What is Reddit's opinion of Self-Coached Climber: The Guide to Movement, Training, Performance?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The Self-Coached Climber is one of those books that's often mentioned for that purpose. Definitely a great book with lots of good info.

i'm going to recommend the movement training drills in this book, and to climb more.

So with climbing you've got 3 buckets: strength, technique, and mental. Mental doesn't come into play as much in bouldering (though it definitely can), so let's look at strength and technique.

You can spend hours training and getting stronger by doing pullups, but you're completely neglecting your technique bucket. By spending more time on the wall, you'll fill both your strength and technique buckets (which should make you a lot more effective on the wall).

On your pull-up progression, how many negatives are you up to?

Running laps with a pump, silent feet, no hands, slow hands, slow feet, turning in with each step, forced resting, ...

The Self Coached Climber gives you more insight in these exercises.

> Why would chalk cause fingertip rawness?

Friction between the chalk dust and your skin? I don't understand the mechanism, but it's certainly something I've noticed when I use lots of chalk.

> Unfortunately I don't have much choice... I have sweaty hands and become pretty useless quick without chalk.

My gf has the same problem (and, not coincidentally, suffers from fingertip rawness much more than me). Maybe try wiping sweat off with a towel some of the time instead?

> I hope OP heeds your wisdom.

All credit should go to the excellent The Self-Coached Climber.

Is the problem that you have too much else on in the evenings? I used to live 45 minutes from the wall, and I still got a lot of evening sessions in - 1.5hrs travel time + 2hrs climbing rounds out an evening nicely. Any chance you could adjust your schedule to get some climbing in during the week?

Also, are you using your arms right? A common beginner's mistake (which I'm occasionally still guilty of myself) is to hang on bent arms for too long - this tires you out much quicker. Hang on straight arms wherever possible so your skeleton bears the bulk of the load.

Recommended: The Self-Coached Climber.

You'd be better off with The Self Coached Climber and Rock Climbing Technique. If you're already climbing 5.12, then a book like Rock Climbers Training Manual can be pretty handy.

And while those are great, don't forget to stay healthy - my favorite climbing training book to pimp: Climb Injury Free.

How to Climb 5.12 was written in an era when there was basically zero information on training for climbing outside of crag-talk anecdotes. That means the information in the book is nothing but guesses with pretty much no science behind it.

Some of the concepts in the book exist in newer forms, HIT Strips live on sorta-kinda as systems board. People still campus. But honestly, if you climb 3 days a week, trying to push and challenge yourself on things that are hard for you to send (if you can send at all), spending most of that time focusing on clean technique, and maybe do some regular core exercise, you can climb 5.12a.

It seems like a distant landmark, hell, for a long time I felt the same way you do, but honestly it takes little more than consistency, not even talent or great effort, to achieve.

Hmm, not sure how to describe all the techniques that you could be using, I would actually recommend reading a book or watching some videos on climbing techniques. Going from V0 to V1 is where things like turning your hips in and engaging your core really start mattering. It's actually harder to learn proper technique on V0 because a lot of the times you can get through them without proper technique. Try to work harder problems with someone who has good form, and try to get at least 2 or 3 moves at a time. If you can't do a pull-up yet, I would work on getting in at least 1 pull-up with proper form as well. One trick I found useful to get the "feel" of a move is hovering over the next hold with my hand before grabbing on to it. If you can reach for the next hold and hover over it for 2~3 seconds, it means you have established a proper base with your feet. Not always possible, but generally you want to be in balance so you conserve energy. Hope that helped, I mostly just climbed with other better climbers and wasn't shy about asking for technique tips, most were very willing to share beta and give me feedback. Good Luck!

if your current goal is endurance on lead/toprope routes then you dont need to bulk up muscles, you need to build up endurance by simply climbing a lot of long routes (long = longer than your usual boulder, just anything on a rope basically). bouldering can give you an advantage on endurance routes because you're stronger and get less pumped, but since you're saying you've been bouldering for a long time you will now see the biggest gains in just training endurance.

try to figure out what's holding you back: is it really only endurance or are there maybe any flaws in your technique? if possible have someone record a video of you climbing it and figure out your weaknesses.

if you have time to read and want to read up more on training for climbing (whether it's specific and structured training or just general directions for what you should do) then I recommend reading the self coached climber and afterwards dave macleod's 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistake. I believe that the internet can only help so much because it can never fully assess what's going. but if I can push you in the right direction to educating yourself so that you can make your own decisions, then I think I already achieved something.

Abra, kadabra, alakazam.

In terms of training info, read this guys books and training blogs: http://www.davemacleod.com/

and this:

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Coached-Climber-Movement-Training-Performance/dp/0811733394

In terms of climbing well in the long term, make a habit of taking long road trips to different climbing areas and trying as many different styles and types of rock as you can ... by pushing yourself on different rock/in different styles you force your body and mind to adapt and your skill set to expand.

And its really fun.

You're probably about ready to start doing some finger board exercises and maybe even some campus board stuff. Check out The Self Coached Climber it has some good exercises to start with.

Just take if very slow at first and really listen to your body. It's like power lifting and gymnastics, you want to stress your body enough to force it to repair but not enough to injury. It's a fine line.