Training is a manipulation of the body's physiology, in an attempt to improve performance. It is the quality of training, not the mere quantity, that is first important point. If you train badly, you will not only fail to make the gains you hope for, you may also permanently damage yourself.

As a general rule, to make any gains one should train at least twice a week, and to make gains more quickly, three to four times a week is preferable. This does not just mean training sessions, but the training of the particular muscle groups involved in a particular set of exercises.

It is possible to train every day without overdoing it, providing different groups of muscles are exercised on successive days (this is known as a split routine).

Training sessions are best split into two. Top-class athletes tend to have a training session in the morning (two hours after breakfast), a rest in the middle of the day, and then train again in the late afternoon. Training sessions are usually one-and-half to two hours long, making a total (if you are full time) of three or four hours a day. If you start training for much longer than this, your body cannot recover sufficiently between sessions, leading into a downward spiral of fatigue and injury.

Resting is a very important part of training schedules. After a particular grueling session or climb, it will take forty-eight hours for the body to recover its peak potential. Not allowing the body to recover, and then repeating the abuse, inevitably results in decrease performance and possible overuse injury.

It is now recognized that it is possible to chronically overtrain. In women this can result in irregularities or even complete cessation of the menstrual cycle. In both men and women it can affect the immune system, resulting in a susceptibility to infection. This is why many top athletes become ill round competition time, just as they are trying to "peak".

Obviously there is a fine line between training maximally and overtraining, although this can be monitored by weekly blood counts, checking the function of the white cells. For most of us, however, the problems of overtraining are unlikely to arise!

It is important that, if you are going to train, you concentrate on the muscles that are used in climbing.

Most individual muscles do their work in partnership with the muscle that performs the opposite movement, called the antagonist. For instance the biceps is paired with the triceps. When you have a weigh in your hand and bend your arm up, as the biceps is contracting, the triceps is actively relaxing, producing a careful controlled movement.

This means that one should not only train the specific muscles involved in a particular action but also the antagonists, aiming to achieve muscle balance around a particular joint.

In order for some muscles to work to their maximum advantage, it is necessary that the joint around which they work is held in a stable position. This is particularly important around the shoulder where the muscles that hold the shoulder blade are often neglected and if not corrected, this can produce pain in the front part of the shoulder or between the shoulder blades.

In summary, one has to train the specific muscles involved in climbing, plus their antagonists, plus the stabilizers of the joints involved, in order to maximize performance and minimize the chances of injury.

This is the basic principle for improving muscular strength. One of the earliest examples of this technique comes from ancient Greece, where wrestlers training for the games pick up a new-born bull and train by lifting it everyday as it grew larger and larger.

Your body adapts to the stresses put upon it and will only change if the strains put upon it increase or decrease. To gain in strength, one must adopt a training schedule placing loads in excess that to which the body has become accustomed, and exercise to the point of muscle failure. This point will change and progress as you reap the benefits of your program.

It is a mistake to progress too far too fast, however, as muscles gain strength much more rapidly than their associated tendons, leading to an increased risk of injury at the musculo-tendinous junction. It takes a tendon six weeks to catch up with each significant gain in muscular strength, so take things steadily.

It is now well established that a basic level of aerobic fitness is essential for good performance in virtually all sports. It makes your anaerobic training easier and progress faster.