In-Season Training: What to Do and What NOT to Do with Dr. Tyler Nelson

In this episode the Camp 4 team sits down to discuss in-season training. What should we be doing when the weather opens up for outdoor climbing? We should be doing: 

1. Things that help translate our hard earned offseason strengths into climbing specific work
2. Maintaining our force output through strategic exercise choice
3. Managing fatigue week-to-week so that we can arrive to the crag FRESH!

This is done through strategic exercise selection as well as contraction type in those exercises. We also discuss how velocity training, or training at higher speeds of movement, can be a "hack" to maintaining our strength while transitioning that strength to movement that will enhance our on wall performance too.

Ideally with velocity based training we know exactly how fast we are moving so that we can specifically understand if we are moving too fast or too slow, and so we can see when our velocity significantly drops off. The drop-off indicates fatigue as set in and we should end that set or session.

Tools to track that speed and give realtime feedback are no longer $1000s of dollars! One of the tools we use the most in our C4HP training and assessments is the Vitruve Encoder. This devices will give you real time feedback on movement velocity on a user friendly app to help you level-up your training and coaching. At only $400 it is one of the cheapest ways to gain the edge you need to become a more powerful climber.

And ending Nov. 20th Vitruve is giving C4P listeners at 15% discount on their device! The code can be found in the episode ;)

Thank you so much to Vitruve for the sponsorship of the episode. Visit the link below to grab you device now!

Vitruve Velocity Device

Dr. Tyler Nelson and Coach Collin McGee have new online courses coming up soon! Please visit the website for more information!

www.camp4humanperformance.com

And a new LIVE C4HP event is coming to Philadelphia, PA Decemeber 10th and 11th at Tufas Bouldering Lounge. Visit the link below to reserve your spot!

Philadelphia C4HP Performance Clinic

Transcript

Welcome to the Camp four Human Performance Podcast, the official podcast of Camp four, human Performance, a climbing company. Started by Dr. Tyler Nelson, designed to give you the most practical, up-to-date and usable information on climbing, training, rehabilitation, and performance. Today we're gonna be talking about in season training exactly what you should be doing when the weather gets really nice.

The goal is to get outside, but how do we do so? Maintaining our strength and all the things we worked so hard for in the off season while not getting too tired to not perform well when we're outside. And those are the details that we're gonna jump into today with Dr. Tyler Nelson, coach Gabe Olson, and myself, coach Colin McGee.

Before we get going, just a few quick announcements. Dr. Nelson has a brand new finger course coming out online, November. All of the principles and new exercise protocols that we've been researching have been rolled up into this new course to educate the coaches and athletes how to use these things practically.

And to dive into some more detail, I am personally hosting an online mobility course, December 3rd for two hours from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, talking everything, flexibility, mobility, how to improve the quality of your movement, and how to organize and think about the training that you should be.

Both of those courses can be found at Camp four human performance.com. And finally, we have a live course coming up in Philadelphia, December 10th and 11th at TFAs Boulder Lounge. I'm going to be working with Coach Nick Elli from TFAs to host a performance and applications course. It's gonna be a two day course, Saturday and Sunday, where we go through all the performance assessments on day one, and then we learn how to improve our skills approaches, and climbing on wall with coach.

That link will be in the show notes and be posted to our stories and won't be found on the website as it's going through the TFAs account. So heads up for more information about that coming soon. But now let's get into the episode.

Oh, rat. So today we are going. Chat with Dr. Tyler Nelson about in-season training. Ultimately talking about Only because. Only because Gabe's not here. . Only because Gabe is yet again, not here, , but we have little Gabe. Little Gabe is here with us and he will give you everything you need to know about any technique and skills.

So the goal today is to talk about in-season climbing and in-season training and what we should be considering when we are outside, inside, and trying to maximize that in-season. That might be two weeks for us or about a few months. So, Tata, what's going on and what should we be considering when it comes to in-season training?

Um, I usually suggest that people think about eliminating more things than what they should be doing. You know, like through, through the process of getting rid of the things that we shouldn't expect to transfer is a really easy way to think about what you can do. Ultimately, the, the solution or the, I guess the answer to what you should do is pretty simple.

You should go outside whenever you can and try hard, you know, if. Sport climb, red pointing, or you're multi-pitch climbing or bouldering. The majority of the things you should do in season are that, and anything else away from that should only be done. You know, if you get rained out or your schedule doesn't allow you to get out only one day per week or something, then maybe you want to use the gym or inside training.

