By Mark Anderson On January 17th, the Boulder Rock Club hosted a panel discussion on training. The panel included myself, renowned climbing coach Justen Sjong, Chiropractor & Physio Dr. Brent Apgar, double-digit boulder and author Peter Beal and Physical Therapist Dr. Stacy Soapmann. It was a really fun and informative event. We fielded questions submitted online…
By Mark Anderson You may recall from this post that I had an abnormally long and successful Fall 2016 climbing season. Typically after I send a hard project I take along break from climbing, but I sent my season goal-route (Shadowboxing) so early in the Fall 2016 season that I was still stoked to continue working (and…
by Mark Anderson A few years ago Steve Bechtel gave me an article called “40 Years of Insight” by strength Coach Dan John. The article is a list of 40 lessons Dan learned in his 40 years of coaching strength athletes. I liked it so much, I keep it on my nightstand and re-read it…
By Mark Anderson This is the second installment in a 4-part series. The first installment can be found here. By the end of the Fall 2015 climbing season, I was consistently 2-hanging the route, and while my hang points were converging, the rate of improvement was glacial. Clearly I needed to reach another plane of…
by Mark Anderson Last week I had to upgrade to a new binder for my training records. The old one was full. This is actually my fourth or fifth binder. My first binder was just an old manila folder. The oldest sheet in my binder is a hangboard log for a workout I did in June…
by Mark Anderson As soon as Kate and I committed to a trip to Germany, I started looking for information on “The Campus Center”, the birthplace (and namesake) of the Campus Board. Legend has it that Wolfgang Gullich was looking for a new way to train explosive power for a new cutting-edge route he was…
The holidays are upon us, and you don’t want to end up with a pile of socks and ties again. Chances are somebody is nagging you for a wish list, but you’re too focused on training to put one together. Fear not Rock Prodigies, we have assembled the perfect list of stocking stuffers to help…
How often have you visited a climbing forum and stumbled upon an endless debate over some trivial matter like the definition of “is”? It seems that many of us would rather argue about training terminology than actually train. This pre-occupation with semantics can be a real distraction from the truly important matters (like the phone number for…
This is part 2 in a two-part series about our experience (so far) training Pro Climber Jonathan Siegrist. You can check out “Trainer to the JStars: Part 1” here. We had learned quite a bit the first time around, and by the end of his first cycle, Jonathan was training completely independently, though occasionally asking…
Ever since I first conceived of the Rock Prodigy Training Center, I’ve been pondering a cheap and simple mounting system that would allow for instantaneous spacing adjustments. Once the RPTC was unveiled I got a number of great ideas from other climbers. Julian Marks suggested a “French Cleat” system in this Mountain Project thread, which uses…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 