About Charlie Manganiello

Charlie Manganiello is a personal trainer at Steve Bechtel’s gym, Elemental Fitness in Lander, Wyoming. He also does online training for climbers on Steve Bechtel’s website, www.climbstrong.com. I met Charlie this May when I was teaching nutrition at a training seminar in Lander with Steve, Charlie, and Tyler Nelson.

One of Charlie’s presentations at the seminar was about how to be a multi-sport athlete. He talked about how he loves climbing, skiing, and running, but didn’t figure out how to train for all of them each year until recently, and then he laid out exactly how he did it. He had a lot of success in 2015 with all three sports, so I wanted to have him on the show to tell you all about how you can, too.

Here’s Charlie’s bio from the Elemental Fitness website:

Charlie started at Elemental Performance + Fitness in early 2011. It was his first job when he moved to Lander from New Hampshire. After a couple of years working the front desk he decided to pursue personal training and coaching, earning his level 2 SFG coaching certificate. Charlie now heads the Elemental Strength program. He enjoys backcountry skiing, climbing, running, and strength training. Charlie offers programs which include general fitness, strength training, and climbing training. He is available for early mornings and evenings. Contact him at charlie@elementalgym.com.

Charlie Manganiello Interview Details

I wanted to talk to Charlie so he could explain to you all what he described in his lecture at the ClimbStrong Training Seminar about how you can train for multiple sports throughout the year.

Here’s what we talked about:

• How he improved his performance as a skier, climber, and runner
• The yearly schedule he programmed for himself
• Scheduling documents to help you make your own program
• When to phase sports in and out
• How much to rest
• What to prioritize and what to sacrifice
• How to maintain strength in all areas
• Cultivating mental toughness

Charlie Manganiello Links

• Charlie at Elemental Fitness in Lander, WY
• Training seminar with Charlie, Steve Bechtel and me in October, 2017 in Salt Lake City (link no longer available)
• Charlie on Instagram
• ClimbStrong on Instagram
• Charlie’s email: charlie@elementalgym.com

Charlie Manganiello Downloads

• Multisport Integration PDF
• Year Plan Xcel Sheet

 

Training Programs for You

Do you want a well-laid-out, easy-to-follow training program that will get you stronger quickly? Here’s what we have to offer on TrainingBeta. Something for everyone…

• Personal Training Online:  www.trainingbeta.com/mercedes
• For Boulderers: Bouldering Training Program for boulderers of all abilities
• For Route Climbers: Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities
• Finger Strength : www.trainingbeta.com/fingers
• All of our training programs: Training Programs Page

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Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta Podcast, where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and today I am talking about something that pertains really well to that intro. I say that we want to get a little bit better at our favorite sport, which is climbing. There are a lot of us, however, that love other sports as well. I have a ton of friends here who are not only climbers, but are runners, mountain bikers, skiers, basketball players, and they want to do all of these sports. But it turns out that it is really hard to do everything, and train for all of these sports and be really good at them. So I talked with Charlie Manganiello this morning, and we had an interview all about that- how you can be a good athlete in many different sports. He’s not saying that you can be the best athlete that you can possibly be in any one of these sports, but you can be better. Charlie has designed a system of doing this, and that’s what he is going to share with you in this interview. Charlie is actually a climber, and he’s a skier, and he’s a runner. A couple of years ago he figured out how to do it well, and he had a really good year. Hopefully this will give you a little bit more direction about how to do more than just one sport.

Charlie is a trainer- he’s a personal trainer and he works with Steve Bechtel at Steve’s gym Elemental Fitness in Lander, Wyoming. He also trains people online at Steve’s website at climbstrong.com. He’s also really awesome, and I like hanging out with him. He’s funny, he’s inspirational, he’s really intelligent, and he’s a great athlete- very positive. I met him in May when we did the ClimbStrong training seminar in Lander. We are actually doing another seminar this October. In about a month in Salt Lake City, Steve Bechtel is putting on another training seminar. If you want to do that, I believe there is still room, and you can go to climbstrong.com. It’ll be Steve Bechtel, Charlie Manganiello, Tyler Nelson, Kris Hampton, and myself. We’ll all be teaching our respective topics about climbing training and how to get stronger. If you are interested, definitely go to climb strong.com, and there is an events page, and it will be under there.

So other than that, before I get into the interview, I just wanted to remind you that if you want more help with your training, you can go to trainingbeta.com, where we have training programs for boulderers, for route climbers, and for people who just want step by step information, or for people who want to learn more about how to make their own training programs. If you want more help, you can go to trainingbeta.com, and at the top it says training programs, and that’s where you will find all of the programs.

So without further ado, here’s Charlie Manganiello, enjoy.

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the show Charlie.

Charlie Manganiello: Thanks for having me Neely.

Neely Quinn: Thanks for being with me. For anybody who doesn’t know who you are, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Charlie Manganiello: Oh man. Uh, no one knows who I am.

[laughter]

My name is Charlie Manganiello. I am a ClimbStrong coach, so my boss is podcast specialist Steve Bechtel.

Neely Quinn: Yes- that’s what he is. A podcast specialist.

Charlie Manganiello: He’s pretty good at it! So yeah, I coach climbing athletes through ClimbStrong, and I’m also at his gym Elemental Performance plus Fitness in Lander, Wyoming, seventy percent of the other time that fills up my day.

Neely Quinn: Cool. You work a lot, and you work early hours, huh?

Charlie Manganiello: I do, yeah. I was at the gym at 5:45am this morning, training an athlete who is coming back from an ACL injruy- or surgery.

Neely Quinn: Dedicated.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, some people have to get their workouts in before they get to work, so that’s where I come in.

Neely Quinn: So can you tell me a little bit about your background, like your education and training and all that?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, so I have a degree in outdoor education from the University of New Hampshire. When I realized I liked doing all the fun climbing trips by myself instead of with thirty students on a sixty day course, I moved to Lander, Wyoming in 2011. I started working at the gym as a front desk employee/routesetter, and started working around Steve and this other trainer at the time. I got really into strength training and personal training, and so over the years, just through talking with Steve and taking a bunch of classes, I got a StrongFirst level 1 and level 2 certification, which is the fundamentals of strength, but primarily focused on kettlebell work. Then lots of just experience that I’ve gotten through the gym and through ClimbStrong training a bunch of athletes, and kind of learning as I go. I feel super fortunate to have gotten that opportunity and build that relationship with Steve, because I didn’t take the traditional path and getting an NSCA or CSCS certification, or exercise science degree. Steve kind of took a shot on me, and it’s been awesome.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I find that really interesting, that our sport is so new, kind of, and maybe a little out there, in that people of all types and with all backgrounds and certifications, or not certifications can be trainers in this sport. What do you think about that, and would you change anything about your education?