But on the whole, we want to be really like, um, underdosed, let's say in our total training in season. But the things that we do, Incorporate, we need to have a lot of velocity and so I'm a big fan of promoting like high, high velocity power training interventions in season more than anything. Gotcha. Yeah, I think the whole keeping the goal, the goal classic Dan John quote about in season training is like you have to climb like, and that's what I've been doing and thankful enough is if I have a nice spot out, I found a nice 40.

Ride for Boulderings. Oh no, I want to get outside and get on rock even though my projects have been rope climbing, but I can't really go rope climbing my friends and schedules all over. But I'm trying to keep the goal, the goals, like in season, it's time to get on rock, get the skills and get everything translating really well.

Um, so when we are rained out or we're inside, inside, we talked about power training being probably the thing we want to. Turn towards and, and why's that? Um, I shot some videos today that I put on my account where, you know, it's you, it's really hard for people to let go of their normal loads when they're doing training interventions because there's this like ego that's attached to it, or there's this sense of like, er, try hard with a heavy lift.

Where the videos that I shot that I put on my account today where I. Doing a bench press at 40% max. But the science would say that that's probably a better load to do with that movement with my individual like strength profile to keep my strength high, but actually give me a transfer to a sport. And so with all of the work that we've done with our strength training interventions, the recruitment of those big muscle fibers, the only way that they're going to transfer in a, in a high velocity.

To the climbing wall is if we actually train them at speed. And so they're naturally fast, but they're not going to be activated in that at that same velocity unless we train them at that same velocity. So I'm a big fan of using the same movements that you use during your strength training intervention, but this is the time to drop the weight and really make every repetition count in terms of the intention of the.

Gotcha. And this would make sense not only for in season, but sounds like. A preceding performance phase and and so forth is the idea to get all of those strength games we've made under slow, heavy circumstances now start to get it looking like rock climbing and get it moving like rock climbing. . Yeah. I think that's a big mistake that climbers will make is they'll try and do max hangs in the season just to like keep their recruitment up.

But that's not necessary in my opinion. And in a lot of cases it maybe increases someone's fatigue level because maybe they're doing them when they're tired because we talked about this at some point, that you can still do those, even if you're tired. Those types of contractions don't respond to fatigue in the same way.

But if I come in and I do my velocity based training metric, I can absolutely see when I'm tired. So I did this yesterday or the day before, after a climbing session for the client account, came in and did some velocity based training, but the load that I expected to move at a specific velocity, I could not hit that velocity, which is an easy demonstration that I was fatigued from my climbing session.

Right, and I think that's a big on the principle, like kind of saving your bullets for the wall outside is if you have metrics that really tell you to improve the quality of your reps, but then really cut you short so you don't go into any garbage reps or useless reps. And the whole goal of keeping that overall volume down so that you can be really fresh for when you're.

Yeah, if you're fresh, those repetitions should not be that tiring, and they shouldn't really lead to any or very little like metabolic stress or delayed onset muscle soreness. You know? So for example, if someone's doing. Like, uh, I did a, one example was a Pullup example. So even at my body weight pullup, if I do my body weight pullup, my velocity I think was like 0.65 or 0.7 meters a second, which is not that fast.

Or the science would say I need to be more in the range of like 0.9 to one meter a second, or 0.85. . And so simply by putting my feet down and pushing with my toes, I could easily, because I can measure my velocity, get to that velocity range, and when I get to that range, now I can train at something that's gonna be more intentional, it's gonna gimme a better transfer to the rock, you know?

But those are mostly concentric only movements. So the concentric only movements are not that fatiguing. It's really all the, like pulling up, releasing, pulling up, releasing, doing pull up reps would be less valuable than just doing the poll. As an example, we did that same exact adjusting of the velocity protocols at Cornell, and a lot of the athletes I think were mind blown that it can be as simple as that.

And we took the. Vivi or this, the linear encoders, all these velocity measuring devices that we have. Um, got them on the wall, got them to observe what climbing movement speeds look like. And then we went into the back in the dark shady dungeon of a training room. I was like, we need more lights back here cuz this is really valuable.

And we started to look at how do I start to move fast enough to make your power training count and be more effective? And as simply as, okay, you can't do that with your feet off. Let's put the feet on. Okay, your feet on. All right. I'll give yourself a little push for your feet. Okay. There's the velocity that we need.

