A bouldering training plan for two sessions a week

What to keep when you only get two

“How to program climbing 2x a week” and “balancing climbing with a demanding job” come up constantly, and the usual answer is to try to fit a normal week into fewer days. That’s how you end up with two sessions that each have fingers, limit bouldering, a pump circuit and weights in them, all done tired.

With two sessions, keep three things and let the rest go:

1. Hard attempts. Limit boulders and finger strength, once a week, fresh.
2. Movement. One technique drill a week, done before you’re pumped.
3. Some capacity. One pump exercise a week, so a long problem doesn’t fall apart at the top.

Everything else, like a second finger session, long endurance circuits and gym work, is what a third or fourth session is for.

How to split them

Session one is for strength. The warm-up climbs up towards your limit and ends on a couple of submax hangs, so your fingers are ready for the finger block. The limit boulders come straight after, while you’re still fresh. Rest 3 to 4 minutes between attempts, even when it feels like too long. Finish with 10 minutes of pushing and shoulder work; it’s easy, and one session a week is enough to keep it in.

Session two is for everything else. Do the technique drill first. Drop knees, footwork or whatever you avoid, practised on easy steep problems while you can still move well. Then one pump exercise, then easy climbing to bring your forearms back down.

Keep two or three days between them. Tuesday and Saturday, or Monday and Thursday, both work.

Where the finger work goes

Once a week, at the start of session one, and nowhere else. Max hangs are the standard protocol for finger strength and take little time, which is why they’re in a two-session week. They’re also max intensity with a high injury risk: warm up fully with lighter hangs first, stop at the first sign of pain in a finger, and don’t do them if you’ve climbed for less than a year or two. Swap in moderate hangs on a 20 mm edge if that’s you.

What goes wrong

• A 45-minute warm-up pyramid. On a two-session week, that’s half your hard climbing gone. Warm up on climbs that build to the day’s style, and start.
• Limit and pump in the same half hour. The pump makes the limit attempts sloppy, and the limit attempts leave nothing for the pump.
• Treating a hard work week as a rest week. Stress and short nights still cost recovery. If work wrecked you, keep session one and make it shorter.
• No log. With two sessions there’s little room to guess whether it’s working. Write down the problems and hangs, and compare every few weeks.

Who this isn’t for

Climbers in their first year: two sessions of just climbing lots of different problems will do more for you than any split. And if you’re peaking for a trip, you’ll want more than two sessions for a few weeks.