BUY NOW FOR $39 This training plan is for those who want a shorter-term training plan that prepares them for an alpine rock climbing objective, or to prepare for Steve House’s 8 Week Advanced Rock Alpinist Training Plan. The plan calls for 1 climbing day, 3 aerobic training days, and 2 strength training days per week. The focus of the plan is building general fitness that is capable of supporting good climbing technique. This plan will lead to improvements based your technical climbing ability and prepare you for the more taxing "Steve House’s 8 Week Advanced Rock Alpinist Training Plan".Is…
Author: Steve House
When doing ARC training or accumulating pitches during a climbing marathon session, it can be easy to lose your concentration and let your form slide downhill. Here are some technique drills you can work on while you log the vertical. If you have your own favorite climbing drill, email us your suggestion and we’ll add it to the list! If you are looking to incorporate drills into a robust training session, see the article: Training for Rock Climbing. Rock Climbing Technique Drills Pick one drill per session. When your mind wanders to that Weiss beer waiting for you at the…
If you know the history of rock climbing in Yosemite, you know that many of the famed Stonemasters would winter in Joshua Tree. There, with no long routes, John Bachar and friends invented the Half Dome Day (20 pitches in a day) and the El Cap Day (36 pitches). Climbing marathons were born. This decades-old practice is a valid and often-overlooked training tool. I was reminded of this time-honored tradition as I laced my boots for a competitive climbing marathon this last weekend. The event, a fun, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the birth of sport climbing, has as its signature event…
We spend a lot of time talking about building the aerobic base for mountaineering, alpinism, mountain running, ski mountaineering, and skimo racing. But what constitutes base training for rock climbers? Spending many hours running and hiking is not useful for leading your first 5.10 outdoors or redpointing 5.14 (except possibly as weight management). Enter ARC training, short for "Aerobic, Respiration, and Capillarity" training. ARCing is to rock climbing what a long Zone 2 run is to a mountaineer. It establishes the base fitness that climbing performance—strength, power, and power-endurance—relies on. ARC training is focused primarily on the forearm muscles. Although…
As many of you know, Everest season is upon us. Two athletes that Scott and I have coached—Cory Richards and Adrian Ballinger—are in Base Camp as I write this to attempt the world’s tallest peak without oxygen. With their permission we wanted to share the stories of what brought us to work with these two motivated mountaineers. This is how Cory Richards of #everestnofilter fame made a 180-degree turn in his training to successfully climb Everest, and why he’s headed back again. Enjoy his story below, and read up on Adrian’s experience here.When I saw the incoming call from Cory…
Watching a master’s seemingly effortless performance of any high-skill activity, from dance to music to athletics, leaves us slack-jawed time and again. Is it just good genes? Does he avoid some of your favorite vices, like beer and ice cream? Or is it something else, something that should be intuitively obvious but is often the last place we think to look… Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect Here’s something of a mantra that we’ve been sharing with our athletes for years now: “If you practice it wrong, all you do is get really good at doing it wrong.” Professional athletes make it…
Spring has come to the valleys, and with spring the allure of summer. And summer has long meant one of two things to me: expeditions to the Karakoram (I’ve spent 12 summers there so far), and alpine rock climbing. If you’re heading for K2, Masherbrum, or Nanga Parbat, you’ll want one of our mountaineering training plans, or better yet, coaching. If, like me, you are heading for some alpine rock this summer, then I’ve written a training plan for myself, and am sharing it with all of you. This June I’ll be lucky enough to be able to spend time…
Blood-oxygen saturation (O2 sat) meters have become ubiquitous, but how much good do they actually do in determining whether an individual is fit to continue a climb? The recent proliferation of affordable blood-oxygen saturation meters has made them commonplace in high-mountain base camps worldwide. But what do the numbers you read on your meter mean in terms of your preparedness to move higher on the mountain? Not long ago, we fielded a question from one of our coaching clients, Giselle, about what she had seen on her O2 sat meter while climbing in Ecuador. Giselle sent this photo taken at…
What do an NBA basketball player, a gold medal runner, and a professional tennis player all have in common? One, they’re each incredibly fit. Two, that fitness won’t ensure that they will be any good at rock climbing. This is because rock climbing is a skill-based activity, primarily. Fitness affects your climbing performance, but if you’re a highly skilled rock climber, and relatively fit, you can probably still climb at a high level. The opposite is not true; you probably can’t send 5.12 slab without good technique. To excel at rock climbing, you have to develop climbing skills. Read More:…
From time to time it is important to set course toward new goals for the next few months, the next year, and beyond. But let’s be adult about this; we all know that goals are achieved through smart work on a consistent basis. Dreams are pillow fantasies. Here is my five-step plan to achieving goals: Imagine Calibrate Plan Work every day Succeed 1. Imagine and Dream (but Not Too Big) It’s fine to imagine what you might someday do. A dream can become a long-term goal, something that is far beyond your current physical or mental abilities may require many…