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Transcript 

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the Training Beta 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 we’re on episode 49 where I talk with Mercedes Pollmeier, who is a trainer out of Seattle. She used to climb and train in Denver and then she moved over there and she pretty much works with climbers on their training full time, whether it’s online or in person.

I wanted to talk with her because she has such a wealth of knowledge and experience with people. She also has a degree in training. We talked a little bit about her training, her philosophies, and we actually ended up talking quite a bit about ARCing, which you’ll hear all about. It’s when you stay on the wall for anywhere between five and 25 minutes and it’s to increase your forearm strength and endurance. We talked a lot about how beginners and intermediate climbers can train to get stronger

Before I get into the interview I want to let you know that Friction Labs and Training Beta have teamed up to give you guys, my loyal listeners, some really awesome discounts up to, sometimes, half off of their stuff- their chalk and everything else over there. If you want to take advantage of that and try out their stuff for yourself go to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta.

A little update on my own training: I’m still training with Kris Peters and he’s still kicking my ass and after five weeks, I think it’s been now, I’m stronger than I have been, I think, in the last two years and I’m really psyched about it. I’ve been doing triples, so three routes in a row at the gym, at not-my-limit but close to it and I think that that’s been helping a lot with my power endurance and overall strength. Also, I’ve been doing a lot of weight training where I’m doing deadlifts and squats and bent-over rows and I just added weighted pull-ups yesterday, which is so awesome because it’s something that I really like doing and it’s something that I haven’t been able to do since before my surgery. I’m really psyched about that. He’s having me a lot on the TRX, which I’ve never worked on before, so I can feel that my core is stronger and everything is just stronger and more solid. I’m psyched. Thank you, Kris, so far.

If you guys want to work with Kris yourself, you can. Go to www.trainingbeta.com and you’ll see ‘online training’ at the top and just click on there and you’ll see what options he has for you.

Okay, so without further adieu I’m going to get into this interview with Mercedes. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Neely Quinn: All right. Welcome to the show, Mercedes. Thanks for being with me.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Thanks, Neely.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah! So, for anybody who doesn’t know who you are, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah! I’m based out of Seattle. I currently work at the Seattle Bouldering Project. I manage the fitness and training program there. Recently, I just came out with a book called Simple Strength, and I train a bunch of folks online for climbing, triathlons, ultra-running, mountaineering, you name it. That’s about it.

 

Neely Quinn: Nice. So you are a trainer, by trade. That’s your full time profession.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: And it seems that you work mostly with climbers.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I do, yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: But you do train other people, like you were just saying. How do you get your clients? Where do you train people? What do your days look like?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I started training people in Denver and, at the time when I started training, it was mostly boulderers and sport climbers and it wasn’t until I moved to the Pacific Northwest that my demographic of people changed. I think it’s just that the Pacific Northwest kind of provides this outdoor arena for everyone so they don’t just focus on climbing or bouldering, they focus on a lot of different outdoor sports. Really, since being in Seattle, I’ve had the opportunity to train a lot of different types of athletes which is pretty cool. They’re all/I met them all in the climbing gym. They’re all basically climbers but they also do other things as well. I would say that’s where I meet most of my clients and I also met a lot of them through the Vertical World Seattle. I worked there for three years, until recently. I just moved to the Seattle Bouldering Project. So that’s where I’ve met most of my clients.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, and can you tell me a little bit about your own climbing? When did you start climbing and taking it seriously?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I started climbing probably, when I started taking it seriously, when I was about 23/24 in Denver. I actually picked it up because Dave Wall, he was my coach at the time – I hired him to be my trainer for tennis. I was trying out for the Olympics and I needed a strength coach and I had dabbled in climbing at the time and I saw this guy crushing people upstairs at the Paradise Rock Gym. I was like, “That’s what I need,” and so I hired him. He was like, “You know, you should probably start climbing a little bit more. It might help your upper body strength and just overall strength,” because I was pretty small. I was an agility athlete so my legs were solid but I had no upper body at all. He’s the one that really got me into becoming a little more serious about my climbing.

