Transcript

00:00:02.51
neelyquinn
Welcome back to the show, Matt. How are you?

00:00:06.19
Matt
I’m doing really well. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be back on the show.

00:00:10.18
neelyquinn
Yeah. So tell us what you’ve been up to with your climbing.

00:00:14.53
Matt
I have been staying in Lander, Wyoming, where I live. I basically have tried to not travel at all for this for a year, um which will be up here in January.

00:00:27.76
Matt
um So I’ve just been in.

00:00:27.94
neelyquinn
You tried to do that. This was intentional.

00:00:31.39
Matt
Uh, well, some of it was forced by the fact that I ruptured a pulley in my finger and took the winter off from, or mostly off from climbing. But, um, but yeah, I just haven’t really taken any trips.

00:00:42.74
Matt
It’s been fun to climb here locally. There’s lots of roots and bowlers I want to do. Um, and it’s felt good to move around a little less. So, uh, yeah, I think the, literally the only time I have left the state of Wyoming was I went to rifle for like four days.

00:00:59.57
Matt
So.

00:00:59.61
neelyquinn
And didn’t it rain the whole time or something?

00:01:01.54
Matt
Yeah, pretty much right the whole time, and I got sick.

00:01:03.80
neelyquinn
But Seth serves you right for leaving.

00:01:03.78
Matt
So yeah, so like, yeah, exactly. I broke my rule, and then I paid for it. No, I mean, I have a bunch of travel planned for ah this upcoming year, and so it just felt like a good way to mix it up.

00:01:16.04
Matt
So yeah, I’ve been climbing locally, um kind of in sport climbing mode, and going to stay with that for another week or two, and then kind of looking forward to a fall bouldering stint.

00:01:28.61
neelyquinn
Yeah. And I mean, people might be curious, like you were working on your kind of longer term project up at Wolf Point for a while, at least. And then I know now that you’ve switched, then you switched away from that, did a different route. And then now you’re on a different route. Do you want to just say a couple of words about like why you decided not to work on your megaproj?

00:01:51.65
Matt
Yeah. um Well, I’ve put a couple, fair few seasons in at this point on this route. It’s called Okami. And i I didn’t really know how, I had no idea how it would go going into it in the spring because it’s sort of rehabbing my finger over the winter. And so i I tried to just be optimistic about it and I actually got pretty close.

00:02:14.09
Matt
Again, like match my high points and, you know, match my low points and things like that. Um, but it was, it it was really hot spring here and it just, I started running into some skin trouble and basically it just stopped being fun.

00:02:27.29
Matt
Um, and I just, I felt like I was like, it felt like I was grinding in a way that I wasn’t enjoying.

00:02:27.43
neelyquinn
Hmm.

00:02:34.75
Matt
And, um, you know, because I couldn’t climb for most of the winter, I kind of wanted to win and there are other routes. I still like plenty of other routes for me to try there. And so I switched it up and I did a this 14A called the King thing um in the spring. And then, and that was like really fun. It came together relatively, like pretty quick for me for that kind of grade. And it just like, it was really fun to climb on something else. And so then over the summer, I kind of switched it up, went to, I climbed to the Strawberry Roan, there’s another cliff in Lander, did another 14A up there and kind of.

00:03:09.09
Matt
called Hellbound and was again just like enjoying climbing on different routes in different places and sort of not being in the routine of trying Okami and it’s sort of feeling like deja vu all over again. um So but I do really want to do that route. So I went back this fall with the intention of trying it and it’s much like the spring it’s just kind of been a hot year and so i I tried it. I felt OK on it pretty quickly. um But the fall season is harder out there due to it’s like a so the sunshade situation. like It’s just a really short.

00:03:52.24
Matt
window and I just was like, I just don’t, I’m going to, I’m going to not go down this rabbit hole this fall, save it for the spring. Um, and so my plan is definitely to like be ready to try to send that route in the spring. But through the fall, I just, again, I was just like, I’ve been having a lot of fun climbing on other routes that are still, you know, quite challenging for me. And so I just was like, I’m going to do that. And there’s a route called easy prey. That’s like hard.

00:04:20.28
Matt
13 D that I had tried years ago and it done okay on, but it like in like 2018 or something. Um, and then it got, we had like a period of seeping and it got wet and I just kind of got sucked into trying other harder routes and i so I kind of skipped over it. And so it’s been fun to circle back and work on that one again. Um, and yeah, having done it, but it’s feels like it’s hopefully coming together.

00:04:45.13
neelyquinn
Nice. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you’ve had quite a bit of success. Like you talking about doing these 14 days rather quickly. That is pretty quick for you compared to other years, right?

00:04:57.72
Matt
Yeah, I think, I mean, they’re, to be fair, they’re probably, both of them are probably not like the hardest of the grade out there. um So I think that does color it a little bit, but yeah, they’re hard roots and I was psyched to do them. And I think essentially what I feel like I’m really taking away from this kind of six months, we’ll call it, of my climbing is that it’s like I, we’ve talked to a bunch on the show before about like, you’ve asked me directly like, how do you stay motivated? And I’m sort of, I’ve always kind of been like,

00:05:28.76
Matt
It’s kind of a silly question to me because I don’t struggle with that at all. right um i just like want i If I want to do the route, I’m psyched and I try hard and I want to do it. But I think that that’s a double-edged sword. like i I think that’s gotten me up a lot of rock climbs, but I think it’s also led to, like i have the I have a tendency to sort of like, I’ll just put my head down and keep going, even when it’s maybe not as productive or not as fun. And it just sort of,

00:05:56.85
Matt
i that I felt that more acutely um in this period. And so rather than sort of doubling down and being like, I sort of looked and I was like, I might send, but if I don’t, I’m going to be, and it comes around to next spring and it’s time to try again. And I still haven’t done any roots. ah I’m going to be pretty bummed and not motivated to try. And since the spring is kind of the better season. So especially if we fall, I was sort of like, I should just listen to,

00:06:27.77
Matt
these these sort of emotions and these feelings here, so that and kind of flip the script so I don’t end up being like, well, here we go, waited all year for June again, and I really do want to do this route, but I’m kind of tired of trying it. So, yeah.

00:06:44.81
neelyquinn
Yeah, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. So like about when to know when to call it and when to know like if you’re giving up for the wrong reasons or keep keeping on going for the wrong reasons. And so it’s just a really interesting topic that I thought people might want to hear from you about.

00:07:03.42
neelyquinn
so So yeah, I mean, good luck on it next spring.

00:07:07.67
Matt
Thanks.

00:07:10.33
neelyquinn
But I’m actually really happy for you that you kind of changed course and had a lot of fun because we all need that sometimes.

00:07:18.17
Matt
Totally. And I think, you know, a lot of times what makes these decisions hard is they’re our emotions are like tied up in them where we like, I really do want to do this route. Look at me.

00:07:28.77
Matt
It’s the thing I’ve tried most in my rock climbing at this point. And so like I’m going to get up it at some point. like That’s my full intention.

00:07:34.34
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:07:36.35
Matt
And so it it can make moving on even temporarily feel really hard. But like sort of hindsight being 20-20, sometimes like ah immediately, I just was having so much more fun going to the cliff when I was climbing on other things, both in this in the spring and then this fall.

00:07:52.80
neelyquinn
Yeah, exactly.

00:07:55.47
Matt
ah like This fall, especially, I sort of like

00:07:55.67
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:07:58.11
Matt
i I put two, I guess I tried to, okay, me on my first two days out the first day, like went terribly. It was it was hot. I just like, didn’t feel very good. I think in general. Um, and so I kind of was like, Oh, whatever day one and then day two, I actually did really well. And I like climb back up to my high point, uh, or not quite my high point, but high up on the route and did a really good low point and was sort of like, okay, we’re, but we’re back in it. And I.

00:08:25.19
Matt
in going out for my third day of the sort of fall season at the cliff, I was just like, I don’t really want to be here. Like I was, I was sort of dreading going and I was like, wait, I like moved to lander for this cliff.

00:08:39.22
Matt
It’s like my favorite place to go rock climbing. I always want to go climbing out there. Why am I feeling this way? And so I think that’s, that’s sort of like when it, when it flipped for me. So and exactly.

00:08:49.94
neelyquinn
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. When you know, you know.

00:08:55.28
neelyquinn
um Well, I want to make sure that we get to everything that we wanted to get to today. So the purpose of this interview or discussion is strength training, because as a training outlet and training beta, we haven’t really talked about these kinds of fundamentals in a long time.

00:09:17.84
neelyquinn
And I just wanted to you know help educate people on strength training for rock climbing, because I think a lot of people don’t know what they’re doing, have questions about it, are intimidated by it, don’t know like how much to do, how to put it in their schedule.

00:09:36.06
neelyquinn
Should I do it before climbing or after climbing or during climbing? or you know like all There’s so many questions.

00:09:39.88
Matt
Right.

00:09:42.41
neelyquinn
um And so I just wanted to do fundamentals. so um You put together an outline. You’re always so organized. So whoever’s listening to this, like you can expect this to be a very organized, structured conversation. um So thanks for that. And I’m just going to let you start it off. Like, where do you want to begin with this? And why is it important to you?

00:10:04.53
Matt
Well, so when you asked me to to kind of like to do this episode, I think, and I was sort of reflecting on um how I wanted to approach it.

00:10:17.05
Matt
I think the the first sort of question and that popped into my head that I deal with all the time when I, you know, from getting emails and talking to people I coach is sort of like, well, why strength train even in the first place?

00:10:31.86
Matt
um I think that like,

00:10:35.68
Matt
Essentially, the people who are already strength training and strength training effectively have a clear idea of what that is. But they’re not. but it’s And that’s great. But it’s really the person who hasn’t started yet who needs to be clear about that.

00:10:49.77
Matt
And I don’t i don’t always see that as ah something that everyone’s on the same page about. So that seemed like the obvious place to start. um And so, yeah, maybe we’ll just kind of jump in from there.

00:11:00.14
Matt
It’s like, all right, if we’re talking about strength training fundamentals, why are we going to do it in the first place?

00:11:05.33
neelyquinn
Yeah, why why are we going to do it in the first place?

00:11:05.33
Matt
um Yeah. So I think when I think about strength training, I think of of it as the underlying goal here is to just be a stronger, more durable human being athlete. And essentially, strength training is our best form of injury prevention. like I enjoy lifting weights, but I definitely enjoy climbing a lot more. um But I think of.

