Planning Articles
Direction
Tags: Planning, Principles, Quality Training, Training
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…
Brick Programming
Tags: Density Training, General Training, Periodization, Planning, Power Endurance, Program Design, Tactics
By Steve Bechtel Going bouldering is not training. If you’re one of the lucky few, you can hit the gym a couple of nights a week and continue to get strong, avoid injury, and enjoy the sport. Most of us, though, will reach a plateau where progress is no longer possible on the “whatever” plan,…
Organizing Your Cragging Program
Tags: Cragging, Planning, Program Design, Project Climbing, Pyramids, Redpoint Pyramids, Redpointing, Tactics
by Steve Bechtel Training is more popular than it’s ever been in the sport of climbing, and it warms my heart to see people actually training in the gym rather than just hitting another bouldering session. The word is out that a focused attention to improvement really works. At the crags, though, it’s another matter:…
The Hierarchy of Training Programming
Tags: General Training, Indoor Climbing, Planning, Program Design, Tactics, Templates
by Steve Bechtel LEVEL 1: Anything Goes I remember working out out in the huge weight room in the basement of my high school. It was dimly lit, had a track around the outside, pegboards on the wall, and dozens of machines designed to help make us “better.” We’d go down there for “weight training”…
More On Periodization
Tags: Bompa, Charlie Francis, Periodization, Planning, Program Design
By Steve Bechtel I remember the first time I learned about classical periodization plans. The whole idea of planning out my training according to easily defined phases which would lead to spectacular results appealed to the eternally plateaued climber in me much the way x-ray specs appealed to me as a nine-year-old. I tried a…
40 Workouts, 8 Weeks
Tags: Conditioning, Dan John, Discipline, Kettlebells, Quality Training, Strength Training
by Charlie Manganiello SFG II Is Your Strength Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty? 40 Workouts – 8 Weeks… It’s so easy you won’t do it. Disclaimer: I did not invent this. I plucked this gem out of a book called Easy Strength written by Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline. I know, they sound like strong dudes,…
Call it What You Want, Periodized Training Works
Tags: Bompa, conjugate periodization, Matveyev, nonlinear periodization, Periodization, Planning, Program Design
By Steve Bechtel I get a ton of questions about whether periodization is effective. The answer, unequivocally, is yes, periodized training works. The confusion comes in that many climbers don’t really know what periodization is. In fact, many climbing coaches read an article or two about classic periodization models (i.e. Bompa or Matveyev) and they…
The Value of a Climbing Coach
Tags: bouldering coach, climbing coach, climbing trainer, coaching, hiring a coach
by Steve Bechtel Thirty years ago, almost none of us had coaches. I remember road tripping down to the front range for some competitions, and climbing against a young kid from Colorado Springs named Kevin Gonzales. He was good, younger than we were, and super strong. Most intimidating of all, though, was that he had…