I’m going to get real blunt here: If you want to be a better climber then damn well go climbing, so you should grab your RV and go find some rocks and you can even get a rv outside tv mount for entertainment during the rest period. Especially a better rock climber. I would bet any amount of money that if a person spent, say, 20 hours a week training and climbing hard in a structured climbing program (rock gym and outdoors) and an identical person spent 20 hours a week in a weight gym (even one promising some sort of climbing-specific program) that the actual climbing effort would destroy the gym program. Absolutely destroy it, as in 5.12 vs. 5.9, as in sending like a fiend and falling off before the first bolt on the same route. I guarantee this.

The post Will Gadd on Training for Climbing first appeared on All Climbing.

Sure I went climbing regularly but I wasnâ??t really trying. I took the easy way out. I toproped whenever someone else was willing to lead. I climbed the same routes regularly. If I was leading and my knees where at a bolt I would take instead of going for it. Basically, I sucked at sport climbing because I deluded myself into thinking that I was trying, when really I was giving 50% most of the time.

via Will Gadd

The post What it Takes to Climb 5.12 first appeared on All Climbing.

I’ve started reading the book One Move Too Many as it was recommended to me by several different climbers. I’ll be posting my full thoughts when I’ve finished the book, but I can already tell you that this is a must have for any climber, especially those dealing with specific injuries.

One idea from the book really stands out to me. The authors discuss warming up and state that:

Scientific studies have shown that bringing the pulleys and tendons up to a perfect state of “readiness” requires about four routes or 120 moves of climbing.

Think about that statement. Do you warm up that effectively? Do you climb four easy routes as a warm up? I’d wager that the vast majority of climbers do two routes maximum and call themselves warmed up.

More thoughts on this book are forthcoming, but I thought that tidbit was too interesting to not share immediately.

The post 120 Moves of Climbing first appeared on All Climbing.

You can find the first three parts here and the fourth is due this August. The articles are PDFs and contain some great tips for climbing and training from the Scottish hardman.

The post Dave MacLeod’s Climbing and Training Tips Series first appeared on All Climbing.

I’m always going through a lot of tape for my fingers, but buying it at REI or other retail stores is getting ridiculously expensive. I did manage to find a great deal on Amazon a few days ago, but I was almost skeptical at the low price per roll. My order just showed up and this is definitely a great deal:

8 10 yard rolls of 1.5 inch Johnson & Johnson Coach Sports Tape for $20.78

For those of you mathematically challenged this afternoon, that’s $2.60 per roll. As a comparison, REI charges $4 for the same length of 1″ tape and $7.50 for a 2″ wide roll.

There may be cheaper tape out there, but not for the Johnson & Johnson brand which in my opinion is the best as it tears much easier and stays in place well.

The post Great Deal on Athletic Tape for Climbing first appeared on All Climbing.

My 75 minute warm up starts with 5 minutes of cardio. You can do anything, jump up and down, go for a run, jump rope, anything to get your heart going. For the first 10-15 minutes, if your feet are cold just wear your street shoes, if not put on your climbing shoes, do easy moves on big holds. Iâ??m usually just trying to get the blood pumping through my arms so when I go and try harder moves, they feel easier. After you feel a bit warmed up, get your climbing shoes on and do 40+ moves on the climbing wall.

The post Warming Up for Climbing Competitions first appeared on All Climbing.

Every year, as my climbing schedule is pretty demanding, I go through an annual slump. For those of you that don’t know, a slump is a period of time (for me usually lasting a month or two), when my climbing is just not going the way it should. I feel weak, I can’t send things, and therefore lose motivation and feel pathetic every time I go climbing.

The post Gabor Szekely on the Slump in Climbing Performance first appeared on All Climbing.

Obviously, there never has been a magic bullet, though many books would have you believe so (although I do recommend Training for Climbing). As a result, I began to re-evaluate my own goals and training plans and came to a few conclusions based on what I’ve read, discussed with various doctors and physical trainers, and my own background.

The short answer is there are no shortcuts. There is no magical plan that will make you climb 5.12 after reading a book.

And even worse, every climber’s body is different, thus making a single plan or set of techniques vary greatly in their effectiveness.

The good news is that I strongly believe there are a few simple steps climbers can take in order to make some rapid improvements in their climbing.

Many of these you may already be doing, but I know I have room to improve on each of these areas.

