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disobey_gravity(Because I've been promising to write this post up for at least two years.)
I can honestly say that a solid 90% of everything I know about climbing technique, I got from the first two of these resources, and the third may be the single wisest book I've found about training. Since I keep reccing them to all and sundry, I thought I ought to explain why.
The Self-Coached Climber by Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter (book, with accompanying DVD)
On at least one climbing forum, "Read the Self-Coached Climber" has become the equivalent of "read the FAQ, n00b".
This is a very information-dense book with a lot of very solid advice. It starts with a focus on movement awareness, then breaks down the theory behind different climbing movements such as backstepping and flagging, explaining why they work in terms of centre of gravity and balance, with a range of suggested exercises for improving your skills and developing fluency.
The second half of the book focuses on training, discussing the physiology of climbing then breaking it down into aerobic endurance, anaerobic endurance, and power, with suggestions on training each and on putting together a training plan to meet your goals. As far as I know, all of this information is as accurate and state-of-the-art as anything in climbing training can be (i.e., given the lack of double-blind controlled trials, mostly based on anecdata — but this is as solid as it gets).
The risk here is of overload (did I mention information-dense?), and/or panicked flight in the face of small print and lots of diagrams. I'd suggest not trying to read it through in one go; start with the technique stuff, and add the training stuff later as and when you can use it. This is a book that you'll want to dip into and reread at different points in your climbing.
The accompanying DVD doesn't add that much, IMHO; mostly it's got some fairly obvious clips illustrating movement training exercises like "silent feet". The interesting bit is the redpoint section, giving a detailed commentary on two young climbers' attempts to do a hard redpoint.
The Neil Gresham Masterclass DVD (DVD, obviously enough)
This is a set of two DVDs, which can be bought separately. I'm going to focus on the first DVD, because it's the more useful and universally relevant.
Here's the trailer for Part 1 on YouTube. And Part 2.
Part 1 covers technique and training. It starts with a basic guide to different types of handhold and foothold and how to use them, then progresses to overall principles of movement and specific moves such as twisting and outside edging, flagging, drop knees, frogging, heel hooks, toe hooks, heel-hoe combinations and "bicycling", knee bars, etc. etc.
This is where it's really value for money, with clear, memorable demonstrations of how each move works and why it work, often using split-screen comparisons between correct and incorrect ways of making a move. Gresham shows commendable willingness to use himself as the visual example of Doin It Wrong, complete with a red flashing "wrong" in the top corner of the screen (example).
Despite being one of the UK's top climbers, he's engagingly earnest and uncool, with the air of someone presenting a BBC science program for kids (I have a theory that top British climbers divide into the unassuming, dorky ones and the ones who are bugfuck nuts). The graphics and music can be kindly described as 1990s; they almost achieve ironic retro coolness, but instead just look a bit crap. Never mind. This is not why you're watching it.
There's a much shorter section on slabs and rounded features (smearing, rockovers, and strategies for Evil Rounded Top-outs), and a section on aretes which is less of a guide and more "a short film of Seb Grieve climbing an arete while babbling" (admittedly, with atypical coherency).
It omits crack-climbing, bridging and laybacking on the grounds that they'd require a whole other film, which is true but still regrettable, especially because jamming techniques can be a particular area of weakness for indoor climbers.
(When it comes to jamming, Best Forgotten Art might be that film. But it should be noted that this is a film made by Johnny Dawes, who knows things about movement on rock that other humans do not, but tends to communicate them in Martian poetry. It's one of my favourite climbing films.)
The section on training covers warm-ups, bouldering for strength training, campusing and fingerboards, and circuits for training stamina. It gives a basic idea of what different forms of training involve, but doesn't do much to give you an idea of how much you should be doing of any kind, or when they might be appropriate. For example, it's helpful to save yourself from injury and know that unless you've been climbing for several years and are bouldering at V6 and above, you shouldn't even be looking at a campus board, let alone thinking about using it, which is something that the DVD doesn't get across.
The second DVD covers skills and tactics for sports and trad. Obviously, it's not relevant for boulderers, and I would say it's not relevant for sport and trad climbers until you've reached the point where you want to think about tactics and strategies for hard onsighting and redpointing.