After the tryouts I ended up having shoulder surgery. I kind of got burnt out on tennis so I quit tennis and picked up bouldering. I was like, “This is really awesome. I really wanna compete,” so I actually competed in Nationals, I think, three years in a row. That was super fun. I got to meet a lot of people and I actually got really good, pretty fast which, in hindsight, might not be the best thing that I could have done but I was real excited. I hadn’t taken it outside too much at that point but then, a couple years later, I went on outside and started climbing. Pretty much just bouldering – I didn’t really get into sport climbing too much. I had a couple interesting falls that led me to not want to sport climb much anymore. Mostly, it was bouldering outside and being in Rocky Mountain National Park and Joe’s Valley, and all of those places just inspired me to keep climbing. Not until recently, I hadn’t climbed in the last three years. I think a change of location and a new job kind of stopped me from doing that but recently, now in the last six months, I’ve started my own training program again. Now I’m back into it and super psyched about it.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, I have so many questions.

[laughs] Let’s go back to – how old are you now?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I’m 32.

 

Neely Quinn: I think it’s really interesting that you started climbing at 23. I actually get a lot of questions from people who are like, “Do you know anybody who climbs hard who started climbing after the age of 20?” or whatever. I’m actually curious – how hard did you end up climbing? Or have you ended up climbing?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Oh man. When I was 23, that’s when I really started training for climbing. Within three years I was climbing V8 and I had several injuries. I tore both of my ACL’s over a two-year period so I took a lot of time off after that. It was quite difficult to get back into it and climbing at the same level. I ended up climbing a handful of V9s and that’s pretty much been my high point, is V9. I’m back at that level again, like, in the last six months so I’m pretty psyched about that. I would say that it’s not easy but if you have the commitment and the availability around you to climb a lot, you can climb just as hard as if you had started it a lot younger. I think starting as a kid you’re going to develop your tendons for the long haul and I think starting as an adult it’s a little bit harder to maintain strength and make sure that you don’t get injured. There’s just a lot of finger injuries that I see with adults getting into climbing, but it’s definitely possible. You can definitely climb hard and start in your 20s, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s encouraging for a lot of people, I think.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, I’m wondering about your tennis background. It sounds like you’re a really good athlete in general. I’m wondering how you feel your tennis background helped with your climbing, if at all?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Tennis taught me how to be very competitive [laughs] and how to be regimented with my training, I think. I started playing tennis when I was 13, which is actually also kind of late for becoming a tennis professional, but pretty much immediately I learned how to train on a schedule and that’s, like, since 13. I would play tennis six to seven times a week. Pretty much all through college I played with that schedule so I would say that being at that level taught me how to trust in the training system and to be committed to the training system. Now it’s like I know these things are going to work, I just need to be consistent and stay on top of it.

 

Neely Quinn: As far as your shoulder surgery goes, what did you have done?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I just had a clean-up in my shoulder. Because of serving in tennis, it put a lot of strain on my shoulder and my upper body strength just wasn’t there. When you’re serving at such high velocity it’s going to tear-up the shoulder and, unfortunately for me, it just kind of/that was kind of the end of my tennis career. I couldn’t really come back from it. They did a great job, they cleaned it up, and – nothing was repaired, it was just clean-up. I think had it been worse, climbing would be a lot more difficult right now but at that point I knew I couldn’t come back from that.

 

Neely Quinn: It’s interesting that you couldn’t come back to tennis but you’re able to climb.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s totally different mechanics on the shoulders. I’m really thankful for that. Even now when I play tennis I can still feel a little bit of pain in my shoulder when I serve. It’s mostly just that one motion, which is the most important stroke of the whole game, pretty much. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: When you say “clean-up” do you mean you had bone spurs removed and bursitis cleaned out?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, I had my bursa taken out and it was mostly my labrum that was pretty torn up. No bone spurs but total labrum clean-up.

 

Neely Quinn: Did they do a tenodesis?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I don’t know what that is. I don’t think so.

 

Neely Quinn: I’m just curious. We get so many questions about shoulders, it’s just interesting to hear people’s stories, to hear what they came back from and how they’re climbing now. You said you took the last three years off. What did you do in those three years because it doesn’t seem that you lost too much fitness if you can come back to V9 in the last six months? What were you doing with yourself?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say that the last three years has been – I’ve dabbled in a lot of different things. I’ve kept hiking. I’d picked up snowboarding and cross country skiing. I just tried a lot of new things like parkour, gymnastics, and just hadn’t really had the excitement of climbing that I did previously and I think that’s why I couldn’t commit to climbing every week. I would climb maybe once or twice a month in the last three years. There’d be spurts like the summer. I’d go to Squamish every summer but that’s about it. That was pretty much the extent of my climbing in the last three years, would be the summer trips. There was no training and it’s all been through keeping generally fit and it’s been mostly bodyweight training that I’ve been doing. Deadlifting has been a pretty big deal recently for me because of my back. I just recently had a back injury about a year and a half ago and so I need to make sure that I stay on top of my deadlifting. I think that’s also been a big factor in getting my fitness and strength back as well.

