It made me imagine a pyramid.. Strength is the foundation (you cant hang on the wall withought it right?), endurance would be the middle.. and technique is the top. All have their place, none should be ignored.. all should be trained from the get go.

Climbing depends on many factors, some of them you mention in your post. I don't view them as a hierarchical system like you do with the pyramid. It's more like an N dimensional box where each side is one factor and the climbing ability is represented by the volume of the box. You become a better climber whichever aspect of climbing you improve. The fastest results can be attained by improving your weakest link. My $0.02.

Depends on the style of climbing. Some routes can't be brute forced no matter how much strength you have.

I have been experimenting with some targeted weight training sessions. I was not sure if it was a wise choice, given the amount of frowning on the subject. Other day i saw a new climber with allot of beef breeze his way to the top of a 20m f6c, and by no means a jug route.

It was quite a shock to me if I'm honest. F6c may not be insanely hard, but it is not easy. His technique was quite poor yet he still owned the route like it was a 4a. I was genuinely impressed.. And i usually look down on such climbers.

I'm obviously not suggesting hitting the weights and getting huge, but watching that guy blitz the route like that is making me challenge my current training ideals.

We constantly see the tip to climb, climb, climb.. always to work your technique. But i really am starting to question this as bad advice. I think that ignoring the brawn side of climbing (weights.. be it dead hangs and any other form) Just puts us on the opposite side of the extreme, that being lots of technique.. no notable strength.

It made me imagine a pyramid.. Strength is the foundation (you cant hang on the wall withought it right?), endurance would be the middle.. and technique is the top. All have their place, none should be ignored.. all should be trained from the get go.

Obviously the best way to increase technique is to climb.

The best way to do endurance.. is to climb too ofc.. while doing technique.

But strength? i think that is the exception.. it is looking to be the only aspect of climbing that is more beneficial and time efficient to be trained else where.

I do work as a climbing instructor. I see many new climbers.. and 99% of them can only climb the 5's or 6a/b if their really naturally good. The fact that this muscle man hammerd a 6c with poor technique is in my eyes an indication that climbing alone is infact the slowest way to improve.

So you base your entire opinion on one climb one person did to come to the conclusion that climbing is the slowest way to improve?

We constantly see the tip to climb, climb, climb.. always to work your technique.

It made me imagine a pyramid.. Strength is the foundation (you cant hang on the wall withought it right?), endurance would be the middle.. and technique is the top. All have their place, none should be ignored.. all should be trained from the get go.

But strength? i think that is the exception.. it is looking to be the only aspect of climbing that is more beneficial and time efficient to be trained else where.

How many routes do you come off of where your biceps feel fried? Your lats? Your triceps? Your traps? Your pecs?

Your observation of a person with "allot of beef" has nothing to do with the old "climb, climb, climb.. always work your technique"advice. The "climb, climb, climb" advice is given to beginners of generally good general fitness in comparison to using a hangboard. The strength from a hangboard is different than weight training strength.

This has to be a troll.

Maybe, but some of us advocate well structured climbing activities to develop all the different aspects of climbing, including muscular fitness.



I get why you might say this, but its simply not the case that the aspects of climbing can be categorized in this way. How much Kinesiology have you read? If you develop your background in Kinesiology it might help you refine you thinking here. Strength, endurance, and technique are not the best terms to use to think about how climbing works. Keep in mind that even though many climbers treat "strength" and "technique" as being different poles of a dichotomy, it is a false dichotomy to be sure. Functionally, in movement analysis it does no good to try to analyze movement using these terms.



Keep in mind that you don't really know that what you were observing is strength. No one just watching a climber could make such a judgement, we can't see enough with the unaided eye to understand what a climber is doing. In a technical sense casual observations tell us very little about what makes a climber successful on a given move or climb. You were just as easily seeing someone whose motor processing speed is faster than average, also climbing depends far more on intermuscluar coordination than it does the strength of individual muscles, you were also witnessing balance, timing, desire, etc etc etc. In a casual observation its impossible to pick apart what role each of these played in the climber's success.

How would you measure beneficial and time efficient? How do you measure strength in climbing?
These are questions for which there aren't really good answers in the climbing world. This is why I advocate training methods that can be quantified in terms of performance level, its something that can be measured with accuracy. Where as most descriptions of strength put forth by climbers leave us with nothing to quantify.

he clearly had good solid 4 arms

There's your answer right there - if he's got 4 arms he's clearly got a natural advantage over the rest of us.
Was it Vishnu by any chance?

Wow that is so funy, so original. You inspire me.

I know, i need to lighten up right?. ok.

Your telling me you have never been on a route where 4 arm/finger strength is not the deciding factor?.

And i never said the strength from hangbaord was the same as weight lifting strength.. Im aware of the differance. But none the less deadhangs can still fall under the same catigory as weighted training.. body being the weight.

You're telling me that you spent paragraphs talking about a muscular beginner, used the term weight training, and we were supposed to assume you meant hangboard?

How much time do you think this guy was spending on a hangboard throughout his weight lifting regiment? (That's not rhetorical. I'm genuinely curious to see if your answer is anything other than zero minutes, zero seconds.)

It made me imagine a pyramid.. Strength is the foundation (you cant hang on the wall withought it right?), endurance would be the middle.. and technique is the top. All have their place, none should be ignored.. all should be trained from the get go.

I realise my speling is bad, but i did mention deadhangs in the OP. That is ''targeted'' training after all.. along with traditional weights to target the larger muscle groups.

Well, your spelling doesn't really have much to do with the confusion. The confusion comes in where you look at a weight lifter, see him as a good beginner climber, and make the conclusion that deadhangs would be more effective than training technique. I will lay out my issues here:

1) It is very unlikely that the muscular beginner has done any kind of hangboard training in order to strengthen his forearms. Therefore, when you look at him and think that using a hangboard is more effective than increasing technique, we are confused because we don't see the connection. I mean, I'd argue that it's more often we see muscle-bound guys flail up a route, only to have their beginner, non-lifter girlfriend get up the route in better style.

2) The idea of movement training is that we decrease the amount of endurance/strength we require. Therefore, it is inherently easier on your tendons not only when you're training, but also when you're climbing in performance days. Your tendons will be unnecessarily seeing higher levels of stress as technique goes out the window. This, from a simply injury standpoint, suggests that beginners should stay away from putting movement training on a backburner.

3) The other aspect of movement training is that the gains we see from it come more quickly than gains from hangboarding. Of course, like any other investment, there is a point of diminishing returns. Everyone has their idea of where this is at, but I figure it's somewhere around V6/V7 or 5.12c/d. Sure, that's perhaps rather arbitrary, but it also helps me ensure that I will gradually introduce my tendons to higher levels of stress.

4) To expand on my #3 a bit more, just look at how stealing beta has helped your own climbing. A move or sequence can feel impossible, but then even just micro beta can make a move doable immediately after trying it. What would you prefer, two to four weeks of training on a hangboard, or having the technique background to come up with beta on your own?

My two favorite points so far.

A person with some training background can climb harder than a completely untrained person. Therefore lifting weights is better training for climbing than climbing.

Deadhangs with bodyweight is weighttraining, climbing and bouldering is not.