Motivation
Kill One Exercise, Learn One Exercise, and Pick One To Maximize
Tags: Motivation, Steve Bechtel, Strength, Training
By Steve Bechtel Routine can be comforting, but it can kill our motivation. Things get boring. We don’t push. Routine can also kill our progress physically, because the stimulus being delivered to the body isn’t novel enough (in movement type, load, speed, etc.) to make the muscles adapt any further. With this in mind,…
BLOG: Hold Fast
Tags: Motivation, peak, Planning, plateau, Steve Bechtel, Steve's Blog
By Steve Bechtel “How strong is strong enough?” We train strength in the gym to improve performance outside, but it’s indirect. What we’re really doing by getting stronger is reducing the chances of training-related injuries and increasing our capability to do physical work, both of which enable us to do more climbing when…
Velocity-Based Training is Really a Thing
Tags: Motivation, Steve Bechtel, Strength, Training
By Steve Bechtel There are a lot of ways to make yourself stronger, and part of the path of an athlete is to explore these. Most of us start out weight training in a class or with a trainer, and we spend most of our time doing basic movements to the point where the…
Million Dollar Arms and a Five Cent Head
Tags: Motivation, peak, Planning, plateau, Steve Bechtel, Steve's Blog
By Steve Bechtel In every sport, it seems like there is a metric that ties in with great performance, and that athletes tend to fixate on. In endurance sports, it’s the VO2 Max, in golf it might be your drive. In climbing, it’s starting to be our straight-arm finger strength tested on a…
Timed Strength
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Steve Bechtel, Training
By Steve Bechtel Stuck? Try This Small Change To Your Strength Program This almost sounds like clickbait, and if that’s how you got here, thanks for reading. I’m not trying to deceive you or sell you anything…I just want to share a tactic that most of us have never tried and that works well…
Ready, Set, Train
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Steve Bechtel, Training
Ready, Set, Train…Getting Ready for Winter Training By Steve Bechtel Most of us ramp up to training with some amount of reluctance. If we had it our way, October would be ten weeks long and crisp and cool the whole time. But at some point the pockets start dripping or the approach gets snowed…
Better Than Last Year
Tags: Motivation, peak, Planning, plateau, Steve Bechtel, Steve's Blog
By Steve Bechtel Dan John once quipped, “The goal of aging should be to make the same mistakes over and over again less often.” Although we are in the throes of redpoint season across much of North America and Europe, many of us are already assessing what we’re going to do to get…
3-Deep
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Steve Bechtel, Training
By Steve Bechtel There are really only a couple of things that are totally essential to progress in sport. They are effort and consistency. Sure, you need some basic skills, and feedback, and whatnot, but these things come more naturally if we are continuing to show up for training. When it comes to method,…
BLOG: Why is Improving So Hard
Tags: Motivation, peak, Planning, plateau, Steve Bechtel, Steve's Blog
By Steve Bechtel Most of us either over-think our preparation for the sport or we don’t think about it enough. Far too often, we end up in the mindset of accepting limits, and decide that this must be our level. Why? Because we have plucked what seems like all the lowest-hanging fruit. Let…
One Piece At A Time
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Steve Bechtel, Training
By Steve Bechtel When we think about strength training in the weight room, most of us go to the “big” lifts: squats, bench press, pull-ups, and deadlifts. This isn’t wrong. A program built around these exercises can help you build tremendous strength and durability, but it’s easy to see that these aren’t exactly climbing-like movements….
No Days Off
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Steve Bechtel, Training
By Steve Bechtel It seems like we all have defaults when it comes to exercise and training. Some of us just can’t get enough, and sneak in a hard workout at every opportunity. Others want to do just enough to still do the sport, but want to invest their time elsewhere. There are issues at…
BLOG: The First Step Off A Peak Is Down
Tags: Motivation, peak, Planning, plateau, Steve Bechtel, Steve's Blog
By Steve Bechtel I have a stack of notecards in the pack I carry to work every day. On them, I have written some ideas about training for climbing that I think are essential and largely ignored by climbers. I’ve made my career by talking to advanced climbers about advanced concepts, and I…