by Steve Bechtel
There is a lot of stuff you can do to get better at climbing. It can be anything from getting shoes that fit, to improving your movement, to taking a vitamin you’re somehow missing in your diet. Some things work a lot better than others. In a perfect situation, we’d have clear interventions that would help us move forward, but humans tend to be messy and this sort of thing doesn’t happen. We’ll want to train with friends. Change goals mid-season. Get inspired by a story on a podcast. See a cool new product.
A useful skill all of us can develop is the ability to filter out things that are probably not going to work. It’s also important to sort out best practices that are going to pay out big time in the long run. There is an important version of the triangle of constraints that applies here. In this triangle, there are three values, fast, easy, and effective. For any given training intervention, you can only benefit from two of these values at a time. An intervention might be fast and easy, but probably won’t be that effective. It might be fast and effective, but it sure won’t be easy. It could also be easy and effective, but it will take a long time.
With these things in mind, we also want to look at what kind of time investment, money investment, and energy investment a given training choice might take. Let’s say I’m going to massively reduce my calories with the idea that being just a few pounds lighter will change the game for my performance. Well, it’s actually going to be less expensive financially, and will take up less time than eating normally, but the energy investment (e.g. the lack of energy I’ll have) is massively destructive.
Hiring a full-time nutritionist, movement coach, and strength coach would probably be helpful for many of us, but the financial burden is more than most climbers can bear.
With all of these things swirling in my mind, I started to build out three lists. The first is essential interventions that I believe every climber can implement. Some are fast and effective. Some are easy and effective. None are fast and easy. All of them require a time investment, and the financial investment is simply a gym membership, gas money to go to the crag, or spending a few bucks on a lean home training set-up.
The second list is things that probably won’t hurt, but might not be too helpful, either. Some of these are more expensive items, require a partner or advisor, or are a big suck on time. Others are attractive experiments that are still not quite where they need to be to recommend them for everyone.
And the last list is the “useless” list. These things might not be completely without merit, but in terms of price, proof, and time, just aren’t worth it for most of us. I saw an equation recently that speaks to these three levels of importance. It helps bring home the fact that consistency is critical, and the latest supplement probably not so much. In this formula, the essential components are represented by x, probably won’t hurt components by y, and the useless ones by z. (hat tip to Chaotic Neutral for the formula)
Results = time * (0.6x+0.3y+0.1z)
Here’s the trap: Most of what we’re easily interested in as athletes falls into the z category. The next shoe coming out. A supplement we haven’t tried. A specific grip tool. The latest spraywall. I call these things useless and that might be overstating the issue. Understand, however, that unless we get the basics right, our latest purchase won’t matter.
Essential
These are habits, practices, and facets of performance that cannot be ignored. If we miss out on even one of these essential aspects, no amount of supplemental stuff from further down the list will save us.
Consistency
Every effective training adaptation develops over long cycles of consistent overload. Intensity this week means nothing if consistency doesn’t follow.
Overload
We adapt to stress that is more than our system can handle. If we spend too much time on routes or boulders or exercises that don’t push our systems, our systems don’t learn to get better.
Recovery
Your training is only as good as your recovery. Recovering well between sessions allows us to get in more quality training each training cycle, and reduces our chance of overuse injuries and overtraining. This includes working hard to get good sleep and eating a clean and balanced diet.
Personal Confrontation
Staying within your comfort zone in training is the best way to assure you won’t ever push beyond it in the performance environment. You have to delve.
Vision
You have got to have a compelling vision that leads you to try hard, stay with the training, and want to change.
High Skill + High Load Work
It doesn’t matter how strong you are if you have no skill for the sport. Likewise, being technically excellent means very little if you don’t have the fitness to apply that skill. We have got to marry these two elements as often as possible.
Capacity
We need a basic level of fitness to be able to build any sort of meaningful performance on top of it. Capacity, then, is the foundation on which all of our training is dependent.