00:11:37.60
Matt
sort of doing my strength training as a, even though it might, you know, it takes time and in theory, I guess I could be climbing during that. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but. um It’s sort of like paying it forward to myself of like, oh, I’m going to get to climb more later because I’m going to stay healthy.

00:11:58.24
Matt
Um, and so if we, we, we just sort of zoom out a little bit, like strength training is done at, at, if you look at any other sport period at the high level, at a high level athletes strength train that with their, like no exceptions here. Um, and it doesn’t have to look anything like the sport in question to be effective. Um, but it’s done again with.

00:12:25.13
Matt
this sort of dual goal in mind of both boosting performance, but even more so of preventing injury. You know, the example I kind of always give when I’m making this case to clients is like, if you if you take like a professional soccer player, right? They’re literally paid millions of dollars, like millions and millions of dollars and to play for these clubs. And you really like, they’re protecting their investment. Because if you get hurt,

00:12:50.98
Matt
and you’re the soccer player, you still get paid, but you can’t go play for the team. And so um so that’s sort of, that’s like the the number one side of it here is it’s more to me about injury prevention than it is about sort of improving performance.

00:12:57.45
neelyquinn
Thank you.

00:13:07.45
neelyquinn
And why, like we we say this a lot that it’s for injury prevention, but why and how does it prevent injuries?

00:13:16.07
Matt
um Well, I think if we dig really into sports science on this, it’s not totally known why, like the the exact mechanism isn’t totally understood, but that sort of doesn’t matter for for us.

00:13:30.99
Matt
right like We just know it works. Um, and so it’s sort of like the ah black box kind of analogy here. It’s like, well, if the input gets us the output that we’re, that we want, does it really matter if we know exactly what’s going on in the, in the black box, but for it to be effective, I think that the underlying thing to keep in mind here is that. Strength training is preventative as long as what you’re doing in the weight room exposes our muscles and connective tissues to forces that are even just slightly higher than we experience in our sport.

00:14:00.90
neelyquinn
and Okay, can you can you ah explain that a little bit more? What does that look like?

00:14:06.20
Matt
So OK, let’s use the deadlift as an example, because I think this is something we’re going to keep coming back to, because it’s it’s just a common one that’s talked about, and it often talks about contentiously in the climbing space. But yeah, where’re it’s a hinge movement.

00:14:22.71
Matt
We, you know, it uses our posterior chain. So our hamstrings, our glutes, our lower back, things like that. And you can produce a lot of force deadlifting. Like people can, you know, the world record for the devil is like 1300 pounds or something. Um, ridiculous. But so obviously in climbing, we’re not going to put anywhere near that level of force through our lower pack.

00:14:45.27
Matt
But as long if we have the capacity to put more than our support, we’ve built the capacity to put more force through our low back, our hamstrings, our boots, than the support exposes us to, then we have margin. That when a move does require us to put a lot of force through one of these areas, we’re not sort of slamming into the upper level limits of our current capacity, where we expose ourself to a higher risk of injury.

00:15:12.06
neelyquinn
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s actually the I’ve never really thought about it that much, but that that makes a lot of sense.

00:15:20.13
Matt
Yeah, and, and it’s just, it’s sort of, I think if we keep that in mind for the rest of this conversation, or if if anybody takes nothing else away from that, ah from this episode, I think that’s a good starting point.

00:15:31.73
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:15:31.79
Matt
um so

00:15:34.16
neelyquinn
Well, and then then the next thing you have on your outline is like that it’s safe to strength train because it’s not like we’re training these max limits of our strength by going and doing crazy things on the moonboard or something. We’re doing it in like a very controlled way that is going to be less injurious.

00:15:54.81
Matt
Yeah, like every time I pull onto a hard boulder or a hard route, there’s a lot of uncertainty in how it’s going to go. but you know like My foot might slip. I might not catch a hold.

00:16:05.84
Matt
right like it’s Climbing movement’s really technical in that way. A deadlift’s really simple. like Once you know how to do that movement, like it’s pretty like pretty much the same every time.

00:16:19.93
Matt
right And so that that predictability, it’s a is there’s safety in that.

00:16:20.00
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:16:24.45
Matt
um And so we can use higher loads because it’s not something unexpected. It’s not going to happen. There’s a much lower chance of that.

00:16:33.48
neelyquinn
Yeah. Um, ah so what else do you want to say about why we strength train before I move on?

00:16:42.07
Matt
Well, so I think the the last thing I want to add there is that there is that other side of like, we’re I’m kind of just hammered on like strength training is injury prevention. But the other side of it is like, We’re doing it because we want to get better at climbing.

00:16:54.79
Matt
And so what I think is important to take away here is that strength training should be thought of as having a potentiating effect, not just a one-to-one impact on climbing performance.

00:17:05.86
neelyquinn
What do you mean by that?

00:17:07.13
Matt
So what we mean by that is, like if we again, let’s circle back to our deadlift example here. People are always like, how is deadlifting going to make me climb stronger? like send this folder. And you’re like, well, if you’re really sort of weak or untrained, it might help. Like you might see some direct improvements there. But if you’re already pretty strong, maybe it won’t. But what it will do is give you, you’re going to stay healthy, as we said, and you’re going to have the capacity to produce more force.

00:17:40.33
Matt
have a higher upper limit, right like we just talked about, where you’re not then hitting into that ceiling. And so that that’s going to let you handle more climbing and more moves, more harder moves. right And those the ability to do those things is then going to help you improve.

00:17:56.11
neelyquinn
Yeah. OK, I have a question before we begin, ah really about the deadlift, because I think when people think of climbing and then they think of the deadlift, it’s kind of like, how do these two things even relate with each other? Like, why would you even deadlift for climbing? How do how do they relate?

00:18:17.02
Matt
um but we’re getting The deadlift is just a hinge movement pattern exercise. right um and so it’s ah It’s a hip hinge and it’s producing it lets us produce quite a bit of force by using our posterior chain and doing so through our hips. um so even yeah like Most climbing moves look nothing like that. um and That’s okay because what we do do in steep terrain is utilize our posterior chain quite a bit to keep our hips into the wall and not sort of sag away to maintain tension and transfer weight effectively through our feet.

00:18:56.81
neelyquinn
Actually, I just finally pictured it. So like when we’re climbing, we’re, we’re squeezing in, I don’t know what that’s called, ah eccentric or something.

00:19:07.58
neelyquinn
And then when we’re deadlifting, we’re pulling up. But when we put the bar down, we’re actually sort of squeezing. And so it does like, I see what you’re saying, but also it does actually mimic climbing in that way on the way down.

00:19:22.67
Matt
Yeah, sure, I guess. um I think, though, that the the the bigger point, though, right is that the movement itself doesn’t have to do anything.

00:19:36.15
Matt
or doesn’t have to look anything like climbing because it’s the it’s letting us load this movement pattern into these muscles really effectively and efficiently. And so if we can build the strength and the capacity in this movement pattern and in these muscles, then we we can apply it then through our skill and our sport.

00:19:57.58
Matt
even though it doesn’t look the same. you know i think I think using other sports is a good example here.

00:20:00.07
neelyquinn
and Okay.

00:20:04.52
Matt
What I like to use a lot as an example is badminton. The Olympics were over the summer. Badminton players definitely train hinge movement patterns.

00:20:17.19
Matt
But I don’t think any of us think of badminton as this like super physical sport that you need to be able to deadlift really heavy for.

00:20:26.08
neelyquinn
Right.

00:20:26.22
Matt
but it does help. like it But certainly being generally athletic and you know a higher level athlete to compete at the highest level in badminton, you need to be really like you need to have that capacity. So yeah, it looks nothing like deadlifting, but it’s still a tool that’s utilized.

00:20:46.02
neelyquinn
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that makes sense because they are hinging constantly, like going up and down and up and down. And and so like being able to be way stronger than that by deadlifting seems useful.

00:20:53.74
Matt
and

00:20:59.47
Matt
right And I think there’s a, what you just hinted at is, I think a real is sort of the underlying point here. It doesn’t matter what activity or sport we’re doing. It can just be daily life. We’re hinging all the time. Like it’s a fundamental human movement. Like you bend over to tie your shoes, you bend over, you know, pick up a quarter. I don’t know. Like this, you, you hip hinge a million times in the day. Right. And so yeah, it’s, if we’re going to move our bodies that way, because we’re all humans, then yeah, it’s, it’s good to be stronger and more capable.

00:21:31.01
neelyquinn
Yeah, I think it’s hard for me. like i know I know I’m sort of we’re taking us off track here, but ah because I’ve had such a hard time training myself this past year, or even two, and I just started again like last week, and I’m like,

00:21:48.06
neelyquinn
Hold on. Why am I doing this particular exercise? What is the point of this? How is this this like overhead press where I’m I can’t remember what it’s called, but you’re like coming in and kind going out and then pressing above your head. I’m like, how is this helping me with rock climbing? And so that’s I think part of my my lack of motivation is I am clearly obtuse and I need.

00:22:14.12
neelyquinn
Needed to be like slapped in the face with it or something.

00:22:14.19
Matt
Well, I don’t think you’re up to this. But I think that’s a great example, if it’s just like like that kind of thinking. is often what prevents people from committing to a strength training program, right?

00:22:25.10
neelyquinn
Exactly. Yeah.

00:22:26.87
Matt
But if we can think of it as having this, like you’ve had a, it’s no secret to anyone who listens to this show that you’ve had a history of shoulder injuries, right?

00:22:34.91
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:22:34.94
Matt
And so if you have, if you have stronger, if you can make your shoulders stronger and more durable, so you don’t have to have another shoulder injury or have another shoulder surgery, that’s going to have a huge impact on your climbing because you’re going to not have to go through a another round of surgery and rehab and building that back up.

00:22:50.90
Matt
Um, and so that’s, that’s the injury prevention side of it, but it’s also, there’s that potentiating effect, right?

00:22:51.13
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:22:57.43
Matt
Of not just, Oh, I’ll be able to climb more cause I’m not hurt and having surgery, but it’s also, Oh, I’ll be able to do these, you know, quote, shoulder removes.

00:23:10.11
Matt
with more confidence because I know that I’ve like, oh, i yeah, I have strong shoulders, my shoulders, i I’ve built capacity there. And so that it’s, you know, it’s not just like you see a gas stone outside of your, uh, you know, the, your like initial box and you’re like, Oh, yep, not going to that.

