Top 10 Climbing Training Mistakes I See ALL the Time

Hooper's Beta Ep. 18

Intro:

In this episode we go over the top 10 climbing training mistakes. Note, these are general mistakes that people make, not specific examples of one particular move that you should or should not do. These are guidelines that can be used to improve everyone's training and at all levels.

1) Not getting enough sleep

Sleep is when we heal. Sleep is when we refine and maintain motor control . Getting less than 6 hours of sleep can lead to physical exhaustion happening earlier in our workouts and training. Also, increased sleep has been studied and shown to lead to a decreased chance of injury *published research in 2014*

2) Not enough recovery time

Your body needs to recover and heal fully. If you are climbing on healing tissue, you are increasing the chance to injure yourself. If you are climbing multiple days in a row, give yourself a couple days off . Allow your body to build back up after you break it down, or you cannot train as hard as you should, and as such are not applying the appropriate forces for your body to get stronger. This will vary from person to person based upon many factors (sleep, diet, how long you have been training, genetics, etc).

3) Poor diet

How dedicated are you to your progress? A common response I see, not just in climbing (and even sometimes in myself!) is justifying poor eating habits due the fact that we are active with climbing. How many times have you said to yourself "I deserve this cookie, I climbed hard today". If you are serious about climbing, get serious about your diet. No, I will never say don't eat that cookie (ice cream is my weakness, to be honest), BUT you need to monitor how often you are doing this and moderate your eating.

4) Not tracking workouts and progression

Not everyone will buy into this right away, but the reason why this is important is that you need to know what works for you. Just because it works for 1 person doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. Only way to know? Write it down , track your progress. Don't go overboard and stop your workout every time something happens but rather track your weights and/or reps, track if and see if you could arrange the workout better, and then reflect. Look back. Did you get the changes you wanted to see?

5) Not setting realistic goals with training

You don’t hop off the couch and become a professional baseball player, just like you don’t hop off the couch and climb V14. Set goals and make them realistic . A great way to do this is to use SMART goals. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable/achievable, Realistic, and on a Timeline. So, set SMART goals for yourself, work on those goals, write down your success and failures, then make your next goal based upon your timeline.

6) Focusing on outliers

Everyone knows someone who can do some ridiculous amount of training, or some crazy maneuver, don’t chase these outliers. Listen to your body, do training appropriate for you.

7) Only chasing fatigue

Everyone wants to hit that high level of fatigue thinking that is the only way to get stronger. We feel like it is the only way we know we have had a successful training day, but this is not true. Sometimes rather than just chasing fatigue, which is when your form may suffer, have days where you are chasing technique and using LESS energy for your movements. What about working on your mobility? You don't need to chase fatigue to feel a great stretch but that doesn't mean it isn't really important to your progress in climbing. Don't let fatigue define the success of your training every day.

8) Not giving training enough time

Physical adaptations TAKE TIME. If you are starting a new program, see it through. And remember, write it down! Yes, how you look and feel at the end of a training program is also important, but did you hit your goals? At the end watch your progress and also consider how dedicated you were.

9) Ego-defined training

We all like to think that we can do anything. We can lift heavy weights, we can train 6x/week, we can run as long as we want. While it’s good to be confident, if your ego is too big, you can cause yourself to get injured by doing too much.

10) Being the strongest climber in your group

Don’t get complacent, get out of routine, climb with people stronger than you, work on different styles of climbing, etc. If you’re the strongest person in your group of friends, you may not be pushing yourself to the next level. You should always have fun with climbing and climb with your friends, but don't reject an opportunity to climb with stronger people, it may make you stronger!

Disclaimer:

As always, exercises are to be performed assuming your own risk and should not be done if you feel you are at risk for injury. See a medical professional if you have concerns before starting new exercises.

Written and Presented by Jason Hooper, PT, DPT, OCS, CAFS

IG: @hoopersbetaofficial

Filming and Editing by Emile Modesitt

www.emilemodesitt.com

IG: @emile166

Special thanks to The Wall for letting us film!

IG: @thewallclimbinggym