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 Fall 2016 probably would have won the title “Best Season Ever” even if it ended after the third day (the day I finished off my year-long bout with Shadowboxing). After that send I spent a night celebrating, which for me entails eating a bunch of food I normally wouldn’t, in this case a greasy…
I’m off to Deutshland morgen! I’m bursting with excitement (and a fair bit of justified anxiety about our 12-hr airplane extravaganza). I’ve had my best-ever summer strength phase, a really good two weeks of power training and I feel like I’m in outstanding shape. I’d still like to lose a few pounds, which may be…
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…
Performance rock climbing is all about strength-to-weight ratio. We tend to fixate on the “strength” side while ignoring the “weight”. Perhaps because the strength side of the equation seems actionable, and the weight side is all about restraint. The reality is that losing weight is probably the easiest thing a climber can do to improve. …
Tom brought up a couple of questions which I will start to address here: tom on July 25, 2012 at 2:35 pm said: “you brought up two very interesting areas i hope you will discuss in detail: a) being aggressive in climbing – what’s the mindset, how do you turn it on? how do you…
At a certain point (the point where the cliffs start to overhang) climbing performance is all about strength to weight ratio. Most of what we focus on as climbers is the strength part. In some ways, that’s the easiest thing to do, because it requires action, whereas dieting, or whatever else we might have in…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 