Direct Download: LINK
Date: April 28th, 2015

About Eric Hörst

Eric Hörst is a well-known climbing trainer, having written some of the most popular books on the topic, including How to Climb 5.12, Training for Climbing, and Maximum Climbing. He’s a 50-year old climber who still climbs as hard as ever (5.13 redpoints) due to his smart training methods, which he’s catered to himself to fit his mature body. His 2 boys are living proof of his training methods, regularly climbing 5.14’s by the time they were each 11 years old. Eric keeps an active blog on training for climbing, aptly named www.trainingforclimbing.com. He also writes regularly for www.nicros.com.

What we talked about:

• How to most efficiently train for different kinds of climbing
• How his training has evolved over the years, and how he learned so much about it
• Whether or not we should run to train for routes (the burning question)
• How his kids train for climbing, and how they’ve become such balanced athletes
• When to train and when to climb, and how to not overdo it

Related Links

• Eric Hörst’s website: www.trainingforclimbing.com
• His work at Nicros.com

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Music

Intro and outro song: Yesterday by Build Buildings 

Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk to climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and today I’m talking with Eric Hörst for episode 19.

Eric Hörst is from www.trainingforclimbing.com and he has written a ton of books on training over the years. He was one of the pioneers back in the 1990s when people didn’t know much about training for climbing. I mean, we still don’t know much but he was one of the first people to really look at it and make changes in his own climbing and help a lot of people get stronger.

In the interview we talked about climbing, obviously, strength training, running, how he trains his kids, who are superstar climbers and really well-rounded kids it sounds like, and what he thinks about training kids in general. I think you’re going to like the interview. I definitely learned a lot from him. He’s a smart guy and he reads a lot of research so it’s refreshing to hear what he has to say.

Before we get to the interview I just want to let you know that we are very excited to announce that we just released our route climbing training program which is a subscription program, just like our bouldering strength and power program. It’s targeted toward route climbers and it goes in six week cycles so you’ll train everything for route climbing including power endurance, finger strength, power, overall fitness, and it’s year round. You’ll have those six week cycles with rest in between and we will take you through it step-by-step.

Kris Peters and my husband, Seth, worked really hard on this and it’s out. It’s ready for you to use so check it out. Go to www.trainingbeta.com and click on the ‘Training Programs’ on the top and it’s the first thing on the drop down menu that you’ll see.

I hope you like this interview and here is Eric Hörst.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright. Welcome to the show, Eric. Thanks for being with me.

 

Eric Hörst: Glad to be here, Neely.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot in common as far as our passion for training. You’ve been in this business for a long time. I have a lot of questions for you. For anybody who doesn’t know who you are can you just give me a brief description of yourself?

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, well it’s a long story but I’ll keep it short. I started climbing in 1977. I’m an older climber. I’m 51 years old so I got into climbing as a teenager back in the late 70s when there weren’t very many youth climbers around. I really, like most people, got hooked. As a high school athlete it seemed logical to try to train for climbing but there was no information out there. I started my research then, so to speak, and it kind of developed over the years along with my climbing career.

I was climbing my hardest from the mid-80s to the early 90s. That’s kind of when I was a national class climber, putting up hard routes. The New River Gorge was my home area where I contributed quite a bit back in the Golden Age of route development there.

In recent years, the last 15 years, I still climb a fair amount and try to climb at a pretty high level but other things in my life have taken priority. Family, and I have a few different career paths that have been developing simultaneously and so here I am.

All these years later I’ve written eight climbing books, six of them on the subject of climbing performance, and those books have circulated around the world and there’s been numerous translations. I think global sales is over 300,000 copies at this point so that combined with all the writing I’ve done over the years – I wrote my first training articles in the late 1980s so we’re talking 25 years I’ve been at this, kind of studying and writing and coaching. Probably about as long as anybody on the planet has been involved in coaching and writing and researching so…

 

Neely Quinn: Wow. That’s quite a resume. That’s awesome. You also have your website – what’s the URL of that?

 

Eric Hörst: www.trainingforclimbing.com. I launched that site around 2000. I’m pretty sure it was the first training site on the web, 15 years ago. It’s gone through phases of development and lack of development. It’s a good resource and I’ve just kind of released a new generation of the site this year that I would encourage people to check out. We’re going to try to post a video and a podcast about once a month so there’ll be some dynamic features there that provide my unique perspective on climbing.

I’m a scientist and I try to dig deep into performance issues, leveraging science and not just anecdote. For some people, that’s an attractive way to learn about climbing. Other people just want to know, ‘What do I do?’ They don’t want the background or the whys. I’m an advocate of people tapping into all the resources out there. Certainly, you’ve done a fantastic job on your site.

 

Neely Quinn: Well thank you. We go to your site because we take, well, we redistribute some articles from your site because you have some really good stuff on there.

Tell me a little bit more about your background. Like, I know that you got into climbing at an early age. Who were you studying? Were you in school for training at all? Can you tell me more about that?

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah. It’s really interesting. First, I kind of started training for climbing somewhere around 1980. I was in high school. I was an athlete. I was kind of a jock and there was no training information for climbers at all. The one book that kind of gave a glimpse of maybe a few things to do, believe it or not, was the John Gill biography Master of Rock, which was written by Pat Ament and released about that time. Though it was a biography, it gave some background as to what this legendary boulderer who was, of course, decades ahead of his time in terms of bouldering difficulty, it gave a glimpse at what he did. Basically, gymnastics ring exercises and rope climbing and things like that.

I literally went out and joined the high school gymnastics team right after I read that book and I ran cross country. I was kind of more an endurance athlete but the gymnastics helped develop the power end of things for me. That was kind of my start in my interest in training. It’s funny, climbers of my generation – I remember a long time ago having this discussion with Todd Skinner that he had the same revelation when he found that John Gill book Master of Rock. It’s like: wow, here’s somebody who trains for climbing.

Back in the 70s and 80s people didn’t really train for climbing. In fact, it was kind of considered/people were like, ‘Why are you training? We climb for training,’ was the attitude of most people. Gill was ahead of his time and then people like Skinner and myself and certainly a few others. I know Lynn Hill got into training and John Long and people like that. Slowly but surely climbers started to get it, that sports-specific training was important though back then we still didn’t know what to do other than the obvious gymnastics and core-type exercises.

