If you know the history of rock climbing in Yosemite, you know that many of the famed Stonemasters would winter in Joshua Tree. There, with no long routes, John Bachar and friends invented the Half Dome Day (20 pitches in a day) and the El Cap Day (36 pitches). Climbing marathons were born. This decades-old practice is a valid and often-overlooked training tool. I was reminded of this time-honored tradition as I laced my boots for a competitive climbing marathon this last weekend. The event, a fun, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the birth of sport climbing, has as its signature event…

When it comes to rock climbing training, building a solid foundation is just as important as perfecting advanced techniques. While trail runners and mountaineers often rely on extensive aerobic base training for endurance, climbers need a more tailored approach to improve their performance. This is where ARC training—short for ‘Aerobic, Respiration, and Capillarity’ training—comes into play. Similar to a long Zone 2 run for mountaineers, ARC training serves as the cornerstone of climbing endurance, establishing the base fitness that supports strength, power, and power-endurance during climbs. ARC training specifically targets the forearm muscles, a critical area for maintaining grip and…

As many of you know, Everest season is upon us. Two athletes that Scott and I have coached—Cory Richards and Adrian Ballinger—are in Base Camp as I write this to attempt the world’s tallest peak without oxygen. With their permission we wanted to share the stories of what brought us to work with these two motivated mountaineers. This is how Cory Richards of #everestnofilter fame made a 180-degree turn in his training to successfully climb Everest, and why he’s headed back again. Enjoy his story below, and read up on Adrian’s experience here.When I saw the incoming call from Cory…

Watching a master’s seemingly effortless performance of any high-skill activity, from dance to music to athletics, leaves us slack-jawed time and again. Is it just good genes? Does he avoid some of your favorite vices, like beer and ice cream? Or is it something else, something that should be intuitively obvious but is often the last place we think to look… Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect Here’s something of a mantra that we’ve been sharing with our athletes for years now: “If you practice it wrong, all you do is get really good at doing it wrong.” Professional athletes make it…

Spring has come to the valleys, and with spring the allure of summer. And summer has long meant one of two things to me: expeditions to the Karakoram (I’ve spent 12 summers there so far), and alpine rock climbing. If you’re heading for K2, Masherbrum, or Nanga Parbat, you’ll want one of our mountaineering training plans, or better yet, coaching. If, like me, you are heading for some alpine rock this summer, then I’ve written a training plan for myself, and am sharing it with all of you. This June I’ll be lucky enough to be able to spend time…

Blood-oxygen saturation (O2 sat) meters have become ubiquitous, but how much good do they actually do in determining whether an individual is fit to continue a climb? The recent proliferation of affordable blood-oxygen saturation meters has made them commonplace in high-mountain base camps worldwide. But what do the numbers you read on your meter mean in terms of your preparedness to move higher on the mountain? Not long ago, we fielded a question from one of our coaching clients, Giselle, about what she had seen on her O2 sat meter while climbing in Ecuador. Giselle sent this photo taken at…

What do an NBA basketball player, a gold medal runner, and a professional tennis player all have in common? One, they’re each incredibly fit. Two, that fitness won’t ensure that they will be any good at rock climbing. This is because rock climbing is a skill-based activity, primarily. Fitness affects your climbing performance, but if you’re a highly skilled rock climber, and relatively fit, you can probably still climb at a high level. The opposite is not true; you probably can’t send 5.12 slab without good technique. To excel at rock climbing, you have to develop climbing skills. Read More:…

From time to time it is important to set course toward new goals for the next few months, the next year, and beyond. But let’s be adult about this; we all know that goals are achieved through smart work on a consistent basis. Dreams are pillow fantasies. Here is my five-step plan to achieving goals: Imagine Calibrate Plan Work every day Succeed 1. Imagine and Dream (but Not Too Big) It’s fine to imagine what you might someday do. A dream can become a long-term goal, something that is far beyond your current physical or mental abilities may require many…

Lots of climbers who want to improve tend to say, “I’m gonna go to the climbing gym two times a week for the next six months.” That’s a pretty good idea. It’s certainly not a bad idea. If nothing else it will be fun. That said, simply climbing in an uncontrolled and unmeasured way, without a specific training strategy, will not typically yield great results or improvement. If progress is your goal, then you need to be intentional about how you train, and you also need to be careful not to mix up, or condense, skill and strength training into…

The most time- and energy-efficient training tool for building climbing-specific grip strength is a hangboard. If you don’t have one at home, I’m sure your climbing gym has several. I own two boards, both from Metolius: the newer Contact Training Board, which I love for the huge variety of incrementally smaller-size grips, and the longtime standard, their Simulator 3D, which has somewhat easier grips. Read more: Training for Rock Climbing Hangboard Training Routine This little hangboard routine is one I made for myself for those times I first begin to think about rock climbing, usually sometime in March and again…