Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

work toward your physical genetic potential).
    For the sake of discriminating among these many types of training throughout the rest of the book, let’s define several training subtypes—mental training, skill practice, fitness and strength training, and training support activities—as shown in figure 1.4.
    Mental training involves any thought control, discipline, or mind-programming activity that will directly or indirectly impact your climbing in a positive way. The best climbers train mentally 24/7—this is one activity in which you can never overtrain—by targeting their thoughts only on things that can, in some way, influence their climbing and by deleting thoughts and habits that might hold them back. Unfortunately, many individuals possess mental muscle that’s in an advanced stage of atrophy from underuse. Visualization is just one of the many mental exercises that can improve your climbing. Chapter 3 lays out an array of mental-training methods and on-the-rock strategies that will have a combined effect similar to unloading a heavy weight from your back (which you’ve unknowingly been hauling up routes). Are you ready to spread your Mental Wings?

     
    Figure 1.4 Subtypes of Training
     

    Practice relates to time spent learning and refining actual sport skills and strategies outside of a performance setting. Just as baseball, basketball, and football players spend many hours practicing their skills outside of competition, climbers must practice by climbing a lot with the sole intention of improving climbing skill (and not worrying about an outcome such as a flash, redpoint, or on-sight ascent). It’s my sense that many climbers’ training programs are devoid of this vital subtype of training. We’ll take an in-depth look at the subject of effective skill practice in chapter 4.
    Fitness and strength training covers a wide range of activities that are performed with the primary intent of improving physiological capabilities. This includes general conditioning activities such as running, stretching, and light free-weight training as well as the more important sport-specific activities such as fingerboard, campus training, and hypergravity training. Many other activities can fall under this heading, as long as they somehow help improve your climbing performance or prevent injury. It’s surprising, however, how many things done in the name of training for climbing actually have a negative effect on climbing performance. Get ready to sort things out as we take a cutting-edge look at physical training for climbing in chapters 5, 6, and 7. Then in chapter 8, you will be guided on developing an effective and time-efficient personalized training program.
    Finally, training support activities comprise a variety of crucial, yet often overlooked (or ignored), issues outside of your actual physical practice and training for climbing. Athletes in many other sports have known the vital role that rest, nutrition, and recovery acceleration techniques play in their ultimate level of performance. Serious climbers looking to press out their ability level toward the genetic limit must act on these issues with utmost discipline. Chapters 9 and 10 cover these important topics—applying the material may be the key to succeeding on your own “personal Action Directe ”!

The Relationship Between Skill and Fitness
     
    While the various subtypes of training for climbing will be discussed separately, they clearly affect one another. This is especially true when it comes to skill practice and fitness and strength training, so let’s dig a little deeper.
    For a beginning climber in the earliest stages of learning, a low level of fitness can slow the learning of climbing skill. A certain level of strength is necessary in order to practice enough (that is, climb) to develop the basic skills of movement, hand- and footwork, and body positioning. Conversely, too much strength enables a beginner to get by on easy to moderate routes despite inefficient movement, poor footwork, and improper body position. Obviously, this will also slow (or prevent) the development of good technique—unless, that is, the strong person makes good technique the primary goal, instead of just getting up the route no matter what.
    The problem is further aggravated by the fact that people tend to develop their talents disproportionately. Strong people are most likely into strength training, flexible people probably stretch regularly, and skillful