I was talking with Alex Stiger about my climbing goals and training plans this year and she said something that keeps echoing in my mind that I wanted to share with you:
“When you train, you kind of go crazy with it and do all the things, and then by the time you’re ready to start working on a project, all of your try-hard is gone. You use all your try-hard in your training.”
And I was like, “Oh my God, you’re right.” That’s exactly what happened when I was trying my megaproject a couple years ago.
I trained super hard constantly for months before trying it in the spring. Then I trained non-stop for 2 months in the summer, foregoing all outdoor climbing, and then by the time I got to try it in September, I was exhausted.
I didn’t have enough in the tank mentally OR physically to do the route. And after that I felt like I never wanted to project anything again in my life. And I haven’t trained since then either. I got really burnt out. (Hence my obsession with climbing for fun this past year…).
The truth is I overdid it, and I think a LOT of climbers do that. I let myself believe that more was better and that being hyperfocused on a singular goal at the cost of so many things was worth it.
It was not.
What I Was Missing
And when I look back on it, I was missing some key things in my training. To do a really hard route, I needed to be able to try really REALLY hard on the wall, which I was ultimately unable to do. And that’s because I wasn’t even training that try-hard in any of my sessions.
I deluded myself into thinking that doing moderate laps on routes in the gym would prepare me with enough to get the job done. But that’s like thinking that I could train for a 400-meter sprint race by jogging around the track a few times a session.
Ridiculous.
I needed to be projecting boulders and hard routes in the gym so that I could train the try-hard muscle and actually get better and stronger at climbing–not just at bent-over rows and pull-ups. But I decided I couldn’t do that because my wrists and elbows hurt too much.
Do you know why my wrists and elbows hurt so much? Because I was doing laps on moderate routes and lifting weights and doing weighted pull-ups all the time. Haha this is so obviously backward…
The reality is that when push comes to shove, when you’re on a climb that is at your absolute max limit, you need to be able to pull out everything you’ve got. You need to have MORE in the tank than the climb is asking of you, and I didn’t practice that in my training.
I focused on what I was doing in the weight room and didn’t challenge myself on the wall enough because I was too afraid of failing, as usual, even in the gym. My point is that I think a lot of us do the exact same things as what I’m describing.
We climb at a sub-max level in the gym, then go to the weight room and do a bunch of hangs and lifts and core and ALL the things we hear about on podcasts (sorry), and it’s a bunch of junk if our goal is to actually get better at climbing hard and trying hard.
Let me back that up a sec.
I don’t mean to say that all training is junk – it’s not – and I’ll get to that more in a moment. What I’m saying is that the climbing part HAS TO BE the priority: That is, practicing our craft, honing skills & movements, and deeply knowing how to access strenuous effort levels…
So in light of all of this, I’m not doing a bunch of junk laps in the gym anymore and I’m not doing that much in the weight room either.
What I’m Doing Now to Train
Instead, I’m genuinely limit bouldering for maybe the first time in my life and I’m only trying routes that are at or just below my max. I’m systematically taking my ego out of the equation; I don’t need to send things anytime soon, or even ever.
For now, my only goal is to try hard so that I can get better at climbing. Wow, novel concept, huh? I feel like the coaches I’ve been working with and talking to on the podcast for 10 years now have been saying this all along and I’m just now really hearing it.
DUH.
So what about you and your training?
If you’re trying to improve your climbing, how often do you try things that are hard for you, and then try them again, and again? Sometimes, especially as route climbers, we get caught up in thinking we just need more endurance, but that’s only part of the equation.
Coach Matt Pincus gets this concept on a deep level, both in his own climbing and in his coaching. That’s why he includes so much bouldering, even in the route training program he created for TrainingBeta. Especially in level 3, where the climbing he prescribes is almost always bouldering.
It’s also why Matt puts such an emphasis on being intentional even in the warm-ups, whether it’s on boulders or routes. He puts simple but effective drills into every single training session so that people really learn how to do things like:
-
- memorize beta
- breathe while climbing
- clip more efficiently
- climb at appropriate speeds
It’s all in an effort to allow you to access everything you’ve got while you’re climbing, instead of being worried about the clips or getting confused about where you’re supposed to put your foot.
The climbing workouts are intentional and designed to teach you to try hard. They’re projecting sessions, flash/onsight sessions, or well-timed endurance sessions where you’re doing laps. And he doesn’t put too much emphasis on the weight room.
Yes, there are consistent strength training workouts in all the programs and levels, but they’re not going to take you hours to do because he knows that:
A) Most people don’t have a ton of time to put into their climbing training
and
B) He wants to maximize the effort put into the climbing – not the weight room.
Basically, what Matt put together in the Performance Climbing Training Programs is exactly what I’ve been needing to do all along, but for some reason I just thought I was different somehow.
What can I say.
If you’re thinking you might need to change things up in your climbing, too–maybe you’re overdoing it in the weight room and on the hangboard and underdoing it in your actual climbing. Or maybe you’re just underdoing it in every aspect…
Matt’s training programs might be exactly what you need, too.
Or check out the Performance Bouldering Training Program if you’re a boulderer or only have access to a bouldering wall.
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