6 Reasons Why Your Training Isn’t Working
When we first started coaching climbers, we thought it would be all about the nuts and bolts of training program design. We really thought that most of what we were going to be doing was guiding climbers through the details of hangboard protocols, exercise selection, and set/rep schemes. We definitely don’t have all the answers, but we can confidently say that our initial assumptions were completely off base.
The reality is that most climbers don’t get to the point in their training where these kinds of nuts and bolts details are the difference between sending and failing. This isn’t to say that there aren’t basic principles that are important to follow in your training.
Our suggestion, however, is that many of us are shooting ourselves in the foot and unintentionally sabotaging our performance or our training efforts well before the point that most of the details of a training program even matter. What follows are six common ways we see climbers undermine their training efforts.
Some of these examples may not apply to you, or maybe you’re six for six. Either way, we suggest you use this article to help guide some honest self-reflection. Like we said before, we definitely don’t have all the answers, but we hope this article can help you identify and then avoid some of these pitfalls in your approach to climbing and training. That, we guarantee, will have a positive effect on your climbing.
Misunderstanding the Role of exercising
Let’s look at this simply and start by asking what seems like a pretty basic question: “Why are you training?”
Since you’re reading this article, we can safely assume that you are training because at some point in the future you want to climb a route or boulder that’s harder than what you are currently climbing. That’s great! We are all about goal-directed training, but the pitfall here is thinking that training is going to reach your goal for you.
Training is NOT a magic pill.
We cannot stress this point enough. There are no secret exercises that are the answer to the next grade. Exercising alone will not get you up your dream projects. And, maybe most importantly, it will never make rock climbing feel easy.
Yes, continuing to get stronger is certainly going to help you progress through the grades and is to a certain extent a prerequisite. That said, no matter how strong you get you are always going to have to show up, put the work in, and TRY HARD if you really want to keep progressing in your climbing.