 

Neely Quinn: You’ve had a lot of injuries.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I have.

 

Neely Quinn: Are you, like, a hypermobile person?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Hypermobile – you know, I’m not that flexible. I think I might have hypermobile elbows and knees and that’s why I tore both of my ACLs but I think, as a kid being a tennis player, it just kind of developed my one side really, really well and then my other side of the body is just totally lagging behind. I think/I peg it to that I trained so much for one sport as a kid, that’s kind of why I have so many issues now, as an adult.

 

Neely Quinn: That makes sense since it’s such a lopsided sport. Climbing’s not really like that, I guess.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: No.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so sometime in the last 15 years you went to school and got your master’s degree for, what was the master’s in?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Human movement, in sports conditioning.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. I talk to a lot of people on the podcast who are trainers for climbing but they don’t have any schooling really, whatsoever. What sets you apart? I’m not saying that you’re better or whatever – I’m not asking you that, but what do you feel that you gained from school that you can now take into climbing training?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I think, for me, I learned how to be critical. Just being a critical thinker about any kind of information because I went through a master’s degree. You have to do so much research and conduct your own experiments. I worked in several different laboratories, in Boulder actually, studying human movement as well as motor control. It’s kind of the other side of training. That’s all the theory, so you learn the theory and how to think critically about, pretty much, everything that you do. You have to question, “How is this going to make this move better?” or “What is it that I’m actually trying to experiment on here?” I think that’s maybe what I gained the most out of going to school. I can look at a lot of information and be as critical about it as as I can and take bits and pieces of the information that’s out there and try to formulate the best training program or basis of information that I can and present that to the people that I work with.

 

Neely Quinn: I’m assuming that a lot of your schooling has actually come from just being with clients and learning from your experiences with them.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Totally. Absolutely. Every client teaches me something totally new and I feel only in the last year my eyes have been really open to how similar but how different everyone is. In terms of similarity, people tend to have the same types of injuries and then you look at their background and you see: you guys all did similar things as an athlete growing up and now this is what your body is doing. I feel like recently I’ve had a good breakthrough with figuring out clients in general. If someone comes and talks to me for, like, five minutes I can pretty much tell them everything they need to do from then on out. Before it would take me a lot longer to formulate, “This is what you should do, this is how I’m going to train you,” so…yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: What do you feel like are your main tenets as a trainer? Do you use weights a lot? Do you have people train cardio a lot? Do you use cyclical training? What kinds of things do you utilize the most? For climbing, by the way.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: [laughs] For my climbers, I mean honestly for everyone, I like to approach everyone in terms of developing them as an overall athlete. I want this person to become a very good overall athlete and that all comes down to how well they move. Movement is obviously what I specialize in so I really look at how people move and how I can make them move better. By going through these progressions – and it is cyclical, I do go through periodization – if they can learn to move well in general they can take that and apply it to climbing or running or triathlons, whatever it is. I do have this kind of foundation training plan that I want everyone to go through and they’ll continue to do it no matter how long they’re training with me. I hope they would take it with them if they stop training with me.

 

Neely Quinn: What does this training plan look like?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: It is mostly bodyweight but I do a lot with weights as well. It’s not isolated training. I would say a lot of it is deadlifts, front squats, pullups, different types of pullups. I guess very little of it is lifting and it’s mostly body weight work.

 

Neely Quinn: So, with the front squats, is that with weight?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Mmm-hmm. If someone had come to me and hasn’t ever really worked out with weights or if their movement isn’t exactly how I want it or how it should look, then I will pretty much just take them back to bodyweight and then work them up through kettlebells and then with the bar with weight. It just depends on where they’re at. If they look good squatting then I will add weight to them immediately. If they don’t look good or if they’re not confident with it then we go back to bodyweight and progressively work the weight into it.

 

Neely Quinn: I want to come back to this, but what about on the wall? What kinds of things are you having people do?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s mostly time spent on the wall, so it they’re – I’m a big fan of ARCing. Even though I’m a boulderer I think ARCing has huge benefits for fitness, finger strength, and working on focus. In ARCing I can ask someone to focus on something very specific. It might be footwork, it could be hand placement, it could be just overall body position and they’re able to repeat that movement over and over and over again. I think that that’s really the basis of my training: repetition and practice of movement, and being very focused about it. Not counting the repetitions, I don’t really care about that, it’s: how well can you move every time you move?

