The Climbing Doctor: Shoulder Injuries – The SLAP Tear
Climbing injury rates are on the rise. If you climb long enough, chances are you're going to deal with an injury at some point. However, this doesn't mean we should just be sitting back waiting for injuries to happen. Most climbing injuries are the result of overuse. This means that [...]
Beta Angel – A New Resource for Climbing Research
As climbing and training become more and more popular, we are learning more and more about what actually works. Think back a couple years ago. We hadn't even reached a consensus on whether or not hangboarding was an effective way to increase finger strength. Today, if you talk to anyone [...]
Cafe Kraft: Lower Body Mobility Drills
As climbers, we tend to focus most of our training on our upper bodies. I'm talking about finger strength, pulling power, the strength endurance of the forearm, ect. While these are all important for climbing performance, training programs shouldn't neglect the lower body. Sure, we all know that we need [...]
Transcript Highlight: Roanne Van Voorst on Positivity
Over the past couple of weeks, I (Matt Pincus) have been sharing excerpts from Neely's conversation with Dutch climber and researcher Roane Van Voorst. So far we've looked at how Lynn Hill deals with fear and how Hazel Findlay practices dealing with fear on an ongoing basis. I'm sharing these excerpts [...]
Cafe Kraft: Upper Body Mobility Drills
Climbing and training place serious physical demands on our upper body. These demands result in continual wear and tear on joints like shoulders and elbows. One only has to look at the ever-increasing number of shoulder injuries in climbers to see this situation needs to be taken seriously. Ultimately, the best [...]
Tension Climbing – Foundations
It doesn't take long on the internet to find loads of new climbing training exercises. Quite often, exercises are even presented as some kind of shortcut to climbing improvement. Combine this abundance of information with the fact that our scientific understanding of the foundations of climbing training and performance is [...]
Transcript Highlight: Roane Van Voorst and Hazel Findlay on Exercising the “Fear Muscle”
Two weeks ago, I (Matt Pincus) shared an excerpt from the TrainingBeta Podcast episode with Dutch climber and researcher Roane Van Voorst about how Lynn Hill deals with fear. The episode itself is about Van Voorst's book Fear! in which she interviews top climbers (and other extreme sports athletes) about how they manage [...]
Matt Pincus: 4 Keys to Limit Bouldering
A staple of most training programs is that they contain some kind of bouldering. Even programs designed for route climbers typically have a bouldering component. The reason for this is that bouldering is a simple and efficient way to train strength and power. While you are undoubtedly familiar with bouldering, if you [...]
