Every climbing season started off the same. I get motivated to send hard. I set goals, start training, and experience progress.
Then at some point I start to sputter. Aches and pains creep in, my strength fades, and I regress back down to baseline. I’d finish off the year in the same place I started.
Why was it so hard to get progress to stick?
I got my answer while listening to a podcast.
It was a conversation between a renowned strength & conditioning coach and a professor of neurobiology. The two talked about various ways of building strength, endurance, and flexibility.
At one point I heard four words that would forever change how I looked at training.
"Strength is a skill."
It turns out that strength has a lot less to do with muscles, and more to do with the mind.
I had been training the wrong way – too focused on just building the body, when instead I needed to improve my mind-body connection.
I decided to test this out, and quickly realized I was venturing into unknown territory.
This training method didn’t exist yet in climbing, so I had to become my own guinea pig. I created a program that adopted its core principles into my climbing sessions.
My body started responding quickly.
The first sign was when all my soreness went away. It felt like I was given a new body. I went into every training session feeling fresh, and was able to consistently climb at my physical limit.
The next thing I noticed was an improvement in my performance. Even though I took longer rests and gave fewer burns, each attempt on a climb yielded much more progress than before. I was shocked. I always thought that I had to give more input to yield a higher output. Now I was actually getting more by doing less.
That’s when I realized that this was actually working.
The results were incredible.
Within 2 months:
I started climbing better with less effort. Climbs that would take me multiple sessions to send were now going down in one session.
All of those small aches and pains in my fingers that had accumulated from previous training were gone. My hands felt healthy and strong instead of constantly tweaky.
Within 4 months:
Suddenly, I became unstoppable. I was feeling stronger every session. Hard moves that were previously inaccessible now became repeatable. Even my climbing friends took notice.
“It’s like you’re getting better every time we climb.”
I started ticking off climbs fast. Progress came every session, and with it my confidence grew.
I tapped into reserves of energy I didn’t know were there. Where previously on a route, I would experience a sudden dip in my strength and power, I now could maintain that power endurance for much longer. And I wasn’t even training power endurance!
Above all, there was a consistency in how I felt. Gone was that huge fluctuation between good days and bad days. I could now rely on a strong baseline.
What I realized from all this is that I wasn’t falling short because of a lack of effort, but rather what I was directing that effort towards. Just like yourself, I was plenty determined. But to turn that into lasting progress, I needed the right knowledge.
You don’t have to train yourself to death to improve at climbing. You can take a smart approach that’s balanced, effective, and above all sustainable.
If I’m able to hit my biggest benchmarks in my 40s, you can definitely achieve the same (if not) better results.
Let me show you how.