It was a slow evolution and going into college I actually studied meteorology. That’s my scientific background though my wife has a degree in exercise and sports science and over the years I’ve read pretty much everything I could get my hands on from sports psychology to exercise physiology, biomechanics – you name it, I’ve read it. That’s what I’ve spent much of my evenings and weekends the last 25 years doing. Even today at the age of 50, my before bed reading is research or papers. I read probably 100 papers a year, most of them not climbing related but there’s always some gold to be mined if you read diversely and can glean some useful information.

That’s kind of how things got started for me. I wrote for Rock & Ice. I think my first article was in 1988 and then a series of articles for Climbing Magazine and one thing led to another led to a publishing contract and one book led to another. Right now I’m working on the third edition of Training for Climbing, working on a revised, modernized, up to date treatment of that book that will be out sometime next year.

 

Neely Quinn: Nice. I’m assuming as research comes out, that’s how you’re revising it? Or that’s why you’re revising it, because philosophies change on this?

 

Eric Hörst: Well yeah. I mean, there’s an increasing amount of research being done these days that is climbing related. I’d say about once a month I get a new paper that has something to do with climbing, some type of research, but I do a lot of reading on sprinting, any type of athletic training research.

I’m very interested in understanding the energy systems that contribute to sport movement in climbing and trying to really sort out the best way to train those energy systems. I think that’s where there can be some developments in the coming years and that’s actually some of the new things that I’m detailing in the revised edition. How to better train the different energy systems that are called upon whether you’re doing a short boulder problem or a longer boulder problem or sport route or a multi-pitch trad route, you’re tapping into different energy systems and you need to train differently so there’s going to be a lot of new material.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s great. I actually have been very curious about that. What sports do you study in order to figure out what to do for, in my case, long sport climbs? Is it anaerobic? Is it aerobic? Is it a mixture? How much of it is each of those things and then how do you train that?

 

Eric Hörst: Right. There’s actually been some recent research in the last five or 10 years where they’ve specifically looked at hard sport climbing and hooked up the climbers and the research and analyzed the breakdown of the energy systems. About 45% of the energy that is used to power the climbing in those cases is aerobic based. Only about 20% is anaerobic lactate and the remainder, about 30% give or take a few percent, is anaerobic alactic – the creatine phosphate ATP system.

If you boulder it’s going to be a bit different and if you’re doing multi-pitch routes a little different again. I’m a sport climber also. That’s mainly what I focus on and I think the best way to think about it is we’re involved in an intermittent sprint activity where you are trying to basically sprint as fast as you can from one rest position to the next. In doing a long sport route you chunk it down between rests and you’re trying to move as quickly through the difficult sections and, of course, then get get to the rest positions where you can get a lot back.

I think the area for people to examine and think about and what I’ve been studying is research related to intermittent sprint activity. Those types of sports.

 

Neely Quinn: So what does that mean? How do sprinters train?

 

Eric Hörst: Well again, it’s not just sprinters. It’s not: ‘How do you run a 100-meter dash?’ where you are just all out for 10 seconds. It’s more like a soccer player or a lacrosse player where you might sprint for 10 or 15 seconds and then you pull back to a slow jog as you’re getting yourself positioned for the next sprint, for the next play, or whatever. I’m not a lacrosse or soccer player but that’s kind of what I’m getting at, is how you are going back and forth intermittently between high power output and then pulling back into a much lower power output which might be easier climbing or might be hanging out and resting. That is what I’m speaking to when I’m talking about sport climbing as an intermittent sprint activity.

In that way, really, most of your power output is being done anaerobic alactic which is how myself and my sons do most of our training. That’s kind of the base of our training then, in between those bursts, you go into either easy climbing or just a static recovery pose and at that point it’s then your aerobic system that takes over. All recovery is driven by the aerobic energy system so that’s what replenishes the creatine phosphate, ATP. The mitochondria are working like crazy.

I think that’s something that a lot of climbers could learn from. It seems that people go to the gym and they just end up getting pumped. They figure, ‘Oh, I climbed to failure 10 times. That was a great workout.’ Well, if you’re just climbing to that point of forearm failure then you’re really training the anaerobic lactic system which is the least trainable of the three energy systems. People that go to the gym and do that all the time wonder why, beyond a certain point, they don’t get any better. It’s because they are repeatedly training the same thing and the anaerobic lactic system is the least trainable of the three energy systems so really they’re kind of missing the target.

You want to do a small amount of that type of training. I think twice a week you’re overdoing it and you would be better off investing time training the anaerobic alactic which are those brief sprint-like activities and then, of course, doing the low intensity climbing like the ARC training protocols that are more being fueled by the anaerobic energy system.

That’s kind of the magic of designing an effective training program. How to piece together all of that in a way that you’re developing all three systems because climbing taps all three energy systems. If the average climber is only training one of them predominately, which is my belief, then they’re kind of missing the mark.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Eric Hörst: They’re leaving potential gains on the table.

 

Neely Quinn: So for your sons and you, because I know you guys, I mean I just saw pictures on Facebook of you guys in the Red. It sounds like they did really well. I mean, you say that you’re still climbing pretty strong and I don’t know what you’re climbing but it sounds like your sons are sending things pretty easily that are hard .13s. Are they doing 5.14s at this point, too?

 

Eric Hörst: Oh yeah. They’re climbing better than I ever have. I’ve never climbed a 5.14 and unless I pull a Bill Ramsey somehow in my 50s and do it I don’t think I ever will. Cameron and Jonathan both climbed 5.14 at age 11, which is about as early as anybody has done it.

 

Neely Quinn: Oh my gosh.

 

Eric Hörst: They’ve done multiple routes of that difficulty but you know, we don’t focus just on difficulty. In fact, that’s one thing – well, there’s a lot of things that are different about the way I approach climbing with my kids. For one, it’s not a year round activity for them. A lot of people assume, ‘Wow, their dad’s Eric Hörst the climbing coach. He must be training them year round like crazy and trying to turn them into super climbers,’ and that’s actually not the approach.

I mean, my kids love climbing. We’re a climbing family but I think that’s – and this is my personal belief. I’m not making judgements of anybody else but I think kids need to be kids. Kids need to be well-rounded and just from a physiological point of view, kids need to learn movement patterns other than pulling up a wall. Kids need to run and jump and physiologically develop a balanced body that’s going to serve them for a long life ahead and resist injury in their future endeavors.

