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Post by MarkAnderson on Jan 10, 2018 21:04:37 GMT -7
The Boulder Rock Club is hosting a Panel Discussion on climbing performance/training on January 17th at 7pm. The panel will include:
Dr. Brent Apgar of Hotrod Human Justin Sjong of Climbing Sensei Mark Anderson, Climber and Author Peter Beal, Climber and Author Dr. Stacy Soappman of Mend
link to event page
You can attend in person (the event is free), or if you can't attend but would like to ask the panel a question, visit the group page and submit your question(s) via an online form. The discussion will be recorded by Louder Than 11 and published online after the fact.
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Post by jetjackson on Jan 10, 2018 22:28:24 GMT -7
LT11 Awesome, they do good work. Looking forward to seeing the video.
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Post by Chris W on Jan 11, 2018 5:52:12 GMT -7
You sure you don't want to change the venue to south central Pennsylvania? WAY better weather, WAY more rock, WAY more climbers. Plus, I could attend in person. You could even hold the event in my back yard! I'll rent some folding chairs and make pizza on the grill. Drinking water from the garden hose will be free of charge.
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Post by aikibujin on Jan 11, 2018 8:17:16 GMT -7
I assume BRC picked that particular time on a Wednesday to weed out people with a normal job and kids that go to bed at 7pm? It's probably a good call. Those people already spend way too much time training in their garage anyway.
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Post by Admin on Feb 5, 2018 19:35:27 GMT -7
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Post by Chris W on Feb 5, 2018 21:15:15 GMT -7
WooHoo!!! I was wondering when you were going to do a new blog post.
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Post by tetrault on Feb 6, 2018 11:00:13 GMT -7
Awesome listen!
Would love to meet these people that are doing 1-5-9 but can't climb out of a cardboard box.
Also glad to hear "the problem with chickenwinging is that it works". I always heard it spoken of as some taboo thing, but seemed to make sense in my mind as far as saving arm/forearm strength, so I always do it. There must be a way to do it that is joint-healthy. That leads to the next issue...
...What is good movement? And, depending on how it is someday defined, do I even care about good movement?
I care about what I need to do with my body to climb x y z route.
Amazing, as already mentioned on this boards and in the podcast, that there is so much discussion of "you need to get better" but no specific roadmap to do so, nor even a definable end goal of what it looks/feels like.
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Post by daustin on Feb 6, 2018 13:55:26 GMT -7
MarkAnderson would love to hear your reflections after the event. Did the other panelists say anything that you didn't agree with at all? Or maybe more importantly, that made you think differently about your own training (and therefore, your acolytes' training)? Loved listening to the podcast, probably the most insightful & entertaining climbing training podcast I've heard!
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Post by jetjackson on Feb 6, 2018 15:58:04 GMT -7
Would love to meet these people that are doing 1-5-9 but can't climb out of a cardboard box. I was doing 1-5-7 and 1-4-7 on small rungs, but had not climbed 5.11+. I think I just had a lot of power from previous sports I'd participated in. Power has never been an issue for me. If anything, it's been a hindrance to me developing better technique on some types of problems, as I can dyno/deadpoint past things that other people have to climb with intermediates and good foot technique/body tension. I can do power problems on the moonboard that friends of mine can't do. Yet they climb 5.13 outside and I climb low to mid 5.12.
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Post by scojo on Feb 6, 2018 18:21:04 GMT -7
MarkAnderson would love to hear your reflections after the event. Did the other panelists say anything that you didn't agree with at all? Or maybe more importantly, that made you think differently about your own training (and therefore, your acolytes' training)? Loved listening to the podcast, probably the most insightful & entertaining climbing training podcast I've heard! There were disagreements about some things. One thing that comes to mind was the discussion about what core exercises were useful and training the core statically vs. dynamically. I didn't really understand what "dynamic/plyometric" core exercises the PTs were talking about during that discussion.
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Post by jetjackson on Feb 6, 2018 18:31:20 GMT -7
I heard that. I feel like PT's love to have exercises in their repertoire that the average person has never seen. It helps to provide the illusion of value in personal training. That's why you go to the park and see people doing weird stuff with kettle bells with resistance bands tied around them etc. etc.
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Post by scojo on Feb 6, 2018 18:46:33 GMT -7
I heard that. I feel like PT's love to have exercises in their repertoire that the average person has never seen. It helps to provide the illusion of value in personal training. That's why you go to the park and see people doing weird stuff with kettle bells with resistance bands tied around them etc. etc. oops, by PTs I meant physical therapists rather than personal trainers, but I've seen a lot of weird stuff from personal trainers in commercial gyms
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Post by MarkAnderson on Feb 6, 2018 19:22:49 GMT -7
MarkAnderson would love to hear your reflections after the event. Did the other panelists say anything that you didn't agree with at all? Or maybe more importantly, that made you think differently about your own training (and therefore, your acolytes' training)? Loved listening to the podcast, probably the most insightful & entertaining climbing training podcast I've heard! I thought it was one of the most fun things I've done as a climber. I really hope I get the chance to do it again some time.
Some specific reflections:
-I was somewhat dismayed by how much time we spent talking about injuries. I don't think that's very interesting to most climbers (unless they currently have an injury). I think this was largely due to the fact that 40% of the panel was composed of people who fix injuries for a living. I would have preferred to talk more about training, technique and tactics.
-It was pretty clear to me that we are all pretty insulated and set in our own ways of doing things, whether as athletes or coaches. Some of the comments I heard seemed pretty whacky to me, and made me wonder how "well-read" some of "us" were. And that made me question the wisdom of climbers who pay good money to hire the nearest coach (rather than the best coach). When you have two people who are both highly regarded offering opposite advice, that should raise some questions.