00:23:28.31
Matt
I don’t want to hurt myself.

00:23:28.42
neelyquinn
Mm-hmm.

00:23:29.24
Matt
Right. Then you’re just, it’s like, Oh, no, no, no, that, that would be fine.

00:23:29.82
neelyquinn
Mm-hmm.

00:23:32.41
Matt
Like that’s what it, but that’s what it can look like in, in sort of practice.

00:23:36.53
neelyquinn
Yeah, you’re kind of building confidence in your body too.

00:23:38.33
Matt
Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:40.58
neelyquinn
OK, I’ll let you proceed now. Now that the questions are out of the way.

00:23:43.65
Matt
yeah Okay.

00:23:48.28
Matt
um Okay, so hopefully we’ve made a reasonable case for like why you had strength train and so I think that the next Sort of categories here is I just are two just considerations I want people to keep in mind as we as we’re kind of zooming in right and so it’s like okay we know why we’re gonna do this now these are like overarching ideas that we should keep in mind and ah in the context of strength training for climbing and so

00:23:55.63
neelyquinn
I guess so.

00:24:18.53
Matt
And I guess strength training in general. But the first one is that we we should really value consistency over intensity.

00:24:28.35
neelyquinn
Okay. And before you go on, it’s like you want to, even if you’re not progressing your weight or making it like superhero records, you just want to do it on some level regularly.

00:24:40.08
Matt
Yeah. Pretty much. So yeah, what I wrote down here is if you’re starting off strange training, don’t think about don’t think what you need to do right away needs to be perfect to be effective.

00:24:42.38
neelyquinn
Okay.

00:24:51.08
Matt
right And we should really think about this as learning new skills and creating and creating a habit that will serve you for many training cycles to come.

00:25:02.93
neelyquinn
Mm hmm.

00:25:02.93
Matt
So it’s sort of like, hey, maybe hinge strength isn’t really limiting you when you’re climbing right now. But if you can learn how to hinge effectively now, then you have that tool in your toolbox for later.

00:25:20.02
Matt
And so I think people tend to get caught up here in, hey, it’s it has to feel hard. It has to look hard. It has to to to be doing anything, right? um That’s focusing on on sort of intensity. And doing something, even if it’s pretty minimal, doing it regularly and making sure to overload it over time, like in the long run, is always going to be more effective than doing nothing or sort of always waiting to do a really big or really hard session when it’s like, you know, I’m rested, I’m recovered, I can go hit it super hard right now.

00:25:55.30
neelyquinn
Right. Like every two weeks, you’re like, okay, now I can go do a big strength training for session.

00:25:59.71
Matt
Yeah, exactly.

00:25:59.98
neelyquinn
And whereas you need to be doing something much more often than that.

00:26:04.54
Matt
Yeah, exactly. um And hopefully, people take that as just like, hey, it just do what fits.

00:26:07.27
neelyquinn
and Okay.

00:26:13.07
Matt
right And this is kind of a nice segue into our second consideration here, which is that it we won to we’re going to spend the rest of this podcast talking about the like nuts and bolts of sort of strength training.

00:26:25.56
Matt
we do This is a climbing training podcast. when we’re it This is supplemental training. So we want to incorporate strength training into our climbing. It doesn’t mean we need to become a power lifter. And you know this is now the the biggest thing. like Climbing regularly should still make up the bulk of your training. And so um yeah, you can have if you have a small session, and that’s what fits, and you can do it consistently and really progress it over time, that’s you’re keeping it supplemental.

00:26:58.76
Matt
You’re prioritizing consistency. That’s going to be better than sort of like, Hey, I only have time to do this huge two hour crazy workout once every two weeks. So I got to do it. Then it’s like, that’s the only time I can fit in. And it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be better to just get, you know, do a couple, like do 15 to 30 minutes of strength training after your climbing session or something and do that regularly. That’s going to work better.

00:27:24.68
neelyquinn
yeah Yeah, that makes sense. So i I think people probably want guidelines like, OK, so how much do I train?

00:27:35.15
neelyquinn
how When do I do it?

00:27:35.20
Matt
Right. So I think two sort of concepts or or like checks that I put on myself when I’m writing programs for athletes, I coach it and, and trying to keep our supplemental training supplemental are to maintain like an 80 20 split where the 80% is climbing movement. So the easy, if you wonder, and the 20% is your supplemental training.

00:28:05.94
Matt
And so that’s of like your total time that you devote to doing something physical in the name of improving and climbing. And if you’re wondering what falls into each category, it’s if it’s if you have your climbing shoes on and you’re doing climbing moves, that’s in the 80%.

00:28:11.68
neelyquinn
So that’s like, oh, god. Yeah.

00:28:22.62
Matt
If you don’t have your climbing shoes on, you’re not then it is in the 20%.

00:28:27.57
neelyquinn
What if you wear your climbing shoes while you’re hangboarding?

00:28:32.33
Matt
You’re not doing climbing moves, so 20%.

00:28:33.53
neelyquinn
OK.

00:28:36.00
Matt
Also that sound hangboarding is heinous enough already. You don’t need to have your climbing shoes on.

00:28:39.48
neelyquinn
I have seen people doing it all the time.

00:28:44.65
neelyquinn
Okay. ah Sorry.

00:28:45.38
Matt
Get those, get those things off. yeah

00:28:47.39
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:28:50.11
neelyquinn
I mean, okay. 80-20, that’s fine. But if you really break that down, that’s like, okay, if you have four, sorry, five days in a ah week because that’s 100% divided by 20, you know what I’m saying.

00:29:05.76
Matt
Yeah.

00:29:05.82
neelyquinn
Then 80% would be four of those five days and the 20% would be one of those five days. And I know that it doesn’t work like that, but I really want people to understand like, what does this actually mean?

00:29:21.07
neelyquinn
Because 80-20 doesn’t really mean anything.

00:29:24.17
Matt
I mean, I think a good exercise here would be to like time your like you’re training for a week. like to start a stopwatch and and add it up. And so it can just be like, hey, total time here. And it’s like, I spend you know x amount of time completely training or climbing. right And I want to, you should look at that and be like, OK, is 80% of that with my climbing shoes on, doing climbing moves?

00:29:56.60
Matt
right Or, or am I like 5050 where I’m Oh, I’m doing some climbing, but I spend a ton of time in the waiting room or a ton of time on the hangboard or a ton of time camp singer, you know.

00:30:06.60
neelyquinn
Well, that’s really funny because, you know, if I go into the gym and I do eight routes and they each to take me three minutes, then I’m actually only climbing for 20 minutes.

00:30:18.38
Matt
Well, I wouldn’t just like add up the like actual time you’re on the wall, just like the total like time you’re in the gym versus time you’re in the weight room.

00:30:18.47
neelyquinn
And then.

00:30:24.79
neelyquinn
Oh, wow. OK, got it.

00:30:26.08
Matt
Yeah, yeah.

00:30:27.13
neelyquinn
OK, I’m sorry.

00:30:27.20
Matt
Yeah, you don’t need to…

00:30:28.25
neelyquinn
I’m being really particular about this because I feel like there are plenty of podcasts out there who they’re like, just do these general things.

00:30:30.01
Matt
Yeah.

00:30:35.52
neelyquinn
And people are like, I don’t know what to take from that. So I really want to drill down this.

00:30:39.00
Matt
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:40.90
neelyquinn
So.

00:30:40.89
Matt
Yeah. And, and obviously like 80, 20 are round numbers here. Like you don’t, if you’re at like 79, 21, it is not going, it’s not a massive problem.

00:30:52.71
Matt
Right.

00:30:52.81
neelyquinn
Mm hmm.

00:30:53.46
Matt
Um, just, you just want to ah like, but I see people and work with people all the time who are like 60, 40 in the other direction or something.

00:31:02.28
neelyquinn
Yeah, right, right.

00:31:02.36
Matt
And you’re like, right. Like that’s something you want to like, look at, look at the, see the bigger picture here from the, from the recommendation.

00:31:09.83
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:31:09.83
Matt
right And just if you’re like way out of whack, just know that while strength training and any anything that you’re making a case for here as being important is, is sure, it’s important.

00:31:23.20
Matt
But it’s not if your goal is actually to improve at climbing, then it’s less important than doing the actual climbing.

00:31:31.28
neelyquinn
Okay. And this is another question for people who are like, you know, they’ve been climbing for ah a year or two and they’re like, should I start training as this for everybody?

00:31:47.16
Matt
Yeah, I think so. Um, it, uh, again, it doesn’t need to be a massive time commitment, right? Or even energy commitment. It’s just this, it, but it’s something where it’s like, you know, yeah, you’ve only been climbing for two years, maybe let’s say, right. And your example, but it is, you have a, huge you’re, you’re a human being with a human body. Uh, it all works the same. So like I said, even if you’re just learning how to do like,

00:32:17.11
Matt
how to be in the weight room and do so effectively. And that’s not, you know if you’re brand new to climbing, your general strength is probably not going to be here major limiter right away. right like You have more to gain from like learning how to move on the wall. like I remember vividly the the first time somebody showed me that turning your hip into the wall could let you reach higher. And I went from V0 to V2.

00:32:43.63
Matt
in

00:32:44.07
neelyquinn
Right.

00:32:45.19
Matt
approximately four seconds, right?

00:32:45.34
neelyquinn
Me too. Exact same thing.

00:32:46.63
Matt
And you’re like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

00:32:47.14
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:32:48.43
Matt
Right. But like those, those kinds of, um, that kind of skill learning, right? Is going to have a bigger impact, but down the line, like you’re gonna want, you’re gonna want to be stronger and strange training takes time.

00:33:01.85
Matt
So you might as well get, might as well get started and stay healthy.

00:33:04.98
neelyquinn
Yeah. Right. Okay.

00:33:08.53
Matt
Yeah.

00:33:10.16
neelyquinn
Cool. I interrupted you, you were going to talk about, um, cause I’m looking at your outline here. You wanted to talk about rep counts for these compound movements.

00:33:20.63
Matt
Yeah. So just sort of again is like, uh, you, you ask for like guidelines to help people keep it supplemental. Cause that’s, that’s often easier to say than it is to actually do.

00:33:30.78
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:33:30.79
Matt
And I think sticking to low rep counts for big compound movements. So we’ll get into what, you know, compound movements just being like multi-joint full body kind of movements.