There are brief sections on falling, clipping strategy, and warm-ups, but the bulk of the DVD is made up of case studies with commentary, covering sport and trad onsights, sport redpointing and trad "headpointing" (leading a very hard or poorly-protected trad route after practicing it on a toprope). As well as Gresham, the case studies star Charlie Woodburn, Steve McClure, Leah Crane and Adam Wainwright.
Commendably, it shows cases where people don't quite make an onsight/redpoint, or flub it completely — Gresham points out Crane's bravery in volunteering footage of her (aged 14) making an escalating series of tactical errors and blowing a redpoint well below her level.
But the DVD is built round two gems of footage which are worth watching just as climbing films. The final sport redpoint is Steve McClure on the first ascent of Rainshadow (his monumental 9a at Malham). And the film ends with a bang as the case study on headpointing is Gresham's own ascent (the second ever) of Equilibrium. This is an E10, 7a trad death route, where a fall from the last moves would lead to serious injury or death.
At this point, you realize a) that Gresham is not mild-mannered and unassuming at all, he is bugfuck nuts, and b) why the DVD comes with an annoying and unskippable multi-page disclaimer and warning that stays up for about five minutes. Please don't try this at home.
The Self-Coached Climber and the Masterclass Part 1 have been my standard recs for years; I'd now add a third:
9 out of 10 Climbers Make The Same Mistakes by Dave MacLeod (book)
Don't start with this, but grab a copy after you've been climbing for a year or so, at the point when you start hitting plateaus and finding that gains don't come so fast through climbing alone, and you want to think about training in a focused way. It'll give you the guidance to use the training info in the other two in an intelligent way.
Dave MacLeod is another top British climber, and very unusual in that he's climbing at the top level in trad, sport, bouldering and ice/mixed climbing. He's also got a Master's degree in sport science, which may not be unrelated, and works part-time as a climbing coach.
Some MacLeod for you: On Pressure (a Font 8b boulder problem)
This article in Rock and Ice will give you a sample of his approach: The Intuitive Approach to Training. You can also check out his Online Climbing Coach blog (![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
davemacleod_feed on Dreamwidth).
9 out of 10 Climbers is the climber's equivalent of The Higher Common Sense from Cold Comfort Farm, a slim and magnificently sensible book.
It's also very meta. MacLeod starts from the premise that the problem for most climbers isn't a lack of information about training methods; it's information overload, difficulty knowing what to focus on and when and how to persevere with it, and psychological issues such as the tendency to avoid working on one's weaknesses, fear of failing, and fear of falling.
He goes on to address "the big four" areas in training: movement technique, finger strength, endurance and body mass, discussing not only effective means of improving them, but also what benefits can (and can't) realistically be expected from working on them (spoiler: getting stronger isn't always the key, and campus boards are a bad idea for almost everyone). There's much less scientific detail than in Self-Coached Climber, but much more of the sort of guidance that might help you pick out your priorities and know roughly what to do to work on them (without necessarily having or needing to have a rigid session-by-session timetable).
The emphasis is on identifying your own strengths and weaknesses and picking goals accordingly: a skinny, lightweight but weak climber has different training needs from someone who's tall and muscular.
(Note: because strength-to-weight ratio is a factor in climbing, there's a short section on weight management. MacLeod's extremely conservative, recommending aiming for gradual fat loss if it's a useful goal for you at all, and emphasizing the health dangers of crash diets or super-low body fat. But if you have triggers, read with due caution.)
There's an extensive section on overcoming fear of falling, which (unusually) addresses the value of practice falls in trad as well as sport, and preparation for bold trad routes where falling at particular points is not an option.
The last section gives advice on training for people in different life stages and situations: the very young, students, older climbers (and how much do I love MacLeod for including advice for people who are starting climbing relatively late in life?), people juggling training with family and career needs, "weekend warriors", and, charmingly, "the confused and disillusioned."
In short, it's realistic, and I don't mean that in terms of lowering expectations; MacLeod is passionate in his belief that everyone's capable of seeing major improvement if they're willing to put in the effort and train intelligently.
This is valuable in a completely different way from the other two, and I can't recommend it too highly.
