By Mark Anderson Lesson 1: Anyone Can Be An Expert in Anything* I recently finished reading Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise, by renowned researcher Anders Ericsson (and Robert Pool). Those familiar with The Rock Climber’s Training Manual (RCTM) will recognize Ericsson’s name from our chapter on Skill Development. Ericsson is well-known as…
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 final installment in a multi-part series about my training for Shadowboxing. For the first installment click here. Wolfgang Gullich famously exclaimed “climbing is so complex!” after a winter of hard training failed to yield the desired results. Many factors need to come together simultaneously to complete a route truly…
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 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 Mike and I did another podcast with our friend Neely Quinn over at TrainingBeta.com. You can check out the podcast here. The interview runs about an hour and covers a wide variety of topics including: What went into designing the Rock Prodigy Forge, and why we think it’s the most advanced hangboard…
By Mark Anderson Our friends at Trango generously footed the bill to send Mike and I to the International Rock Climbing Research Association’s (IRCRA) annual conference, held in Telluride, CO earlier this month. Ben and Jason at Fixed Pin Publishing also stepped up big-time to provide attendees with complimentary copies of The Rock Climber’s Training…
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…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 