 

Neely Quinn: Can you explain what ARCing is?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, I don’t actually know what the ‘C’ stands for, I think it’s Aerobic Respiratory Capillarization? You’re trying to build your capillaries and the structures in your forearms, in your muscles specifically. You do that by spending a lot of time on the wall without coming off. You can rest on the wall but really you’re trying to get your forearm muscles to adapt to training for working for long periods of time on the wall. Usually, ARCing is meant for sport climbers and, maybe more specifically, alpine climbers. In boulderers we don’t need it as much but I feel like, for building good technique and movement, it’s a good tool to use.

 

Neely Quinn: I’ve been hearing, I mean, we have our endurance program on the site and we use ARCing in it. I think it’s interesting that it’s a term that you’re hearing now. This is how far we’ve come with training. Normal people are like, “Oh, I’m ARCing right now. I’ll be on the wall for 25 minutes.” So, for you, can you give me an example of a client you have right now who you have ARCing? What does their climbing session look like?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Pretty much, the session would start with bodyweight movements to warm-up: arm circles, lots of circular motions for all the joints, and that might last 10/15 minutes. Then their ARC session. The goal is to work up to about 30 minutes on the wall without coming off. Someone who may be starting with me for the first time, we may split that ARC session up into three, 10-minute sessions because 30 minutes right off the bat is really hard and, actually, just five minutes is long enough so the goal is just to ramp up to 30 minutes in one session. Actually, someone recently just started this and they’re splitting their ARCing up into five-minute sections, so it’s five minutes on, then they rest. The whole session would be focused on – I give them a list of things they could work on and they choose one and focus on that for the 30 minutes, or that session.

One of them would be ‘bug squishers.’ I work with a lot of kids so I like to use these funny terms, so ‘bug squishers’ for footwork. You place your toe and you do a little swivel, like a pivot motion, with your foot to increase the neuroconnections to your toe. They just do that over and over and over for that whole session.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so they’re obviously on things that are easy for them.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yes, super easy. At Seattle Bouldering Project, because we’re a bouldering gym, we don’t really have long routes so they end up doing it on V0/V0-, just climbing up, climbing down, climbing up, climbing down for as long as they can.

 

Neely Quinn: So if you’re a 5.12 climber, like a pretty solid 5.12 climber, and you wanted to do this, would you be on 5.10?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say yeah, 5.10. It might be good if you had an auto belay that was on 5.10/5.11. You could do mostly easy stuff and incorporate a few moves of 5.11 then go back to 5.10. Whatever point you can work yourself up to without getting pumped, so for everyone that’s a little different. If you climb 5.12 you might get pumped on a 5.9 after five minutes. It just depends on your work capacity. If you can climb 5.11 and not get pumped after 10/15 minutes, you should be working at the highest grade that you can without getting pumped.

 

Neely Quinn: You say that they’re allowed to rest on the wall, so they can sit there and shake out indefinitely?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: They can shake out. [laughs] I think I see this mostly with people who are traversing. If you traverse into a dihedral and you shake out with both hands off the wall, that might not be the best thing. If you’re shaking out one arm at a time and you have to do that for a minute on the wall before you start climbing again, I think that’s totally fine. You’re essentially working on resting, shaking out, chalking up, all things that are very important for sport and trad climbing. You’re also working on being mentally fit to stay on the wall as long as you possibly can so if you’re going for that onsight or redpoint and trying to not come off the wall, I think that working on these resting positions really does help that.

 

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Neely Quinn: What do you tell people about etiquette with this kind of thing? This will just be a very short aside. When do you have people do this?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: For those who have the ability to train during the day, when the gym is pretty quiet, that’s the best. If they can only come in after five, I ask them not to do ARCing. It would be just, “Climb as many climbs as you can in an hour,” and maybe it’s not ARCing – they’re just doing 5.9 or 5.10 with their partner. They would have to do that with a partner, unfortunately, at that point, unless you’re bouldering.

I think after 5:00 would be really difficult, during the week, to do ARCing. If they can do it during the day, that would be great. If they notice – especially at the Seattle Bouldering Project, everyone’s very, very polite, so you can just say, “Hey! I’m going to be working on this for 5 or ten minutes. Do you mind that I do that? Or, you can just tell me to come off and I can come off for a minute.” You know, you have to work around other people. You can’t just use the space on the wall for 30 minutes at a time if people are waiting. I do say to try to be as polite as you can and tell people what you’re doing and they might actually ask you about your training, like, “What are you doing?” Just be polite about it.