00:33:41.03
Matt
So, you know, your depth, your squats, your, your bench press, your overhead press, your bent over rows, things like that. Um, you want to. Like keep it to 10 to 15 max total reps of working sets. You know, you know, in the workout. So it’s like, if I’m going to go in and deadlift um’m I’m counting up. Like if I’m going to do three sets of three, right. I’ll do a couple of warmups, you know, sets of later weight. Those, those don’t need to count. But then once I’m loading the bar up to go heavy at my sort of working weight.

00:34:15.33
Matt
I’m going three by three, right? That, that’d be nine total reps, right?

00:34:19.53
neelyquinn
Mm hmm.

00:34:20.52
Matt
That’s, that’s pointing, right?

00:34:22.19
neelyquinn
Right.

00:34:22.49
Matt
And yeah it could be three by four or it could be three by five or something, but you know, you, you don’t want to be, it just gets really fatiguing.

00:34:22.69
neelyquinn
We’re like a five. Yeah.

00:34:29.80
Matt
If you. are doing quite a bit more. And like if you look at how power lifters train, because it’s her sport, yeah, they’re going to do quite a bit more volume and than that a lot of the time. But we just because we’re just looking for the strength gain here, and and it’s you know injury preventative ah preventative measures as a result, um we just don’t need to get carried away with like doing that much.

00:34:52.97
Matt
like A little bit goes a long way.

00:34:53.27
neelyquinn
Well, and then not to mention that once you start getting into the higher reps, you start getting into hypertrophy, hypertrophy.

00:34:59.88
Matt
Exactly.

00:35:00.70
neelyquinn
So you start building muscle bulk instead of ah muscle fiber density. And so that’s when you start to see people getting bigger, which is why like crossfitters can be pretty big.

00:35:14.17
neelyquinn
And, you know, bodybuilders are big because they’re doing lots of reps, right?

00:35:20.02
Matt
Yeah, and it doesn’t happen by accident, right?

00:35:23.01
neelyquinn
Right.

00:35:23.13
Matt
it’ Yeah, exactly.

00:35:23.19
neelyquinn
They’re also eating a shitload of food, but well, no.

00:35:25.58
Matt
Yeah. So like it’s not that if you if you hit 16, again, reps for your ah and your program, you’re suddenly like, your quads are going to triple in size, right?

00:35:36.48
Matt
Yeah.

00:35:36.66
neelyquinn
And we’re talking about like 15 plus reps, I think in hype.

00:35:37.09
Matt
um

00:35:40.05
Matt
Right.

00:35:40.69
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:35:40.84
Matt
And like doing it consistently for a long time with quite a bit of extra calories

00:35:40.93
neelyquinn
So anyway.

00:35:48.60
neelyquinn
Yeah. And maybe some steroids.

00:35:49.09
Matt
like an uncomfortable amount use yeah maybe and maybe some steroids.

00:35:51.16
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:35:53.23
Matt
Yeah, you’ll get huge, but um that’s not what we’re trying to do.

00:35:53.35
neelyquinn
Wait.

00:35:56.52
Matt
So um I do think it’s important to say here that like that rep count, there is an important exception here is if you’re learning new lifts and movements, right?

00:35:57.22
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:36:07.22
Matt
Like if we think about it sort of just common sense wise, if you’re only doing three sets of three of your deadlift, right? That’s only nine reps.

00:36:18.39
Matt
And if you’ve never deadlifted before, that’s not that many times to like practice what it’s supposed to feel like. So when I’m introducing new movements to athletes, especially who are brand new to the weight room, I’ll often use rep counts that are fall outside that window just to give them more practice opportunities to kind of groove what it’s supposed to look like.

00:36:40.26
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:36:40.40
Matt
And because they’re also probably going, slightly lighter initially right because we have to learn the movement before we can load it optimally. That’s OK. And once we’re sort of like, hey, we’re happy with how we’re doing it, we’re happy um you know with form and everything, and and and the athlete feels comfortable with the movement, right then we can sort of reduce the rep ranges again and start kind of trying to go heavier.

00:37:04.92
neelyquinn
Yeah. Okay, cool. Got it.

00:37:09.72
Matt
Okay. So if we keep our trajectory going here of zooming in a bit, now we got some tips for just getting started. Because I think this is a hard this is a hard part for a lot of people. Like, okay, you’re telling me this is important. I go to the climbing gym. I see that there’s this weight room over there around the second floor or whatever. But I’m like pretty comfortable over here in the bouldering area and I don’t know what to do over there. Like, where do I get started? Right? And so ah I think this is where That’s kind of like the these, these tips are geared towards hopefully addressing some of those stress points and helping people feel a little more empowered and just knowledgeable about like, okay, what, what not only what am I going to do, but why am I going to do it?

00:37:55.29
neelyquinn
Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

00:37:57.28
Matt
Yeah. Okay. First one is thinking movement patterns, not exercises. So i’ve I’ve said a lot of times on the show that you know we want to cover our major human movement patterns.

00:38:10.80
Matt
So a pull, a press, a hip hinge, and a squat. um But yeah.

00:38:17.00
neelyquinn
Hold on a second. Let’s just repeat that. A pull, a press, a hip hinge, and a squat. Is that what you said?

00:38:23.58
Matt
four major yeah Four major human movement patterns.

00:38:26.59
neelyquinn
Okay, so what Matt is saying here is we don’t need to do specific exercises necessarily they just have to fall into each of these categories. If you’re going to do a proper strength workout.

00:38:35.37
Matt
Right. Yeah. Or a strength program, let’s say. Because you don’t have to necessarily do everyone in every workout.

00:38:42.67
neelyquinn
Right leg day arm day I got it.

00:38:42.69
Matt
But we’ll get it. Yeah, exactly. um But I think you know there’s a million exercises out there. like It’s wild, right? And so it can be really overwhelming. You can get bogged down, sort of like, oh, is this a good exercise? Or is this a bad exercise?

00:39:03.47
Matt
um And I ah really love, there’s a, like Dan John is a legendary strength coach and he, the the line he always uses here is that when we’re talking about exercises, we shouldn’t be thinking it’s moral theology. Like it’s not, there’s no fundamentally good or fundamentally evil or bad exercise, right? Like they all have their uses in their places. And so what we need to, what we need to sort of do is we need a better lens for sort of simplifying.

00:39:33.58
Matt
are are to to make choices. Because otherwise, how are you supposed to decide whether you should dumbbell overhead press, kettlebell overhead press, barbell overhead press, bench press, single arm bench press, ah do a pushup, do pushups on rings, do a handstand pushup.

00:39:50.10
Matt
you know like We can keep going, right? Well, they’re all press exercises.

00:39:52.12
neelyquinn
Hmm.

00:39:53.48
Matt
So ah as long as we can look at ah a way to filter through it, it’s like, OK, well, we need a press in our in our program. So if we’re covering them all, then we don’t have any major gaps. And you can look for because we need to keep it to this supplemental 80 20 kind of split, you can use moving patterns, this lens to help you eliminate redundancy. So if you’re like, Hey, in my program, I, I bench press, I overhead press, I do pushups, I do rings, ring dips. Uh, but, and you’re like, well, but I haven’t, I got no hinging.

00:40:31.17
Matt
exercise. Well, great. Let’s eliminate some of the press exercises that you have, you know, several of because you’re now you’re covering that movement pattern in lots of ways.

00:40:43.36
Matt
And you can and eliminate like get rid of that sort of major gap by adding in a hinge exercise.

00:40:49.84
neelyquinn
Mm hmm.

00:40:52.20
Matt
And so when I’m, when I’m doing this with my clients, like in my, you know, if I’m on a initial call with a new athlete and you know, I’ll sort of be like, try to establish their relative comfort level in the weight room and like, and figure out where we’re at. But if, if they’re sort of like, a yeah, I know what I’m doing enough. I’ll be like, okay, let’s write it down. Pull, press, hinge, squat. Okay. And you’re like, all right, let’s pick one for each. And that’s, and we’ll kind of start at least start there. It’s like, Hey, we might not need more than one.

00:41:21.42
Matt
of each depending on, you know, other considerations. But ah we know we have one of each and we’re not sort of going like just pull, pull, pull or just press, press, press.

00:41:32.38
neelyquinn
Right, yeah. Is that to say that you shouldn’t ever do more than one of each category?

00:41:39.59
Matt
No. um I think it’s OK to do. There are cases where um So the pressing is a good example here, where there’s like, if we look at an overhead press and a bench press, well, one’s a horizontal press and one’s a vertical press. And both of those have lots of lots of value for climbers.

00:41:58.24
neelyquinn
Okay. Or for instance, when I have trained in the past, I’ve done like weighted pull ups and bent over rows, so but you wouldn’t necessarily want to do like a weighted pull up and then a lat pull down.

00:41:59.03
Matt
what

00:42:05.09
Matt
Right. same Same idea. A row would be a horizontal pull and a pull-up would be a pull in the vertical plane. And like yeah, there’s certainly value in both of those.

00:42:19.82
Matt
That’d be any, that, I mean, you you can sort of make a case for for anything, like there’s an athlete, I don’t want to say like, no, definitely not, because there’s there’s somebody out there who’s like, has a very good reason for why they’re doing both of those things, right?

00:42:34.15
neelyquinn
Okay, yeah.

00:42:34.90
Matt
um But what we’d would we’d certainly look at there is like, if that person is, yeah, and I’m all in, weighted pull ups and a lat pull down, it’s like, well, yeah, that’s that’s great, but do you have time in the rest of your program to also so while keeping your shrink training supplemental fit in a squat or a hinge movement or a press.

00:42:56.04
Matt
Or are you sort of like, no, no, no, I only do these pull patterns. They’re super important. And I don’t have time for any pressing would be an example.

00:43:03.87
neelyquinn
Okay.

00:43:05.00
Matt
And then you’d be like, OK, well, clearly not. If if the answer is no, then we’d be like, well, why don’t we eliminate one of these vertical pull movements to fit in some sort of press?

00:43:15.87
neelyquinn
Yeah. And the reason that we want to follow these four basic movement patterns is because it, it like covers all of our bases.

00:43:25.92
Matt
Right. Exactly. Because that’s how we move as human beings.

00:43:30.07
neelyquinn
Right.

00:43:30.16
Matt
right yeah

00:43:32.56
neelyquinn
Okay, great. What’s next?