Similarly, mentally I think kids need to do things other than just climb. I think there’s a benefit to them being involved in a team sport. They both actually play tackle football during the fall season but yeah, they climb really hard and they’re really just part-time climbers. They have about a six month climbing season and we travel and climb a lot on the weekends and our summers are spent mostly on the road climbing but we don’t park under a project.

In fact, as much as they would maybe love to do that like the other kids do my philosophy is, for myself and for them, if you can’t send a route in five goes you’re not ready for it. Especially for a kid, you need to succeed. You need to send some routes and feel good about climbing and not fall and fail and hang around. Even adults I think need to build confidence and certainly gain experience. You gain a lot more experience going out and climbing a bunch of .12s and .13s than you do failing on a .14 for a week or two and hoping to finally put it together.

That’s something we’re always weighing as a family but we put, I guess, more emphasis on onsight climbing and quick redpoints, two or three goes. That’s kind of our MO. When we go on our trips maybe they’ll spend a day or two on a route but again, if they don’t do it in a day or two I tend to encourage them, ‘Okay, let’s move on and do something else and maybe circle back to this route next season.’

 

Neely Quinn: I think this is similar to what the Anderson brothers would say and I’m curious as to how you feel, like how your philosophies compare with their’s and we can talk about that later. They said to me, “Yeah, if you’re projecting something and you’re failing on it over and over, you should go back and train.” Is that what you’re saying?

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. There’s actually been a little research done on this. They’ve done research where they track what’s called ‘geometric enterprise of a climber,’ [unclear phrase] like how efficient is your movement up a route and how much oxygen do you consume? How much energy do you exert getting up a route? With repeated ascents you get more and more efficient, only to a point. After, the research showed, between four and nine reps on a route the average climber has kind of gotten about as efficient as they’re going to get. By the time you’ve put in 10 burns on a route you may not get more efficient and be able to send the route on go 11 or go 15 or go 20 or go 30. Why not just train and get stronger and come back when you’re ready for it?

Again, there’s no perfect right or wrong answer to that. Everybody has to kind of have their own way about things but for me, personally, and this is how I’ve been for 30 years as a climber and for my kids, I kind of feel like after five goes you have it dialed in and you know how to do the moves and you know the sequences. You’ve probably learned to be about as economic in your attack as you can and if you can’t send it, train and come back later.

In the case of my kids I often tell them, “Come back next year stronger and taller,” because they’re still growing so that tends to help them out, too.

 

Neely Quinn: How convenient for them. I wish I could do that.

So let’s talk about the training part. When your kids and you are in training cycles – can we actually go through a mock training program for a sport climber and a boulderer?

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, sure. I mean, do you want me to tell you what, specifically, we are doing right now? What I train my kids? Or do you want me to give more of a blueprint of what I would give an adult that I’m coaching?

 

Neely Quinn: Actually I would love to do both because part of what I wanted to talk to you about was your kids and training kids in general. Could we do an adult first and then do your kids?

 

Eric Hörst: Okay, sure. When I work with an individual of course the first thing you always have to address are the technical and mental issues because most climbers, unless they are a pro climber who’s been doing it for decades, most climbers still have a lot of gains to be made in improving their technique and their efficiency climbing and of course their mental game.

So often, and even a veteran climber like myself, you get on routes that for some reason freak you out a little bit and your thoughts are scattered. It’s hard to climb at your limit when thoughts are scattered. Your thoughts need to be focused like a laser beam. That’s the magic behind people that I’ve seen climb like Jonathan Siegrist or Alex Megos. They’re strong. They’re incredibly strong physically but mentally they’re just sick, you know, their ability to focus and get something done.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Eric Hörst: That’s the first thing I always kind of start off with. Then, getting to the physical end of things the average person, right away, is always saying, “What secret campus training exercise can I do? Or hangboard protocol can I do?” Of course, not every climber is ready for that type of thing. In fact, I like to really back up and some of my clients resist this but before you can train, for instance, arm power or finger strength you need to go all the way back to your core and work outwards. It’s kind of like a proximal distal development that I think climbers need to do. Before you should be training your fingers aggressively, you better learn to stabilize your scapula or else you’re going to wreck your shoulders.

Again, some people don’t want to hear it but I come at them with some new and different ways like, ‘Maybe you could do deadlifting twice a week. It would actually really help you out in terms of your posterior core stabilization and working different exercises that focus on scapular stabilization so that you can safely execute overhead movements. Dynamic overhead movements like campus training which can wreck your shoulders if you do too much or if you’re not ready for it.’

I try to be responsible and take people through this path of evaluating their technique, evaluating the state of their mental skills, then evaluating their body physically from core outward with the fingers being kind of the last thing you address. Again, most climbers want to cut to the chase and address the fingers first but that’s the reason there are so many injured climbers so I try to go through that and, as best as I can, suss out where an individual is at based on their climbing history, their injury history, and maybe they need to do some rehab before they get into the finger training.

If they are a healthy climber of a pretty high level then I can prescribe for them a pretty extensive program that focuses on strength because I think if there’s one physical thing that a climber needs to do is they need to get stronger in terms of pulling, locking off, and of course gripping the rock. Pulling on smaller edges, smaller pockets, but again, my philosophy is stabilization before strength and then strength before power. You have to go down that road.

Stabilization – you develop that first in terms of a robust musculature to stabilize your shoulders and keep your elbows healthy and then develop the strength and then the final step is the power development.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so backing up a little bit, with training all these initial things, you’re using weight training it sounds like for at least part of it and are you also just having people climb?

 

Eric Hörst: Well sure. Climbing is a skill sport. It’s a movement sport so every program has to have, as a base, regular climbing activity. You can have periods during the off season where you maybe do just some weight training or maybe a cycle on the fingerboard without doing a lot of gym climbing or outdoor climbing but I think at least nine months of the year you ought to be trying to climb and be learning movement and developing skills.

The cliffs of the world is a playing field of infinite variabilities so you really need to accumulate a volume of exposure to that. That’s always paramount but in terms of training separate from the climbing, yes – some weight training. Now, I don’t have people doing body building programs, obviously. If you’re going to weight train, if you’re going to deadlift, for instance, you need to do the right program. You don’t want to put on muscle mass, you want to train your nervous system.

