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Post by tedwelser on Oct 13, 2014 20:24:33 GMT -7
I have noticed a strange pattern. I open our home wall to local friends in our small town climbing community, and most of the climbers are college age young adults. They climb, and they really want to improve. I show them your book, and I often explain what I am doing for training and why. They seem interested at first, but when I suggest that they should buy your book, read it and develop their own training plan based on their goals they balk. They say it is expensive, and then make plans to go out for drinks; or they start to read my book, but quickly give up and go back to randomly climbing.
I love the RCTM. When I showed it to another older ~30 year old climber (also an academic) he went home and ordered it immediately. We talk about ideas from different sections, and he even said he likes to look up the references and read some of them too.
The funny thing is to me is that these younger climbers would seem to be in a position to benefit the most from investing a little bit of effort into reading and improving their understanding, and yet they won't.
Some of them I point to your blog, and they will read particular posts, and pick up part of the ideas. But they don't really commit.
Anyways, it seems like there might be a potential audience for your ideas that is averse to the format and depth of the full RCTM. I wonder if it would be helpful to make a second book that is like more of a cliff-note version that would be lower cost both in terms of money and in the intellectual start up costs.
Perhaps it could be framed as a "plan your first training season book." Even a mini-season that takes climbers through all of the steps in progression would be both very effective and demonstrate the utility of the method. It would then form the starting point from which they would see the value in the longer book and a deeper understanding.
Anyways, it is just a thought.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Oct 14, 2014 6:36:31 GMT -7
That's a really keen observation. I think its pretty funny. At least it gives us wiley veterans a slight chance to keep up with the whippersnappers. Anyway, I would highly encourage them to read The Making of a Rock Prodigy which is free and relatively short. Another option is this 4 minute video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvEhrlN0rsI Its not comprehensive but it might get someone interested in doing more reading.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Oct 14, 2014 8:08:51 GMT -7
Also, thanks for trying to spread the word. My mom likes to say "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". Which is weird because we never had horses. I'm not really sure why she was so concerned about equine hydration, but we all have our weird obsessions.
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Post by tedwelser on Oct 14, 2014 9:39:48 GMT -7
I am very happy to spread the word, and I suppose it is a bit of a consolation to have few advantages from age and wisdom.
But even so, I have been thinking about the "no read" and "no train" barriers a bit more. I think many climbers won't drink the water even if shown because they are already filling their available time with random climbing, which is more delicious in the short term. Random climbing is the "Jolt Cola" of training, all the caffeine and twice the sugar!
Random climbing provides access to reinforcements of one's climbing identity, positive self evaluations from favorable social comparisons and also the approval and support from valued peers. Participating in the collective experience of climbing for fun is pretty attractive in the moment, even if it is a sort of short term, empty calorie behavior that does not add up towards effective improvement.
I remember in the Performance Rock Climbing book there was a little cartoon of the burly guy who spent all his climbing time shining the engine of his car, even though it had bad steering and a bad suspension. I think climbers get stuck in this mode especially for social reasons-- it is immediately satisfying to reap the social rewards of maximizing climbing in the moment. Training is usually going to be more solitary and not going to engage the whole bouldering camaraderie, that admittedly, can be very satisfying.
I guess that in the process of typing this up, I have come to the realization that creating a culture around effective training is the alternative / answer. I remember seeing something like this occur in some of the youth teams I worked with, where the climbers would get psyched on the process of improving rather than simply performing in the moment.
I keep bringing my training notebook to open climbing at the Dojo, and perhaps slowly we will shift the culture towards more water and less cola.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Oct 14, 2014 10:55:05 GMT -7
That's awesome! I think rock climbers would really benefit from the same type of shift in terms of convincing commercial gyms to route-set with training in mind instead of simply pure fun in the moment.
The benefits of socializing training would almost be exponential. As a runner nearly every type of training I did was very social. In addition to making tough workouts way more fun, it primarily made them way more intense (from competition). Climbing has been the exact opposite for me, but I think if you could get a group of psyched climbers together they could see tremendous improvement.