00:43:35.82
Matt
um Okay. So next is that we actually have to learn how to do these lists. and So if you’re brand new to lifting, um that’s that can be pretty intimidating. right um and Sorry.

00:43:51.79
Matt
we got there’s absolute chaos going on. We’re going to have to edit that. Hey, Hobbs, go way down. Go.

00:44:02.86
Matt
Sorry.

00:44:04.24
neelyquinn
That’s right.

00:44:04.32
Matt
we got We got llamas going nuts in the field, making the dogs go nuts.

00:44:06.86
neelyquinn
I was going to make a joke and say is there a llama fiasco happening?

00:44:12.14
Matt
Literally, they’re chasing each other and going ballistic. um Sorry.

00:44:17.55
neelyquinn
That’s awesome.

00:44:21.13
Matt
OK. so The next sort of tip for getting started here is that we have to actually learn these movements, and that can be a pretty intimidating thing like to go do. Luckily, within these movement patterns, we can use regressions and then progressions of of sort of movements to help us learn how to do them effectively. So I think it’s really important to say, like nobody was born knowing how to lift weights.

00:44:51.36
Matt
right Like even the world record holder in the deadlift had to do his first deadlift. And so we need to learn how to do these movements before we can even think about loading them like optimally.

00:45:07.71
neelyquinn
Yeah, and I mean for the deadlift in general and squats, like i I could have watched videos and done those, but like it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as well as me actually having a trainer teach them to me over and over and over.

00:45:25.75
neelyquinn
And so like when I think about people doing these lifts without any to like any hands-on

00:45:25.90
Matt
Right.

00:45:33.77
neelyquinn
tutorials, like it kind of freaks me out because I would have been messing up my knees and my like all kinds of my back, all kinds of stuff.

00:45:37.39
Matt
Well. Only if you had, uh, gone too heavy, too quickly.

00:45:49.96
neelyquinn
maybe, but I mean, if you don’t know the form, like you can, if you’re arching your back, or if your knees are too far forward, or whatever it is, like, I just recommend, all I’m saying is, I would love to see more people hire a trainer who knows what they’re doing, even just one time, just this, and we had my mother-in-law do that.

00:46:13.13
neelyquinn
We were like, please go talk to somebody who knows what they’re talking about.

00:46:14.06
Matt
right I mean I will never make sit here and say that in-person instruction when you’re learning something is a bad idea But I do think it’s really important to say that proper form in Any movement has more to do with optimizing force production than it does minimizing injury So

00:46:22.50
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:46:35.62
neelyquinn
What?

00:46:38.41
Matt
something like, let’s use the deadlift as an example here. Because this is everyone, we’ve people have been told forever that lifting something heavy with a rounded back is going to hurt your back.

00:46:51.12
Matt
right like We have to lift with a neutral spine. The reason you lift with a neutral spine and a deadlift is because if you can if you learn how to do that, it will let you lift more weight in the long run.

00:47:03.46
neelyquinn
Mm.

00:47:04.19
Matt
There’s like better biomechanics there. However, there are, you could also Google the exercise a Jefferson girl, which basically looks like you, the deadlifting with the worst quote unquote air quotes here form imaginable, where you intentionally try to round your spine forward at each segment under load. And you can use it as a hamstring mobility exercise, spinal mobility exercise. You obviously aren’t going to.

00:47:35.92
Matt
ah Jefferson curl, the same weight as you would your strength sets for your deadlift. But that doesn’t mean that putting your spine under load while it’s curved is dangerous.

00:47:49.48
neelyquinn
Okay.

00:47:50.29
Matt
Yeah. Does that make sense?

00:47:51.69
neelyquinn
Yeah, it makes sense.

00:47:51.79
Matt
Because I think that’s a really important point. um

00:47:57.34
Matt
and And I think, yeah, and and the reason I think it’s so important is because people get caught up in the idea of like, well, if I can’t get this in-person instruction, because it’s it’s not available to me, let’s just say, well, then I shouldn’t deadlift because I might hurt my back.

00:47:57.53
neelyquinn
I think so too. ah

00:48:12.97
Matt
It’s like, well, deadlift is pretty simply just hinging at the hip and standing back straight up. It’s pretty simple movement, right?

00:48:20.14
neelyquinn
It’s kind of like saying, don’t ever pick up a heavy box.

00:48:24.97
Matt
Exactly.

00:48:25.12
neelyquinn
Don’t ever do that yet.

00:48:25.37
Matt
So that’s the example I was just going to use.

00:48:27.42
neelyquinn
and

00:48:27.45
Matt
I’ll have clients who are like, no, no, no, I’m pretty nervous about deadlifting. And they they’ll go in and they’ll put, you know, it’s like 45, you know, a bar weighs 45 pounds.

00:48:38.14
Matt
And they’ll, so maybe they’ll put 10 pound bumper plates on either side. So that’s 65 pounds. Right. And they’ll be like, I’m really worried. I’m going to hurt my back. And it’s a reasonable reminder to hear that, like, in your daily life, you probably bend over and pick something up that weighs more than 65 pounds.

00:48:56.36
neelyquinn
Well, not every day.

00:48:56.51
Matt
pretty regularly.

00:48:57.24
neelyquinn
what kind of What are you doing every day?

00:49:00.01
Matt
We got animals out here. There’s, you know, um, no, but yeah, exactly.

00:49:03.07
neelyquinn
Peek-a-pops.

00:49:05.49
Matt
Uh, no, but like if you’ve, you’ve moved, you’ve, you know, you’re going to the airport for a long trip, whatever, right? Like you do pick up things that way more than that.

00:49:14.90
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:49:15.57
Matt
Yeah. And so, And your back didn’t just like shear into a million pieces. It was like catastrophic. So it’s like, it’s OK to have to learn. And you might not do it perfectly at first. We all have, most people have iPhones or phones with cameras at this point. Film yourself, compare it to what it’s supposed to look like. you know Film from a couple angles. Film front on, film side on, film at like a 45 degree, and just and look and learn.

00:49:41.90
Matt
like

00:49:42.01
neelyquinn
Yeah, yeah.

00:49:42.77
Matt
Yeah. um And so this idea, though, of regressions, I think, is really is important. Because so that’s easy to say. right Like, oh, yeah, just go learn. um But this is a tool you can use to do it. So let’s stick with this this hinge family, right the hinge movement pattern here. And we’ll say that like a deadlift is our sort of anchor exercise, so like a barbell deadlift. Well, if that’s too intimidating, right and you’re and you’re like, I don’t know, I’m i’m struggling with my hinge movement,

00:50:12.92
Matt
Well, one thing I’ll do is I’ll also have, I’ll teach it a lot with just a kettlebell deadlift. They’re lighter. You can go lighter than 65 pounds or 45 pounds or whatever, right? Than a, than a barbell easily. So that what that’s, and they’re also just less intimidating. Like a kettlebell is a less intimidating thing. Implement none of our bell. So you can learn the mechanics. They’re the same. Basically basic mechanics. Learn it by lifting up a kettlebell.

00:50:39.89
Matt
in a deadlift rather than going straight to a barbell deadlift. And what I mostly what i usually find there is when I when i prescribe that, maybe 99% of the time to somebody who’s like, I’ve never done any hinge training before, is though within a couple sessions, like under five, they’ll come back to me and say, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it doesn’t feel that hard anymore. And I’m using my gym’s heaviest kettlebell. And then you go, OK.

00:51:07.67
Matt
Well, now it seems like it’s going pretty well. I think you’re probably, and you’re you’re feeling more confident in this movement. Now we can move back to a barbell so that, because you’re, you’re and not feel as intimidated.

00:51:17.28
neelyquinn
Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:22.02
Matt
And, you know, if we move, if if that’s still, maybe you’re, maybe you have a back injury or you, ah you know, a history, you have a former Lee had a low back injury. So you’re super sort of cautious about this.

00:51:33.68
Matt
Well, ah a further regression of a deadlift of a hinge movement would be like a single leg hip lift or glute bridge. And if that’s too much, you could even just do a glute bridge at first right um just to start learning these hinge movements and knowing that it’s like, OK, this is what it feels like to hinge at my hip and do so with load. And that’s not going to. it It doesn’t mean my back’s going to shear into a million pieces.

00:52:02.49
neelyquinn
Yeah. Got it. So knowing that there are regressions for basically every movement and I mean, you can just Google those too and watch YouTube videos.

00:52:04.75
Matt
Yeah.

00:52:09.74
Matt
Right.

00:52:12.96
Matt
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully that just like helps people. If we, we look at that all, it’s like, it’s okay to have to learn a new movement. You can progress or regress an exercise to meet yourself where you’re at with your comfort level, your skill level, all those things.

00:52:28.93
Matt
And just that should help you get started.

00:52:31.83
neelyquinn
Got it.

00:52:32.62
Matt
Right.

00:52:35.37
Matt
OK, next one.

00:52:37.06
neelyquinn
next.

00:52:38.87
Matt
I think the next sort of tip for getting started is to learn about auto regulation. um So but a if we circle back to our idea of like consistency over intensity, a thing I’ll hear a lot is like, oh, I would and went climbing outside yesterday, and I went to Lyft today, and I couldn’t hit my previous personal best, so it was ah it was a bad session.

00:53:05.87
Matt
Like it wasn’t worth it. Well, one thing, the funny thing about personal best is, you know, we’re not gonna hit them every time like nobody does. Like, you know, we’re not always at our best. And so it’s pretty impossible to be consistent at our best, right? In anything. So auto-regulation just means that we need to be able to adjust the session uh, you know, volume, frequency, intensity to meet ourselves where we’re at on a given day.

00:53:40.45
Matt
Does that make sense?

00:53:41.38
neelyquinn
Yeah, it makes sense.

00:53:42.29
Matt
Okay.

00:53:42.87
neelyquinn
Like notice how you’re feeling.

00:53:42.88
Matt
So yeah, sorry, go ahead.

00:53:47.18
neelyquinn
See what you’re feeling like in your warmups. If you’re overly stressed, haven’t slept, blah, blah, blah, all that.

00:53:54.05
Matt
Right. that that’s going to impact your numbers in the weight room. And what’s you know it’s nice that strength training is really measurable, but I think people can get caught up in like, well, if I was deadlifting 135 and now I’m deadlifting 130 for a single session, it’s I’ve gotten worse.

00:54:12.16
Matt
I’ve gotten weaker. It’s not working.