Charlie Manganiello: It’s a really good question, because I do think folks need a background in general strength training. But then, as soon as we get to this climbing specific stuff, there’s really nothing out there. Steve’s doing clinics, Kris Hampton with Power Company is doing clinics, but there’s really no training. The only certification I can think of related to climbing is getting your Level 1 certification for routesetting, which has nothing to do with training or getting people strong for the sport. I do think there is a lot of crossover as far as just general strength training, but I’d like to see, in the future, some kind of certification that’s a little more climbing or sports specific, where I think the finger strength type protocols, and then a little bit more of how to integrate the strength into someone’s climbing. I still think that’s super new, and Steve and folks like the Anderson brothers have been kind of on the forefront, and Steve Maisch, for quite some time. But it’s kind of in their own world and not globally. It’s getting out, obviously now, but…

Neely Quinn: And would you change anything about what you have? Are there things that you want to pursue in your climbing training career, or your training career?

Charlie Manganiello: That was your original question and I didn’t really answer that. I would like to have, looking back on it, and I had a bunch of really good friends in college doing the exercise science degree. I wish I had started my training there, to have the fundamentals and the basics down, and a little bit more anatomy. I’ve kind of done that now on the back end, and have felt like it’s hard to catch up. But yeah, I want to pursue more movement training. There is this FMS- function of movement screening certification, when people have some kind of hip impingement or they’re not mobile in a joint- ways you can get home back to where they need to be. I still feel like if I have an athlete that needs to go see a PT before they come see me, I feel like I want to have a little bit more knowledge to help that athlete instead of being like “I have no idea what to do, I don’t know why your shoulder hurts when you put it above your head”. Then just continue to hammer the fundamentals, like getting a CSCS certification is definitely a goal of mine. Reading, talking to as many people in the strength and training world as possible.

Neely Quinn: It seems like at the very least, somebody who is training climbers and having them do weight stuff, should at least have some sort of training in proper form- that seems like the basics.

Charlie Manganiello: I absolutely agree. And then, you know, that’s the hard part. And then they can easily get into the climbing stuff, where we aren’t putting people under load, we have to kind of watch for packed shoulders when people are hanging on the hangboard, or the way they move on the wall. But at least now, everyone has got some sort of strength routine that they do. I see it in the gym, and we see videos online, like on Instagram and Facebook, where people are doing pretty basic moves really poorly. Not only are we going to see injury that way, but people aren’t actually getting any benefit from the lift because they’re doing it wrong, and they can’t use the weight the way they are supposed to use it.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Charlie Manganiello: That’s what we see, and people are like “Oh the kettlebell swing hurts my back”, and that’s because they’re doing it wrong. They’re using fifteen pound weights, and anyone at any weight or height should not be using fifteen pounds for that kind of swing.

Neely Quinn: And you said you did, what was it called? StrongFirst?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, StrongFirst is the organization.

Neely Quinn: Is that something that you would recommend to other climbing trainers?

Charlie Manganiello: Uh, yeah. I think it depends on how committed they are. You had Josh Rucci on a few years ago? I actually met him at a StrongFirst certification- he’s a strength coach. I think it depends on… it’s a big commitment. I guess why I’m hesitating is that it’s pretty expensive, it’s pricey, somewhere around $1500. They expect you to go in with all the lifts dialed at a specific weight. I think Steve’s talked about it on their podcast, but if you’re going for the StrongFirst Level 1, you’ve got to do this kettle bell snatch test with such and such weight, depending on your weight class, and it’s really, really hard. You can’t just go take that class, and be like “Yeah, I got my certification!”. You have to train for anywhere from four to six months before you go to the class, because they won’t pass you. I think 30 percent of people don’t pass that course, or forty percent. They demand a lot from their coaches. Not only perfect form, but you have to perform it at a certain weight.

Neely Quinn: I mean, it’s cool that they have such high standards, because that seems to be a little lacking n some of the other certification courses.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah it’s really cool, I mean they don’t joke around. We’ve all been to conferences where at 2 o’clock there’s eight different presentations where you pick and choose. That’s really good for networking and getting some ideas for whatever you are interested in, but then this one is like, no kidding. You have to show up ready, and we will fail you if you don’t make a lift. People cherish those certifications because you have to work pretty hard, it’s not just get in front of a computer and take a standardized test.

Neely Quinn: But in general, just briefly- do you think that doing kettlebell work for climbers is beneficial?

Charlie Manganiello: I absolutely do. I kind of get pigeonholed as the kettlebell guy. I really enjoy kettlebells personally in my own training as well as with my athletes, but there is a reason behind it. Some of the barbell stuff can be pretty intimidating for folks- they can be hard lifts to learn. The kettlebell is a little more versatile as far as training, like, a young stud athlete who is eighteen, as well as training all the way up to some of your older athletes. They are pretty easy to get for a home gym, instead of racking up a bunch of bumper plates and barbells. I think they’re really versatile and they also help get people stronger. Those things go pretty heavy- the heaviest kettlebell we have is a hundred and six pounds, and I think they go up to a couple hundred pounds. People always ask “Oh kettlebells are so easy”, and it’s like, well then go up in weight.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: A two hundred pound kettlebell? That must be as big as me! Obviously it’s heavier but… [laughs]

Charlie Manganiello: People do heavy swings with that- we don’t have that size of kettlebell, that’s pretty heavy. Those are specialized athletes in that sport.

Neely Quinn: Giants, yes. Okay, so I didn’t want to talk to you just about kettlebells, but we actually have a lot to cover. I want people to know a little bit more about you first. One of the things I want to talk to you about is about being a multi-sport person, and in particular being a climber and doing other sports as well. That’s something that you do. Can you tell me a little bit about your background as an athlete?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, absolutely. I have always been someone who kind of liked being a jack of all trades. I kind of would get interested in all these different sports- I grew up skiing and running, and I got into climbing. I like to do all of them all at once. When I first came and started getting to know Steve and picking his brain, he was probably super annoyed by the time month one rolled around, and he was like “Man I can’t get rid of this guy”. But I was interested in trying to perform well throughout different seasons, whether that was running, skiing or climbing- they were my main three. I got to this point where I was trying to do all three at one time, and trying to peak at all three at one time. I really thought I was going to be able to do it- it was no knock to Steve, but Steve was like “Oh we’ll see how that works out to you”- he was super nice about it. But I came back and was like “Dude that didn’t work, at all”. I just felt tired or whatever.

