Keep it simple is a very strong principle and it doesn't mean that it's easy strength training it's that

it's simple to do in your week or in your training session and it

doesn't have to be complex. there are very very highly effective but complex ways of getting stronger but we are not weight lifters we're not trying to break past
big you know PR's we're just trying to get strong enough and so keeping it simple means it could be a 20 or 30 minute strength session where it's two or three sets
maybe it's five reps of a deadlift to press a pull a squat and then you can get the heck out of the session and go to your next thing people often confuse simple with
easy and simple just doesn't mean complex
You’ll have a focus when you're in your strength training phase and so what we mean by this is you might be focusing on one lift maybe it's weighted pull-ups
maybe it's a front squat maybe it's a press so after you warm up that will be your lead exercise and maybe you'll be working in these what we would call
developmental loads so you're trying to push that up but all the other lifts get done as well but maybe not at a high load that maybe you would use if it was the
focus and so the best analogy we have here in your strength session you might have kind of a hot burner up front which is one movement pattern or one exercise
and then you've got the other major movement patterns kind of simmering off in the background
Stick with the training session or a workout for at least 10 or more sessions probably not much more than 15 but what we mean by this is folks have an awesome
plan and they just do it once or twice they don't see any Improvement and then they just go to the next best thing they saw on Instagram or online but we don't
see the body's ability to adapt until at least somewhere in that 8 to 10 sessions we say 10 because it's perfect when you think about two days a week for five weeks
it usually fits in people's schedule
Learn the movement correctly first I am all about getting under heavy strength exercises but if you don't know how to do the movement correctly first, we're
putting strength on top of dysfunction and so we've got to use practice loads we've got to take video of ourselves maybe we're reading a book maybe we've hired
a coach but learn those movements first and then you can start to add look
If you can't perform the movement or exercise, we've got to figure out why and it might go Way Beyond whether you're reading the right textbook or looking at
the Right video it could actually be a mobility issue whether that's through a former injury or maybe even some genetic reason but you've got to figure out why
you can't just kind of pretend like you know it and move forward
Strength isn't done or strength training isn't done instead of climbing it's done additional to your climbing and this can be a really hard thing for folks to not
necessarily understand but like ask really good questions like why am I doing strength training if you're saying it's just kind of addition to the real reason is is it's
making our body a little bit more resilient we can be a little bit less prone to injury and we can just be a stronger athlete to then be ready for harder climbing
training or harder climbs or harder you know progressions through our climbing it's the foundation of any athletic performance our athletic performance is climbing
and so we don't want this to be is people choosing to do a strength session instead of a climbing session it's done in conjunction with because it's a supporting
factor and it's foundational
You will not get huge I absolutely love this one it's a such a common myth that people think oh strength training bodybuilding Arnold Schwarzenegger I'm going to
have you know a huge chest of really big thighs and that's going to hurt my climbing the type of training that we're talking about here is very low volume but high
intensity so you know three sets of five three sets of three five sets of Two And if you think about this in other sports like a cyclist what what's the big part of their
body because of cycling it's their quads right it's super low intensity lots of pedaling over lots and lots of volume and so hypertrophy is the technical term of like
muscle mass happens when it's low intensity and really high volume that's not strength training that's bodybuilding or you know you might need it for your sport
we think about it with climbers it's the reason why our forearms are Big Lots of low intensity things but at a high volume so strength training is not going to get you
huge I promise
Llittle and often over the long haul our best analogy here is the same way you want to save money we're not trying to just get into the gym and make it super hard
real brief a few times a year and that strength training it's usually lots of kind of medium to intense sessions every so often but over your entire career what usually
happens is two things is people think oh I need to make this thing really intense and I'm going to kind of juice up my strength for my season and they get injured
or they just don't get any adaptation from it at all and they just think it doesn't work so very little over a long sustainable career is where the strength training
needs to be placed
Don't chase the pump climbers love chasing the pumper we understand what that pump kind of moment or feeling feels like and so yeah sometimes that's featured
in our training when we're doing maybe some intervals or some more specific power endurance training or maybe we're trying to gain some capacity so we're
doing these like longer sustained efforts but in strength training as soon as you feel pumped you've left the realm of strength and switched to different Energy
Systems and you're not actually working on your strength anymore so in your specific stated strength session and you and you feel pumped you've missed the Mark
it's okay you can just you know make a note and be like oops I went a little too far I went too many reps or I I didn't rest long enough next session let's change that
anytime you feel pumped you've left the realm of strength
Tension is King and I love explaining this in strength training to climbers because they understand what tension is or what that ability to squeeze and fire all your
muscles at once to perform a move it's the same thing in strength training and if anyone's strength trained for long enough they'll understand that that pressure in
their belly and those power breaths and their ability to squeeze even the smallest little muscle around a joint or even in a limb that they're not working actually
produces the best strength results and yes we can have some physical adaptation to our strength but really what we're after for the most part is this central nervous
system and our ability to fire all our muscles at once exactly when we need them and be rigid when we're in our most compromised hard position and then be able
to relax them when we're done
Strong antagonists make strong Agonist and what we're talking about here and it's obviously very classic with a climber is that their pull muscles are very strong
and their push or press muscles are very weak and there's this thing that happens where our body can govern our ability to get stronger in pulling because our
push is so weak and it's our body's way trying to get us to not have a shoulder injury but a lot of us don't listen to that we push through our pressing is really weak
and our pulling's too strong so if we can work on the antagonist muscles like pressing and squatting and hinging what we're not usually using in our sport or at least
at a high level we can make those joints more robust be less injury prone and we can also start to up those levels of the movement patterns that we actually are
already working and are already quite strong at
Have a reason for every exercise that you do and I think this last principle is much like the first we've got to keep it simple it's really easy to add in some new exercise
or oh yeah that one really you know felt hard so I'm going to add that in but most times or more often than not you're just doing more of the same movement
pattern that you already did in your very simple good strength session and you're just adding it in because you think you need more we've got to get away from
this more is better mindset less is definitely better in these sessions and you've got to look at your strength session and be like why am I doing that exercise why
am I doing that exercise and you might have a good reason but you also want to see if it's being done already in your session and you just cut out the thing that
you've just added so make sure you have a reason for why you do each exercise