 

Neely Quinn: Thanks for that clarification. I appreciate it. It sounds like, and correct me if I’m wrong, would you have any level of climber do this? Like, if they’re a 5.14 climber or a 5.9 climber?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I think it depends on their objectives and their strengths. I think I have very few people who are actually very good at endurance so I mostly have everyone do this, even beginners, just teaching them to stay on the wall. Not ‘beginner’ beginner, but people who have been climbing for about six months. They understand a little bit of the climbing movement and I would totally get them to ARC but someone who has incredible endurance? I have one person right now who I’m training who could probably go for days and that’s not going to help them at all. At that point, I would ask them – it’s not the endurance that’s the problem, it’s reinforcing technique or improving power endurance. With reinforcing technique, I would ask them to do ARCing but maybe just do shorter sessions of it and to just really focus on whatever their technique is that they need to be doing.

 

Neely Quinn: So, how would, if someone weren’t working with you or with a knowledgeable trainer, how could I, for instance, test myself to see if I need to be ARCing? Or if there’s something else going on?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: So…ARCing – I would say there are a couple of reasons why you would ARC. The number one would be increasing your endurance and number two, working on your technique. Those are the two big ones for me. I think that if you don’t have someone who’s analyzing you and you’re maybe a sport climber or an alpine climber and you’re just like, “I get so pumped that I can’t climb this route. I can do the moves but I can’t complete it,” to me, that’s a very obvious element to work on, is your endurance. If you can’t complete routes because you’re getting so pumped, you should work on your endurance and put ARCing into your regime.

 

Neely Quinn: But if I’m working on a 5.13 outside and you say to me, “I want you to work on your endurance so go inside and do 30 minutes of 5.10/5.11 climbing,” how is that going to help me get through 5.13 moves and be able to continue? How would you train that?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I wouldn’t have them ARC. ARCing is just one small piece of the training puzzle. I think if they’re not able to link-up difficult 5.13 moves, one after the other, then that’s power endurance and that would be working on, maybe, link-ups or four-by-fours so that they can practice working at a high intensity over a longer period of time so that they can complete the 5.13. I would say even bouldering training is wonderful because you can work on harder moves, maybe 5.14, instead so working above your limit would also help your 5.13 moves if you can push your body into that.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems like maybe even a combination of all of those things might help, including the ARCing, because it seems like the ARCing is – I don’t know how many times I’ve said ARCing this episode- it seems that it does do really good things for your forearms’ ability to keep going. Sometimes on hard routes you’re doing easier moves after the hard moves and you’re pumped out of your mind. Maybe it would help with that?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Totally, and the training programs for most people should be variable so one day is focusing on endurance, another day is focusing on power endurance, and another day is more on recovery, and another day should be more on projecting, where you’re actually projecting and working really hard moves. That way you’re also getting all of these facets into your training. Periodization is there for a reason and I think it’s awesome. I use it a lot. I do go through an endurance phase and then a strength phase and then a power endurance phase but, even at the micro-level, you can work on each facet in your training in one week.

 

Neely Quinn: Right, and then just focus on one aspect of it more, maybe.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: I think I’d like to ask you about how, specifically, you would train a 5.10 climber or 5.11 climber who wants to break into 5.12 or 5.11. That’s because a lot of my audience is that person and I’m wondering – it seems that all of your athletes, you want them to become better athletes and you might have them do the deadlifts and front squats and pullups and all those things. Could you talk specifically about maybe even a client that you have who is a 5.10 or 5.11 climber?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: That’s interesting because those are most of my clients, the 5.10 climbers going into 5.11 or 5.12. For the most part, the foundation training to become a better athlete, I ask them to do that twice week so it’s a very small part of their overall training because they are training to become better overall climbers. For them, it’s increasing the amount of climbing. If you look at your schedule and you’ve never climbed before and you’re like, “I’m climbing maybe once or twice a week,” and you’re climbing at 5.10, the first thing I would do is just increase the amount that you’re climbing. Up that to three, or maybe three to four times a week, where two of those days are actually training-specific and one or two of those days is going outside and climbing, or wherever it is that you’re climbing. One of those days would be ARCing because that in general, I think, is just a wonderful way to increase your climbing time, in general, and you don’t have to be at the gym for two hours.

