.

Specific Workouts

Lots of bouldering for strength, plus some fingerboarding. Plenty of an cap and a lot of aero cap at the moment. Lately I’ve been doing some recruitment pulls too. Despite what some insta personalities will claim, I don’t believe that they’re the best thing since sliced bread, but I do think they are a useful tool, especially if you’re short on time and want to fit in a short strength session before work - I find them faster to warm up for than hangs or pick-ups. They’re very useful if traveling with work too.

I’ll often do strength and endurance on the same day - I think it would be hard to fit everything in without doing that sometimes. But if possible, I’ll split the sessions up or take a break in between, e.g. bouldering in the morning and endurance in the evening.

How do you warm up before your training sessions?

Nothing special - just gradually increasing intensity on whatever it is I’ll be doing in the main session. Although if I have rehab exercises for any injuries or niggles I will often include these in the warm up. I find it much easier to be diligent doing the exercises at the start of the session, rather than getting to the end and then forgetting to do them or being too tired.

Time Management

I’d love to train late morning every day if I could, but midweek it’s dictated by work. Sessions anywhere from 30 minutes before work to all day at the crag, it totally depends. If indoors or training on the fingerboard/weights at home it would normally be 2-4 hours all in.

Variation and Progression

How do you ensure variety in your training to avoid plateaus?

Good question, but I think I’ve been plateauing for the past 8 years so I’m probably the wrong person to answer it! At the moment I’m lucky enough to be able to do some extended blocks of remote working and climbing so I think the contrast between those and training at home probably keeps the body guessing and adapting quite nicely.

How do you track your progress and make adjustments to your training routine?

I think about climbing too much, so I adjust my plans a lot depending on weather, tiredness, motivation, my feeling on how my climbing is going, whether I’m keen to get something done outside etc. But I generally know what sessions I want to do in a week and just make minor adjustments around that. Very quantifiable things like weights for hangs I have in a combination of spreadsheets and old notes stored in a draw that I can look back at to compare, and I have training diaries going back over a decade. They’re quite high level - not details of each session - but are useful to look back at occasionally to see the broad outline of what my focus was on during different periods, e.g. how many of each kind of session I was doing per week.

Recovery and Rest

Rest days = work days, so I do healthy things like sit at my desk all day with horrible posture and stress about my job! Not recommended for climbing ability, but useful if you want to keep paying the mortgage.

Nutrition and Hydration

How do you manage your nutrition and hydration around your training sessions and do you follow a specific diet or nutritional plan to support your training?

Nothing specific, just the usual broadly sensible stuff - try to eat healthy, be fueled for training sessions, eat more on climbing days and less on rest days etc. Unfashionably, I do like to get light for periods where I want to be good. I think the important thing is to put the weight back on again afterwards. I suspect this flip-flop feast-or-famine approach has not been the best for my long-term development, nor my relationship with food. I don’t think I would recommend it to my younger self, but nowadays I feel like I’ve probably gone too far down that road to reverse it, and I stick with the same tactic out of the fear/belief that it works for me. Perhaps it’s an area where I’ve not been as open to experimenting as I should have been? But taking the hit of holding a heavier weight for a few years to see if that works better seems like a roll of the dice when I’m not getting any younger…

Challenges and Adaptations

I’ve had a lot of injuries, from short-term niggles to on-off issues to chronic finger issues over a whole decade. I have two chronic finger issues that now I don’t think will fix, but I’m ok with that. I had a pretty bad time a few years back where covid lockdowns coincided with me feeling like I’d hit the end of the road with hard climbing due one of those injuries. It all felt a bit bleak, like saying goodbye to what climbing had been to me for over a decade. I had injections from the German team doctor, saw a specialist in the UK, worked with various physios, took a block of time off… in the end the physio I was working with and I just accepted it wasn’t going to get better. That mental shift was very important for me - accepting that it was never going to be what it once was and I was never going be able to do everything with it. I’ll never climb routes with hard moves on RH monos; I’ll never climb anything that hard and relentlessly crimpy on either hand; I spent years not being able to do anaerobic capacity on fingery holds and finding repeaters too dangerous. But there are still more routes that I can climb on that I’ll ever be able to do and there are still too many options for training sessions that I can do for me to fit them all in. It helps that I like onsighting, long routes and spinning in a roof on jugs - a few weeks in Europe doing that again and I forget the injuries are still there at all.

Mental and Emotional Aspects

Motivation is one thing I usually don’t lack! I’m pretty obsessive. If I am struggling for motivation I just remind myself that it always comes back around, and when it does I’ll be glad I put in the work. Even if it doesn’t pay off this month, this trip, even this year, it’s all setting you up for the future. I suspect consistency is one of my stronger suits.

Advice and Insights

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

Keep the goal the goal. For me that’s rock climbing, so training is built around that. It’s great if you have “training goals” like certain board problems or hangs or 1-4-7 or whatever, but don’t forget it’s just a training goal.
Get the basics right and stay consistent. Some people love to tinker around the edges, but tinkering only works if you’re getting the bulk of your training right.
Be aware of your surroundings when evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. In Sheffield I feel like I’m fit, good at kneebars, but shockingly weak. Then I go to Spain and I’m the overstrong, underfit one who’s bad with his knees. Experiencing different places and scenes can be really important for reminding you of this.
There is no one way, just broad principles. Experiment within those principles to find what works well for you and what you enjoy.

Extras

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

Yuji

Anyone you would like to thank?

My wife Ella, especially for putting up with my endless pontificating about the same things (usually why I’m more tired than I think I should be, almost every day)!

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