Skills
Polar Skills
Tags: drills, Movement, Rachel Speer, Skills
By Rachel Speer When I first started climbing, I learned quickly how to balance my body on the wall, I got stronger, and I rocketed through the grades, improving rapidly. For a few years I coasted on the easy gains until I came upon my first plateau, at the upper end of the 5.11 range. …
Fundamental Skills: Precision, Execution, and Balance
Tags: Andrew Caraballo, Balance, drills, execution, Practice, Skills
by Andrew Caraballo, PCC, NSCA-CPT These days, a simple Google search will bring up every climbing skill drill imaginable, but there lacks a framework for progressing those skills over time. In this article, we’ll discuss three major overarching climbing skills that will build on each other. These are balance, precision, and execution. Some famous…
Skills and Cues in the Gym
Tags: cues, optimizing training, Skills, tension
by Steve Bechtel We prescribe training. We write down a list of exercises, hand them off to climbers, and the climbers go off to the gym and follow the instructions. Some of them come back and are pleased, some are underwhelmed. Some of them get great results, and some stay flat. It’s not necessarily that…
In-Depth: Inside High-Step Drill
Tags: drills, in-depth video, Skills
In-Depth: Inside High-Step Drill from Climb Strong on Vimeo.
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…
Don’t Train – Practice, part 2.
Tags: Motivation, Planning, Practice, Progress, Quality Training, Skills, Talent, Training
by Steve Bechtel The first article on practice covered the general idea that you should consider your climbing practice, and some general ideas on what that meant. In this follow up, I’ll answer questions that the first article raised, and give some specifics on how to re-structure your training sessions to include a focus on…
Don’t Train – Practice.
Tags: Feedback, Habits, Planning, Practice, Quality Training, Skills, Talent, Training
by Steve Bechtel “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.” – Michael Jordan The term “training” is over-used. People refer to any and everything they do in climbing as training, yet training is a very specific…