Another day would be learning where your technique flaws are. If you’re climbing 5.10b and you’re like, “I can’t do this move,” then you take that kind of move and work it on a systems board or a boulder problem. You’re just really focusing on those specific types of movements that you know you’re not capable of just yet, so that would be another day that’s more technique-focused. I would maybe suggest doing one other day where you’re maybe doing power endurance, where you maybe climb a 5.10a, if you’re able to complete 5.10a, do maybe four of those into a four-by-four. You choose four different routes and you do each one four different times.

I think, in general, that increasing your climbing time and putting some focus into each training session I think you would see some pretty huge gains just by increasing the amount that you climb and being consistent. You can’t just go, “One week I’m going to climb three days a week,” and then next week you only do one day of the week. Staying consistent, I don’t think it would take too long. It would take several months to build that up but I think you would see significant gains. My clients have definitely seen huge gains with that but it’s the consistency. That is the secret ingredient to all training: just stay consistent.

 

Neely Quinn: So you’re saying basically three days a week, and these seem like gym days, and then are they going outside as well?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, definitely.

 

Neely Quinn: So they’re climbing, like, four or five days a week.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: With the power endurance workout you said four-by-fours on routes. Did you mean, like, do a .10a four times and then rest? Four times with no rest in between each route?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Correct. You’re trying to limit the amount of time between each route so you do 5.10a – you climb up, maybe you climb the same one four times without really resting. Then you can take a five to 10-minute break then choose a different route and do that one four times in a row and take another break. You do that for four different routes.

 

Neely Quinn: Is the goal to not fall? Or to maybe fall at the last rep or something?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Four-by-fours can be focused for different energy systems, so I would say for a beginner, don’t fall. Choose something where you won’t fall but that is fairly challenging by the fourth time that you’ve done it. So, like, at the fourth one you’re like, “I don’t know if I can make it to the top,” but you know that you can do all of the moves. If you’re working more power, you can do a four-by-four that is focused on power. You might want to choose something that’s fairly close to your limit that you might actually not finish. You can probably do all of the moves but maybe by the fourth rep, you might fall. I think it just depends on your focus, if your focus is more on endurance rather than power.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems like there’s no real formula. If a person’s redpoint limit is 5.11b or something, is there some formula that says you should do a number grade lower if you’re trying to do endurance or maybe two letter grades lower if you’re trying to do…?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: This is where periodization comes in. I think for your endurance phase you would choose a four-by-four that is easy but, you know, you’re getting pumped by the last rep/that fourth round on the route. There is no numerical formula. You can’t say, “You climb 5.14: you should do four-by-fours on .11c.” I don’t think that that’s really possible. You can give a general idea but every route is so different and each person climbs differently that it’s going to feel different to everyone. You might find an .11a that totally pumps you out whereas an .11c that is pretty straightforward and you can do all of the moves and feel totally fine. I think it just depends. You have to be very objective when selecting the routes that you’re going to climb.

 

Neely Quinn: That was really helpful. That was good. With the weightlifting and everything else that you’re having them do, are you having them do that on their climbing days indoors or are they doing stuff everyday? … Like, do they have rest days?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Somedays. I would say there’s really only one rest day. I have everyone doing some kind of lifting as well as running. Cardio is a big one for especially the alpinists that I train, and then the climbing. There might only be one day where I don’t have them doing anything. In one day they may actually have climbing, running, and lifting, all in one day but each session/each practice session would only be like: your climbing might only be an hour, your lifting session might only be 30 minutes, and your running be only be 15 minutes. The hope is that they’re only training two hours or less each day.

 

Neely Quinn: Would that change for a 5.13 climber?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: No. I feel like, even if you’re climbing that hard, your practice sessions would be shorter than that because they already have a pretty good basis of strength and you just need to help them focus and increase their quality of movement rather than trying to get them to do a million four-by-fours. I think at that point they’re already a really good climber so we’re just trying to help you increase the quality of the movement. I would say that a lot of my better climbers, or the more skilled ones, they actually spend less time climbing.

 

Neely Quinn: Cool. Let’s talk about your book, because I’m assuming a lot of this stuff is in the book.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: [laughs] Well, my book is based on bodyweight training so it doesn’t really talk that much about training concepts at that level, like what we were just talking about, for climbing. It’s basically –  Simple Strength is about how to reframe your mind to focus on your movement rather than, “I’m going to do 10 reps of squats and then do four sets of that.” It’s about, “I’m going to do the best squat that I can do and do this for two minutes, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.” That’s really the basis of my book, just increasing the quality of movement and it’s all bodyweight exercises, mostly because that is a really good starting point for most people and it’s accessible. You can do it anywhere. A lot of people travel and you can do it in your hotel room or even if you’re on a climbing trip, you can work on some of these things as well.