I got really interested, as I came up through the training ranks at the gym, working with him, getting ideas from Steve. Then I was also kind of beta testing my own ideas, and coming up with a pretty useful plan that actually worked- that worked with my sports, and the seasons I have available to me in those sports. I had one of my best years skiing, running and climbing in 2015, I think it was. It was really fun, and it was scary to try, because I really thought that if I stopped one sport, I was just going to lose it all and it was going to be hard to come back, and it just wasn’t the case. I’ve kind of been marked as the multi-sport athlete, and now more currently I’m mostly just focusing on climbing, but I’ll probably jump back into multi-sport stuff here soon.

Neely Quinn: I think this is so relevant to so many of my listeners. We’re all kind of overachievers- well a lot of us are- and I have so many friends who are trying to run and climb, or they’re trying to bike and climb. So what people want to know is what is this magical schedule that you’ve figured out for yourself, and how to they do it themselves [laughs]. But first, tell me about your year in 2015? What did you accomplish for yourself?

Charlie Manganiello: So yeah, I guess it was a mix between 2015 and 2016, so about a calendar year. I had running, skiing, and climbing goals. In that year I was able to climb my first 13a, which is something that I thought was impossible. Then I ran Gannett Peak, which is the tallest mountain in Wyoming, in under twenty four hours, and that was my goal. The record on that is like eight hours, which is ridiculous, but I did it in sixteen hours, and it was thirty seven miles. It’s a big ass mountain. Then also, into 2016, I wanted to do that Never Summer ski season, where I skied once a month for a full year. That involved lot’s of hiking with my skis on my pack up into the Tetons, find some snow, ski, put the skis back on my pack, and then hike the five miles back to the trailhead. I was kind of simmering, and turning on different sports throughout the year. With a nice scheduled out year overall view of what I was going to do, I was able to match my training wth my performances.

Neely Quinn: Okay. I mean, that’s a pretty good year.

Charlie Manganiello: It was an awesome year. It just stinks that Trump got voted that year- that was the only downturn for me.

Neely Quinn: Whoa- I had no idea we were going political here.

Charlie Manganiello: No, I’m just kidding.

Neely Quinn: Tell me a little bit about how that compared with previous years for you.

Charlie Manganiello: So in previous years, I just tried to do everything all at once. So what I mean by that- my body wasn’t able to adapt. It was too much for my body, and so I was trying to climb really hard, say boulder really hard. I was trying to do long runs, either after bouldering sessions or even just the day after. Then throughout the winter I was skiing a bunch. I wasn’t allowing my body to recover and adapt for whatever sport I was doing. What it just turned out to be was kind of a “meh” season, where I just kept climbing the same grade, not feeling as good on the skis, or my times I turned in for running weren’t any personal bests, or really anything to write home about.

Neely Quinn: Okay. But would you say that you had a big jump in improvement in all of these sports?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, it was huge. And it’s a little hard to quantify skiing, but if anyone skis- the way you feel in the skin track, the way you feel after a long day is kind of marked improvement. And then running, I’ve never run that kind of distance at that pace ever in my life, and I had never redpointed anything harder than I think 12b or c at the time.

Neely Quinn: Wow. That’s pretty- this is a really good year.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah- a lot of it was training, a lot of it was mental toughness. I know we throw that phrase around, but believing in my training, believing in my strength and just getting it down. The mind can shut things down in a hurry, even if you are strong enough.

Neely Quinn: What do you mean “mental toughness”? Did you practice that, did you learn something new about yourself? How did that improve?

Charlie Manganiello: I think it’s hard to explain. I just got back from a Canadian conference for climbing coaches in Banff. This topic came up, like these young athletes. Some kids have it, some kids don’t, as far as being able to bounce back from a failure, or maybe they’re just having touch day and they can kind of move on without getting super upset. I think it’s a self-awareness piece, like knowing when you are letting your mind take over. Like “Oh, I can’t get that move” or “Oh, my legs are too tired I can’t do another lap”. I think I just consciously just tried to recognize when I was doing it, and not like pushing through the “Oh man I’m just going to try really hard”. You still have to listen to your body if it’s time to quite for the day, or if you go to much you’re going to get hurt. I think it’s just that positive self-talk, and maybe some pre-climb or pre-run rituals, or routines, to get yourself into the mindset of what you are about to go to. Not just going out for a run and listen to your favorite soundtrack or whatever, but being in the moment.

Neely Quinn: Do you have any rituals or routines?

Charlie Manganiello: I’d like to say that I do. And most people do this- we see it at the crag- at least for climbing specifically. If I’m going to try something hard, or get on a redpoint burn for a project, I like to kind of take a couple of minutes- I always like to make people laugh, or I’m pretty goofy at the crag. But I just take a couple of minutes, walk away from the group if it’s busy, kind of do some deep, sharp breaths, start to visualize the moves- particularly the crux sequences- or a foot that I need to make sure I have before I do a move. Then kind of just be quiet in my own head, and then get on the route.

For running, I’ve gotten into the habit of running with podcasts. Listening to TrainingBeta, This American Life or whatever, and then just zoning out and not actually thinking about my form or keeping on my pace. I got in the habit of not running with music, and some of the runs went better that way, because I had to stay focused on my running. I did get super bored, but it helped, it definitely helped.

Neely Quinn: Cool. Anything with skiing?

Charlie Manganiello: Skiing is funny. It’s a funny sport- it’s like riding a bike. I could not ski for ten years- mostly because I grew up doing it, and I’ve done so many hours of it- that I could go out and ski the same way I would even if I wasn’t skiing a lot. It’s more just the conditioning aspect of being able to handle it. I do a lot of backcountry skiing so it’s not like I have a lift taking me up every time. It’s more just conditioning, it’s not like “Oh I made that turn perfectly”. It’s not like climbing where it’s these individual strength feats, moves, and endurance. You’re just gliding on snow and it’s super fun.

Neely Quinn: Okay [laughs].

Charlie Manganiello: I guess there’s a little bit of a mental aspect to skiing, where if you’re doing big couloirs, or big mountain skiing where there’s no-fall zones, you gotta have your head in the right place for that. You can’t just jump in and maybe go ski the Grand or something if you haven’t been skiing in a while. It’s the same thing with climbing- or at least I get it with climbing, where if I haven’t climbed in a while, I feel a little rusty, I get a little shaky above the bolt if I haven’t done it in a while. I’m sure people feel that as well, and I think it’s the same on skis as well.

