From my experience, the "climb a lot" advise discussion missed one key point: the number of climbing sessions. A key struggle for many people I know is to organize themselves to actually show up regularly, even though they want it. There is a huge difference between showing up 2-3 times a week for a full year and dilly-dallying around every second week for years on end. If you want to improve, you have to show up at the starting blocks! This may sound trivial, but I think is something you can definitely work on with almost guaranteed success.
Yeah 2-3 times a week, when your skin has healed and your strength has returned. Don't go back to the gym earlier than that when you've just started out
@@MB-co6qj I agree! You can also go too hard. Take particular care of your joints and tendons. It is easy to build up strength within a couple of months without the rest of the body adapting to it. So you then have all the strength you need to ruin your ankles, finger tendons, shoulders, etc. The body needs time and not all training has to be max effort.
I agree that many people find it difficult to maintain consistency, but without a clear sense of purpose and intentionality in training, it can lead to exhaustion and burnout. Connecting the idea of "showing up and just pushing forward" to a specific goal or purpose can provide a motivational boost.
I have been climbing for over 20 years (on and off), including returning to climbing after having two children and four knee operations. I am still getting stronger and still challenging myself on more dynamic styles. However, I know exactly where my limits are and I won't push past them - i.e. risky uncontrollable falls from the top of the boulders are not for me, are simply not worth the risk. Progressing in climbing needs to include that risk taking analysis especially as yoi age. I think ageing is a very important subject especially for women. I wish more women my age and older carried on climbing past menopause and understood that climbing is amazing for couteractacting muscle atrophy. Really enjoyd the video, Hannah! As always, top class!
Really glad to hear you enjoyed the video! It was super cool to hear Josh’s advice for climbing into later life. I hope to enjoy climbing for many years to come and it’s great to talk to coaches about how to make ensure longevity in sport! ☺️
So awesome that you’ve returned to climbing after all that life stuff my friend! As a middle aged female climber with kids I can say it’s challenging but in my experience so worth it. Climbing helps me to show up for myself, to keep pushing my limits and keep my body and confidence strong. Way to go!
Great point about risk analysis and how this changes. Post-menopause climbing is also a topic I plan to discuss more on our channel in the future. I would say resistance training and weight bearing exercises become even more important for post-menopausal climbers. We currently have 3 post-partum climbing/training videos lined up over the next few months. But then I plan to explore menopause more. I recently had the pleasure of chatting to Beth Rodden for a post-partum video and she suggest menopause should be our next topic 😊
There are many great points here. Lattice Training clearly knows what they’re talking about and has been a key source of knowledge for my own climbing journey. However, one area I feel is often overlooked when focusing on strength gains is the critical role of nutrition, recovery, and weight management-especially since the latter requires careful handling. In my experience, when I significantly reduced alcohol, prioritized a consistent sleep rhythm, and aimed to eat as healthily as possible, I achieved progress like never before.
I like to think of weaknesses as low hanging fruits. If I did not progress far on a certain task, it is likely that there will be some relatively simple fixes that I just did not apply, yet. I think this is especially true for technique. If I find out that my technique at a certain climb is garbage, there are probably some very basic things I can learn. If I am already quite good at something, finding more progress might be much harder.
Awesome session. It was a really nice chance to review my strengths and weaknesses with Josh - I am totally guilty of avoiding slab, but I also relate to his advice on making sessions fun being a priority for some people, so I better start saving the overhang as my treat after working my weaknesses 😇
I'm both proud and disappointed... for my age I'm pretty good compared to the kids I compete against, but also I'm far behind many older kids or even the pros when they were my age... so I really want to focus this year and try to get better
Interesting video as always. Ive been climbing for 5yrs but Im now 61yrs old. My technique has improved after a training course recently but my strength is getting less. Maybe I should try and do some strength training as well.
Good to hear you’re seeing some technique gains! I definitely learned a few things from Josh about setting good habits in place at any stage of your climbing. ☺️
watching someone tall like I am (6'7"), struggle on certain moves makes me feel a little better about my ability.....Now if I could drop 10-15lbs, that would help some of those moves too. Really enjoyed the explanation of the different climbing "ages" and how to get better. I really wish I would have found climbing in my 20s, instead of my 40s....
Thank you for your content...a 'training' video idea: 'co-ordination' to move through moderate climber level plateau. I don't mean 'co-ordintation boulders' as such, but whole body/technique coordination across styles. For example, combining heel hook, drop knee, hips in, momentum, accuracy...all in one move lol and repeat with different combos. Training tips that work on this 'putting it all together' beyond 'just climb more' again haha. The closest answer I have myself at this stage is to use spray walls and boards more
Super interesting video. I started recording myself very frequently and watched the material at home. I think that’s a nice way of finding out about your strengths and weaknesses.
For sure! Watching footage of myself climbing has been really useful to get a more objective look at my movement - I think it's a really useful tool for every climber!