In the last six months I did a cycle of deadlifting. I have some lower back issues that are probably because I did a lot of running in my past and sat at a desk a lot. Those lower back issues have improved from doing some lifting and some deadlifting but long story short, I’ve added 100 pounds to my deadlift and I haven’t added a single pound to my body weight. It was all motor learning. It was all recruitment and that’s the best kind of training. If you can get stronger without adding weight, that’s a beautiful thing.

Now, everybody’s genetics are different and people respond to weights a little differently but if you’re doing low repetitions and high loads, that’s the best way to train your nervous system and not yield a lot of hypertrophy that’s going to weigh you down.

 

Neely Quinn: Did you change your body composition in that time?

 

Eric Hörst: Not a heck of a lot. My body weight doesn’t vary more than four or five pounds throughout the year so it was just training the nervous system. I don’t know how it translates to my climbing, whether the deadlifting really made a difference on the rock but I feel better, I have a better lower back that causes me fewer problems, and I do think a lot of climbers are becoming, of course, obsessive with core training. The funny thing is they mostly focus on their anterior core training, their abs, doing planks.

Planks are the most overrated exercise there is, where you kind of face the ground and do planks. That’s not a position you use in climbing. You’re usually, if you’re climbing steep rock, you’re facing the sky and your back is facing the ground so you need to train your posterior core.

You know, your glutes, your lower back, pretty much everything between your shoulders and your hips is core but climbers focus on the front side and don’t do so much to train the back side. That’s a whole other subject I could go into but that is where you can make some core strengthening that’s really going to help you in steep climbing: developing your posterior core. Deadlifting does that. Squatting does that, and there’s a number of other bodyweight exercises you can do that strengthen it as well – back bridging – and if you do a reverse plank, where you’re facing the sky and your hands are behind you. Things like that that focus more on the posterior core.

You know, these are distinctions that I’ve just come across in the last six or eight years. My thoughts are constantly evolving and that’s why there’s always another edition to be written to a book. I wrote my first training book in 1994 and here I am in 2015 working on the next version because it’s an evolving science and discipline.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems like you take an extremely individualized approach to this. As an aside, do you see clients? Do you work with people one-on-one?

 

Eric Hörst: On a very limited basis. Like any climber who is a parent who works a couple different jobs, my hours are a precious commodity so when I meet a person who really wants to be trained by me badly and I can fit them in, I do.

I give out a lot of free advice, obviously, through the internet and at the crags. I do clinics during the winter, mostly here in the east. I take on maybe a dozen paying clients a year but I’m pretty picky about who I take on. I kind of try to suss out how serious they are and whether they’re actually going to follow through my advice.

Some people just want to know, ‘What’s the one secret that’s going to take me to the next grade?’ and of course there is no one secret, so…

 

Neely Quinn: I know. As a nutritionist I can very much relate with that.

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, exactly.

 

Neely Quinn: Oh shoot…

 

Eric Hörst: Any effective program has to be individualized. I mean, there is no one-size-fits-all training program. I mean, there are principles of training that we all need to apply and that I think most of the climbing books out there express well but still, you just can’t read a book and instantly have an effective training program. Again, it’s that art of program design which, if you have an experienced, knowledgeable coach or if you’re experienced yourself at self coaching, you can hopefully put something together that works.

 

Neely Quinn: So if people…

 

Eric Hörst: But I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of climbers out there just training in ways that are completely ineffective. It’s kind of mind boggling and again, when I work with somebody or just talk to somebody at the crag and they tell me what they do and I’m thinking, ‘Geez. 80% of what they told me is a complete waste of time.’

 

Neely Quinn: Can you give me examples?

 

Eric Hörst: That’s the real – what I try to help people do, even if it’s just a casual chat at the crag, is how to cut out the junk training time, the things that are just causing fatigue. Just because you’re getting tired from an exercise doesn’t mean it’s going to help your climbing. You know, there’s specific things that are really going to work and then there’s things that might help a little bit and then there’s things that are a complete waste of time that will help not at all or maybe even have a negative effect on your climbing. You’ve got to get rid of all of that stuff and focus on the handful of things that are going to be effective.

 

Neely Quinn: Can you give me some examples of the junk training?

 

Eric Hörst: Well, I mean, I don’t want to offend anybody but I mean, Crossfit. Crossfit is cool. I think if it would have been around when I was a teenager I would probably have thought it was pretty cool, you know, to be able to do that type of thing and compete in that way but it’s not an effective training program for climbing. It might have some benefit if you’re preparing for alpine climbing, just kind of that whole body fitness type thing but it’s not at all specific in terms of movements or the muscles used to climbing.

People that do excessive running. Sometimes somebody will say, “Hey. I’m trying to get to 5.12 or 5.13 but I’m also training for a marathon.” I kind of confront them and say, “Which is your priority? You really need to focus on one of those two because the ideal program for training for a marathon and training to climb 5.13 is quite different. Where are you going to invest your time?” Excessive amounts of running is probably counterproductive to their climbing.

People that go and do weight lifting programs, like if you’re going to a Gold’s Gym three days a week and you’re going through a circuit of all the machines, again, maybe a month or two a year some general training like that can be a good thing but as a year-round training for climbing program, it totally misses the target.

Even going to a climbing gym which is – okay, now you’re in the right kind of facility, but if you’re in there with a singular focus of, say, max bouldering or a singular focus of just getting pumped to the point of getting sick, if that’s the only focus of your training program, again, you’re missing the target. You need to do small doses of those type of activities but there’s some other things you should be doing like we discussed earlier, training energy systems and doing some isolation training rather it be on a fingerboard or a campus board.

That’s something that demands that a climber, especially if you go to a gym, you need to be able to be individualistic and not kind of get sucked down the path of what everybody else is doing because a lot of the other people are not training effectively so you have to really kind of find your way and go to the gym and try to execute an effective program in the time you have.

 

Neely Quinn: So let’s talk about running a little bit. This is a really common topic among climbers because it seems like climbers seem to be obsessive in general and running seems to be one of the obsessive things that they do. I say that because when you say to people, “Stop running,” a lot of them are going to be like, ‘No way. I’m not going to stop running. That’s stupid.’ A lot of people, I think, run because they’ve heard all their lives that that’s how you stay lean so can you tell me how running is counterproductive to climbing training?

