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 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 third installment in a multi-part series about my training for Shadowboxing. For the first installment click here. For the second installment click here. Visualization is an important part of any hard ascent, but the picture in our mind is often overly idealized. We imagine everything going flawlessly—executing the sequence…
by Mark Anderson Last summer I bolted a radically steep roof in Clear Creek Canyon. This climb involves approximately 30 feet of horizontal roof climbing–something I’ve never been very good at. I knew I would need to improve my core strength to have a chance at climbing this monstrous roof, so I put together a…
by Mark Anderson This is part 2 in a two-part series. Part 1 can be viewed here. The most significant obstacle to climbing my looming Bunker project appeared to be a lack of specific core strength. My career for the most part has been spent standing on my feet, not swinging and stabbing them over…
by Mark Anderson I’m a big fan of puzzles. Crossword puzzles, brainteasers, jigsaw puzzles. Without a doubt, my favorite part of project climbing is solving the sequence puzzle. The more baffling the sequence, the more rewarding it is to solve. This challenge is magnified on first ascents, which typically lack obvious clues like chalk and…
by Mark Anderson Roof climbing is my nemesis. As someone who “grew up” climbing at Smith Rock, I always gravitated towards clean, monolithic faces that sweep skyward in one continuous plane of consistent steepness. My best angle is probably plumb vertical, and the steeper it gets after that, the more I struggle. The climbing on…
In this post I introduced the concept of the Transition Phase. This is the several-week period during each training cycle in which you shift your focus from primarily indoor training to primarily outdoor climbing (and sending!). Chapter 10: Building a Seasonal Training Plan from the forthcoming “The Rock Climber’s Training Manual” thoroughly describes how to…
As implied here, I’m inspired by the climbing career of the legendary Jerry Moffatt. During his prime, Moffatt was the best climber in the world, and he dominated on redpoints, onsights, boulders and competitions. What inspires me most though, was his commitment to hard work and his dedication to training. He was a phenom in his…
My training philosophy emphasizes finger strength training above all else. For a number of mostly obvious reasons, I’m convinced that finger strength is the single most important physical factor (as opposed to mental or technical factors) in rock climbing. That said, there are other elements of physical strength that are relevant, and worth training, if…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 