Just climb a lot is great advice if you are a good intuitive learner. If you aren't, you will be developing bad habits that will be really difficult to unlearn. Lots of people don't intuitively move their hips well so they won't develop that chain of movement that starts in the feet and moves upwards to the arms. At one of the gyms I go to they have technique classes for beginners and the peeps who do them progress quickly.
That whole discussion was super interesting! I'm just coming into my 3rd year of consistent climbing and have just started prioritising strength training to aid my climbing after a couple years of "just climbing". Also definitely noticing that I only climb routes I think are doable - rather than challenging myself with my anti-style - so Josh nailed it with both those points in my experience :)
The actionable info / time ratio isn't great here What exactly do I need to do? It's lost in the fluff Could we get an abbreviated or condensed version?
Those beginner advice are super weird tbh The main point of “climb a lot” is that it’s simple to follow and doesn’t have ambiguity, switching it with “just climb a lot with mindfulness” basically reintroduces that ambiguity, it’s like answering “how to get better” with “just get better”. Same for “do smt to become more athletic”, for a lot of people who start climbing, that literally is the thing they do to become more athletic, and it works. Also as much as he tries to pretend it’s not a contradiction, it literally is contradictory advice, people starting are wondering if they should do other exercises, and you tell them “no, don’t overcomplicate things, just climb… but also add strength routine to it” which also just reintroduces ambiguity and now they need to figure out a strength routine and how to add it to their schedule and basically it seems like no advice at all imo
Sorry if my advise wasn't super clear for you. Hopefully I can explain a little more. Just Climb A Lot: My issue with this is, I see a huge variation in the quality of practice climber do in a typical session. Some climbers have been climbing "a lot" for years and still miss super basic movement concepts and skills. Over gripping, poor footwork etc. There is a level of absentness in attention and lower "climbing intelligence". They may even be climbing V6 and higher but brute strength their way up stuff. My advice is to be more present (mindfulness, reflective etc) with their practice. This is key to develop in any sport and crucial if you are not getting any formal coaching imo. But I get that the concept of mindfulness is not intuitive for everyone. Be more athletic: Most sports activity tends to build specialised athletes. Climbers will gain strong fingers, strong backs etc. but these can develop much faster than leg strength or even the stabilising muscles around the shoulder. Sometimes these neglected areas can't tolerate the forces we place on them in climbing and we may get injured. The prevailing wisdom in injury prevention research and coaching is to do general preparation with simple strength exercises. This helps protect the climber so they can enjoy the sport more frequently and for longer. I often simplify this sentiment by saying "be a general athlete before a specialised athlete". This style of video was very conversational so it can be hard to articulate the points clear enough for every viewer. Inevitably some ambiguity is present and I'll never get across all the nuance.
I would also advise training your core. Especially for beginners. As a beginner myself I severely strained my intercostal muscles. Those, over and inbetween your ribs. Felt like a knife jab in my left part of my chest, just as I was about to top out. Physiotherapy and from on pay extra attention to my core.
Ahhhh that sounds rough! Coming back from injury is challenging - I’m coming back from a torn calf muscle and I don’t trust my body and falling these last few weeks!
Whats a tip for someone who’s just coming off one year, but works out and strength trains for over 10 years, close to 40, weighs 80+ kgs but have weak fingers and can only crimp 15kgs for 10 seconds? Also struggles on small but fairly decent holds that others cruises on, but gets joint inflammation as an aftermath.
I'd work on using 3 finger drags more than crimps, as they're less rough on your finger joints. You might have to step down a level or 2, but it should lower your injury risk and open up more options for finger-y holds.
@@caratownsend1166 thank you! I always get the impression 3 finger drags are worst than crimps idk why! I guess well...its only 3 fingers haha. I'll start training those on he free hang and see if I can substitute some of the smaller holds. Oh yeah I know I'll probably nvr get past V4 and I'm ok with it.
@@gershom86 yeah, I can see why you'd get that impression - but the main thing is the angle of the force thru your tendons. In a crimp, the force is basically horizontal, which lets you leverage against more surface area, but with much more strain. The drag lowers that angle to one much closer to flat, so you trade a bit of leverage for a lot of longevity. Means that if you want, you can consistently train drags with a much lower pain and injury risk. They're weaker to begin with, but because you don't have to back off as soon, you can get a lot of strength into it. Also lets you reach slightly further. I also wouldn't resign yourself to V4. Given you're pretty strong overall, I imagine you've been drawn to overhang to play to those strengths - which has a pretty sudden grip strength curve around V5. But some compression-style vert might play to your advantages, and training footwork on slab will give you considerable gains everywhere. You're only 1 year in, V4 is a pretty common plateau point for that amount of time, but if you never try harder stuff, you never know
@@caratownsend1166 Wow thank you for taking the time to type and share! Such an awesome community! I'm literally taking mentals notes and whipping up a training programme for my next year based on what you shared!
You can’t “force” tendon strength the way you can muscle strength, it simply takes more time to develop If you climb regularly I would say incorporate board climbing in your routine, maybe once a week