 

Eric Hörst: Well first of all, we’ll have to back up the tape here and see if that’s exactly what I said. I think I said training for a marathon would be counterproductive. Doing some running, I don’t think, is a bad thing. In fact, I still do small bits of running myself and I have my kids do small bits of running and I have some of my clients do small bits of running but you don’t want to be out doing 40, 50, 60 miles a week like you would if you were training for a half marathon or a marathon. You want to be a little more intelligent in your approach and you know, also, we all have different genetics. I work with people that if they do any running at all, their legs get bigger. Not smaller but bigger. It’s just some people are genetically prone, especially guys I think, some guys if they do even a few miles a week they’re going to put on some mass and some weight that’s probably not a good thing.

But I think more commonly people lose weight when they run and develop a sense of a lightness. I know when I’m running a few days a week I just kind of feel better and feel a little lighter and that might be kind of what you were getting at. I think that’s a good thing as long as it’s not an excessive amount of running.

You know, I’m thinking if you go out three mornings a week and run for 20 minutes that’s probably not a bad thing for the average climber, especially if you’re a route climber. You mentioned long, steep sport routes. The aerobic energy system is important and even though running is an unspecific way of – it trains the aerobic system differently than, obviously, it’s being used in climbing it does develop a stronger heart, it helps you move lactate around your body better.

Actually, if you look at a few of the more successful steep, overhanging, long sport route-type climbers, like I think of Sasha DiGiulian and maybe Jonathan Siegrist. These people who can hang on forever, a lot of them have running backgrounds. Sasha ran cross country and went right down to the Red and climbed Pure Imagination her senior year in high school or coming right out of high school. Having the idea that, on steep routes, all your recovery when you get to those rests is being driven by your aerobic energy system – actually, there’s a research paper I was just reading recently with climbers. I would have to dig it out and send it to you. It actually showed that people/climbers that have running backgrounds, their heart rate recovered more quickly when they were at resting positions on sport routes, on steep sport routes.

We all get to those rests on long, steep climbs and our heart is beating and we’re sucking for air. Especially if it’s a marginal rest, it’s really beneficial if you can get it back fast and then get moving as opposed to – so I think a limited amount of running can be helpful. But again, if you’re doing more than 20 miles a week you’re probably, maybe, starting to hurt yourself so…

 

Neely Quinn: I mean, do you think it would be beneficial for people to take a running season during the year to really build up their cardiovascular system or their aerobic system?

 

Eric Hörst: That’s not a bad idea. That’s what a lot of other sports, like swimmers or rowers and even some track athletes, they will spend off seasons doing what they call their ‘base training’ where they’re developing their aerobic energy system, their aerobic capacity, and then as they get closer to the season of course then they’re working more specifically on the energy systems of their sport. If they’re a 2000-meter rower then it’s very lactic so they would shift more to interval training and things like that.

Yeah, maybe that would be a good approach for climbers is do, during their off season, a higher frequency of running along with some other base training like if you were going to do some weightlifting or deadlifting or things like that. As the climbing season nears of course you would cut back on those types of activities and make things more climbing specific so sure. We kind of do that here, our family, to some degree. Since our climbing season is not year round we do kind of/things do evolve throughout the course of the year. There’s kind of a natural cycle that we go through.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so tell me about that cycle. I want to spend a little bit of time on your kids.

 

Eric Hörst: Okay, well first of all my wife and I are athletes and we love climbing. I guess you would call us recreational climbers at this point. I’m still, on a good day, climbing 5.13 and on a bad day falling on 5.12 so that’s kind of where I’m at at age 51. I still train and try to do my best but really everything we do when we’re in the gym here at home or if we’re out at the crags, we’re trying to put the kids in a position to have fun and climb their best and to learn as climbers. We kind of oftentimes spend all day belaying [laughs] instead of getting on our own projects.

Here in the gym we’ll, again – my kids, their climbing season is really only February through July because come August they play Midget football and that football season runs, basically, through Thanksgiving and by then it’s just too cold to get outside and climb here in the east. Kind of beginning with winter we are into our pre-season climbing training where this winter, my kids are both – especially my older boy Cameron, who’s 14, he’s going through his growth spurt, puberty, and his body just wants to get stronger. He’s got all those hormones peaking. My younger son John, who’s 12, is just starting to begin the growth spurt so he’s not quite there yet on the muscle building.

In any case, our focus this winter has been to develop strength so we spent pretty much December and January focused on developing strength. A lot of activities on both our climbing wall and treadwall and on things like pull-up bars and rings involving either one-arm movements or weighted two-arm movements. Lots of resistance to develop strength and then we kind of, having had that established over the course of about an eight-week period, we shifted over the last six weeks to more power. Again, you’ve got to always train strength before power.

Just now spring is finally arriving here in the east so we’ve been kind of transitioning that out to the crags and that means we have to cut back our training intensity during the week. We always want to arrive at the crag for the weekend fresh and not fatigued so we’re actually doing a little less training right now than what we’d done the last few months.

The focus now in the next four months will be kind of almost maintenance training Tuesday and Wednesday and then some pushing and recovery-type exercises on Thursday, resting Friday, climbing on the weekend and that will take us right up to June when we go to the Frankenjura for the month and then July we’re going to go to Wyoming for the month and then we come back from that and it’s into football season. The beauty of them playing football, as crazy as this sounds. As much as climbing is a pulling sport, football is a pushing sport. It’s really a perfect balance for a growing body.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So how many days a week are they training during, say, their strength period?

 

Eric Hörst: During this winter when we were in full on training mode there were three serious training days a week. A fourth day we would do what I call ‘recovery climbing’ which is we get on the treadwall and we just climb on big holds. We might only do 10 or 15 minutes total. Not in one burn but a minute, two minutes, three minutes climbing on big holds not really getting pumped.

I instruct them to, on a scale of 1-10, never let more than about a four or five level pump develop so that way it’s mostly kind of that ARC-type climbing. Sometimes we do it with our shoes off just so it’s very relaxed and fun and we’re just kind of paddling on the treadwall. That’s kind of recovery day and then of the other three days, which are the more intense days, two of them are very focused on the strength exercises. We train strength and even when we train strength we throw in a few power exercises so there might be a couple things that are power oriented.

