Lattice training bouldering plan

Lattice training bouldering plan



Lattice Training, founded by renowned climbers and coaches Tom Randall and Ollie Torr, provides highly personalized training plans tailored to each individual. These plans are crafted based on an in-depth personal assessment, which can be conveniently done at most bouldering gyms. With Lattice, you receive expert guidance built from years of experience, helping you reach your climbing goals with precision and effectiveness.

Step 1: Assessment

When you buy a 12 or 24 week bouldering plan you will have to do a home assessment. This consist of a few body measurements

  1. height
  2. ape index (wing span minus your length, if you are 175 and you have a wing span of 180 this would be +5)
  3. body mass

Second step is to measure your strength, endurance and flexibility for specific bouldering/ climbing exercises.

  1. split, measure heel to heel
  2. repeated pullups, with added or reduced weight to achieve 10 rate of perceived exertion (RPE), report the amount of weight added or reduced
  3. two arm max hangs, hang on a fingerboard (20 mm edge) with added or reduced weights to achieve max RPE, report the added or reduced weight
  4. repeaters; repeat hangs on a fingerboard (20 mm edge) 7 seconds on, 3 seconds off until failure. report the total amount of seconds you can hang until you fail a 7 second hang

Last part of the assessment is a survey. This is where you will have to describe

  1. what your history is with bouldering and climbing
  2. goal with this plan
  3. your availability, throughout a regular week and if there are any vacations or weeks you can climb less in the coming twelve weeks

Step 2: Training plan

If you do this for the first time you will have to wait for 2 or 3 weeks until a personal trainer assigned to you will mail the results of your assessment together with your plan.

Based on your assessment the trainer will explain what they observe as weaknesses and strengths. In my case they observed that my finger strength was above average, my flexibility around average, my endurance and strength below. These observations are then converted to specific climbing exercises for you.

Step 3: Train

After downloading the lattice app, you will find your personal training plan scheduled for your first week.

The following weeks you will have to plan when you will execute the exercises. Lattice trainers have recorded a nice video that will guide you to plan it most efficiently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-DP_w70CqY.

The exercises they will offer you will be spread over the following topics:

  1. Aerobic base, Exercising longer times on the wall (e.g. 5 minutes in one go, or 10 times 1 minute) with a low to medium RPE.
  2. Conditioning, Off the wall training exercises conditioning and strengthening specific muscles groups. This could be among others pull ups, shoulder presses and bench presses.
  3. Fingerboarding, Examples are hanging on a fingerboard edge of 20 mm for 10 seconds with a maximum added weight.
  4. Open climbing, Free climbing sessions.
  5. Power endurance, Medium to high RPE training on the wall. Specificly designed to train your endurance. Examples are Boulder Triples: repeating three times the same hard boulder within 5 minutes.
  6. Strength and Power. With a high RPE, training on the wall. Examples are dynamic movement training, body tension training on overhangs and comp training simulation.

Personal experience

Before stasrting the lattice training plan I was struggeling with injuries. When I recovered I would go to the boulder gym again 3 / 4 times a week to reach my peak and get a new injury. So I was looking to reduce injuries and increase my average bouldering grade.

The first training plan I got was very basic and sometimes felt too easy in some aspects. Yet some of the exercises were terribly hard. Specially the core training on a pull up bar.

My flexibility, endurance and strength all improved. I felt more comfortable on the wall. Feels like I had a better basis. Yet my average grade was lower compared to when I started. More importantly I did not get injured.  

This training helped me to understand and put to practice some of the basic training principles that lattice teaches. Together with the strength and ability gains I had in this period of time I feel it was money well spend. Yet I did not buy a second period of 24 weeks of training. I felt that I could setup my own training plan with the help of the app crimpd and all the materials I have gathered so far.

Podcast explaining the process

If you want to learn more about it listen to this podcast.

Sources:
– Personal experience; I followed a 24 week training plan.
– https://latticetraining.com/product/bouldering-training-plan/ with additional materials on their social media

bouldering training