 

Neely Quinn: So it’s called Simple Strength and you can get it on Amazon, right?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Are there videos and other things that go along with it? Is that what I read?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. I think I have about 150 variations for exercise in the book and for every exercise there is a photo, but for about 50 of them I actually made videos for each one. I have a playlist on YouTube. You can actually go to that and look at all of the Simple Strength exercises on there.

 

Neely Quinn: Is there anything you want to tell us about the book, like anything else that would be really helpful for climbers or why somebody would want to get it and start doing those?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: If you feel like you would like to try cross training, essentially for climbing, this is a really good place to start because it’s very simple. You just work on three basic movements: the squat, the pushup, and the backbend, and those are all very basic movements that we all need to do as human beings. You can progress each one as fast or as slow as you can. If you have trouble just doing a regular squat then you work on just that but if you’re good with a squat and you want to work on a single-leg squat, or a pistol, I think working on those and being very focused on those would definitely translate to your climbing. Like, a single-leg squat, we see those a ton when you high-step and try to rock up or topping out on boulders you’re doing a lot of the similar movements. I would encourage you, if you haven’t done a lot of cross training or if you’re looking just for something that you could do while traveling or while at home but you don’t want to go to the gym, that might be a good place to look for some resources.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems that those, at least the push-ups, might be good for oppositional exercises for shoulders and elbows and all that.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, totally. The push-up is one exercise that I feel like a lot of people do wrong. I do my best to explain exactly how to do the push-up because I think that push-ups can actually be, especially for women, it can actually be detrimental to your shoulder girdle. You could easily get injured doing a push-up, so doing them with really good form is definitely one of the best exercises for climbers because it is oppositional training, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Is that something that you have a lot of people do, who you train? Obviously, you’re sensitive to shoulder injuries and you want to help your clients not have the same thing that happened to you so are there other exercises that you recommend?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Especially for women and because I’ve had two ACL surgeries, the squat and learning how to track your knee properly over your toes, like proper alignment? I’m really, really sensitive to that and I try to get everyone to move really well through the squat and the push-up. It’s all about alignment and if you have even just one small slip-up in movement and you’re doing it at a high velocity, you could potentially injure yourself and that’s exactly what I did. If you can train your body to move well in alignment then you can avoid a lot of these potential injuries that might happen. So, the squat, especially for women, really pay attention to how you’re moving. The squat is just a wonderful exercise overall because you can increase your core strength overall. By doing really good squats, you can increase your core strength for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: I’ve been doing weighted squats myself and you definitely have to use your core more than I thought I would on those things.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yep.

 

Neely Quinn: Let’s talk a bit about quadrupedal movement. You wrote an article for us on Training Beta called Quadrupedal Movement and it’s Benefits for Climbing, and the word ‘quadrupedal’ is not something that climbers use very often so I was like, “How can we change this title so that climbers will even recognize it?” Let’s talk about that.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Climbers are quadrupedal. We’re using all four limbs on the wall. In terms of that, we just don’t put that word in, at all. We just say that we climb stuff so I think it’s a very functional word that we just don’t use but maybe we should start using it but honestly, I don’t know. It’s just kind of a funny word. You see that word mostly in movement training, like, people who do a lot of parkour, gymnastics, and that sort of thing and it’s definitely not introduced in the climbing realm. Hopefully, with my article, people will start to understand it a little bit more!

 

Neely Quinn: Can you just give us a two-minute outline of – I’m looking at the article right now and there’s a picture of you on the floor, basically walking on your hands and feet like an animal would, like a quadrupedal animal would, so what is the point of that for us?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Exactly. Quadrupedal movement, the reason I like to do it is because you’re using oppositional movements for climbing, so you’re pushing away from the ground but you’re doing all four limbs, which is what we do when we climb. In climbing, we’re vertical. In quadrupedal movement we’re horizontal so automatically we’re going to use oppositional muscles for that movement. I also really enjoy doing it because it’s movement flow. You’re moving one limb and then the other limb just kind of follows. You don’t really have to think about it after the first few steps. It kinda just sort of happens. With climbing that’s really what we strive for is this flow of movement. Once we have movements dialed it just turns into a flow, and I think quadrupedal movement can teach you to tap into that a little bit more, like the zone of movement. You don’t have to think about it, it just comes naturally. I would say that those are the two main benefits that I see out of quadrupedal movement for climbers.