Strength training you’re, of course, trying to create more force development but in doing weighted exercises you create force development more slowly. You have a low, slow rate of force development but in climbing you need to develop force quickly so that’s where the power exercises come in. We always, even on a strength day, try to do a few powerful movements whether it’s just a little laddering on the campus board or a couple of powerful movements on the bouldering wall, just so the nervous system is always being trained to recruit quickly.

Then, after having done two days of strength we actually throw in one day where we train more anaerobic lactate system where we get pumped. We do that on the treadwall. We do typical interval training where we’ll climb hard moves for 1-2 minutes and then rest for 2-4 minutes, something like that. That one day a week we’re kind of getting that cellular acidosis that results from the anaerobic lactic energy pathway.

Then of course, after we kind of get through that strength period we shift gears and go to power for a few weeks and then the final thing before we go to the crags is focusing more specifically on the strength endurance and power endurance. That takes you through kind of the three phases of the program that lead us into the climbing season.

 

Neely Quinn: Man. Are they psyched to climb and train like this or does it take any arm twisting?

 

Eric Hörst: No, it’s actually quite the opposite. When we’re down in the gym I’m like, ‘Get off the wall! We’re not doing bouldering today.’ ‘ No Dad. I want to try this boulder problem.’ It’s like, ‘No. That’s not today’s program.’

They’re kids in that regard. They love just climbing but they do enjoy training for sure and I’m also really big on auto-regulation. There’s certain days you get to the gym, and I think we can all relate to this, and you just don’t feel quite right. Maybe you’re mentally not there, maybe it was a tough day at work or maybe you’re actually on the verge of overtraining and you’re not recovered.

That’s one thing I teach them is everyday is, that first 30 minutes we’re kind of doing our warm-up, assess where you’re at. If you assess that it’s a day that you’re not quite ‘there’ for some reason we end the workout right there or we cut the workout in half.

We don’t have this slave mentality that we’ve got to get down there and do the whole three hour workout. Some days it might be truncated and just be one hour. I’m very sensitive to that and I’m also certainly sensitive to not getting my kids hurt because I feel like any coach that gets, whether it’s their kids or a client, injured, you failed. If you get hurt climbing sometimes you can’t help that. If you’re pulling on a mono or your foot pops and you’re on a small edge and you tweak a finger, if you get hurt climbing that’s part of the game but you should never get hurt training. I really take that to heart and apply that not only to my aging body but to my kids. I pride myself that they’re both completely injury free, have no issues, and again I think they’re probably uncommonly balanced in terms of their development physically.

The final thing people might say, “Should a 13-year old be training hard? Should they be doing the types of stuff that they’re probably doing?” The answer is: these kids – and we can apply this to all the super kid climbers out there – they started at age four or five, most of them. Their tendons and their body has gotten used to the stress of climbing and they’ve grown through that whole period. I think this generation of kid climbers, if they’re trained well, should be largely injury free. They should have really strong tendons and hopefully, if they’re being coached well and they’re doing exercises to develop their shoulder stability, their scapular stabilization, things like that, training the antagonists – if they’re doing that type of training as youth climbers, watch out when they all get to their 20s.

 

Neely Quinn: So it sounds like you think that it is okay for them to – are they fingerboarding? I didn’t hear you say that.

 

Very, very limited. You know, I’ve read every piece of research I can find on youth training, both climbing and non-climbing and obviously it’s during the period of highest growth velocity that kids are most prone to get hurt. In the case of climbing kids, the growth plates in their fingers. Both my boys are kind of in that period right now between 11 and 15 for the boys and maybe 11 and 14 for the girls. They’re going through that growth spurt and their growth plates are wide open.

My kids don’t do any double-handed dynos on campus boards. In fact, I don’t even like them doing a lot of dynoing in bouldering because that puts you at great risk. Some of these kid super climbers in Europe and a couple in America have broken growth plates in their fingers by doing too much dynamic-type movement. We do for instance, on the campus board, just some laddering. That’s all that I let them do. Arm-over-arm laddering which is very controlled. It develops the pulling power but it’s not so hard on the fingers like when you do double-hand movements on a campus board.

In terms of a fingerboard, they will hang open handed on pockets and do some pull-ups to train pocket strength and because it’s not dynamic and because it’s open hand, we haven’t had any issues. They don’t do anything crazy like microcrimp training on an edge or crazy campus training. It’s not going to happen in my house so…

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Eric Hörst: Again, if you get your kid injured, you failed, I think, as a coach.

 

Neely Quinn: Well – I won’t go there. I was going to see if you had any bad examples of kid coaching but I don’t want to slander anybody.

 

Eric Hörst: Again, I don’t mean to be judgemental in anything. Every parent and every coach has kind of their own way of doing things. I’m just expressing my philosophy as both a climbing parent and a climbing coach.

Again, just recapping, I think kids need an off season from climbing. I think kids should play a second sport, at least up through age 16. I think kids should play a second sport because their body and their mind need to do other things. You’re really hurting this future adult by not doing that. Then, you need to have balanced training that develops a body that is physically fit and prepared for whatever rigors they go into as adults in terms of athletics and such.

 

Neely Quinn: Well I wish I had you as a dad when I was growing up. [laughs] It seems like they have quite an advantage there with you and it seems really balanced.

 

Eric Hörst: Well, we try to be. We’re not doing it perfectly and I think the kids could probably be climbing harder if they climbed year round but again, that’s not our overriding goal. We don’t measure things by what the hardest route you can send is. I mean, they have all of their life ahead to climb. Climbers reach their peak – Chris Sharma, age 32 – early 30s and you can climb hard, obviously, into your 40s and 50s.

Climbing is a life sport so if I burn my kids out by having them climb 12 months a year or if I injure my kids to the point that they can’t climb as an adult or miss a lot of time, I’ve ruined a wonderful gift which climbing as a life sport is. Football, they have limited opportunity to do that as a youth so I’m glad they’re doing it. They can’t, at age 36, say, “I wish I’d played football.” That’s too late in the game but climbing is a life sport so we kind of take a long term perspective. I guess that’s kind of my global philosophy on many things I do in life is having more of a long term perspective and try to resist those urgencies of the moment.

 

Neely Quinn: Great. I appreciate that. I wanted to ask you about how you feel – and a lot of trainers don’t read other trainers’ information. It seems like you’re familiar with Steve Bechtel but  have you read the Anderson brothers’ book or any of the other more current trainers’ information?