00:54:15.01
neelyquinn
Yeah.

00:54:15.12
Matt
But it is normal to have session to session variation. Um, and so a really good tool to use for this beyond just sort of saying like, be okay with it is RPE, which is stands for rate of perceived exertion. Um, so RPE is just a subjective rating of difficulty. It’s done on a one to 10 scale and it, where you rank, you can do it for whole sessions. You could do it for sets. It can be, it’s sort of a.

00:54:44.11
Matt
It’s a very valuable tool, but and it can be used for a lot of things. But what i what i’m going to to simplify here, i’m just goingnna ah one of the common forms of RPE is to correlate it to reps in reserve. So if you were to do a set of a deadlift, let’s say you do a set of five deadlifts, and you finish that set, and you’re like, there I couldn’t add another pound.

00:55:11.40
Matt
And I couldn’t do another rep, like I would fail on the next rep. That would be RPE 10. RPE 9 would be, oh, I have one rep left in reserve.

00:55:21.25
neelyquinn
Mm.

00:55:21.83
Matt
RPE 8 would be, I have two reps left in reserve, RPE 7, 3, RPE 6, 4, and then basically 1 through 5 is like, hey, this isn’t this isn’t that challenging.

00:55:32.67
Matt
And it’s then it’s pretty hard to tell. You’re like, I don’t know, I could do 100 more. but Tough to say, right?

00:55:38.35
neelyquinn
Got it.

00:55:39.02
Matt
um And so um when we’re doing that, so when I’ll write programs, i’ll I’ll provide like, hey, I want you to do three sets of four on the deadlift, and I want the first set to be like an RPE 6, the first working set to be an RPE 6, the second one to be an RPE 7, and then a third to be RPE 8.

00:56:03.97
Matt
And so now you have a target intensity to try to hit. That’s not a target load. That’s just a target intensity. So if you feel really good one day and you’re like, oh, I thought this was going to be, I thought this was hard last time, but I feel stronger today.

00:56:18.70
Matt
that that I thought that was going to be RP seven, but it was RP six. Like, great. You know, you can go heavier.

00:56:23.40
neelyquinn
Hmm.

00:56:23.55
Matt
Conversely, you’re like, I’m a little under recovered today in the example I gave of I was climbing yesterday. It’s like, ah. I’m not at my best today. That’s OK. Instead of i’ll just meet I’ll just still hit those RPE targets and know that I’m getting an appropriate stimulus.

00:56:39.78
neelyquinn
Okay.

00:56:40.53
Matt
So when you’re doing this, it’s important to say don’t think about the RPE during the set. you know If you’re like you’re pressing a heavy weight overhead, you shouldn’t be like, I’m not sure. Is this RPE 7 or RPE 8?

00:56:52.85
Matt
That’s time to to focus on ah performing the lift well. Then you put the weight down, rack the weight. right And then you can sort of try to reflect. You’ll get better with practice. It’s a subjective scale. It’s not an exact science here. um And just be like, OK, yeah, that felt like RPE 6. That felt like RPE 7. And you can note that down in your training log. And what this what I really like about RPE is that it gives you target weights and a plan for your next session then.

00:57:22.29
Matt
So what I mean by that is if you look at your RPE results in the previous session, you’ll have, you’ll have targets for the next. So if you hit all your RPE targets and yet you’re like, that was honest RPE six, honest RPE seven, honest RPE eight, you should probably try to add five to 10 pounds per set the following week. If you overshoot slightly, you’re like, ah, you know, that was like maybe 6.5, maybe 7.5, maybe 8.5, maybe nine, whatever, right? like you didn’t You didn’t miss any reps, but you’re like, yeah I can’t can’t say that that was honestly that RPE. Try the same load the following week. right The idea is we’ll get stronger. We adapted to the training we’ll do. Maybe that slight overshoot will now be sort of an accurate and appropriate stimulus. so Now, if you overshoot by a full RPE or more, so you’re like, hey, I was going for, I wanted 135 to be my RPE 8. That felt like RPE 10. I couldn’t do another rep.

00:58:22.43
Matt
well, then you know you need to reduce the load the following week.

00:58:26.17
neelyquinn
OK.

00:58:26.28
Matt
So it basically takes the guesswork out of like, I don’t know, should I go heavier? Am I ready to? I’m not sure. You can use RPE to help you plan that progression.

00:58:35.99
neelyquinn
This is good. I’m going to actually include that whole thing from your outline in the show notes on training beta. It won’t be on like Apple, but if you go to the show notes for this episode on training beta, it’ll be there along with um what Matt’s about to talk about, too, because those are really great guidelines, I think.

00:58:55.73
Matt
Perfect. OK. Should we do a sample session so that ah like but we’ve done a lot of ah theoretical strength training here?

00:59:07.28
Matt
And so hopefully.

00:59:07.37
neelyquinn
Oh, I think a lot of people have started listening to this episode just for these sample sessions. Let’s do it.

00:59:12.49
Matt
Yeah, OK. All right. So what I wrote out here is a two day a week strength program.

00:59:23.95
neelyquinn
Okay.

00:59:24.20
Matt
um And I’m going to give you the structure here first, and then I’ll give you the actual exercises. So what we’re trying to do with this session or these sessions are cover the major human movement patterns. I put in some accessory movements that prioritize shoulder strength and stability and some mobility focused movements that are kind of target hip mobility and hamstring flexibility.

00:59:51.16
neelyquinn
What are accessory movements?

00:59:53.72
Matt
So we talked about there being like our major compound movements. So those are our like, hey, we’re covering the pole, the press, the hinge, the squat, these big multi-joint exercises. um Our accessory lifts are um more focused on like smaller muscle groups, kind of more like isolationy kind of exercises.

01:00:14.05
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:00:14.83
Matt
Yeah, to so like in this case, shoulder stability is like something that most, a lot of climbers are trying to actively work on. And so while there is pressing, ah you know, elsewhere in is one of the compound movements, there’s also exercises included to work on sort of different areas of the whole muscle tendon unit around the shoulder. Yeah. Because the other thing is like compound movement, big compound movements are really fatiguing, right? That’s why we’re only trying to do

01:00:47.94
Matt
we’re We’re capping at 10 to 15 total working reps there. But so you know you wouldn’t want to be like, I’m doing 90 deadlifts today. It’s like, you’re going to be sore and you’re going to be tired. um But there’s we we often have we have to rest between those big sets. And so we it’s a yeah a reasonable time to utilize to to work on some other areas of our strength.

01:01:14.24
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:01:16.17
Matt
Make sense?

01:01:16.62
neelyquinn
Okay. Yeah, makes sense.

01:01:18.10
Matt
Okay, so the structure here is for both days, there’s two groups of exercises. And so you do around like a a set of the first one to set the second one to set a third one, then cycle back to the first second, third, and so on. um And it’s each group consists of a compound movement, an accessory lift and a mobility exercise.

01:01:40.46
Matt
um The sets and reps are the same for all the compound movements, all the accessory lifts, and essentially all the mobility exercises. So for the compound movements, what I wrote here is you could do, assuming once you’ve learned these lifts, you’d maybe do something like um three sets of four, and your target RPs here are, for set one would be six, set two would be seven, set three would be eight.

01:02:07.88
Matt
um And you do this after two warm-up sets for that compound movement. So the warm-up set, let’s use a bench press as an example here, could be something like you do a set of four with just the empty bar.

01:02:21.97
Matt
So that’s 45 pounds. Then if you know your, then your second warm-up set would be at 50% of your target load for RPE6.

01:02:34.80
Matt
Does that make sense?

01:02:35.35
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:02:36.18
Matt
Yeah.

01:02:36.34
neelyquinn
Yep.

01:02:36.80
Matt
and then you you do those two now you’ve now you’ve warmed up kind of put you put your joints in your muscles through that full range of motion and then you can go into your working sets.

01:02:47.51
neelyquinn
Okay. So you’re doing all of the sets of this, of the bench at one time.

01:02:54.73
Matt
I so I do the compound movement one set. So you do your warm up sets, then you do your first working set, then you do your a set of the accessory lift, then a set of the mobility exercise, then back for your second set of the bench press.

01:03:07.65
neelyquinn
OK, that’s it.

01:03:08.72
Matt
Yeah.

01:03:08.77
neelyquinn
All right, got it.

01:03:09.30
Matt
And it’s rest as needed here. There’s no, like the idea there’s, it’s not a race. It’s not like a super set where you need to like, put the bench press down, run over, do the next exercise, right?

01:03:21.10
Matt
Like, yeah, exactly.

01:03:21.46
neelyquinn
Yeah, it’s not a hit workout.

01:03:23.40
Matt
Quality. The idea is to be as recovered as possible for each one. Uh,

01:03:27.29
neelyquinn
But in general, and we have had so many conversations where I’m like, but Matt, how much rest? And you’re like, but just as much as they need, but people don’t know. So like three to five minutes, five to 10 minutes.

01:03:38.97
Matt
I try to somewhere in the three to five range between sets or of the compound movement is a reasonable starting point.

01:03:46.47
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:03:47.21
Matt
Yeah, I think.

01:03:47.51
neelyquinn
But if you’re doing a deadlift and then you’re doing a bench press, you could ostensibly do less rest because you can do the deadlift and then you can rest a little bit and go do your bench press or would you literally rest?

01:03:59.37
Matt
but Well, but. It would be, we’d go to an accessory movement. And so it would be like, you could, yeah, you don’t need to like do a deadlift, sit there for three minutes, do your accessory lift, sit there for three minutes.

01:04:11.51
neelyquinn
Okay. Yeah.

01:04:12.62
Matt
You can, but just try to minimize the impact of the previous exercise on the next one. It’s set up and I set up these workouts in a way that they, like you’re suggesting it’s different movement patterns and muscle groups.

01:04:19.35
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:04:24.85
Matt
So it shouldn’t interfere too much where you’re like, Oh my god, I’m I’m wrecked for the from this deadlift and now you want me to do this, but.

01:04:32.16
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:04:33.79
Matt
These these should this whole workout should probably take once you once you sort of know it, you know And you’re not like trying to figure out loads or um Find equipment or things like that and set yourself up.

01:04:46.46
Matt
This is like a 30 minute 30 45 minute max kind of session. So it’s pretty short um And you know, you could do it post climbing day by itself, whatever ah so

01:04:52.24
neelyquinn
so Okay.