Neely Quinn: Alright, let’s get into the schedule of events here, and what you consider climbing, running, and skiing seasons, and how you sort of mix them all together.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah. I think you have the ability to- I can get you this document so people can see it, because it’s kind of of hard to explain. I’ll make sure we get that online for folks. The plan that I’ll talk about is specific to my seasons here in Lander, Wyoming. It might be a little different for people who live in the desert, live in the northeast or whatever. They just have to- that person has to look at their year and kind of do some backwards planning. When do I want to peak for skiing, or say running and climbing, and then you can kind of start to fill in the pieces. For around here, just for making it nice and clean, we can start in January, because March is a pretty good climbing season around here.

So in January, it’s pretty cold. You can still kind of climb- it’s not too bad, we live in a pretty sunny spot here. But climbing at that point is kind on the back burner. Maybe you’re climbing two times a week, not super hard, maybe a little bit of hangboard. But January is a more strength, and I’ll be skiing a lot obviously, in January. So if we were to look at priorities, it would be skiing, strength maintenance, and then simmering climbing around in the background. That’s January.

February, I’ll build a little bit more into climbing. Skiing will start to taper a little bit, even though you can ski until July around here. Running is still kind of tapering off in the background- usually it’s the summer stuff that I’m worried about for running. So the climbing will kick back up. The March will be a good redpoint season, where I am mostly climbing, maintaining strength in the background, and then starting to kind of think about running for the early summer. That’s three months right there.

Basically, I just take that exact same three month block from April, May, and into June. June becomes peak running, and then I do something in the mountains, or you’ve got some race- that’s when races kind of start to pop up all over the United States for folks. Then I want to get ready for the fall, around here. Everyone wants to get ready for the fall for climbing. I’ll come back off a peak for running, still maintaining my strength, start back into some training for climbing through August. Then September-October I can really focus on my climbing. Running kind of stops at that point, still maintaining strength, and then finish through October.

November-December are two months where, for me at least, and I think for most, step away from climbing for a little bit. Then really have a focus on strength for November and December. It’s kind of poor climbing months anyways, depending where you’re at. I can ski a little bit, but really got into my next calendar, my next training year, with more strength than what I had before, and then try to maintain that throughout the year. That’s the key point. Everything can kind of come and go throughout the months, but I’m always maintaining my strength somewhere around two to three times a week, because that will go. You can get the endurance back up really quickly for the running, your climbing will come back quicker than you think, but the strength needs to be maintained, so you can go into the next year building on what you already earned on your strength focus in November and December.

Neely Quinn: Okay, that’s a busy year.

Charlie Manganiello: It’s a really busy year. It’s tough. You’ve got to plan it out, but you also can’t be married to the plan. Things will change, something comes up with work, or family. You’ve got to kind of be a little fluid, but you also have to realize that if you do want to do all these sports, you only have so much time. That’s the point with folks who want to do multi-sport training, where you are always compromising whatever you are trying to do. Or excuse me, you’re always sacrificing- there’s no compromise. If you want to peak at your running in the summer, it’s going to take away from your climbing whether you like it or not. If you just were climbing all the time all year, and kind of going through these phases, it’s definitely a better plan for peak performance in climbing than trying got be this multi-sport athlete. There’s no arguing that. But there is definitely a way where if you do want to peak in different sports, where you can try to fit the pieces in and have these different performances throughout the year. But you are always, always sacrificing when you want to do some sort of adaptation that isn’t sports specific. I think people kind of hold onto this “Oh I can do all of it all at once”.

Neely Quinn: So I just want to highlight something that you just said, which was that this is not the plan for people who really, really want to take their climbing, or their running, or their skiing for that matter, to the highest level they possible can, is that right?

Charlie Manganiello: Yup, that’s exactly right. There’s no Olympian in the history of Olympians that competed in power lifting, and they were really into volleyball, or whatever. You’re taking away from the sport you are trying to get better at. We see this a ton in climbing- there’s examples in professional sports, like Bo Jackson. That guy in the late 80s was a pro football player, and a pro baseball player. He was just an absolute tremendous athlete, but a total outlier. People kind of hold onto these people that they know in their lives, like “Oh man, I know a guy who can run under 4:30 in the mile, and climb 5.14c”, or whatever. That person is probably just an outlier. For most of the climbing world and athletes in general, you just can’t sustain that, or do that, the way other people can. The question you should be asking yourself is “Imagine what that person could do if they just focus on that one sport”.

Neely Quinn: Well and I wanted to ask that of you. What do you think you could do if you focused on one?

Charlie Manganiello: Oh, that’s a great question. That’s what I’m kind of experimenting with now. It’s been about a full year where I’ve really just focused on climbing. Skiing will kind of pop up in the winter here and there. I haven’t been running at all in the last year. But that’s the question that I’ve asked myself, in what I actually want to see what I am capable of. Most of us can climb better than we think we can. We always answer that question- when someone asks “How hard can you climb?”, we always answer our hardest redpoint. But that’s not how hard I can actually climb, right? If you kind of think of all the other pieces of the puzzle- the mental aspect, the strength- I think honestly I could climb 14a someday, but I’m just not there yet.

Neely Quinn: So after having taken a year almost of just climbing, where are you at now?

Charlie Manganiello: Now I’ve climbed a handful of 13a’s in the last year, and I just redpointed my first 13b this past June.

Neely Quinn: Nice. Good job!

Charlie Manganiello: So yeah, it’s good. And it comes slowly, like everyone knows in climbing. I guess I’ve already gotten the answer to my question- I’m climbing better than I did the year that I tried to do the running and the skiing. It’s obvious, because I’m just spending more time climbing and not going into a workout tired from another day on the slopes, or another day on the trail.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello: It’s common sense, when you really think about it or put it on paper. But I think when people don’t write down a plan, they don’t really see what’s actually happening in our training.

Neely Quinn: Okay a couple of questions and then I want to go back to your epic schedule for the year for multi-sport athletes. First of all, are there any rest periods where you are just doing nothing when you are training for multiple sports?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, it’s about a week in November [laughs].

Neely Quinn: During Thanksgiving?