 

Eric Hörst: I not only read everything that’s out there but I kind of endorse it. Even if I don’t agree with everything that’s in a book, I probably sell more books for other authors than they sell for themselves because if I’m at the crag, people ask me about books. I’m like – well, they usually know what I’ve written and I’m then saying, “But you should read Arno’s book or the Anderson brothers’ book or Steve’s book.” I think there is gold to be mined from all of those books. Even though there might be some elements that conflict or philosophies that are a little different, I think if you’re an enthusiastic climber interested in training, you should just gobble up whatever you can find out there. Then, hopefully sort through and find out what best applies to you.

Yeah, the Anderson brothers’ book is great. Steve – I’ve known Steve for a long time. When I’m in Wyoming in the summers we sit down and talk training. I’m not shy about encouraging people to not only read my books but read pretty much everything out there. It’s, again, that’s just kind of my character. I’m not one to say, “Only read my stuff,” because none of us has a monopoly on the truth. This is an evolving discipline.

I think some of the things I’m working on that are way beyond the scope of this podcast, I think I have huge potential in the next five years to take training for climbing to another level. It’s stuff that I don’t want to go public with yet and I’m sure there are other coaches that maybe have some recent insights into how we can train a little better and more effectively. I think five or 10 years from now we’re going to be hopefully doing things even more effectively.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. I’m excited to see what you have in store.

 

Eric Hörst: You’ll have to come train here. That’s the only way people get a glimpse. If they visit our home gym and they train with us, then they’re like, ‘Wow. I’ve never seen anybody do that quite that way.’ More later on that.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. You know, a lot of people ask us to get more information on home wall training. It sounds like you guys have a home wall, a system board, and maybe those are both together but also you have your treadwall, right?

 

Eric Hörst: And about a dozen different hangboards. I collect hangboards.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. So I’m assuming that the treadwall is pretty primary to all of your sport climbing goals in your training.

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah. Our treadwall is at a fixed angle. It’s a Brewer’s Ledge treadwall so we have it jacked back to about 38० past vertical. We do all of our warm-up and cool-down activities, we do a lot of our – I have the kids do certain movement pattern training so we do the movement pattern training on the treadwall. It’s not hard climbing but we’re training movement. We’re training hip turns, we’re training different motor programs, and we do all that on the treadwall. Of course we do our ARC training, the aerobic recovery training, on the treadwall. We do some interval training for the anaerobic lactic system on the treadwall but we do use our bouldering wall a lot, mostly for power workouts.

We have a system wall that we will use to isolate certain movements, especially if we’re projecting a route and we want to isolate a certain movement. We can use the system wall or we can build a boulder problem on our wall to do that. We have a HIT system, something I developed for Nicros about 15 years ago where you can do very specific, targeted training of your fingers and your pulling muscles and train the strength in the way you use it climbing. It’s a little different than the workout you would get from a hangboard doing the HIT system training with weight added to your body.

We do a wide range of things and, again, that’s kind of my madness. The way I design these programs and dovetail it all together, our typical workout is 2.5-3 hours and it’s pretty action packed. There’s rest periods and when one of us is climbing the other two are resting and it’s quite unique.

We have all the tools. We have a gym rope, a big thick gym rope. I think one of the best power training tools – I think every climbing gym should have one of those thick gym ropes that you can arm-over-arm up. We have gymnastics rings, we have a campus board – I mean, our house is littered with this type of stuff.

Even during our climbing off season like when the kids are playing football, about two days a week we do some climbing just to have fun and to kind of keep the motor programs alive and keep the muscles recruiting in a climbing specific way. We’re very passionate about it, no doubt.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Eric Hörst: There’s just more to the Hörst family than climbing. We do strive to be kind of a reasonably well-rounded family, although I think most of our friends don’t think we’re well-rounded. Like, regular people that live next door to us that aren’t climbers, they look at us and think that we’re kind of crazy but I think if you compared us to some other climbers you would say, “Hey, they’re pretty well-rounded.” That’s kind of the goal.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and one of the questions I had about your whole home system is: I think that a lot of people would love to have a treadwall but I’ve heard that they’re like $20,000 or $30,000. Do you know?

 

Eric Hörst: That’s false. Brewer’s Ledge makes the Core Wall and the price is negotiable to some degree. I think for around $6,000 somebody could get one in their garage. I know Andy Raether has the exact wall that I have there in Vegas. You’ve probably seen his wall perhaps.

 

Neely Quinn: Oh, you mean at Rob Jenson’s wall? Or does Andy have one, too?

 

Eric Hörst: I was at Andy’s house a year or two ago. He had one in his garage there outside Vegas. It’s not an adjustable wall. I think Bill Ramsey’s wall, he can adjust the angle on. It’s a wall that’s not made anymore but the wall that’s available for around $6,000 you set it up at one angle. I kind of think 30-40० is the best kind of compromise angle and then you can go to town.

Again, I think people misuse treadwalls, by the way. If you just get on there and climb until you’re pumped then you fall back into something we talked about a half an hour ago which is you’re just training that anaerobic lactic system all the time. You need to be a little more intelligent and that’s something I’m going to start writing up, some programs on how to more effectively use a treadwall, because more people are getting. I think it’s a great investment if you use it intelligently.

 

Neely Quinn: I’m excited to read those. I think we could all use – not all, but a lot of us could use those.

 

Eric Hörst: I think Emily Harrington just emailed me. She got one of these Core Walls set-up at her place in California so, I mean, they’re starting to pop up. It is an investment but again, if you’re kind of a core climber for life type person, it’s a tool that you’ll use a lot for many years. You have to get by the sticker shock and jump on in and get one.

 

Neely Quinn: So for people who do have a home wall and they want to train, can they make a program from your books and your blogs?

 

Eric Hörst: My Training for Climbing book does help you design a program. It really does not provide a detailed step-by-step guideline because, again, I think you can’t give a one-size-fits-all program or step-by-step guideline but Training for Climbing kind of breaks down: okay, if you’re a beginner, an intermediate, and advanced climber, what should your approach be in terms of developing skill? Movement skills and mental skills and the physical strength and developing a balanced body that hopefully won’t get injured. Then, Training for Climbing takes you down that path of, as you become more expert, how you need to do things more intensely.

