You may have heard the phrase ‘it’s a speed limit, not a target’ and they’re kinda right. The limit is set as a maximum safe speed you could travel, rather than as some arbitrary number to match our speedometer. There’s a lot of numbers you could choose between, the idea is simply not to pick …
Goodhart’s Climbing Grade? Fine But How Long Could He Deadhang? Read More »
Clearly, you’re quite a psyched climber and I would guess, would quite like to train a bit more than you do. But I’m also guessing that if you manage to get chance to get to the wall, you’d quite like to spend that time climbing and not mucking about with dumbbells and pull up bars. …
Foundation Strength: the Basis to Allow Us to Get Climbing Strong Read More »
It is so tempting, when approaching physical training in climbing, to think more is, well, more. Train more, climb more, achieve more. But everything has it’s breaking point. Injury is the evil to the good of training. Pick whichever good and bad metaphors you like here, the fact is that training is great up to …
Train-Cap: A Model to Guide Training and Reduce Overuse-Injury Risk Read More »
Magazines, websites and other media outlets are always keen to advocate a nice, effective and simple workout for their readers to follow; after all, trying to detail a long and complicated training plan is more than a little tricky within a thousand words. So when they come across something as simple and effective as HIIT, …
Short and Sharp for the Sharp End? Discussions on HIIT Training for Climbers Read More »
Let’s imagine we’re buying ourself a new car. And given we’re really passionate about climbing, we’re looking for one that will take us to the crag; the perfect climbing vehicle. So we go searching the options. Maybe we’re into bouldering and want to make sure there’s room in the boot for our pads (quick note: …
Adding Fuel To Your Fire: The Importance Of Nutrition and Recovery Read More »
Marshmallows. Generally considered yummy (sorry vegetarians). So yummy in fact, that they were used, back in 1970 led my social scientist Walter Mischel, in one of the most famous studies on human behaviour of the twentieth century: the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. We’ll come on to the details of the experiment, suffice it to say that …
Can We Test For Injury With Marshmallows?! No, But They Can Be Useful Read More »
I was having a really bad day at home once, grumbling and complaining and claiming the whole world was against me. Then Rosie, my eldest daughter, turned to me and said “There is not one day in your life”. It completely stunned me; instantly rendering me speechless and defenseless. Because she’s right: today might be …
Pick and Choose: Using Training Modalities to Structure Your Sessions Read More »
A quick google search suggests that this as a phrase doesn’t exist so I’m nabbing it before anyone else does. It is possibly the single most extensively used technique in my coaching repertoire. In some ways, it is not new and is even now developing more and more alongside technology (more on this later). However …
Copy and Paste: A Definition of Replication Training Read More »
I’m sure we’ve all heard of ‘warming up’, how it’s really important and how it keeps us from getting hurt but I have it on good authority from a physiotherapist friend of mine that there is no conclusive academic research that states that warm ups prevent injury (I’m not making this up, check out McCrary, …
Are You Ready For This? Discussions on Warm Ups for Climbing Read More »
There is often a big emphasis placed on physical training to improve climbing performance but I often feel it is overstated. Personally, I think there are usually much greater gains to be made from improving technique, tactics and mentality but there comes a point where pushing yourself physically is both beneficial and necessary. The problem …