-It seemed like Justin's views were pretty much diametrically opposed to mine on almost every topic. I really enjoyed the contrast and I think it would be cool to do something more in-depth with him in the future. It felt like whenever we hit on a disagreement the topic quickly shifted and we rarely had a chance to really explore or even understand the nature of the disagreement. I would expect that we would see things similarly, but I think we're coming at it from very different perspectives, so it would take some time to identify and characterize our common ground.
-There were a ton of topics I would have liked to discuss further, like "what is good technique", but it seemed like there wasn't enough time, and I was conscious of how much I was talking relative to others and didn't want to dominate the conversation. In some ways it was great having a moderator, particularly at the beginning, but once we got the juices flowing it would have been better to direct the conversation ourselves. This kinda goes back to the makeup of the panel too, since at times you would get some comment out of left field that would derail an otherwise productive discussion.
-Ideally, you could optimize the composition of the panel to get a group that already has a good rapport, mutual respect, similar interests, but differing views. Obviously that's really hard to do, but it would make for an awesome discussion.
-This has made me think a lot about starting some kind of climber-related podcast. I think it's a really cool medium that takes less effort to create and less effort to consume than written blogs. It also allows for more spontaneity and, frankly, honesty since it's not so easily searchable. When writing, I feel like I can't be my true self because everything will be read in the most negative light, you can't infer tone/sarcasm very well, and any mistake or criticism will be held against you. With something like a "live" podcast you can get away with a bit more sincerity (I think).
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Post by scojo on Feb 6, 2018 20:18:07 GMT -7
Since I was there, I'll give my impression of the event. Overall, I thought it was pretty interesting. With the in-person discussion, it was easier to get a sense of where there was consensus or disagreement on the various topics and especially on the relative importance of different aspects of training. I had also not heard much from Peter or Justin before, so it was nice getting a broader range of opinions on training. My major criticism of the event would be that while I thought Mark was pretty succinct with his responses, some of the other panelists rambled or repeated information that was already said, which sucked up a lot of time. I wish this time could have been spent on more audience questions. I had to leave at the end, otherwise I would have liked to stick around a bit and meet the panelists.
- I agree with Mark that too much time was spent on discussing injuries (I think I lot of information was unnecessarily repeated, which took up a lot of time). I guess it was because two of the panelists weren't prolific climbers/climber trainers, but rather speRCTMkicksAssts in injuries. It seemed a bit awkward when these two tried to answer questions that weren't related to injuries.
- I got the sense that Justin's views were more applicable to competition climbing (and I'd guess that the audience was more interested in outdoor climbing performance), which makes sense, because he coaches kids.
- I would have liked to hear more about technique training as well. You always hear the advise "work on technique," but rarely is the advice more specific than that. I think the climbing community could use an in-depth discussion of "what really is good technique?" and "how do you optimally train technique?" Another aspect of training, which I think is intimately related to technique is mobility. eg. "What kinds of mobility are the best to train for climbing and how best to train them?"
- I would love another climbing training podcast. I think the existing ones have strayed pretty far from their original purposes, and I haven't found the recent ones to be very useful.
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Post by jetjackson on Feb 6, 2018 20:43:59 GMT -7
-It seemed like Justin's views were pretty much diametrically opposed to mine on almost every topic. I really enjoyed the contrast and I think it would be cool to do something more in-depth with him in the future. It felt like whenever we hit on a disagreement the topic quickly shifted and we rarely had a chance to really explore or even understand the nature of the disagreement. I would expect that we would see things similarly, but I think we're coming at it from very different perspectives, so it would take some time to identify and characterize our common ground.
That would be interesting to see. FWIW I hired Justin for a few months in 2016, as wondered what it would be like to do have 1-1 coaching. It was online, and I didn’t find it that insightful. I’m reasonably well read on training techniques and came to climbing with a background in training for long distance running, and power lifting. I think for the beginner looking for training, his program would see results, as would any program. I think Justin probably performs better in person, he did a bit of video analysis with me over skype, but after seeing some other analysis he had done for other people I kind of felt I was just getting the same messages about feet, and soft vs. specific eye focus etc. One could argue though – that everyone in a beginner to intermediate level can benefit from the same messages, because they are making the same mistakes. A lot of the mental things he covered, I subsequently read in the Rock Warriors Way. Point is, it didn’t feel bespoke enough that I wanted to continue paying for it. I think he has discontinued online training, or tried to change up the format as I think he would probably somewhat agree with my sentiment. I did however get some ‘real talk’ from him, which was really what I had gone into it for. I had heard and read that he was good with the mental aspect of climbing and training. When I would chat with him over skype, I had done a couple of RPTM cycles. He did disagree on a few things, I just can’t remember what they were, I can’t recall the major things. He would only get me to do edge, open hand, pocket and pinch grips, and he would get me to do different elbow angles like 90 deg / 170 deg/ and dead hang. Interestingly it was repeaters on a 3/7. There was a whole lot of core exercises. Brutal core. TRX and Rings, Toes to Bar, Planks and V-ups. The volume was more significant – I was doing 12-15 hours a week training vs. maybe 8-10 under the RPTM. I didn't think I saw more improvement correspondent to the increase in volume. I’ve since stuck to the RPTM. I think I’m in my 6th season now, maybe 7th. The approach fits with what I’ve learnt about training in previous sports and I can work it around a job that has me travelling a lot and working longer hours. Anyway, I'll listen to the rest of the podcast tonight. I didn't get that far in last night.
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