jordansahls wrote:
If you want to see how your strength and muscular fitness measure up you should really try something like MichaelJ's suggestion.
Agreed. I have workouts that I use to measure the progress I am making in strength and power, and of course I use actual climbing as its own measure. I've never done the specific workout Michael mentioned (and probably couldn't, for all I know), but I've used and will use similar measures.
But I was looking for a fairly objective, fairly climbing/slogging/mountaineering-specific method to gauge
aerobic fitness that was not conditions-dependent. Sounds like the stairmaster will be my best bet there until all the snow melts and I can get reliable and accurate times on local trails. Of course I'll still be hitting those trails in the meantime....just not as a week-to-week or month-to-month measure of improved fitness.
I'm coming off 3 and a half months where I literally never worked out (September-December) due to school, work and grad. school applications (and being sick 3-4 times thanks to the stress). It's been years since I went on a break even nearly that long, so I'm interested to see how quickly the fitness comes back and how much I really gain from a 5-6 month training cycle. I suppose all of this hearkens back to running, where I was much more methodical about my training than I ever have been with climbing (and more methodical than most climbers I suppose).
Thanks for the thoughts everyone.