01:05:00.31
Matt
ah So that those were the sets and reps for the compound movements, three by four targets are RP6, RP7, RP8.

01:05:11.68
Matt
For the accessory lifts, because these are working, um it’s sort of more like isolation exercises. I went with three by 10.

01:05:20.73
neelyquinn
Three sets of 10.

01:05:22.22
Matt
Yep, exactly, 10 reps.

01:05:22.94
neelyquinn
Yep.

01:05:24.12
Matt
And for the mobility exercises, um so most of them are for reps, some of them are for time. And so I said, if it’s for reps, it’s three by six. If it’s for time, three by 45 seconds.

01:05:37.05
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:05:38.01
Matt
yeah Okay, okay. Day one, first group, deadlift, seated shoulder, external shoulder rotations, and a Cossack squat.

01:05:48.74
neelyquinn
OK. What is a seated external shoulder rotation?

01:05:53.13
Matt
So that would be like sitting down, you can put your elbow on a bench, you can put it on your knee, and you’re holding a dumbbell and rotating your arm up to work the external rotators of the shoulder.

01:06:05.65
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:06:06.66
Matt
um

01:06:06.95
neelyquinn
Got it. Again, these are going to be in the show notes. So you don’t have to write these down.

01:06:09.78
Matt
yeah

01:06:10.75
neelyquinn
You can always Google how to do it. So yeah.

01:06:13.43
Matt
And a Cossack squat would be being sort of like a like a straddle stance, and you are doing a side lunge, like holding, you’re holding a dumbbell or a kettlebell, um and sort of squatting down to one side, keeping the other leg straight, standing back up, down to the other side.

01:06:33.34
Matt
So it’s kind of hip abductors, like hip mobility and hamstring flexibility there.

01:06:33.63
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:06:38.49
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:06:39.37
Matt
Yeah, group two. would be a bench press, a single arm, like straight arm cable pull down and a frog stretch.

01:06:51.10
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:06:51.27
Matt
So so the bench press or compound movement, the cable pull down is if you were to like take a cable machine at a gym and you, so your arm is sort of extended out in front of you at like a 45 degree angle rett without bending your elbow, you’d bring your hand to your waist.

01:07:09.65
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:07:10.82
Matt
um

01:07:11.08
neelyquinn
Okay, so you do group one, do all of those sets and reps of that, and then you would do group two, all of the sets and reps of that.

01:07:19.36
Matt
Yep, and that’s that’s day one.

01:07:20.33
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:07:23.55
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:07:24.97
Matt
ah Day two would be our first group is back squat, a lateral raise, and then a Jefferson curl. um So lateral raise, holding a dumbbell in each hand, like raising your arms up to sort of parallel to the floor on either side.

01:07:46.25
neelyquinn
Got it.

01:07:46.41
Matt
ah So that’s like it. It’s like kind of like i part of an IYT’s kind of exercise. um And then a Jefferson curl is that um spinal mobility and hamstring flexibility exercise that we talked about before where you’re sort of rolling your spine forward.

01:08:04.39
Matt
ah

01:08:07.17
Matt
And then group two is a bent over row, a prone military press, and a seated straddle. Good morning. So prone military press, like a military press is a, is like an overhead press, right? Two, two dumbbells, but you know, seated on a bench, extending overhead, doing it prone, grab a yoga mat and you will lay face down. And so you’re doing that and extending your arms overhead while you’re holding a lightweight. And so now gravity’s, you’re no longer pressing it up against gravity, but as you extend your arms overhead, you’re having to fight to maintain the height of the weight off the floor.

01:08:47.38
neelyquinn
Oh, okay.

01:08:49.09
Matt
Um, and those are hard and kind of miserable, but, uh,

01:08:52.47
neelyquinn
Yeah, my PT always wants me to do it. I’m like, I’m not doing that. It sucks.

01:08:57.14
Matt
it definitely sucks. Uh, I have felt like it is really helped, um, with some of my shoulder strength stability.

01:09:02.67
neelyquinn
Yeah, someday I’ll do that.

01:09:04.45
Matt
Yeah.

01:09:04.83
neelyquinn
um Okay.

01:09:05.14
Matt
And then the seated straddle. Good mornings. These I took like lattice has been, uh, promoting these quite a bit, but this is the idea of like, it’s, it’s working towards like a pancake stretch.

01:09:18.48
Matt
But you can control the height of your hips two to scale to the right intensity.

01:09:25.20
neelyquinn
Okay. Seated straddle. Good mornings.

01:09:27.13
Matt
Yeah. And yeah, Lattice put out this really awesome video that I found myself sending to lots of clients about it was like three exercises or something for really inflexible people. um So if you’re if you want to see those there, that’s that’s a great video for that.

01:09:42.72
neelyquinn
Okay. Perfect.

01:09:46.28
neelyquinn
Cool.

01:09:46.41
Matt
So yeah, so that’s, that’s the whole program. So that’s probably, that’s an hour.

01:09:50.35
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:09:52.15
Matt
That’s probably an hour of strength training a week. If you were to do both on two separate days, so right. And this could be done post climbing or on, you know, on a day after climbing.

01:10:04.05
Matt
It doesn’t really matter in that sense. I wouldn’t do it before climbing on the same day. Right. So you wouldn’t want to like go do strength training in the morning and then go climb in the evening.

01:10:16.97
Matt
I think you’d rather you want to do your strength training after ah you’re climbing if you’re doing it in the same day. And personally, I always try to set my week up so that um if I’m going to climb and then do my strength training on a separate day, I like to climb on day one and strength train on day two. So so I feel fresh. I’m not carrying any soreness um into my climbing day.

01:10:37.92
neelyquinn
You like to climb day one strength train day two.

01:10:41.53
Matt
Yep. um

01:10:42.93
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:10:43.64
Matt
But when I, and I’ve done, ah send and not kind of, I’ve done this exact program and I usually do it just after climbing because it’s, ah I can, you know, maybe I have Boulder for two hours, let’s say, and then I spend 30 minutes in the weight room and I’m in and out and, you know, total session, two and a half hours. And that way I can, you know, rest and recover and repeat.

01:11:10.80
neelyquinn
Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest questions that people have is like how often to do it, when to do it. How many times per week?

01:11:17.69
Matt
Right.

01:11:19.38
neelyquinn
What about when it’s sending season and you’re trying to climb outside too? like what Can you give just some broad generalizations there?

01:11:30.78
Matt
Sure. Well, can I say, let me say one more thing about this program first and is that hopefully you saw like there’s each of the major movement patterns is covered by one compound movement being done once a week.

01:11:34.51
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:11:45.10
Matt
So that’s a reasonable starting point if you’re in in a training phase. So it’s like, hey, you’re deadlifting once a week. There’s your hinge. You’re bench pressing once a week. That’s your press. You’re back squatting once a week. That’s your squat. You’re doing a bent over a row once a week. That’s your pull.

01:12:03.73
neelyquinn
That’s true. That’s very smart of you, Matt.

01:12:07.02
Matt
I try. um and so But then in in answer to your question, it This is always, these are always hard. ah It’s hard to give guidelines here because it really depends on the greater details of your, the athlete in questions, where they’re at and they’re climbing, where they’re, you know, the level, their sort of training age and history. But I think that for the most part, yeah ah if you’re in a training,

01:12:41.65
Matt
phase shooting for one to three strength sessions a week is reasonable. And if you’re in a performance phase, something like one the strength session every 14 days so is something reasonable.

01:12:59.17
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:13:01.00
Matt
So if it’s like you’re in season and and you, you can get away with quite a bit less, it’s best to not

01:13:01.35
neelyquinn
Okay.

01:13:06.97
neelyquinn
Right. That’s like getting away with it every 14 days.

01:13:10.34
Matt
Well, and even that, like, I think it’s, I think this worst time shows it’s something like.

01:13:17.93
Matt
I’m going to get the exact numbers wrong, but it’s something like 30 something days of total inactivity before we start like really losing tons of strength. And it’s like, well, first of all, if you’re so strange, really persistent, it sticks around. Like that’s, that’s part of the the beauty of strange training here is like, once you build it, you have it. It doesn’t go away.

01:13:40.45
Matt
super fast. And the other thing is, if we’re going outside and climbing or inside and we’re in our performance cycle and we’re climbing super hard, that’s pretty far away from total inactivity. So you’re not going to see huge ah decreases in your strength levels while you focus on you know the sport that we’ve been trying to train for in the first place.

01:13:51.64
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:14:02.32
neelyquinn
And that’s what I’m talking about because in the two one to two years that I haven’t been training, I also have climbed like some hard things for me and I don’t feel weaker.

01:14:13.53
neelyquinn
And so i we I think that’s a good reminder that the reason we’re strength training, it’s not like if you stop strength training, you’re all of a sudden going to be a terrible climber.

01:14:13.51
Matt
Right.

01:14:24.20
neelyquinn
It just means that you might be a little bit less ah ah hardy and injury proof, which is exactly what started to happen because I got a hamstring and ah injury and then I hurt my back when I was in Kalimnos. And I was like, oh, that’s my reminder that I need to start strength training again.

01:14:43.24
Matt
Right. I was, and I, sorry if this throws you under the bus, side but I use this story with some of my clients often of one time when ah you asked me for some coaching advice and you were like, yeah, but I’m going to tell you upfront. I don’t want to squat. I don’t want to deadlift. I over it. I don’t want to do it. I said, that’s, I was like, that’s fine.

01:15:07.00
Matt
I’m not saying you have to, but i I think what I said to you was, but I just want to point out that you were like, I’ve been doing them for a year and I’m sick of it. I was like, well, have you gotten hurt in the past year?

01:15:16.65
neelyquinn
yeah

01:15:17.03
Matt
And you were like, shut up.

01:15:21.12
neelyquinn
Yeah, and here I am, a year later.

01:15:22.42
Matt
Right. But it’s okay because you recognized, right? You were like, Hey, I, I needed to have some time away from this to focus on other parts of my climbing in life.

01:15:36.80
Matt
Now I’m recognizing that like, okay, I got away with it as the wrong word, but it’s like, you’ve been climbing a fair amount. And now you’re like, okay. And you’re, you know, you’re not seriously injured and you’re recognizing like, Hey, I’m starting to get a little tweaky.

01:15:53.10
Matt
The answer is to get back in the, in the late room and yeah.