And so velocity training can be as simple as that, and I think it kind of talks about the campus board and how we tend to utilize exercises that tend to just come with this power tag a associated with them. But can we do power exercises wrong to the point where they're not really getting us any more?

Yeah, I think most people are probably doing that. You know, I think the one that we get right would be like limit bouldering. If you're really trying as hard as you can, you're doing single moves and falling, that's pretty much training at speed. But with non climbing power trending movements, we wanna move faster than the sport or, and we definitely want to get like, you know, the velocity ranges are, like we mentioned, 0.5 to one, but like one meter a second's, like a pretty good.

Like speed range, where even though I did that the other day with the bench press, I think I was doing nine reps, was like my first set. Then eight reps. Seven sets, or seven reps. Seven reps. The next day I still was like pumped. I still was like, felt like I did a strength training workout and so really it's trying to access.

Those large muscle fibers that we've been training, but we need to access those at the speed in order to get them to transfer. Cuz if we don't, they will not transfer because the movement is too slow with the heavy stuff. Gotcha. I'm probably thinking like a listener right now and saying, Hey Tyler, I'm somewhere where I don't have access to a velocity box or something to measure my speed.

What would be good principles to go by that I'm getting. More out of my power exercises without the testing and knowing the number. Yeah, I think it definitely takes a little bit of practice to get a sense of when your power goes down, but I think most athletes know, especially people that will be listening to this, they know their body well enough and they know their strengths and weaknesses enough that they know what it feels like when their power goes down.

We just need to teach people, and I usually use the LPT in office to teach people what it feels like to have your power go down and use that as a demonstration. But you already know, most people know the thing that they don't do adequately is drop the load enough, and that's something that is relatively new to me as well, where I would have people, you know, previous years train at 60% intensity and try and move with intention.

What I've learned recently is that that increases someone's force component of their force velocity profile, not really their velocity. Mm-hmm. . So in order to actually get them to be fast, we need to go even lower, maybe 40%. Those are the types of velocities that we actually see, you know, transfer to a sport from, which is maybe something that people wouldn't know about, but that, cuz that's quite a bit of load.

My load went to, I think one 15 was the load I was pushing where my max as of late was two 50. Huge drop in weight. Yeah. Yeah. And off the bat, you're like, that is such a low number. And it brings me back to the whole, you know, max hangs versus the isolated finger curls. And people probably being shocked that you can reduce a weight so much and still see benefit from it.

But again, we're talking about the principles that underlie these things, and that's where the, the magic happens, uh, so to speak. Is that a. Let's say place to start for listeners is, okay, I, maybe I know my three rap max bench press, or maybe I know something that feels really heavy for me for like a, a dumbbell bro or a pull up.

Can I take about 50% of that and just move it as fast as I can and kind of cut myself off when I get tired? Probably. You know, I, I'm pretty well trained at benching and I have good. But ultimately, like, so I maybe am, maybe it would be a lower load for them. But another example could be doing , doing a, doing a, doing a pushup with your chest on a plyo box or when you're outside.

I'll have a lot of people do that where you know, like they just have their hands high and they push to a standing position. So as long as you're being explosive and as long as you're doing something that's really fast, you're likely to get a better trans. To the sport from that same thing would apply to deadlifting.

Like people should stop deadlifting in season, in my opinion. Like they should be either doing some, maybe overcoming isometric just to get a little bit of recruitment if they have a long phase. But they should just doing vertical jumps, doing squat jumps or counter movement jumps, because if they're doing it with intention, they're gonna keep a lot of the hip extension recruitment that they want, but they don't need that much slow force on the wall.

They need to be explosive when they're doing limit boulders on the. Cool. That makes lot of sense. So I think that translates to, you know, all of the exercises that you are doing in your program. If you're doing things beyond the fingerboard and beyond the wall, when you're in season, make 'em mall move a little bit faster.

That's gonna help translate everything you do on the wall. Does something that's more climbing specific. Some of times the terminology. I think even when we talk about lemon and bouldering can get confused with like projecting in season and like for training where I think that when people go. Ongoing project in like that tends to be kind of that heavy strength side of it where it's slow, static movements really hard where they're like, I'm trying my limit.

And you're like, well different. I mean it's a different limit, but it's more like your one rep max versus true limit where we're trying to get the recruitment and then get that, like that snappiness is like kind of on the moon board where you are moving a little faster and they'll be being more powerful and snappy.

