Alexey Rubtsov Olympic preperation interview

Alexey Rubtsov won the Bouldering World Championship in 2009 and last December he qualified to the Olympics by winning the Euro Championship in Moscow. Interestingly, he could not participate in the World Championship in 2019, due to a shoulder injury from which he was not fully recovered until last fall. He did not do any real preparation before Moscow and no speed or lead training whatsoever. Last week he was in Turkey with the Russian national team where he did an 8C in Geyikbayırı, video on his Insta.

How do you train to prepare for the Olympics?
At the moment, my training program is completely different from what I have done before. After a shoulder injury, I constantly reduce the volume of strength exercises, and since May 2020, I practically do not do them at all. Now my program is aimed at long-term improvement (it might seem a little silly at my 32 years old :) I try to make my body healthier, improve flexibility and agility. I can feel my climbing style changing, my position on the wall and I like it. For now, I will continue to work in this direction. Even if I have now become weaker in strength indicators (for example, 2 years ago I could pull up on 1 arm 15 times, now 2-3), but still in the fall I was able to win two Russian Championships and the European Championship.

In general, as usual, I am looking for new training solutions to climb better. I climb together with Nikolai Yarilovets and Sergei Luzhetskii 3-5 times a week for 3-4 hours. I have everyday mobility and stretching training on the floor for 1-1,5 hour. I also do martial arts 2-3 times a week. I cannot say how many percent of my schedule will be bouldering, how much lead, how much speed, since I don't know it myself :) and I see no reason to control it. Nevertheless, I admit that maybe I will return some exercises to the strength of the fingers on the fingerboard if I start to feel very weak :)


In which comps do you plan to participate as preparation and what is your goal for the Olympics?
4 WC's in bouldering, 1 in lead and maybe no in Speed :) Tokyo is just competition and in competition, everything can happen. I hope to show good climbing:) About speed, I don’t like this discipline and I don’t have a big training plan for it. I didn't train it last year, so I have only comp time 7.3 in 2020 as PB.