ETA: I forgot to mention that you can buy all of these from Dave MacLeod's online shop, if you fancy subsidizing British climbing rather than Amazon. *g*
I can honestly say that a solid 90% of everything I know about climbing technique, I got from the first two of these resources, and the third may be the single wisest book I've found about training. Since I keep reccing them to all and sundry, I thought I ought to explain why.
The Self-Coached Climber by Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter (book, with accompanying DVD)
On at least one climbing forum, "Read the Self-Coached Climber" has become the equivalent of "read the FAQ, n00b".
This is a very information-dense book with a lot of very solid advice. It starts with a focus on movement awareness, then breaks down the theory behind different climbing movements such as backstepping and flagging, explaining why they work in terms of centre of gravity and balance, with a range of suggested exercises for improving your skills and developing fluency.
The second half of the book focuses on training, discussing the physiology of climbing then breaking it down into aerobic endurance, anaerobic endurance, and power, with suggestions on training each and on putting together a training plan to meet your goals. As far as I know, all of this information is as accurate and state-of-the-art as anything in climbing training can be (i.e., given the lack of double-blind controlled trials, mostly based on anecdata — but this is as solid as it gets).
The risk here is of overload (did I mention information-dense?), and/or panicked flight in the face of small print and lots of diagrams. I'd suggest not trying to read it through in one go; start with the technique stuff, and add the training stuff later as and when you can use it. This is a book that you'll want to dip into and reread at different points in your climbing.
The accompanying DVD doesn't add that much, IMHO; mostly it's got some fairly obvious clips illustrating movement training exercises like "silent feet". The interesting bit is the redpoint section, giving a detailed commentary on two young climbers' attempts to do a hard redpoint.
The Neil Gresham Masterclass DVD (DVD, obviously enough)
This is a set of two DVDs, which can be bought separately. I'm going to focus on the first DVD, because it's the more useful and universally relevant.
Here's the trailer for Part 1 on YouTube. And Part 2.
Part 1 covers technique and training. It starts with a basic guide to different types of handhold and foothold and how to use them, then progresses to overall principles of movement and specific moves such as twisting and outside edging, flagging, drop knees, frogging, heel hooks, toe hooks, heel-hoe combinations and "bicycling", knee bars, etc. etc.
This is where it's really value for money, with clear, memorable demonstrations of how each move works and why it work, often using split-screen comparisons between correct and incorrect ways of making a move. Gresham shows commendable willingness to use himself as the visual example of Doin It Wrong, complete with a red flashing "wrong" in the top corner of the screen (example).
Despite being one of the UK's top climbers, he's engagingly earnest and uncool, with the air of someone presenting a BBC science program for kids (I have a theory that top British climbers divide into the unassuming, dorky ones and the ones who are bugfuck nuts). The graphics and music can be kindly described as 1990s; they almost achieve ironic retro coolness, but instead just look a bit crap. Never mind. This is not why you're watching it.
There's a much shorter section on slabs and rounded features (smearing, rockovers, and strategies for Evil Rounded Top-outs), and a section on aretes which is less of a guide and more "a short film of Seb Grieve climbing an arete while babbling" (admittedly, with atypical coherency).
It omits crack-climbing, bridging and laybacking on the grounds that they'd require a whole other film, which is true but still regrettable, especially because jamming techniques can be a particular area of weakness for indoor climbers.
(When it comes to jamming, Best Forgotten Art might be that film. But it should be noted that this is a film made by Johnny Dawes, who knows things about movement on rock that other humans do not, but tends to communicate them in Martian poetry. It's one of my favourite climbing films.)
The section on training covers warm-ups, bouldering for strength training, campusing and fingerboards, and circuits for training stamina. It gives a basic idea of what different forms of training involve, but doesn't do much to give you an idea of how much you should be doing of any kind, or when they might be appropriate. For example, it's helpful to save yourself from injury and know that unless you've been climbing for several years and are bouldering at V6 and above, you shouldn't even be looking at a campus board, let alone thinking about using it, which is something that the DVD doesn't get across.
The second DVD covers skills and tactics for sports and trad. Obviously, it's not relevant for boulderers, and I would say it's not relevant for sport and trad climbers until you've reached the point where you want to think about tactics and strategies for hard onsighting and redpointing.