Probably Won’t Hurt
Some of the items on the list below really can make a difference, but remember that optimizing here at the cost of one of the facets of training above is not going to produce the results you want.
Specific Grip Training
This is where many of us focus most of our efforts. We think that if we can just-get-a-little-stronger…nothing else will matter. The tough lesson is that finger strength gains on a hangboard are pretty quick and level off quickly, too. Far more important is to work this finger strength in specific climbing situations. Seems obvious, but the simplicity and measurability of the hangboard is a siren song that is hard to ignore.
Mobility and Flexibility Work
We are masters of adaptation, and we all move slightly differently. Very rarely is a climber just not flexible enough to do a move. I do feel that working mobility is important, but not at the cost of other training. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that building significant change in our flexibility, requires a tremendous amount of time, and it simply might not be worth it if your time is limited as a climber.
Anaerobic Capacity Training
Being able to handle high amounts of fatigue is useful, but it’s not a critical component of our sport. The more we learn about how elite climbers perform, the more we understand that fatigue resistance starts with strength and aerobic endurance. Fighting the pump is probably of dubious value, especially when we consider the required recovery time.
Detailed Attention To Nutrition
My dietician friends will not like seeing this one in the second category. The point here is not that nutrition doesn’t matter. Rather, obsessive attention to eating generally takes up a lot of time and brain space, and doesn’t produce the same level of results that, say, bouldering does. Calorie tracking, macro ratios, dogmatic dieting, or obsessive measurement tend not to produce the results we would like.
Attention to Hydration
Trying to stay hydrated is a good idea, but obsession over drinking water at all times (and the body having to manage it) can be a burden. If hydration feels like it is on your mind constantly, it’s worth really digging in and figuring out why that is. A read of Waterlogged by Tim Noakes might be in order.
Good Training Habits (tech failure, attention to RPE, etc.)
I find that good training habits are essential to progress, but they mean very little if we are not covering the bases in the “Essential” category. Good form on exercises, watching that you’re training in the right zones, and more are wonderful habits, but are much like waxing a car that has a bad engine…not really worth it if you’re not consistent.
Useless
This is where people are going to take exception to my advice, and I am OK with that. I still stand by the fact that unless the first category is well mastered, your daily dose of creatine is a waste. Another way of putting that goes like this: if you are killing it on the essential parts of training, none of the things below will matter.
Supplementation Without Regard to Basic Nutrition and Recovery
If you take collagen every morning but skip vegetables and whole protein sources, you’re off track. Sleep aids without a sleep habit are a fool’s errand. A couple of years ago, my friend Eric Horst did a great presentation on sport supplements at the Canadian Sports Medicine Symposium. In it, he represented supplementation as the tiny little peak of a pyramid that included a base of good programming, nutrition, recovery, and more. Imagine the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill. Supplementation would be the eyebrow on top of the eye on top of the pyramid.
The Latest Training Gadget
Doesn’t matter. Stay the course. You don’t need a new grip device.
The Home Wall
What?!?! Home walls? Look: I love the home wall, but unless you are driven, consistent, recover well, build good training programs, and are willing to go hard on the thing only occasionally, it’s not worth your money. Home walls are convenient, but they will not automatically give you the motivation to train.
Therabands
These are decent tools for rehabilitating injuries but have no place in a healthy climber’s program. The loading is too light to do almost anything, and there are infinite better tools.
Block Pulls
…are nothing like the loading we see in 99% of our climbing. They are the bench press of grip training: a good exercise, but not something worth spending more than a set or two on for most climbers. I love these for working on specific strength in the early part of a phase, such as ring finger isolation, or a particular pinch…but the 20mm edge pull is not a great idea.
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So there you go. It’s nothing you don’t know deep down, but I think that building a mindset around the fundamental aspects of training is essential for long-term progress. Don't get upset by my assertion that some of the things you're doing aren't serving you. If you are having amazing results and just seem to get better each day, stick with it. If you're stuck and frustrated, though, consider that your preparation might not be perfect.