Author Archives: coachjfire

Climbing makes many different demands of us. We need to be able to speed ourselves up, then slow ourselves down. Try extra hard, then be incredibly gentle. Focus on what we’re doing in this section, but also notice footholds for the next section, and sometimes go fully out-of-body to circumvent pain and fear. This setContinue reading “Managing arousal levels, and matching arousal to imposed demand”

I’ve had the unfortunate experience of witnessing many bouldering injuries. These range from nauseatingly audible pulley pops to countless ankle sprains to seeing someone break her back falling off an icy boulder in Wyoming. My least favorite memories are the accidents or near-accidents that were clearly avoidable. Usually those went something like this: some folksContinue reading “Bouldering 101: How to place crash pads and not break your legs”

In the first part of this series, I laid out my thesis that one primary goal of performance climbing is to reach a flow state where the physical climbing is intuitive. This thesis should hold true regardless of the style of ascent, as ideal redpointing begins to functionally look and feel like effective onsight climbing.Continue reading “Mental Maps for Climbing: The information processing loop and strategies for sequencing”

I like to joke that I’ve never actually redpointed a hard route at Smith Rock. It’s notoriously technical, engaging, and diabolical; but compared to bouldering and some other sport crags, generally not that physical. (Don’t @ me, Oregon.) So much mental effort goes into a successful redpoint on Smith terrain that the eventual send isContinue reading “Mental Maps for Climbing: The intuitive/conscious processing bell curve”

Strength is great. Obviously all climbers want to get stronger, and they should. Strong is the word thrown around at the crag when we mean “high performance.” In fact, most of our casual ways of describing high performance involve physicality. “She’s so strong”, “He did it 2nd go, he’s a beast”, “You’d have to be soContinue reading “Non-physical factors in climbing performance”

Many climbers use pyramids each season, mesocycle or macrocycle to have a tangible representation of the growing confidence and momentum that they build through that period. Online logbooks like 8a.nu, Sendage and Kaya all provide a pyramid in their interface. This is one reason I recommend all motivated outdoor climbers keep some kind of logbook,Continue reading “Using route pyramids to build your base”

Long arms are the subject of much jealousy and rage. No doubt they have great benefits. But as your ability to reach through cruxes grows, there are side effects. Shoulder engagement and lockoffs are more difficult with longer levers. Lanky climbers need to spend more time on these physical deficits, and spend time on theContinue reading “Training the “dead zone” for tall climbers”

It’s an old axiom of hard bouldering that the holds are worse and farther apart. Early in climbing, generating power is mostly a question of using the upper body to “line up” the more powerful lower body muscles. Easy dynos on less steep terrain are almost reminiscent of a barbell power clean or kettlebell snatchContinue reading “Snapbacks: generating power from fewer contact points”

A 25-pound dumbbell is always a 25-pound dumbbell. But what if it wasn’t? In climbing, we are not so lucky. V5 isn’t always V5. Most training for climbing involves a lot of bouldering. Therefore, problem selection is a crux of most training plans. Grades are not reliable indicators of difficulty. Getting good at selecting theContinue reading “How to pick the right problems for training”