[laughter]

Charlie Manganiello: It’s a busy schedule and you kind of have to know what you can handle. I kind of half kid, but that year was around Thanksgiving. Actually, I went on a bouldering trip that Thanksgiving. I think it was that first week in November I took a complete week off, I wasn’t strength training, I wasn’t climbing, I wasn’t running. I did a ton of mobility, just rested, and hang out. Maybe it was almost about two weeks, probably a week and a half, and then I get right back into strength training and getting ready for ski season.

Neely Quinn: Okay, next question is do you think that there are benefits to being multi-sport athlete?

Charlie Manganiello: Um, that’s a good question. It just depends on the goal of the person. I mean, I’ve always liked being well rounded, or you know, trying something new. Getting away from something you do all the time makes you appreciate that sport even more. I think- I can’t speak for everyone, but stepping away from something you’re trying to get better at- I think there is some benefit to that. I think people kind of beat their heads against the wall for so long, and you can kind of get burnt out on something, or they kind of lose the love of the sport, or the focus. I think it can almost help set a re-set button for folks.

We’ll see it too, where people will get burnt out. Maybe they’re doing the multi-sport thing because of where they live, where the seasons are so drastic and they don’t have the ability to travel, so they kind of go off from that. Then some people do it because they don’t have a choice, and they get injured climbing, and they want to pick up another sport to get that same feeling.

Neely Quinn: Right, which is me running right now [laughs].

Charlie Manganiello: I promise I won’t tell Steve.

Neely Quinn: Okay, I’m wondering about the strength training. So you described your year, and you were basically saying that no matter which sport you were doing, you were strength training to either maintain or gain strength. I have a couple of questions. One is when you are running or skiing, are you mostly focusing on strength training on the lower half of your body, and vice versa with climbing? How do you piece that out?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, and this philosophy rings true though the ClimbStrong literature we have, and what Steve has also said on the podcast. I might focus a little bit on maybe some quad dominant stuff. I mean, that’s a lot of what skiing is. Or unilateral strength, meaning using one leg at a time, like step ups or pistol squats, which is a one legged squat. But most of my strength training, whether I’m skiing or climbing- and they’re pretty contrasting sports as far as upper body and lower body. It’s all the hip hinges, the pushes, the pulls, the squats, some sort of core exercise, and a loaded carry. They don’t really look that different throughout the year. The only thing that changes is the frequency and the load. In season stuff is maybe one max, two times a week. Still high intensity, but lower volume, where maybe I”m doing two sets of five, or even three sets of two, where I’m not doing as much.

Then when we kind of get into the off season, say November-December for my specific example, it’s three times a week, and maybe I’m doing 3×3’s. Maybe I’m doing ladders where it’s 4-6, 4-6, 4-6 for three or four rounds. The workouts, as far as what I’m actually doing… I may have a focus. Say I’m focusing on deadlifts, but all the other patterns are still being done in a strength workout.

Neely Quinn: So I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I strength train, I’m tired [laughs] the next day. I’m wondering if in redpoint season, when you have a project, do you think that strength training on the side could be detrimental to that?

Charlie Manganiello: It is if you don’t put it in the right part of your week. So what I do, and what I have athletes do is- best case scenario would be a redpoint day, and then rallying and trying to get your strength training done after that day of climbing. Then you have the most amount of time to recover for your next redpoint day. You’re not going to try to redpoint the next day anyways, it’s probably going to be a rest day. If you’ve been strength training a lot, and your body is used to it, there shouldn’t be any reason why it’s going to hurt your redpointing climbing. Say it was a redpoint climbing day Sunday, you strength train that night, rest Monday, maybe you have a redpoint day Tuesday or Wednesday you should be good to go. Yeah, absolutely. If you are doing a big strength training day the day before a redpoint, or the morning of, absolutely that will take away from your redpointing day.

Neely Quinn: So, what would be a bad schedule, besides doing it the morning of going out and trying to send? What are other bad decisions to make there?

Charlie Manganiello: Just doing it too much. It doesn’t take much to maintain the strength that you have. We’ve even seen maintenance of strength where you just lift, work out once every ten days. Maybe it would be once every seven days. That’s like, nothing compared to most strength routines where we are seen three times a week. All we are doing is just taxing the central nervous system with some heavy loads, and then you’re getting out of the gym in fifty minutes. It’s not trying to- you’re not going to get any stronger during that season, you’re just trying to maintain your strength. I think people fall in the trap- if you want an example of bad planning- if people have that same redpoint mindset with the numbers they’re using on their deadlifts, or they’re like “Oh I don’t feel tired, I need to feel tired so I get stronger”. People end up doing too much in a season, in a redpoint season.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and you said something really important a little while ago. You said that if your body is used to it, when you are trying to redpoint, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. So that should make it clear that if it’s October and you’re trying to send something, you shouldn’t just begin a strength training program right then, right?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, and we’ve seen that because people will grab a book and be like “I want to start training”. Strength training isn’t for the immediate effect. It isn’t for “Oh I’m going to start training in October and I’m going to redpoint at the end of October”. Well, I mean, that is, but as far as strength training goes… the strength training that I did yesterday is going to help me a year from now. It’s not an immediate effect. It’s over time where we see that benefit. Where it’s shoulder injury prevention, because we are working on the antagonist muscles, it’s overall durability, work capacity, being able to handle a lot.

Steve and I just went to this crag outside of Canmore in Canada. It was like an hour and a half uphill- I think it was two thousand vertical feet of approach. I know of some athletes that do the ten minute approach and do their climbs. If they did that approach, they would be totally trashed, and they would not be ready for the climbing day. It’s the same thing with strength training. If you don’t do it or you don’t maintain it, your body is going to have so much new adaptation to take care of that you are going to be sore for a couple of days.

Neely Quinn: This is maybe the hardest part. We get a lot of e-mails from people who are like “I have a trip in seven weeks. Should I do a training program, how long should my training be, when should I start it and when should I stop it?”- things like that. But you’re saying that it’s much more than seven weeks that people need. Or what is the cut off?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, I mean, they’re going to see adaptation. We see it in about four to six week cycles, that’s kind of the traditional time for some sort of strength workout. But yeah. It’s quick. Honestly, I would say like six months out, up to a year, is when you really kind of start to see the benefits. When we get people on new strength programs, a) they’re just learning the movement, they’re probably going pretty light because we don’t want to hurt them. That is rule number one as a personal trainer, is don’t hurt anyone. They’re still trying to figure out what a hip hinge feels like, or pressing up over head. Then after two, maybe three months, they kind of start to feel comfortable in all these lifts, and then we can actually start to use a load that is beneficial.