And so I think sometimes people just get confused. Are you projecting or are you limit bouldering and they're not the same. Um, or even if they kind of can seem similar, they have a different intention. And so I think that's sometimes good to clarify. Um, yeah, I've been working with that with my athletes lately.

I think the moon board's a great tool for in season, like limit bouldering, power output stuff, because I don't ever use the moon. But if I climb on the moon board, like I'll get snappy pretty quickly, which is fantastic for in-season stuff. Yeah, absolutely. That's pretty, I always like, I actually like to like train on like attention board during the year and then when I get into season, I actually go to like a moon board or something because the holds are kind of more funky and more unique like outside and you tend to be a little more jumpy in style.

Um, and so it's kind of fun to just like swap boards per season too. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a cool. So, um, is there anything then we talked about at the beginning of like a reductionist thing, things in season where we can more than likely just save our time, save our energy, and just kind of get rid of during the end season you stop running

Like I had, I had someone send me a message yesterday and they said, I think it was. How I need you to help me clarify this question. I've heard a lot of different answers on this question. And how many miles can I run per week before it becomes, uh, limiter to my performance climbing  and I that kindly, you responded back and said, any miles, like, why would you run?

Like, it is not the same thing as like you're rock climbing. So I think, you know, the best seasons that I've had bouldering, I literally did nothing other than go bouldering. And you know, I think most people. And I talked to Steve about this, you know today as well. It's like people need to learn that like all of the training stuff that you've done is like your savings and you've like built up the savings with all this hard work.

Like your body is not that sensitive. You're not going to lose strength and power in like a couple days. Like you're not gonna lose anything. You're only gonna gain. Things by resting more in season and as long as you're resting more and you're trying really hard, you will get better outcomes just simply by doing that.

So I think anything that's not your sport, if you're really committed to sending a new grade or doing a new thing is like chilling out and going and trying really hard. I love that and probably another, don't hear what we're not saying. We didn't say climbing or running is terrible and bad and gonna give you cancer while climbing some of us.

I did say don't do it though, . Yeah, you did say don't do it . Um, but things that are outside of climbing, especially running, I think running's a, not this a running podcast, but it could be eventually. Um, running is a lot harder on the body than I think a lot of people appreciate. Unless you have a history of running.

And Gabe, you can probably talk to this. I've run one 50 K in my life and it is a ton of high speed eccentrics on the body, which is towards your. Hell, and then towards nervous system as a whole hell. And so that's a lot to dump into this stress bucket that you're trying to manage and be like, okay, I want to go expect performance at something else after all of that.

And it's a little bit relative, but running is hard on the body. . Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, definitely as an ex runner, I guess this would be something like, this has been like philosophy or something I've had, but I don't know if it's always correct, so you can feel free to chime in and be like, Ron, but I've gone with it in my head.

Is that for pairing? Running with climbing never really made that much sense to me. And partially it was because like I think there's a book called like Wise Bros Are. And I thought it was really good, but it was mainly talking about like it's ma based on like fight or flight type things. And like we can go rock climbing and do all this stuff and we tax our energy system and then, you know, like that needs to repair.

But then if we go running, like that's a way more vital to like saving our life. And so like, your body needs to repair your legs because you need to like, be able to run away instead of like, hmm, tending to your arms and your, your, your fingers or whatever's little because it's smaller muscles and not quite as important to saving your life.

And so, like I always kind of thought of it as that like, fight or flight muscles are gonna take your bo, like your body's gonna prioritize that. And part of that is also like the stress of your brain, like your brain's ca And so like, I guess the, the. I think what the reference is is a zebra is dumb because it's eating green grass and just having a great time, and then it sees a lion and it sprints out of there and it, you know, goes around the corner and it no longer sees a lion, but it sees green grass and the stress response drops and it starts eating its grass again.

But if human sees a lion, we run away. And then afterwards we're like, oh my God, that lion almost got us. I stubbed my toe. But like, it's not really tough, you know? You're not really. , that's not important yet. And then you start telling people, Hey, I got chased by this lion stress response. And then the next time you go out, you're concerned about the lion that like there's so much stress that your body needs to attend.

Getting to calm yourself down before it can actually address the muscles that you tore running away or the stub toe or whatever the case. So like I always thought that was interesting concept, but then I kind of like dumbed it down to, I don't do other sports while climbing because flight, some are flight or flight muscles and other ones.