 

Neely Quinn: If you want to read the article, just go to www.trainingbeta.com and search for her name, ‘Pollmeier,’ and it will come up, or ‘Mercedes’ even. The last thing is, I want to let people know how they can get ahold of you if they want to work with you. Do you do any online training or do you do only in-person training?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I actually just only do online training now. I do some one-on-ones at Seattle Bouldering Project. I’m transitioning my job right now so it’s mostly online. You can find me at www.modusathletica.com . If you go there right now it might actually be www.betaathletics.com but it will transfer you over to how to contact me on there.

 

Neely Quinn: Great. With the online training, what do you generally do with people?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s normally month-to-month and the goal for my online clients is you stay, actually, long term. I don’t like to offer two-to-three months worth of training. It’s mostly, if you’re going to train with me I’d like you to train for the long term so that I can teach you how to move better and incorporate whatever it is, like the climbing training or alpine training, whatever it is that you’re looking to do. I want to build you up so that you can become a better athlete and so that we can circumvent any kind of injuries that you may get from repetitive motion, like that you would get from climbing or running. What it would look like is you would commit to maybe four or five days of training and it would depend on what it is that you’re training for. We had already mentioned two to three days worth of climbing training, a day of running, and a few days of lifting.

 

Neely Quinn: And you would write out a monthly plan for everybody/for your people?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Do you do any Skype support or emails?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. The best way to stay in contact with me is via email and we do a lot of phone calls and also, I ask people to send in videos of their movement. If they’re not in Seattle then I ask them to send me a couple of videos of them climbing, doing some squats, some pushups, so I can at least see what their posture looks like and how your overall movement is on the wall.

 

Neely Quinn: Cool. It sounds really similar to what we do over here. Okay, well do you have any parting thoughts for anybody about training?

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: I think, just my philosophy in training is that, don’t try to rush through it. You’re going to get better and if you can stay consistent and surround yourself by people that want to do the same things or have similar objectives and you’re all working together, I think that helps you stay consistent. Just don’t rush it because you’re going to get better and if you rush it you might get injured and that’ll just set you back. Have fun with it and just be as patient as you can because it’s going to happen. You’re going to send your project.

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Depending on how high your sights are set.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: That’s true, you have to be realistic. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: I appreciate your wisdom and knowledge and thanks for being with me today.

 

Mercedes Pollmeier: Thank you so much, Neely. I really appreciate it.

 

Neely Quinn: All right! I hope you enjoyed that interview with Mercedes Pollmeier. If you want more information for her or if you want to train with her yourself you can go to www.betaathletics.com .

Coming up on the podcast I have Teal Dreher and – I’m sorry if I just butchered your name there, Teal. She has been training with Training Beta for a while and she’s currently training with Kris Peters. I think she’s about a V8 climber and we’ve had a lot of requests from you guys asking for people who are more like you or me, to be on the show to talk about how they’ve trained to climb V8, because it’s hard to climb V8. It seems like most people are capable of doing it with the proper training. Teal is going to be on and she’s going to talk about how hard she trains, what she does, how she balances that with the rest of her life.

I also have a sports psychologist on the show coming up. He’s a climber and we’re going to talk about plateauing and dealing with failure and more of the mental and psychological aspects of climbing, which I’m really excited about because that’s something that I definitely struggle with.

Another exciting addition to the podcast is that every week starting today, actually, I’m doing my first interview with him, I’m going to have Kris Peters on. We’re going to talk for about 15 minutes about one particular topic. This week we’re talking about finger training because we’re actually putting together a finger training program for you guys, which I will hopefully be announcing in a couple of weeks. He is going to talk about finger training, just for a very short time, so if you have any questions that you want him to answer you can email me those at neely@trainingbeta.com and we’ll try to get to them all.

If you want any more help with your training we always have training programs for you. You don’t have to do personal training with Kris. We have programs online that you can follow online at your own pace. With our bouldering program and our route program, for instance, you get three workouts every week. They’re new, they’re unique, you’re never going to get bored and it’s for every level of climber, basically. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to be doing the same workout that somebody who’s at a much higher level or lower level is going to be doing. Each of the workouts that you guys get will have videos and maybe photos associated with them and they’re scalable in that all of those workouts can be modified to be made easier or harder, depending on where you are in your own training. You can find those at www.trainingbeta.com and you’ll find our online programs all over the site. Hopefully you’ll give those a try. Whenever you do purchase anything from us it supports me doing the podcast, it supports us doing the work on the site that we do, and we really appreciate it.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening, as always. I really appreciate you getting to the end and I will talk to you soon!

 

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