Most people, or some people, will get into a strength workout and not really know the movement, so they’re not using a heavy weight, and it’s just not as beneficial as it will be when they practice it more. Also, people might go through a phase where they get pretty strong, and then they just don’t do it for months and months and months, and then they’re lost that strength. Then they’re just restarting back from the beginning. Our goal is to continue to build on those strength blocks throughout the whole entire year, maintain it. Maybe you kind of come down a little bit off your peak strength, and then you come back up. It’s consistency over intensity. You have to continue to do it. It’s boring, you don’t want to do it, but you can’t just turn it on and off. It just doesn’t work like that.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, this stuff is so confusing. I mean, it just seems more and more like if you don’t have a coach telling you what to do… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just fatalistic of me, but I’ve talked to ninety people now on the podcast, and I’m still confused [laughs]. Do you think it’s that confusing, or do you just see it as “This is how you do it”?

Charlie Manganiello: I think I come from a good background, a good experience, or I’m a good example. I thought training was absolute rocket science. I was so confused and I didn’t get it. I was like “When do I do this, how do I do that, when do I take away this”.  Once I started just trying to figure out what worked for me, like people don’t even get that far, right? They don’t even have a plan. First you have to try something and see if it works. I’m a personal trainer, I’m a coach, I have personally tried things for myself that didn’t work. I was like “Well, that did nothing for me” or “That was too much”, and then you go back to the drawing board. People don’t even get that far because they get frustrated and they don’t see improvements. You kind of have to stick with something to know whether it works.

As far as strength training goes, it’s very simple. People need to do it often, and every year. Or every month, rather. You can’t just turn it off. I think very simply put, if you are in season- say you are climbing, try to do it once every ten days, or once every seven days, all the major movement patterns, which Steve has already gone over in podcast previous. I don’t want to use up too much time talking about that. Off season, what most people do, maybe it’s two six week cycles or two four week cycles, where you are just focusing on strength. Maybe you’re doing it three days a week, minimum two days a week. Where I want to get stronger on my deadlift, or I want to deadlift more. Pick a focus, hammer it home, leave it, and then maintain strength throughout the rest of the year. I think where people get lost is not doing it as frequently as they should.

Neely Quinn: Okay, but generally. If you are maintaining or building strength and you’re using the movements that you and Steve talk about, you should be able to do well in more than well sport, because you are training your whole body all the time.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah exactly. For climbers, and this obviously applies to a multi-sport athlete, but I don’t want climbers to think like “Oh I’m going to turn this podcast off because this is only for multi-sport athletes”. It’s also for climbers as well. Even if you just climb year round, you still have to do all that strength training. It’s going to make you more resilient on your approaches, injury prevention, and just a stronger athlete. A lot of people are neglecting areas of the body that are weak, that you can’t get strong just through climbing alone. The fingertips is where we fail. It’s not because our quads burn out, or because our core gets fatigued or whatever. I mean yeah, we might not have the strength in our core, but it’s so hard to practice that strength in the wall because you just can’t hold on with your fingers that much. That’s where we start to implement all these other strength lifts, to get the big muscles stronger for climbing or for whatever sport we are doing.

Neely Quinn: And then you’re doing finger strength training more closer to the climbing season?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, and finger strength is no different than just general strength. It needs to constantly be done. If you are in season, maybe it’s once a week, once every ten days. If it’s off season, you can start to integrate it- the integrated strength model, where you are doing your heavy deadlift, maybe you are doing some mobility exercise, you’re getting on the hang board for five to ten seconds in some specific position, and then you’re back into some other lift. It’s a really good way for climbers to put it into their workout, because you force the rest, get some regular strength training in, and then go back to the hang board.

Neely Quinn: Okay. So I’m looking at your schedule here. You’re like, January-February-March-April, blah blah blah. I’m wondering how many days a week were you training and performing throughout this year?

Charlie Manganiello: Um, yeah. So- oh man, it can get really complicated in a hurry. Simply put, I’m an 8-5 kind of guy, where I have a full time job. So this might change for people if they work at home if they’re living out of their Sprinter van because they’re bumming it around the United States. Where I had a strength day Monday, and I came kind of off a weekend of whatever I was doing- skiing, running or climbing. Monday felt like the hardest because I was pretty tired from the weekend, but I was still getting strength training in. Tuesday was my off day. Wednesday was another workout day. Wednesday can be a little bit of a performance day for me, because I have a half day, where I can go try hard things. Thursday in the gym, strength in whatever sport I was doing. Friday would be day off, and then it would be full on Saturday Sunday.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so you had two days off a week?

Charlie Manganiello: Yup, and sometimes only one. Sometimes Friday, if I was kind of in more of that build phase, I’d be at a little bit lower of an intensity, so a little bit easier as far as the weight goes. But I wanted to build that engine for long days, like a thirty-seven mile run. I’d kind of stack my workouts, they just wouldn’t be as intense.

Neely Quinn: When you were training- this is kind of an aside- but when you were training for that thirty-seven mile big run, how many times did you run thirty-seven miles?

Charlie Manganiello: I’m really glad you asked that question. Not once. The longest run I think I did… I guess I ran the Wind River peak here, which is twenty-something miles as kind of an “I’m just going to go out and keep a good, consistent pace”. Then I ran the Grand Teton, and that was kind of a pre-test to see how my legs felt. That was hard and felt like kind of a performance day. Other than that, my longest run I think was seven miles.

Neely Quinn: And were you going super fast during that seven miles, or something? Like, how did you train to do- seven miles? That’s it?

Charlie Manganiello: Seven or eight miles, yeah.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] What? What?

Charlie Manganiello: It’s good. What I focused on was the strength in my legs, being strong. When I was doing my strength focus, I was doing ton of deadlifts, front squats, and got into these pistol squats. I really focused on my leg speed, so I would do track workouts. Lots of intervals- anyone who runs knows what intervals are, or doing four hundred meter repeats. We see this a lot, and we have this loop here in town called the Tomato Loop. I don’t know why it’s called the Tomato Loop, I should probably know why. But it’s a five mile loop here in town that’s really easy to do if you go on a lunch break if you work here in town. People run that, and again, I’ve nothing against people going out and running and having a good workout and sweating it out. But what happens is they get confused. They want to keep running that five miles, try to go faster and faster and faster on that one specific route. But usually what happens is that they become so efficient at that route that they can’t get the leg speed- like their legs to turn over, because it’s such a long distance, that they just get really, really good at running a specific pace for as long as there are hours in the day.