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Post by rob on May 24, 2015 11:05:52 GMT -7
I am very happy to spread the word, and I suppose it is a bit of a consolation to have few advantages from age and wisdom. But even so, I have been thinking about the "no read" and "no train" barriers a bit more. I think many climbers won't drink the water even if shown because they are already filling their available time with random climbing, which is more delicious in the short term. Random climbing is the "Jolt Cola" of training, all the caffeine and twice the sugar! Random climbing provides access to reinforcements of one's climbing identity, positive self evaluations from favorable social comparisons and also the approval and support from valued peers. Participating in the collective experience of climbing for fun is pretty attractive in the moment, even if it is a sort of short term, empty calorie behavior that does not add up towards effective improvement. I remember in the Performance Rock Climbing book there was a little cartoon of the burly guy who spent all his climbing time shining the engine of his car, even though it had bad steering and a bad suspension. I think climbers get stuck in this mode especially for social reasons-- it is immediately satisfying to reap the social rewards of maximizing climbing in the moment. Training is usually going to be more solitary and not going to engage the whole bouldering camaraderie, that admittedly, can be very satisfying. A very insightful view Tedwelser, and I agree, psych on training would be great - which is exactly why I am loving this forum, it's really great to speak to like-minded people who are just as much of a training nerd as myself . Though in the gym I notice even those climbers who say they want to climb harder are rarely willing to put the effort in to reading books like TRCTM and designing and sticking to training schedules. I think some people are often "stuck" in their training patterns and unwilling to accept any new information that may suggest everything they're doing is a load of rubbish! To combat your first comment, I am just about to turn 24 (started reading the book at 22) and I have read the book cover to cover several times, along with other climbing training books (none to the same standard). Though I don't know anyone quite as psyched on training and getting better at climbing as me (except you guys of course). |
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Post by willblack on May 26, 2015 4:51:27 GMT -7
That's awesome! I think rock climbers would really benefit from the same type of shift in terms of convincing commercial gyms to route-set with training in mind instead of simply pure fun in the moment. It's not super related to this, but as head routesetter at a small gym, I can say that the day there is demand for more "training routes" will be the day gyms start setting them. I follow the Rock Prodigy program, and have in the past set training problems (targeting pocket and edge strength as well as footwork). Those routes didn't see nearly the same traffic as the more "fun" routes on the same wall. The primary goal of any good setter is to create an enjoyable experience for the customers, so if someone asks for a couple realistic training routes I'll absolutely accommodate their request, but there's just not a high demand currently for this to be the general style of setting in most gyms. Look at how setting has changed in climbing comps--routes have gotten less and less realistic and are now mostly characterized by flashy party tricks with massive slopers and slabby parkour moves. I think this has trickled down to lots of gyms that try to emulate that gimmicky style of setting. |
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Post by tedwelser on Jun 8, 2015 5:35:21 GMT -7
That's awesome! I think rock climbers would really benefit from the same type of shift in terms of convincing commercial gyms to route-set with training in mind instead of simply pure fun in the moment. It's not super related to this, but as head routesetter at a small gym, I can say that the day there is demand for more "training routes" will be the day gyms start setting them. I follow the Rock Prodigy program, and have in the past set training problems (targeting pocket and edge strength as well as footwork). Those routes didn't see nearly the same traffic as the more "fun" routes on the same wall. The primary goal of any good setter is to create an enjoyable experience for the customers, so if someone asks for a couple realistic training routes I'll absolutely accommodate their request, but there's just not a high demand currently for this to be the general style of setting in most gyms. Look at how setting has changed in climbing comps--routes have gotten less and less realistic and are now mostly characterized by flashy party tricks with massive slopers and slabby parkour moves. I think this has trickled down to lots of gyms that try to emulate that gimmicky style of setting. Good point! Maybe the video of Ondra's flash of Jade will become motivating to aspiring climbers, or maybe to competition route setters too. I realize that the setters only get the holds that the sponsors send but problems with thin hard cruxes can be exciting to watch too. www.island.io/island/adam-ondra-flashes-in-rmnp |
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Post by joev9 on Jun 8, 2015 7:14:20 GMT -7
It is interesting that Ondra pulls two 3rd place finishes in the World Cup then goes out and makes the hardest boulder flash ever. When you impress Dave Graham, that really says something. But it also says something about the difference between plastic and rock, because Ondra is clearly in phenomenol shape, just is having trouble figuring out some moves on the World Cup comps...
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Post by jessebruni on Jun 8, 2015 8:35:41 GMT -7
It seems to me that the setting style of the world cups requires you in many instances to do big moves to not so great holds and requires you to essentially throw yourself at the hold, either stick it and send, or fall. Ondra seems to have trouble fully committing to these moves as it means going totally out of control. For example on M3 at Vail we saw Colemen and Hojer both flash the problem, and they both just had to dyno to the final hold. Ondra kept trying to do a drive by move which would allow him to keep his feet on for as long as possible, this stopped him from getting the sloper on the correct side, and as a result he kept falling.
Outdoors, Ondra's style of remaining in control as much as possible makes sense and obviously works well. But indoors, in competitions, sometimes you just have to huck and dyno with some authority. If Ondra can get better at that aspect he'll be unstoppable.
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