And I think so I think the book is why Zebras Don't get Ulcers. I think that's the one you're referencing, really. And it talk, I think it's, yeah. So Zebras don't get ulcers. I mean, I've read Why Zebras Don get Ulcers. It's good. It's, oh yeah. Okay. So that must be the book then. And I just have it phrased in my head wrong.

I have the book somewhere, but, yeah. Yeah. But there's, there's actually, there's actually some evidence to. Like the fatigue with the calf muscles with running would influence other muscles of the body too. So it's like there's actually is a performance, literal performance, you know, thing to consider there.

Why maybe it wouldn't be a good idea. But the other thing is your perception of your fatigue level will increase your perception of effort. And then when your perception of effort goes up, your actual central motor command will go down. So if people go into a climbing session, fatigued from another, They're still gonna get a suboptimal outcome because their effort feels really high.

But that effort does not equate to your actual output of the body, either power or force. , right. So yeah, there's good, good science behind that. Exactly. So about that stress bucket, like everything goes into that stress bucket and depending upon how high it's filled, is going to be a pretty good correlative determinant of your performance.

Um, not to talk on running. Probably one last thought on running is that I think it relates back to the eccentrics and the stretching fatigue that we've talked about a little bit even within the fingers. A common thing I see too is recovery runs where running. If you're hitting the ground with your body weight, there's no recovery going on there and you're just doing high speedy centrics, which we know to have a higher fatigue and a different fatigue.

And again, what Tyler said, it fuels back to that. And we're just really draining ourselves, especially if our goal is do well climbing. If your goal is do well climbing, we have to be attentive and underst. What we're doing throughout the other 23 hours of the day and the six days of the week that it's supplementing climbing well and not taking away from climbing Well, yeah.

I think the only recovery that would be necessary would be maybe like something as a, maybe even a brisk walk up a hill just to get your heart rate pumping and then taking a nap. Like the only, you know, people talk about recovery climbing too. You know, it's just like an anxious way of like being on the wall and moving around, but, It's not good evidence to support that that's not fatiguing, because it's really hard to not do a lot of it.

Or really, that would be a good time to use like a cryotherapy chamber, use icing, you know, if people wanted to do like stretching, that would be an okay. Time to do stretching would be in season after, uh, uh, training intervention. But the majority of the things we're doing should be sleeping and recovering, like literally not, not loading the.

Yeah. It's not sexy, but it works. Yeah. I feel like everyone, I don't know. Sleeping is sexy. . Yeah. Great. Depends what kinda what you're dreaming about, you know? Yeah. Oh, Jack said I heard that . Sorry, Jack. I heard that if your mom asked it was your dad. Your dad told you Dad definitely was. That's. Yeah, I feel like people just get bored that they're like in season when they're not climbing because they're like, I have all this time on my hands.

I should be doing stuff. Like I was doing all this other things leading up to it, and then they're like kind of just restless. But that's, that's good. Yep. So that kind of leads, uh, perhaps into maybe some examples of the other things that we can be doing. In the season that besides like sleeping and resting, um, I think is paying attention to the volume of things you're doing, but also the contraction type.

So some concentric only things, some lower loaded and high velocity based things. Things that are gonna keep the recruitment high, but also fatigue low. Probably a good idea to help, again, support you going outside and feeling fresh while you're. I would say only if people have been doing those too.

Gotcha. If you haven't been doing those, don't include those. Don't like introduce new stress. Don't hear this and say, oh, I'm in season. I better start doing some high velocity bench press. Like if you haven't been doing that, that's a really bad idea. Like I haven't been doing polling movements really. And I shot a video for my account doing, um, the, some high volume powertrain as a pull up example.

And I was so wrecked the day and two after, cuz I have not been doing that movement. But the bench pressing one was no different. So. People will see different levels of fatigue with new types of exercise in season, which is a really bad application of what to do. You'd be better off not doing anything and just going and trying hard outside.

Gotcha. Yeah. Thanks. And then just knowing that knowledge for the next season, once you're out of season to then. Kind of start the prep, that you're gonna go back into strength training and then you're gonna slowly get faster. And that's maybe if they need those movements, maybe they don't need those movements as much.

