A QUICK NOTE:
The new BLOG articles are where Steve's monthly newsletters will live on the Climb Strong site. Instead of blasting full articles into email inboxes, we're providing a snippet, and linking them here for those who'd like to read the whole thing.
By Steve Bechtel
…too bad you solved the wrong problem.
Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek general and king and was widely regarded as a great strategist in the early wars against Rome. In what later became known as The Pyrrhic Wars, he sailed to Rome, and focused on demolishing their forces across the southern end of what is now known as Italy.
He focused his efforts on quick victories and sacking cities, doing so with heavy losses. Despite this, he moved on with the same strategy until he reached Beneventum, where his weakened force was turned back. And, like so many that walked before and after him, he failed to conquer Rome.
His “wins despite heavy losses” were so profound that the very concept is now named after him—The Pyrrhic Victory. More to the point was that he focused heavily on specific parts of his strategy (moving quickly, taking cities), and ignored other essential parts of success (supply chain, reinforcements, gathering intelligence, etc.).
When designing training programs for performance climbing, the essential part of the planning is that the training improves performance. This might seem obvious, but most of us miss this and instead settle for getting some exercise with friends. Even doing the training plan you did last time will likely result in mediocre improvements, as the biggest gains probably came last time.
When things get complicated, we trend toward the familiar. As climbers, we can easily fall into training easily controlled and measurable parts of performance, which can result in detraining and even regressing in other critical facets.
Add to this the fact that our fingers are ALWAYS feeling like the weak link. Despite the causes of your fingers not being able to do their job, the result is almost always right in front of us…”My fingers peeled off the hold.” We don’t always remember that poor movement, bad positioning, ill-fitting shoes, bad tactics, fear, or poor recovery are just as likely to be the culprit as fingers that are not strong enough. I’m willing to wager that for any hold a climber feels “too weak” to hold, a weaker climber has grabbed it, used it, and gone to the top of the climb.
Thus, when we decide to spend this winter finally, truly, getting the strong fingers we always needed, we should step back and see if it’s really the limiter.
I’ll take you back about five years, now. I built out a solid and focused finger strength plan, and executed it with really good results over the course of July and August. I tested my peak load at the end of the cycle and both hands had improved, to 195 left and 202 right. I moved into a redpointing phase, and backed off to one finger strength session every 5 days. At the end of September: 193 and 202. In October I backed off and did 4 sessions, roughly one every 8 days: 191 and 199. November, I did three sessions, and they were ⅓ shorter than the previous ones. At the end of the month, 191 and 198. In December, I did two sessions. On New Year’s Eve, I pulled 191 and 198.
I could have spent hours fighting for those last few pounds, but at some point it became clear that there were more productive things to do with my time. For almost all of us, there are low-hanging fruit, where if we put a few hours a week into their training, we will see huge gains in performance. Imagine practicing heel and toe hooks intensely for six weeks, 3-4 hours per week, as my friend Colt did a few years ago. You’d be a different and much better mover after. If you spent those hours trying to hangboard your way into some arbitrary zone where other 5.13a climbers test out…well, good luck.
It all comes down to time and your energy for investing in your training. If you’re a rigidly or over-scheduled person, your three hours per week at the gym are precious. Others might have plenty of discretionary time, but start to get burned out (or have had plenty of training time to improve) after just a few hours. The message in both situations is that we need to optimize training time.
Taking a step back, I’ll state that bouldering with friends can provide a training stimulus, but the more you advance, the smaller the window of opportunity becomes. Heck, when I started climbing during high school, it seemed like I got better every single day we went out, regardless of pitch count, grade, rock type, or conditions. I think a person getting out and hitting 20 pitches a week and giving any kind of effort on those days is going to get about 80% of all their fitness potential covered in just a few years. Then it starts getting harder and the gains get smaller. And then you go backward for a while and barely forward.
This is where training, and reflecting on training become essential. Barely a day goes by that someone doesn’t reach out looking to be “assessed” or “tested” in their physical strength or endurance for climbing. They might be looking for the right answers, but are probably asking the wrong questions.
Instead of trying to figure out where you are on the max pull bell curve compared to other climbers, you should be asking whether finger strength truly is your limiter. Sure, everyone probably could use stronger fingers, but if you are going to spend three hours a week hanging to gain a tiny bit of strength, it’s a fool’s errand. Especially when you could get 90% of those gains in ten minutes. And when doing even more of something starts to have a negative effect. There are long tails on the both sides of every curve.
So…where am I limited? Where can I see some real improvements with a moderate increase in training time?
Our coaches employ a multi-part performance screen that includes measures of strength and endurance, but importantly also covers tactics, habits, planning, mental skills, and motivation.
Examples include:
“I understand the technical demands of my goal route or goal style of climbing.”
“I can generate high levels of tension on the wall.”
“I use the front point of my shoe.”
“The thought of taking a break from climbing for 1-2 months for a vacation or other sport is appealing.”
“I make a plan for a season of climbing and training and stick to it.”
“What proportion of your meals do you prepare yourself or are "home-made"?”
None of these show the whole picture, but they give an extra dimension to ways in which we can improve. It’s important to continually step back and ask hard questions. Let’s face it: you might suffer through a hangboard workout, but it’s not really all that hard to do. There is little personal confrontation. There is little to tell you your habits and tactics might be misdirected. You hang from the board, get tired fingers, and believe you’re doing all you can for your climbing.
You give a lot to this sport, so I urge you to be wise with where you put your efforts. I’ve consulted and trained with many hundreds of athletes, and not one of them turned out to be stuck with no way forward. And not one of them got to the next level by digging in and continuing to milk the last juice out of the things they were already very good at.
Hold Fast,
Steve
ABOUT STEVE BECHTEL
Steve is the founder of Climb Strong, and is proud to be the worst coach on the Climb Strong team. A climber for nearly 40 years (and feeling it!), he has traveled to globe bouldering, sport climbing, and doing first ascents of some of the world's biggest walls.
Steve's main training goal is just to stay strong enough to do more pull-ups than his kids, since they've each been promised $100 if they can do more than he can.
He is education director of the Performance Climbing Coach organization, and is the author of several books on training for climbing. He lives in Lander, Wyoming, with his wife Ellen, and children Sam and Anabel, who can each do around eight pull-ups as of this writing.