Once we start to strength train and do some interval training, and we are actually trying to get the legs to move faster, that’s where we see our performance go up, even in a thirty-seven mile run like I did. It’s so different than some of these marathon trainers or athletes, where trainers will have them do a ton of strength training, get their legs in shape. Of course they’ve got to run somewhere in the fifteen or twenty miles- kind of long runs to get that capacity in. But they’re just doing a ton of intervals and leg speed work, and then boom, they go to their race and they crush it.

Neely Quinn: So you are saying that you would go out on the Tomato Loop and you would do sprints basically?

Charlie Manganiello: Uh, no. Well my point there was that that’s what people will do to train for a 5k. They’re like “It’s a couple of miles more than a 5k, I’m just going to keep running this thing over and over and over again”, and they just keep expecting to keep going faster, but they just keep running at the same pace. I would be on the track and I would do some hill repeats, because I knew I had a lot of elevation gain that I had to do. I would still go out on the Tomato Loop every once in a while because it’s an easy run, but if I didn’t incorporate that, if I didn’t use the track into interval training, I’d have to figure out where the mile markers were. But maybe I’d do mile repeats, or eight hundred meter repeats, where I’d go at the pace I wanted to go. Say it was a 7:30 pace or 7:00 pace, which is pretty slow for most people, or elite runners. But that’s what I kind of knew I had to do, so I’d do that. Maybe I take a 1:1 rest to work ratio, and then I’d go back into it, into the mile.

Neely Quinn: Hmm. Okay.

Charlie Manganiello: And just to be clear, I wasn’t running a 7:30 pace on Gannett, that’s ridiculous. I don’t even know- that’s like six thousand vertical feet. As far as just a general 5k pace, most runners can do that.

Neely Quinn: Okay. So you were running- training- at a pace that was much faster than you knew what you were going to do in the actual run?

Charlie Manganiello: Exactly. It seems crazy- I think the longest run I did that summer was twenty miles once, one sixteen mile, and then mostly under ten, and then a ton of leg strengthening.

Neely Quinn: Okay, okay. So you would do the same sort of schedule. On the weekend you would perform, or do big days. Monday and Friday you would rest-ish. That was through the whole year?

Charlie Manganiello: Yup, that pretty much stayed true for each month. Once you get into the performance phase, for example, that June time frame, or September-October, then it can really start to back off. Now you’re doing what you worked so hard for and what you want to perform in, so maybe that might look like a strength day Monday, Tuesday off, Wednesday redpoint day or performance day, then maybe Thursday-Friday off, and then Saturday a performance day.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so now you’re talking a little bit more like normal people’s schedules.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, you want a little bit more of built in rest. You’re not going to get any stronger than what you were supposed to do months before, and you want to be rested for those performance days.

Neely Quinn: So when do you start tapering? Like, if you are training, training, training, and your performance month for climbing is March, and you’re training January-February, when do you start backing off from that schedule?

Charlie Manganiello: I’d go through those full two months, and then as March 1st started to hit- it would actually depend a little bit on how the training was going. If I was feeling pretty good and I wanted to start projecting, I would just do it right around when it made sense, like March 1st, March 5th or whatever. But if I kind of felt like maybe I needed one or two more weeks, maybe I would extend that a little bit.

If you don’t do the work before and then you come into a performance month, you can’t make up for it in the performance month. You have to make sure you do it beforehand, then start to taper and make sure you give yourself that two or three week window to perform. Then that’s another hard question for people, like “When do I stop? If I don’t send, or if I don’t do this run, when do I go back into another training phase?”. I think that all depends, and people will kind of find out what works best for them. These kind of two or three week windows for performance is kind of al we get, and then it’s back to the drawing board.

Neely Quinn: Two or three weeks?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, and that’s generally speaking. What happens when we are in a performance phase, we are actually kind of getting weaker. If we look at it just in climbing, we are getting really strong and specific on one route, and people have probably felt this. They are so excited that they just sent their hardest redpoint, but then all of a sudden it’s been two or three weeks of them going to the crag, warming up on the same two pitches, giving two to three burns on the exact same climb, then going home. Doing that for a few weeks, they’ll go back out and the 12b that felt super easy during their training all of a sudden feels really hard, because they’re just so dialed on the specific movements of that project that they actually kind of start to get a little weaker in their training. The volume is really low, the intensity isn’t very high, because they’re just trying to learn that sequence in a route.

It’s the same thing with running. They peak for a specific race or whatever objective they want to do, and then they haven’t been running because they’ve been tapering, they’re tired from their performance, and then they go try and do another big race and they turn in the worst time they’ve ever turned in.

Neely Quinn: Hmm. So in March, for your climbing, you would basically only climb for that month, or even shorter than that month, and then you would start training again?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, and I think working in months is the easiest for most people. Like, okay I’ve got the month of March to do this, instead of trying to do two or three weeks. I think it’s easier to plan out the year that way. We’ve all seen it happen, and I can speak from my own personal experience, and maybe you can too Neely. You throw yourself at this specific route for three weeks or whatever, and you’re like “Oh my god, I’m not going to be able to do that”. If you keep throwing yourself at it, it’s not beneficial after- like if you’ve given yourself an honest effort at it, if you can look back and be like “Wow I really threw myself at that thing”, then it’s really time to move on and try for another season. We see that with professional climbers, right? They talk about these five year projects, these ten year projects. Imagine if they just kept throwing themselves at that one project for forever. They’d maybe be well known for that one climb, but that’s it, and not all these other efforts that they’re able to do.

Neely Quinn: It seems like though, even during your peak climbing month in March, you’re starting to run, maybe even at the end of it. Are you running all the time?

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah, I think January, February, March, I’m really not running at all. Maybe at the end of March I’ll start to get ready for that late spring, early summer peak running.

Neely Quinn: And then same thing with April through June? Sorry, I’m just looking at your schedule here. You’re doing your peak running, you’re doing your races, and then you start to climb again after that.

Charlie Manganiello: I think with the climbing, a little bit unlike the running, since climbing can be… running is mostly an endurance sport. That can kind of be picked up pretty quickly. Climbing is kind of the same kind of strength maintenance level as well, where I’d be climbing at least one or two days in the gym. Maybe not at a workout type level, but doing my hangboard, maybe having a limit bouldering day once every couple of weeks, maybe a circuit type training. The climbing gets lost so quickly, because it’s such a skill sport. Running, it’s so endurance based, and you’re just picking your feet up and moving along, and trying to go as fast as you can. At least the running I was doing- maybe not sprinting. I try to keep the climbing simmering in the background through the whole year.

