Motivation and Tactics
Get It Exactly Right
Tags: Assessment, Habits, Movement, Planning, Practice, Skills
by Steve Bechtel You’ve heard it many times – when someone sends their hardest it feels effortless. We talk about it as the “flow” state or as having an out-of-body experience. No matter what you call it, it’s a performance state you’d like to recreate as often as possible. We usually see ourselves get to…
Go Medium, Then Go Home.
Tags: Habits, Intensity, Planning, Quality Training, Train Medium, Training
by Steve Bechtel There are any number of statements that tell you that you’re not trying hard enough. From “Go Hard or Go Home” to “Compete Every Day”, we are fed the message that in order to progress, we need to set records each and every time we are in the gym. The truth, thank…
Adaptation
Tags: Adaptation, Adaptation Persistence, Change, Expertise, Planning, Quality Training, Training
by Steve Bechtel On an intuitive level, we all understand the basic principles of training. These principles include specificity, individuality, and overload, among others. Most basic of all the principles is the idea of adaptation; we adapt to the demands placed upon us. Sports science has logically followed the lead of Hans Selye, who put…
Problems With Projecting
Tags: Planning, Programming, Project Climbing, Quality Training, Second Tier, Training
By Steve Bechtel Project climbing – trying a very hard route over and over with the goal of eventually climbing it in one push – is one of the most fundamentally rewarding facets of rock climbing. It drives us to higher grades and teaches all sorts of valuable lessons. But like anything beneficial to us,…
Write It Down – The Value of a Training Log
Tags: Assessment, Feedback, Goal Setting, Habits, Planning, Programming, Quality Training, Training
by Steve Bechtel When I first sit down with a new athlete, the first thing I ask them is where they want to go. The question usually goes like this: “In six months, what do you want to have accomplished?” That part is easy for most of us – the dreaming is not hard to…
Change
Tags: Change, Habits, Planning, Quality Training
by Steve Bechtel This site is filled with our best training ideas and advice. There are dozens of books on systems for improving your climbing. You could watch quality training videos online for a whole day and get ten lifetimes worth of good advice. So why do so few climbers reach their goals each year?…
E-Stim Might Make You Weaker
Tags: E-Stim, Endurance, Recovery, Training
By Steve Bechtel I am as excited about the next big thing in training as the next guy. When Electronic Muscle Stimulation (E-Stim) came on the scene, I could almost feel my forearms getting stronger just thinking about it. It was a great idea for climbers; a way to train the forearm muscles when you…
Pre-Climb Rituals
Tags: Planning, Rituals, Stretching, Training, Warm-Ups
By Steve Bechtel I like to go to competitions. I like them for many different reasons, but mostly it is to watch people as they prepare to compete. See, the vast majority of pre-event activity is nothing like the way we prepare for training. At bouldering competitions, we see all kinds of craziness, and pre-climb…
How Hard Do You Try?
Tags: Habits, Intensity, Motivation, Pain, Planning, Quality Training, Training
By Steve Bechtel Why is it that some people just keep getting better while the rest of us are stuck? Further, why can I follow the same program as another climber and watch him rack up the grades while I still fail at the same level year after year? As hard as it is to…
Three Mistakes You Might Be Making in the Gym
Tags: Assessment, Intensity, Progress, Quality Training, Specificity, Training, Weight Management
By Steve Bechtel Training is all about progress. Unless you just love to train (I’d rather watch Deadwood), you’d better be seeing some results for the hours you spend flogging yourself. What we see in most climbers, though, is really just slight decreases in fitness throughout the year, and then an occasional return to a…
Get Out of Your Rut
Tags: Change, Habits, Quality Training, Supercompensation
By Steve Bechtel Do you remember back when you used to get better at climbing? Month after month you could climb harder routes, you could feel yourself get better at jamming, at lock-offs, at edging, and it felt like the sky was the limit. Now you know that the limit is right about 12a, and…
The 1-6-3 Rule
Tags: Habits, Intensity, Motivation, Pain, Planning, Quality Training, Training
By Steve Bechtel Training can be fun. It can also be a huge effort. Usually, it’s somewhere in between. One big mistake first-time trainees make is thinking that it’s going to be fun the whole time. Think about it…remember how exciting the first day of school was? That first kiss? The day you bought a…