01:15:55.38
neelyquinn
Yeah. And I went and did some deadlifts and some squats the other day and I was really sore. So yeah.

01:16:01.72
Matt
And so, yeah, I think, It’s okay to approach it that way. But in terms to circle back like this, this idea of like, you just don’t need to do it super regularly when you’re in performance phase to to maintain like, you know, over 95% of your numbers here.

01:16:14.52
neelyquinn
Right.

01:16:20.03
Matt
So like, I don’t know. And it it it can also be, you can cycle off of exercises, things like that. there There’s obviously quite a bit more that we could go into here, but I hope this, I tried to keep it pretty simple and straightforward here geared towards, you know, like, Hey, you’re new to this.

01:16:37.57
Matt
There’s a lot of content in the climbing training space about how strength training is important. Hopefully this gives people just a clear way or more of a clear sense of how they can get started and it’ll evolve over time.

01:16:48.56
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:16:51.47
neelyquinn
I think so too, because, okay. So we, last thing here, we asked for questions from our audience on Instagram for this episode. And it’s like, how many times per week, these are some of the questions.

01:17:02.87
neelyquinn
How many times per week should we strength train on top of normal climbing and outdoor sessions? Great question. But like you just said, there are some things to consider. It depends. That’s the answer.

01:17:12.43
Matt
Right.

01:17:13.27
neelyquinn
Next question, if I do a core workout one day and an upper body won the next, am I still getting the rest I need? Well, we need more context. We need to know what are you doing for the rest of the week?

01:17:23.29
neelyquinn
Like, what are your your goals right now? Are you training or are you, you know, like all these things? It depends.

01:17:29.97
Matt
Yeah, it’s always it depends, right?

01:17:30.16
neelyquinn
Next. Yeah.

01:17:32.08
Matt
But let me address something in that second question there of like, oh, if I do a core workout and an upper body workout, This is where I think it’s, it pays to think in terms of movement patterns, but the body’s one piece. We we don’t need to, we we shouldn’t be thinking of like, I need to hit every muscle group or area. That’s like but easy way to just get overwhelmed. Um, and so what I’d say to that is like, yeah, you’re again, yeah, it depends on what you’re doing, but if you’re.

01:18:04.65
Matt
if If you’re hitting a pole, a press, a hinge, and a squat, then you know there aren’t gaps in your training. right And you don’t then need to be like, well, did I do biceps, triceps, delts, yeah core, all these things.

01:18:11.31
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:18:15.84
neelyquinn
Core. Yeah. um The next question was, to recover from a strength workout, you need 24 to 48 hours. Is this specific or is it general rest? I don’t even know what that question means, um but the 24 to 48 hours thing, what do you say about that?

01:18:39.37
Matt
um I mean, I think what they mean there is like, is it, specific I’d assume it’s, they mean specific rest as in like, I need to wait that long until I train strength again, versus just like, oh, I can’t do anything for that period of time. um And with, I think that’s what they’re getting at, I’m not totally sure, but I think my answer to that would be,

01:19:05.44
Matt
Frustratingly, I’m sure, for everyone listening, it depends. um But it depends on the rest of your program, because you don’t need to be 100% recovered for every single session that you ever do.

01:19:16.39
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:19:17.37
Matt
right but So would i if you’re if you’re like, hey, I need 24 to 48 hours to recover before I’m going to try to red point my hardest ever route, OK, yeah, i wouldn’t I wouldn’t go lift the day before.

01:19:33.72
Matt
going to try to red point my project. um i do And I have lifted the day before going out and climbing easier second tier stuff, or doing a kind of endurance workout, right where I don’t need that sort of top end high quality.

01:19:45.01
neelyquinn
Hmm.

01:19:50.27
Matt
So it depends on the details there a little bit. um And so what I’d encourage you to do, is sort of or that person to do, is like look at your sessions and prioritize the ones where it’s higher intensity.

01:20:03.56
Matt
Uh, needing to be recovered for those. So like that’s, that’d be your hard bouldering, your, uh, you know, red point sport climbing, things like that, where it’s like really sort of quality focused, um, and prioritize being recovered for those. And yeah, I’d i’d give yourself, you know, 24 to 48 hours before that it was like not stacking a weight session or a strange session before that.

01:20:24.95
Matt
But if it’s, you know, more energy system oriented work, whether that’s endurance or power endurance, or, you know, you’re just, you’re in a training phase and maybe you are climbing outside, but you know that it’s okay.

01:20:36.12
Matt
You’re not, you’re not trying to send your like hardest ever, bolder, hardest ever route. Then you don’t, you know, if you always wait 48 hours between sessions, basically you just can’t fit that many training sessions in a week.

01:20:47.31
neelyquinn
Right. And that’s also why you tell people like stack these sessions on after your climbing day, uh, because, and this is, I think controversial too.

01:20:55.10
Matt
Right.

01:20:59.16
neelyquinn
I think a lot of people and trainers would say like, you, shouldn’t do your strength training after climbing because you’re powered down and you can’t put maximal efforts in.

01:21:09.90
neelyquinn
However, if we’re saying it doesn’t need to be perfect, then that’s where you’re like, well, we’re prioritizing rest here so that you can get a full rest day the next day so that you can go back and climb the next day, right?

01:21:13.60
Matt
Right.

01:21:22.68
Matt
Right. I gave this example and on a, to a client on a call yesterday. Um, cause she was sort of asking the same, same, ah same question of like, Oh, like, is this how I’d be recovered?

01:21:33.40
Matt
When should I do it? And I was like, Oh, often I don’t like go lift after going to Wolf Point. It’s too big of a day. And we get back later, but like, I’ll go bouldering locally.

01:21:41.04
neelyquinn
yeah

01:21:44.85
Matt
go go out bouldering for you know whatever, four or five hours, whatever it is. And i instead of just driving home and being and like showering and getting on the couch, I’ll just swing by Elemental, the gym in town, and do my strength session.

01:22:00.47
Matt
It’s like I use auto regulation and RPE.

01:22:01.49
neelyquinn
Yeah.

01:22:04.24
Matt
I usually don’t hit personal bests after I’ve been out bouldering.

01:22:07.92
neelyquinn
Right.

01:22:09.87
Matt
But I can get pretty i can get close enough. Where, you know, it’s not like this major decrease in my number, like massive decrease in my numbers where I’m like, well, I was trying to, you know, bench press one 95 and now I’m then I can’t bench press a hundred kind of deal.

01:22:28.13
neelyquinn
Right.

01:22:28.29
Matt
And so yeah, I might not, but that’s letting me stay more consistent with my training. I fit it in because yeah, if I’m in, and then I want to, I want to start that recovery and get it over with so I can start recovering and go back out climbing again sooner.

01:22:43.45
neelyquinn
Yeah. And like there’s that’s one thing with weights. However, it’s not like you would go and try ah the hardest project you’ve ever tried for hours and then come back and do like a max finger strength workout.

01:22:58.21
neelyquinn
And this is a different conversation, but like you have to there things that you would and wouldn’t do and like things that you can get away with and things you don’t want to get away with.

01:22:58.45
Matt
No. Yeah.

01:23:07.54
Matt
Right. Yeah, I think. I typically I’m not going to say I’ve like I have done. Hang boarding and finger training post climbing before, but I try to avoid it.

01:23:24.70
Matt
Is my yes.

01:23:25.09
neelyquinn
Yeah. Or like you go in and you warm up and you do a little bit of climbing and then you go and give yourself a little bit of rest and then you can do your max hangs or whatever.

01:23:29.85
Matt
Right, right, yeah, exactly.

01:23:33.22
neelyquinn
Cause it’s sort of like a warmup, but yeah.

01:23:35.51
Matt
um But yeah, I think for me, I think the the the message I’d like people to take away here is that thinking in terms of like, ah you wanna optimize the whole program, you don’t not each individual session, right? And so if you can, you have to make compromises somewhere. And so with our strength training,

01:23:59.19
Matt
One of the things we started with, right, was think about consistency over intensity. So if like, yeah, you’re going to, you’ve got to use auto-regulation and drop your numbers a little bit and it maybe doesn’t feel as awesome as it does.

01:24:11.07
Matt
If you had two rest days before your strength session, that’s still okay because it’s going to let you get the sessions in consistently and it’s going to let you keep it supplemental because then you can go climbing.

01:24:22.19
neelyquinn
Right.

01:24:22.19
Matt
Right. Instead of like, you know, pretty quickly, if you’re just optimizing for a strength session for string. in a weight room, right? You start training like a power lifter. They know what they’re doing. Like the whole sport is to lift heavier things, but they’re then not worried about trying to fit in, feeling good on rock climbs.

01:24:39.01
neelyquinn
Right. Exactly.

01:24:39.69
Matt
Yeah.

01:24:40.85
neelyquinn
Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. Okay. All right. We’ve been talking for a long time. I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of, you’ve gotten a lot of points across. um I want to say, again, really good job putting this together.

01:24:53.32
neelyquinn
And If people are confused or you want Matt to like look at your goals, your schedule, your equipment available and make you a program, like that’s what you do for your living. So please, please reach out to him and he can help you because I know this stuff is really confusing.

01:25:14.60
Matt
Yeah, if I can add to that and just say like, I think there’s a lot of times where the, it depends answers come across as frustrating, but it’s often not, it depends when it’s individual.

01:25:29.25
neelyquinn
Yeah, it usually isn’t.

01:25:29.60
Matt
Right. And so, right.

01:25:30.60
neelyquinn
It’s like, I know your situation, this is the answer.

01:25:33.42
Matt
It’s, it’s only really, it depends because the hypothetical great, you know, greater climbing community that we’re talking to right now, everyone’s different. And so yeah, if, if you’re looking for help trying to incorporate shrink training into your program for the first time, I have a lot of experience helping people do that. And even, you know, addressing those pain points, getting people more comfortable in the weight room, using video to help, you know, give feedback on form and learning of lifts. Um, and yeah, if you, you know, you can find me a training beta and

01:26:08.06
Matt
Um, either I even offer like a free 15 minute console call. If you want to, if you’re interested in working together, but you want to make sure it’s ah the right fit and you’re, you’re thinking about it the right way.

01:26:19.07
neelyquinn
Exactly. Yes. Cool. Well, as always, thank you for your wisdom, for your effort in this episode, and um for all of your experience. Thanks.

01:26:29.96
Matt
Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show again. And yeah, hopefully everyone ah found this you useful and informative.