As you get into the higher grades, training for maximum strength and training for high intensity is really/that’s the Holy Grail, to get stronger and more powerful but you just can’t go to that too early. The 5.9 climber who tries to train like the 5.13 climber is going to end up an injured climber so I try to present a responsible approach.

I think the Anderson brothers’ book has some good training guidelines but I really do think ideally a climber, even if they’re self-educated and read all these books and visit the websites and listen to the podcasts, you still can benefit from having a coach that works with you and can look at you and objectively assess your strengths and weaknesses and help guide you to train more intelligently and kind of, again, put together that program design. That’s where the magic is at is designing the program just right and, like I said, trying to cut out that junk training and focus on the few things that are going to be most effective at getting you to the next level.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, well thanks for your wisdom. Can you tell us once again where we can find you online, your most popular books, things like that?

 

Eric Hörst: Right. Well the website is www.trainingforclimbing.com and if you just Google ‘Training for Climbing’ it’s the first thing that comes up. In terms of books, Training for Climbing is my flagship book. It’s the most detailed, it covers everything from technique to mental skills to physical training to a little bit on injury, a lot on recovery, and it’s kind of the most comprehensive of all the books.

The most recent book that I’ve written that came out a few years ago is called Maximum Climbing. It’s the most challenging read because it’s a mental training book. It’s a brain training book, as I like to put it, and I think it’s, for the aspiring advanced or elite climber, it’s probably the most powerful of all the books that I’ve written but it’s a very challenging read. It would just be right over the head of a more novice climber but to an experienced climber I think there would be a lot of ‘Aha’ moments as they read through the book on how their thoughts and such affect their climbing performance. You’d really have to dig in and read the book. I’ll send you a copy out to check it out. It’s the book I think I’m the most proud of.

 

Neely Quinn: What’s that one called?

 

Eric Hörst: It’s called Maximum Climbing and actually, if you go to the website www.maximumclimbing.com you can read some excerpts on it.

You know, I wrote this book – I had a pretty bad illness about six or eight years ago and I wasn’t sure I would be climbing any longer. It was kind of like I was writing the book out of urgency, like all this stuff I had been thinking about that is more deep needed to be written down. I spent about a year cranking this book out and kind of in that sense of urgency and crisis I think I cranked out my best book. But, again, it’s an intense read and some people might think it’s a little over the top perhaps. [laughs] If you’re a really serious climber I think there’s a lot of gold to be mined from that book and it’s got a photo of J-Star on the cover, so…

 

Neely Quinn: Nice. Great. Your podcast and videos – where can people find those?

 

Eric Hörst: www.trainingforclimbing.com I’m just kind of, like I said, launching into this site redesign so I’ll continue to build that out as my time allows so yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: And the videos are on there, too? They’re pretty easy to find?

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, I’m just starting to produce some videos. I love the multimedia stuff, obviously. A picture or a video is worth a thousand words or more so I can instruct better to the viewers through the video format, obviously. These printed books are going to go away someday so I better start shifting gears here I guess, right?

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well it seems like you’re keeping up with the times. I mean, I like the facelift of your website. It’s clean. There’s a ton of information on there. You must have a thousand blog posts and articles on your site.

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, well like I said, I’ve been at it a long time. I’ve been doing it for 15 years, at least the Training for Climbing site. For about the last decade I’ve been running the Nicros training center.

You know Nicros, the climbing wall and hold manufacturer. I have a little blog on there where I put some training articles. Actually, people can submit training questions. I get a few dozen questions a month from people around the world through the Nicros training center. I try to respond back with a brief, intelligent feedback to the question so it’s another way that I interact and try to serve the climbing community.

Yeah, I like selling books but to me, I starting writing and I started climbing because I love the sport. That’s always the bottom line for me, the spirit of the sport. I gravitate towards companies and other climbers who have that same attitude, that it’s about sharing the love for the mountains and climbing and training. How hard you climb and what you make in your profession, that’s all secondary stuff. That’s not important.

 

Neely Quinn: Right. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate all of your wisdom and everything that you’ve shared. I’d love to have you back on the show if you’d be willing.

 

Eric Hörst: Sure. As time allows I’m willing for just about anything. I have two more books in my head to write but when I’m going to be able to sit down and actually crank those out, who knows?

 

Neely Quinn: You’ll find the inspiration sometime.

 

Eric Hörst: Hopefully I won’t need to get sick again to crank out the books.

 

Neely Quinn: Maybe – well, I won’t say that, but it seems your best work came out of that but let’s hope that that doesn’t happen.

Alright, well thanks again and I will be talking with you.

 

Eric Hörst: Yeah, and congratulations to you, too, on the terrific job you’ve done aggregating information and I think the interviews you’ve done, like the Ondra interview, was so awesome. I think that really inspires people and it’s all good. Like I said, I’m a big fan of anybody who’s doing something related to training, so good for you.

 

Neely Quinn: Thanks. I’m actually honored that you listened to that. Thank you.

 

Eric Hörst: You’re welcome.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, well I’ll talk to you soon.

 

Eric Hörst: Okay, see you Neely.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, thanks.

That was Eric Hörst for episode 19 of the TrainingBeta podcast. Again, I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and I hope you enjoyed that interview with Eric. As you can see, he’s a well read guy and he knows a lot about what he’s talking about. If you want to learn more from him you can go to his website at www.trainingforclimbing.com and he’s also on Facebook at Training for Climbing. He’s got quite a following there. He blogs a ton and he’s done a lot on the Nicros site so his work is pretty much everywhere.

That’s it for today. I have another interview coming up soon with Arno Ilgner and also Alex Barrows, who just sent his first 5.14d. He’s a friend of mine from England. I’ll try to get those out next week and the week after that.

In the meantime, definitely if you’re a route climber check out our new route climbing training program at www.trainingbeta.com on the ‘Training Programs’ tab at the top. We’re super excited about it. We think it’s going to help your route climbing just as much as the bouldering strength and power program has helped a lot of people’s bouldering. We’ve been working really hard, both of us sort of cooped up in Boulder working on this program a lot. We put time and effort into it to try to make it as simple and easy to follow for you as possible.

That’s it for today. I hope you’ve been climbing a lot. I hope you get out and enjoy this nice weather that’s been happening and I will talk to you soon.

 

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Thanks for listening!