How To Climb 3 Grades Harder Without Getting Stronger // Tom Randall of Lattice Training 

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🧘🏼‍♂️💪

I’ll be chatting with Dave soon and will explore this more 🙌

Most of the sports science says that holding longer than 2/3 minutes is all you need and any more won’t help increase flexibility.

It's actually the other way around. Flexibility increases the risk of injury. By increasing the range of motion in a joint you're actively weaken the ligaments and tissue and the joint becomes unstable. Joints like stiffness. It's logical when you think about it. You can rarely hear that stuff on climbing channels as everybody talks about benefits of it and it does have benefits but it also comes with downsides. This is pretty mainstream knowledge. Just google the correlation between flexibility and injuries

@@verticaldreams1149 No amount of google or studies sighted will convince me on this one.

​@verticaldreams1149 you need mobility, not flexibility

@@verticaldreams1149 I am not sure you're right. As a person who has been doing yoga more or less on a daily basis for a year now I can say it has reduced the amount of injuries, ceased the pain in my right wrist and lumbar pain.

@@verticaldreams1149 You're not supposed to stretch the joint ligaments. increasing the range of motion with which your muscles and tendons can move decreases your risk of injury, especially in unpredictable and explosive sports

Us tall climbers don’t always have it so easy after all! Glad this was a good reminder to get working on mobility. It has been a grind for me, but I do see a difference on the wall.

I think this is the worst when it comes to indoor bouldering. At my gym for instance, all the setters are below average height, like 5’5” women and 5’8” guys who have very short arms and sometimes they set the most crunched problems ever and I swear they don’t even realize it 🤣😅. I feel like being tall is almost a non factor on bouldering unless you can completely break the sequence which often isn’t possible at higher grades

@@V8chumpyeah 100% agree on that ! breaking the beta for a taller climber is possible more in the lower grade like v3-v5.. but once you start going up the grades every movement has to be done with so much precision that breaking the beta becomes less lilely.

@@AdamL_18 yep not to mention the holds become fewer and far between or just get to the point where you NEED to be in a specific position to even hold them. I’ve found this outside a few times but not nearly as bad… mostly bc outside the holds are just so dogshit that I don’t think height is the determining factor…. Im working on an outdoor v9 for a couple sessions now and it’s crazy how bad the holds are vs indoors, but alas, I’m on the last move… felt the last hold even 🙏🏼

@V8chump I wish you the best of luck on that project ! Outdoor bouldering is a beast of itself. You have to tame the wild

V12 on deck!

Awesome! Any tips on what / how you trained?

@@thestruggleclimbingshow I found an old routine done by Movement for Climbers. Did that 3 times a week before bed.

@@calar8 Thanks, will check that out!

I just released two episodes on strength training - one with Dr Tyler Nelson (finger strength) and one with Dr Natasha Barnes (weight training). They’re over on the podcast. Hope they help!

Thanks for the support and welcome to the fam! Means a lot to me. Right now I haven’t released the full videos, mainly because I’m a perfectionist and I edit the podcasts for time, flubs, pacing, etc. So im using clips for the YT channel but haven’t put much thought into longer videos or full uncut. Tho you’ve given me some things to consider down the road! Hope your training and climbing are going awesome, and thanks again for supporting the show 💚

@@thestruggleclimbingshow definitely consider it! Much love

Goalz

Glad to hear that!

I’ll ask Tom!

I’ve been at it for a few months and see the difference on the wall. I think a key thing is to take it TO the wall (eg, apply those stretches to better technique, so the gains aren’t just on the mat but they’re being actively used often on the wall). I’ve been adding high heel hooks and open / frog resting during my warmup climbs to help connect the dots.

To me personally passive flexibility training everyday didnt do anything (i barely made good process after a certain point and couldnt really apply it anyway). Some pretty simple mobility and strength through motion blew me away. I managed to get rid of the knee pain from climbing completely, gained a lot of flexibility, started noticing it on a wall. (Something simple like Tom Merrick's weighted routine 2x a week for side splits, KneesOverToes guy stuff and high feet drills for front splits)

Depends how old you are and how many injuries you have. I've spent 3 years getting to "normal" mobility and now that most of the chronic injuries are much less noticeable I've started, what I assume to be another 3 year journey into the "extreme!" I'm 47 and spent a lot of years driving and hanging in a harness with a rounded back. Clue is in the name!

@@НиколайТобиасAgreed! Also you need to leave the ego at the door and be honest with yourself about where you really are.

Good question. I think with frog the toes are turned out, whereas Box the toes are pointing forward. If the idea is to get the pelvis as close to the wall as possible in order to reduce load on the fingers, Frog seems more reflective of that. I think. But I do both stretches - box split and frog. And also pancake with weight. Aiden Roberts and Ollie did a Lattice video on this that has great visuals and descriptions. Hope your climbing is going great!

@@thestruggleclimbingshow in box splits the toes point in the same direction as the head. So if you are doing frog where you are laying forward and imagine your frog is completely flat, you would then straighten the legs and the toes would also be pointing in the direction of the head. So in both you have the inner thighs to the ground. I’m pretty sure it’s the same position. If you do box splits with the upper body upright then the toes/tops of feet should also point up to the ceiling (same direction as the head). So to me they seem like exactly the same thing, just with frog not involving the lower legs

Stefano seems pretty flexible, not sure on Sharma. But I think Tom’s point is more about the average climber, there’s quite a bit of low hanging fruit for us in the area of mobility. Once you get to the top echelon, there’s much smaller room to make big gains in any area, it becomes a game of fractions.

Envious 😅

@@thestruggleclimbingshow To be fair, I'm still tall so things like sit starts are all V10 for me.

@@Aaron-xq6hv just heel hook above your head like Margo 😆

@@thestruggleclimbingshow The difference is I have to do that on a 5.12 instead of a 5.15 cause I'm too weak to do the intended beta 😅

@@Aaron-xq6hv sound pretty dang strong to me!

😂

I appreciate the thoughtful perspective here. Ankle mobility is a great one to add to the list, and I’ve heard Tom talk about that in particular, with regard to crack climbing, but certainly applies to volumes as well. As far as working weaknesses, I agree, tho I think Tom’s point here is that we can push our upper limit(even our strengths) up significantly by working hip mobility.

@@thestruggleclimbingshow Oh yeah definitely, flexibility/mobility lets you use the strength or technique that you have on different positions and holds. It's more of a multiplier than an addition I guess. Case in point: I currently have badly shortened hamstrings on the right side and despite my legs being similar in strength again, my right foot just cannot do the moves my left can. Depending on the boulder this sets me back between 0 and 3 full number grades. This is most obvious on mirrored training boards. The same goes for some other things though: IME lots of holds at higher grades have a pretty strict 'minimum amount of finger strength' that a given climber needs to do a move. For me though, my fingers get stronger just by climbing so there's no need to train them. My flexibility doesn't, so I need to purposefully train it so it doesn't get left behind. I guess the exact opposite would be someone who's naturally flexible, but doesn't gain strength as easily. They'd benefit much more from strength training than they would from stretching. They can get their hands or feet on the holds they need, but can't generate the force needed to utilise them. The other point of the triangle would be to improve your technique but telling people they just need to climb better to do a problem is sometimes hard to do tactfully.

@@hetistijmen really thoughtful perspectives here!

Yeah me too. But I like the perspective - loads of room for gains!

😂