Christmas came a week early for me this year. While driving Logan home from downtown Denver to see the impressive light display at City Hall, I received a call from my friend and publisher Jason Haas. The “Proof” of the Rock Climber’s Training Manual had arrived from the printer! The proof is a collection of…
As promised, here is some hangboard resistance data from my recently concluded Strength Phase. This was my first full phase using the Rock Prodigy Training Center. I thought it would take a while to get the loads dialed in correctly but I was able to get pretty close to the right resistance during the first…
Power is an essential element of climbing performance. One could argue (and many have) it is the most critical physical aspect of climbing performance. As Tony Yaniro famously said, “if you have no power, there is nothing to endure”. If you cannot execute the hardest individual moves on your goal route, everything else is moot. …
The holidays are upon us, which means friends and relatives will soon be pestering you for your wish list. If you don’t already have it, I highly recommend asking Santa for a copy of Jerry Moffatt’s outstanding autobiography Revelations. Jerry Moffatt was probably the best climber in the world for most of the 1980s, and he…
by Mark Anderson I think if people realized how little I train (and climb) they would be shocked. I often joke with my wife that I should be quarranteened in a plastic bubble and studied by teams of cruel government scientists (ala E.T.). There is certainly a trend among top climbers to perform massive quantities…
I permanently installed my Rock Prodigy Training Center last week, and I’ve done my first few hangboard workouts of the new season. To install the RPTC, I took a bunch of measurements of my old, sprawling setup, and used those figures to optimize the spacing of the RPTC. In the end I settled on 4.5″…
The inaugural Shelf Road Anchor Replacement Weekend was a big hit. We had a lot of volunteers and a lot of fun. We replaced tons of mank hardware at The Bank and Cactus Cliff, and built a fence at the Bank Campground for the BLM. Anything we can do to maintain positive relations with landmanagers like…
The Rock Climber’s Training Manual has been sent to the printer! That means as far as my contributions are concerned, the book is “done”. According to the guys at Fixed Pin, it normally takes about 3 months from the time the book is submitted to the printer until it arrives on bookshelves. Once the printer…
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. …
I’m currently reading Greg Crouch’s fascinating book “Enduring Patagonia”. I’ve always had this thought in the back of my mind that when the kids are grown up I’ll go climb Cerro Torre for “fun”. After reading Crouch’s book I now realize the folly of that idea. Crouch spent 68 days trying and failing to climb…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 