Transcript Highlight: Roane Van Voorst and Hazel Findlay on Exercising the “Fear Muscle”
Two weeks ago, I (Matt Pincus) shared an excerpt from the TrainingBeta Podcast episode with Dutch climber and researcher Roane Van Voorst about how Lynn Hill deals with fear. The episode itself is about Van Voorst's book Fear! in which she interviews top climbers (and other extreme sports athletes) about how they manage [...]
Matt Pincus: 4 Keys to Limit Bouldering
A staple of most training programs is that they contain some kind of bouldering. Even programs designed for route climbers typically have a bouldering component. The reason for this is that bouldering is a simple and efficient way to train strength and power. While you are undoubtedly familiar with bouldering, if you [...]
Top 5 Route Climbing Articles
Route climbing has its own unique set of techniques, strategies, and training considerations. At times, route climbing can often feel casual. Afterall, a day at the crag doing routes well within your ability is simple enough and downright fun. However, things get more complicated when you start pushing your limits [...]
Matt Pincus: Fitting Everything In
A big question I get from my athletes is about fitting everything into their training schedule. After all, there are only so many hours in the week and you need rest days so fitting everything in can be difficult. However, we all know it's important to limit boulder, campus, hangboard, lift [...]
Transcript Highlight: Roanne Van Voorst on How Lynn Hill Deals with Fear
Fear can be one of the most limiting factors in climbing performance. The fear of falling is probably the most common climbing fear and we are all familiar with climbers who become paralyzed with fear as soon as a bolt reaches their waist. Chances are you were even that person [...]
Natasha Barnes: A Simple Intermediate Program
In the past couple months, we've shared a series of articles by climber, chiropractor, and sports injury rehabilitation specialist Natasha Barnes. These two articles have been Natasha's attempt to lay out some general principles about training that she feels climbers neglect and undermine their training efforts as a result. The first [...]
Top 5 Bouldering Articles
Bouldering: it sounds so simple. Grab your shoes, some chalk, and a crashpad and you're good to go. Sure, you can have a fun and enjoyable bouldering session with just those three things. However, things get much more complicated when you're interested in climbing harder and harder boulder problems in [...]
Uphill Athlete: Rock Climbing Skill Drills
Earlier this week, we posted an article by Steve House from Rock and Ice Magazine where he argued that we should differentiate between strength and climbing skill sessions. House's argument here is that because climbing is a skill sport we need to have dedicated sessions where the goal is practicing [...]
Climb Strong: Why Am I Stuck?
Put in the time, train hard, and keep climbing harder and harder season after season, year after year. This kind of linear progression is what we all want. Unfortunately, this isn't typically how things play out for climbers in the real world. Climb for long enough and chances are you'll [...]
Transcript Highlight: Dave MacLeod on Training vs Performance
As climbers, most of us always want to be pushing hard to progress our climbing. We want to be training as hard as possible when we are in the gym and sending as hard as possible when we are outside. These motivations are great and having this underlying drive is [...]