My overall plan is to simplify first with general goals and then built up to more specific ones as I make progress.

There’s no point in my having a goal of “do 3 10 second dead hangs on the micro-edge” when I don’t even use my hangboard on a regular basis. Instead, I’m going to start with “use my hangboard to supplement my gym climbing training X times per week”. Then once it becomes a habit, I can start to add more specificity.

So, without further ado, here is my personal training plan for the upcoming year in lieu of any New Year’s Resolutions I’d likely break or rationalize away anyway.

Food / Nutrition

• Eat some green vegetables at least once per day. This is because I tend to avoid vegetables and load up on carbs. I eat bagels like normal people eat chocolate. Most studies show green vegetables have the most antioxidants and nutrition pound-for-pound.
• Watch my carb intake. See above.
• Eat natural and organic foods as often as possible. While my wife has been pregnant we’ve been watching this one closely for the little one’s benefit. The side effect is that I have been eating mostly organic and natural foods for the past few months and have never felt better. That’s enough evidence for me.
• Decrease (or at least maintain) caffeine and alcohol consumption. I love coffee and beer. Neither one in large quantities are necessarily good for you. I’m aiming to slightly decrease coffee and maintain the level of beer consumption. Hey, I’m in Boulder now and there’s coffee shops and micro-breweries everywhere. I mean this literally – Time magazine called Colorado’s Front Range the Napa Valley of beer.
• Drink more water daily. I’m shooting for two liters per day. Fill up a Nalgene and place it on your desk. My bottle taunts me all day until I drink it.

Cross-training / Exercise / Weights

• Do more body weight training exercises several times per week (pushups, pull-ups, dips, etc.) to work antagonist muscle groups to prevent injuries (for me, it’s my loose shoulder).
• Do crunches regularly to increase my core strength.
• Use my hangboard regularly. I have a Metolius Slim Gym. Not the most variety in the holds, but it fits almost anywhere you want to mount it. Once I set a pattern of using it regularly, I’ll splurge on a better one.

Climbing

• Fully warm up before climbing. I’ve read and heard many strategies, but I think the book One Move Too Many recommended doing about 100 climbing moves to be warmed up. My personal strategy, that has been working well, is to climb about 8-10 easier boulder problems with good holds (i.e. no crimps). I’ve found that this amount gets the blood flowing for me and I’m usually good to go at this point. I honestly keep a running count in my head until I reach 8. Going back to my keep it simple theme, this little trick forces me to warm up. I don’t allow myself to work on anything hard until I get my 8-10 warmup problems in.
• Don’t always climb to failure when training in the gym. This is good for muscles, but it does not work same way for tendons. I won’t go into detail here, but take a look at any of these for more info: ClimbingInjuries.com, Training for Climbing, and Marvin Climbing.
• Ice after each climbing session. I found my fingers recover from minor tweakage much quicker when I ice them. I’ve now had this habit for a while of icing my fingers after climbing. Simple, yet once again very effective.
• Rest when needed. This sounds like the most obvious of them all, but as climbers we usually abhor resting unless we’re physically forced to. It’s probably a good thing to actively plan resting.

Your mileage may vary on all of these. None of this may work for you or maybe all of it will. Some of you may find all of the above simplistic, but for me that was the entire point. The key is that each of these components has shown some promise for me at different times of my climbing life.

My goal is to now put them all together and be consistent. Luckily, none of the above is radical, untested, or will kill you. Just a simple, common-sense way of getting fit for climbing.

I welcome all your suggestions in the comments. Are you using any common sense training concepts in your personal climbing fitness plan?

The post Climbing Training Plan for 2009 first appeared on All Climbing.

The post How to train like Sonnie Trotter first appeared on All Climbing.

New research suggests that beer may be a decent source of hydration after a workout.

Researchers from Granada University in Spain published results from a recent study that tested the hydration powers of water versus beer, and a results were surprising.

After students performed strenuous exercise until exhaustion in 104 degree Fahrenheit temperatures, one group was given two pints of beer while the other group drank the same amount of water. Both groups were then allowed to drink as much water as they wanted and their hydration levels were tested soon after. The tests revealed a slightly better measurement in the beer drinkers than those who drank water. Surprising? According to common principles of nutrition, this finding may be scientifically grounded.

Ok, so maybe beer is not the best solution, but knowing it may help you is still good news to me!

The post New research says have a beer after your next workout first appeared on All Climbing.