Skills

Start by adding two to three cardio-focused workouts a week in addition to your climbing sessions—these can be on climbing days, time permitting, or on active rest days. In an effective cardio session, maintain an elevated heart rate of 70 percent of your maximum for 30–60 minutes through moderate but continuous exercise like running or hiking. (The Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests your maximum heart rate is 208 minus 0.7 x your age. A heart-rate monitor can help until your awareness increases.) … [Read more...] about How to Cross-Train for Climbing for Better Sending

Who is the one that checks that you are properly tied in before leaving the ground? Who yells out the beta that helps you move upward when you can’t find the next hold? Who helps keep you from hitting the ground after slipping off that greasy hold? Upon redpointing your project, who is the first one to praise and congratulate you? Your belayer. A climbing partnership is a two-way street, and that means that you need to be just as good of a belayer as your partner is for you. Join the #BelayBetter movement by embodying these seven characteristics. … [Read more...] about Characteristics Of the World’s Best Belayer

Many climbers consider onsighting to be the purest style. On-the-fly problem solving, knowing how to recover, and holding on define a game in which you have only one shot. As a Las Vegas native and sport climber of 15 years, I see onsighting as climbing’s version of gambling: Just like betting everything on 10 in roulette only to have the ball land on 33, the moment you fall, you’re done. I’ve won a few times, including Blue Light Special (5.13a/b) in Ten Sleep, Wyoming, and Peer 42 (5.13a) in Clear Creek Canyon, Colorado. But I’ve had way more losses—near misses. However, unlike gambling, it’s not all dumb luck: You can up your onsight level with savvy planning and execution. … [Read more...] about Improve Your Sport Climbing Onsight Game

Overall, I found the progression of workouts in 6 Weeks to Stronger Fingers to be difficult, yet doable. The warm-ups include a lot of climbing, which made convincing myself to get to the gym easier and the entire experience more fun. I found the first few track A hangboard workouts to be pretty easy, but by the third week I was being pushed hard. All of these workouts were based around repeaters, which involve doing repeating sets alternating between hanging and resting. The amount of time spent on each repeater is prescribed, as is the number of repeaters per set. More than adding extra repeaters to a set, decreasing the rest interval between each hang felt especially difficult. On the final few sets during these workouts, I stopped being able to hold on for the entire time; I also had to adapt by increasing the size of the edges, sometimes to as large as 30 mm versus the 20 mm edges Siegrist suggests. The fact that I hadn’t done much hangboarding in the past, coupled with … [Read more...] about Quick Gains: My Experience With 6 Weeks to Stronger Fingers

“Now you need just one pole for all your summer and winter activities,” Max said, which saves adventurers money and storage space. For snow, add a powder basket; for summer, remove it. He explained the FXP, while collapsable, works well for skiing because its internal tensioned cord is ingeniously segmented, removing any rattling and reducing the number of technical components, thereby saving weight and minimizing the possibility of malfunction. Plus, from its collapsed form, the poles click into a fixed stick with the flick of a wrist. … [Read more...] about How To Maximize the Benefits of Trekking Poles