Neely Quinn: Each of them is kind of simmering in the background for the whole year, except for- actually no, the running you completely stop for a couple of months.

Charlie Manganiello: Yup, yup. For me at least, it’s a high impact sport, it’s hard on the knees, hard on the ankles, and I just can’t sustain a healthy body. People are either running- like if you know any runner, they’re either running or they’re injured. I guess in some way it can be like climbing, but running, it can be picked up- at least if you are doing it correctly and doing your strength maintenance- it can be picked up pretty quickly. You don’t have to be doing twenty mile runs in the middle of January.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Okay. What’s in the document that you were talking about?

Charlie Manganiello: Which document?

Neely Quinn: Sorry- the document that I want to put up on this episode page actually.

Charlie Manganiello: Oh, it was going to be the one I think you are looking at right now, with the red, yellow, green- so people can see that.

Neely Quinn: Can you describe what people are going to see when they look at it?

Charlie Manganiello: They’re just going to see a way to schedule out one’s year. They’ll have to figure out where they’re going to put their performance months, but they’ll see what the focus of the month is going to be, so they don’t lose track and aren’t going to tank on their performance month. I also have another print out that I can get you that I don’t think that I sent to you, that highlights what it looks like to be a multi-sport athlete, and highlight that there is going to be some sort of sacrifice throughout the year.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, those are going to be great. Those are going to be really helpful for people.

Charlie Manganiello: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Cool. Anything else on being a multi-sport athlete?

Charlie Manganiello: Oh man. I think I already said it. I think the biggest thing that people want to remember is that it’s going to hurt whatever sport you want to be good at, if it’s simmering in the background. This is a climbing podcast, so if climbers want to do multiple sports throughout the year, it will for sure hurt your climbing. It doesn’t have to completely derail your climbing, but it’s always a sacrifice and not a compromise. If you’ve got some outlier friend that can run these crazy distances, and climb these amazing grades, or do other peak performances in other sports, you have to ask yourself if that person is probably an outlier- “I’m a different athlete, and I need to focus on what I need to actually do”. You have to ask yourself the question what could that person be doing if they were actually just committing to one sport? I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t be a multi-sport athlete, you just have to know what you are getting yourself into.

Neely Quinn: Right. Okay. What do you have going on this fall? Where are you climbing?

Charlie Manganiello: Um, man. We were just talking before we got on- it’s like no fall here in the Rocky Mountains. It went from ninety degrees and super smoky, to now- I think a couple of feet of snow fell in the Winds. So hopefully I am up at Wild Iris- I’ve got a project up there on the Rodeo Wave. It’s a little snowy up there right now, and I think there’s some more snow on the forecast, but I’m hoping for the next month or six weeks to be like it has been the last few falls and we can climb up there. My plans might have to change because the crag might get snowed out, we’ll see.

Neely Quinn: Yeah you might be climbing in Sinks.

Charlie Manganiello: I know! And I love Sinks, it’s just that I’m not quite ready for it. We’re there all winter, so it would be nice if we didn’t have to start there two months early.

Neely Quinn: What’s your project?

Charlie Manganiello: It’s Atomic Stetson, it’s a 13c. If folks have been on that Rodeo Wave wall, it’s really, really bouldering. Hard sequences, hard moves, to a couple of rests, and then another hard finish. I’m primary focusing on my strength, so limit level bouldering, and then doing some hard intervals, where it’s like hard boulder problem, rest for thirty seconds or a minute, and then try to repeat that effort. Kind of going into it tired, like we all know when we are doing that strength-endurance climbing.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s smart. Cool, well I hope you do it. I hope you get the opportunity to go back up there.

Charlie Manganiello: I hope so too, yeah. I think I’ll be able to make it up there this weekend.

Neely Quinn: And if people wanted to work with you, how would they do that?

Charlie Manganiello: I’m kind of at capacity right now, but I encourage anyone to at least reach out and ask any questions. But charlie@elementalgym.com is my email, and then on Instagram it’s @charlie_manganiello, which is a hard last name to spell-

Neely Quinn: It’s the hardest! I’m a really good speller and I always mess it up.

Charlie Manganiello: There’s just a lot of vowels in there. It’s pretty funny- this is how I’ve taught friends- so imagine being six  years old and trying to spell “Manganiello”, and that’s where I was at. So my parents, I think it was my dad that came up with it. You know the Mickey Mouse song?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello: Like [sings] M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E? It works with Manganiello. So [sings] it’s M-A-N-G-A-N-I-E-L-L-O.

[laughter]

That’s how you do it!

Neely Quinn: That’s perfect. I’m never going to forget that.

Charlie Manganiello: So yeah Instagram is @charlie_manganiello, and then I help manage, or we have people manage the ClimbStrong Instagram, and that’s @climb.strong and you’ll see our logo there.

Neely Quinn: Nice. Well I appreciate your knowledge and experience with this. I think that people will appreciate that too. So look for the document that he was talking about on the episode page, and contact Charlie if you need any more information, or want to train with him. Or, people can train with you in person at the gym if they’re in Lander, right?

Charlie Manganiello: Yup, absolutely. We had a lot of people come this summer who were looking for one off sessions who were looking to dial a specific lift, or just sit and talk.

Neely Quinn: Well thanks so much, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Charlie Manganiello: Alright, thanks a lot Neely.

Neely Quinn: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Charlie Manganiello, and I’m looking forward to teaching with him again at the end of this month.

Charlie Manganiello: Coming up on the podcast, I have, let’s see, a bunch of people. I have Jared Vagy, who has a new book and new programs coming out. He’s the physical therapist, he’s been on the show before, and he has a lot of resources for you. Stay tuned for that, I think that will be in a week or so. Then Tom Randall is going to be on the show, and he is going to talk about all this research that he’s been doing on training and kids training, so I’m super excited about that. Then of course, Esther Smith is going to come back on and talk about yet another part of our body that gets injured.

All of that good stuff is coming up this month and next month, and I hope that this podcast helps you with your injuries, with your training, with your mindset. I hope it keeps you psyched to climb and train, because sometimes we all need that. I appreciate your support, and I appreciate you listening all the way to the end. If you have anything good or bad to say about the podcast, it would be awesome if you could do a review on iTunes.

Thanks again, and I will talk to you soon.