Programming

Climbing Notes in Notebook with Pen

Write It Down – The Value of a Training Log

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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…

Alex Bridgewater Demonstrates Kettlebell Deadlift, Photo by Mei Ratz

8 Things To Do Before You Open Your Wallet

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by Steve Bechtel I wrote a newsletter a few months back where I discussed the idea of “big rocks first.” The general gist is to take care of the most important things in your life before you obsess about the minutiae. People, not just climbers, tend to fixate on the wrong things. We obsess over…

TS Wheaties

The Todd Skinner Workout

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By Steve Bechtel Once upon a time, there were no climbing gyms. There were good climbers, among them my friend Todd Skinner, who did a fair amount of hard training off the rock. During the late 1980s, Todd and some friends developed a freestanding “box” of slats with several different sizes of wooden edges attached…

Kerry Demo

Understanding the Lactic Energy System

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by Steve Bechtel If you’ve ever climbed to the top of a strenuous route, you’ve felt the burn. If you’ve ever trained super-hard, you’ve felt the debilitating soreness the day after the session. Undoubtedly, you’ve also read or been told that one or both of these is due to lactic acid buildup in your muscles….

Kerry Demo

Training Age

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by Steve Bechtel Want to get good at climbing? Be patient. Every month at our gym, we have a training meeting with the entire coaching staff. These meetings range from exercise technique to invoicing to habit change – basically everything you can imagine when it comes to training athletes. A few years ago, I talked…

Max Sport Climbing, Looking for Next Move

How Hard Do You Try?

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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…

Change

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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?…

Steve Bechtel Airdyne b&w, photo by Mei Ratz

Three Mistakes You Might Be Making in the Gym

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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…

Ouray Ice Climbing Location Unknown

Advanced Strategies for Progress: Volume Variability

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by Steve Bechtel All you have to do is read the title to know that this isn’t one of those lovely “simplify it” articles. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of simple plans – yet sometimes, at the very tippy top of your ability, things need to get complicated when you try to move…

Ben Hanna - Butora - Wastelands Area - Rifle Mountain Park - For Sander

Pre-Climb Rituals

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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…

Kevin Wallingford Demonstrating Deadlift B&W

Direction

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By Steve Bechtel Once the fever to train sets in, awareness of one’s body becomes paramount. Buying into the excitement and perhaps difficulty of this or that training fad, an athlete can actually change direction and drift further from his goal by training harder. Unfortunately, in the world of difficult climbing, simply working hard does…

Steve Bechtel Bobcat 2003

Get Out of Your Rut

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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…

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