There are brief sections on falling, clipping strategy, and warm-ups, but the bulk of the DVD is made up of case studies with commentary, covering sport and trad onsights, sport redpointing and trad "headpointing" (leading a very hard or poorly-protected trad route after practicing it on a toprope). As well as Gresham, the case studies star Charlie Woodburn, Steve McClure, Leah Crane and Adam Wainwright.
Commendably, it shows cases where people don't quite make an onsight/redpoint, or flub it completely — Gresham points out Crane's bravery in volunteering footage of her (aged 14) making an escalating series of tactical errors and blowing a redpoint well below her level.
But the DVD is built round two gems of footage which are worth watching just as climbing films. The final sport redpoint is Steve McClure on the first ascent of Rainshadow (his monumental 9a at Malham). And the film ends with a bang as the case study on headpointing is Gresham's own ascent (the second ever) of Equilibrium. This is an E10, 7a trad death route, where a fall from the last moves would lead to serious injury or death.
At this point, you realize a) that Gresham is not mild-mannered and unassuming at all, he is bugfuck nuts, and b) why the DVD comes with an annoying and unskippable multi-page disclaimer and warning that stays up for about five minutes. Please don't try this at home.
The Self-Coached Climber and the Masterclass Part 1 have been my standard recs for years; I'd now add a third:
9 out of 10 Climbers Make The Same Mistakes by Dave MacLeod (book)
Don't start with this, but grab a copy after you've been climbing for a year or so, at the point when you start hitting plateaus and finding that gains don't come so fast through climbing alone, and you want to think about training in a focused way. It'll give you the guidance to use the training info in the other two in an intelligent way.
Dave MacLeod is another top British climber, and very unusual in that he's climbing at the top level in trad, sport, bouldering and ice/mixed climbing. He's also got a Master's degree in sport science, which may not be unrelated, and works part-time as a climbing coach.
Some MacLeod for you: On Pressure (a Font 8b boulder problem)
This article in Rock and Ice will give you a sample of his approach: The Intuitive Approach to Training. You can also check out his Online Climbing Coach blog (
davemacleod_feed on Dreamwidth).9 out of 10 Climbers is the climber's equivalent of The Higher Common Sense from Cold Comfort Farm, a slim and magnificently sensible book.
It's also very meta. MacLeod starts from the premise that the problem for most climbers isn't a lack of information about training methods; it's information overload, difficulty knowing what to focus on and when and how to persevere with it, and psychological issues such as the tendency to avoid working on one's weaknesses, fear of failing, and fear of falling.
He goes on to address "the big four" areas in training: movement technique, finger strength, endurance and body mass, discussing not only effective means of improving them, but also what benefits can (and can't) realistically be expected from working on them (spoiler: getting stronger isn't always the key, and campus boards are a bad idea for almost everyone). There's much less scientific detail than in Self-Coached Climber, but much more of the sort of guidance that might help you pick out your priorities and know roughly what to do to work on them (without necessarily having or needing to have a rigid session-by-session timetable).
The emphasis is on identifying your own strengths and weaknesses and picking goals accordingly: a skinny, lightweight but weak climber has different training needs from someone who's tall and muscular.
(Note: because strength-to-weight ratio is a factor in climbing, there's a short section on weight management. MacLeod's extremely conservative, recommending aiming for gradual fat loss if it's a useful goal for you at all, and emphasizing the health dangers of crash diets or super-low body fat. But if you have triggers, read with due caution.)
There's an extensive section on overcoming fear of falling, which (unusually) addresses the value of practice falls in trad as well as sport, and preparation for bold trad routes where falling at particular points is not an option.
The last section gives advice on training for people in different life stages and situations: the very young, students, older climbers (and how much do I love MacLeod for including advice for people who are starting climbing relatively late in life?), people juggling training with family and career needs, "weekend warriors", and, charmingly, "the confused and disillusioned."
In short, it's realistic, and I don't mean that in terms of lowering expectations; MacLeod is passionate in his belief that everyone's capable of seeing major improvement if they're willing to put in the effort and train intelligently.
This is valuable in a completely different way from the other two, and I can't recommend it too highly.
ETA: I forgot to mention that you can buy all of these from Dave MacLeod's online shop, if you fancy subsidizing British climbing rather than Amazon. *g*
