Why Strength Training Isn't Making You Climb Harder | Part 2
If you missed Part 1, be sure to check out Why Strength Training Isn't Making You Climb Harder.
Getting stronger is a lot of fun. It can feel like you’re pulling back a curtain to reveal possibilities you didn’t believe were meant for you. You feel stronger, fitter, less injury prone, and best of all, you can climb harder things without having to try harder.
And therein lies the problem.
Strength training, when done well, should be a stepping stone to performing better while continuing to use great tactics, a strong mental approach, technical proficiency, and a high degree of effort. When done poorly, strength training can be used as a crutch to replace those foundational pillars of performance.
The first time you ignore everything else and solely focus on strength training, it actually works really well. You don’t have to try very hard to send the next grade. It feels too good to be true. Why haven’t you been doing this forever?
As you become more well trained, the benefits become less pronounced. A single phase of hangboarding doesn’t jump you a full number grade anymore. Is that it? Is this as far as strength training can take you? It isn’t enough. You were supposed to keep going. What do you do now? Do you climb less and train even more to see if that restores the deluge of strength gains? Maybe you need more complex training? Are there any new methods out there that could bring back that feeling of effortless advancement?
No.
You’re not a beginner anymore.
That initial injection of ability can give us a false sense of destination. We made it. That grade that used to feel really hard feels comfortable. This is our path forward now. This is the path forward now. Why isn’t everyone doing this? We’ll just keep getting stronger and the harder grades will keep coming from this alone.
Unfortunately, we have to come back to reality at some point.
Our early encounters with strength training can lure us into believing that this is all we need, all we ever needed, to improve. If you want to reach your potential though, you’ll have to continue leveling up your mental, technical, and tactical games. More than anything else, you’ll have to keep trying hard on the wall, too.
Get strong. It’s absolutely worth it. Don’t stop there, though. Use strength to leverage every other aspect of your climbing, not replace them.
One of the most common places things start to fall apart is at the very beginning of the move.