Like I don't train pole movements cuz I don't need a lot of pole strength where. I think for myself, the compression strength is probably more important for me than training my pole strength. Hence why I've not really done that. So it's, the other idea I think that people maybe overvalue is that we all need to do certain movement patterns.

And these movement patterns are really specific and they're gonna transfer to our sport. But that's also very confusing. And you know, the, the multi-joint training methodology is also a bit misguided because people assume that. Looks more like a sport. It is more like a sport. It will transfer more to a sport, but in a lot of cases those movements are less recruitment because they're complicated.

So for people that don't have a lot of, you know, non climbing training experience, introducing new movements too close to the season would inhibit their performance. And I see that a lot with people as well. Yeah, interesting. Sure. What kind of exercises maybe in specific would be, um, places for the listeners to start?

Get that practice or maybe even the seasonal moment, when can we start introducing some new exercises? That way we can be prepared almost like what Gabe said for the next in season. That way we have these things, uh, and we don't get as many detrimental effects from doing the mid season. Probably just after the season.

You know, use your video. On your phone and take videos of yourself climbing at your limit on projects. See your body positioning. See your flexibility, see your shoulder strength, your power output, like, and use those as a measure or as a testing metric to define or help guide decision making on what you would do or could do with it.

And then, Maybe make decisions after the season for implementing those things. You know, cuz if it's a new movement for an athlete that's not familiar with it, most of the benefits are gonna be coordination anyways. And so there's no reason to get coordinated with a deadlift in season if you've never done a deadlift.

That's a bad application, I would say. But if you feel like you are, your hip extension and your ability to control a tension in the back isn't great, then maybe you do that, you know, after the season. But, . I think that's something that is really commonly done is people try and include new things in season cuz they see some cool video and that would be bad for performance on the whole.

Gotcha. So in season, get off of reels and TikTok. In season challenges are bollocks. , yeah. For sure. So done a lock off? Yeah. Uh, well I was gonna say it. So pretty much like iso, like just isometric, just do maintaining. Would be the best in season just to keep recruitment If your season's a couple months long, like if you're, if we're planning to go two or three like months here until end of, uh, November, December, what, what maintaining exercises should we kind of be doing?

Just some recruitment pools here and there, and then the rest of it just be on wall and rock climbing. Yeah, I would say if it was for fingers, something recruitment would be good. If it was for upper body pulse strength, some horizontal pulling isometrics would be good pressing. I would do, I mean, if people, I would do velocity training if people are familiar with the movements, but if they're not, then I would use isometrics because they're not as much of a skill.

Yeah. You know, they're, they're more simple. There's less, like, of a coordination component. There's less of a antagonist like inhibition component. So there's, they're just more accessible for people to use in season if they're not familiar with the movements. But for in season clients that have, or athletes that are familiar with the movements than they want to be all power for the duration of it, you know?

Um, so let's talk about.  other can other parts of the in-season training, maybe like the warmup section. Are there other ways to look at warming up both while you're training and maybe outside? Is that gonna change for us in-season versus others? Uh, I would say for.  anytime a, a trained athlete's looking to access a lot of muscle fibers, they certainly can do that in season with more speed.

And so for fingers, I usually have people do a high rate finger boarding loads, so either on the flash board or on the rock outside. Just engage the board more quickly. Every rep. And then with polling training, it's all like power pulling, pushing from the feet and for pressing, it's all off a rock or off a box.

You know, power pushups to a standing position and any lower extremity stuff, it's jumping, you know? And there's not really a whole lot of reason, especially if people are hiking to a boulder or hiking to a crag. There's not a lot of reason to do a bunch. Slow intensity or moderate intensity, slow movements because the whole point of, you know, um, performing efficiently as being powerful and I'm gonna get powerful and access to those motor units easier if I move faster, because that's the job of those muscle fibers, is they naturally are fast.

And so we really wanna bank on that before we get on the wall. Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. The video you posted about jumping on the Rock, maybe it was in your portal or the live account, but I was literally doing the same thing right next to the boulder I was working on yesterday. There was like this peak and it's nice and slopey where I would just jump up, catch stick, jump up, catch stick, and it was really good warm up.

Prep for this. Drawn out Slappy, Sloper move I had to do, which Gabe then told me I probably didn't have to do, but it's okay. We'll, , oh, you worked around it? Yeah. . I was, I was trying to make the bigger move. Like it, it worked in isolation, but then Gabe was like, whoa, if you just da da da. I was like, goddammit, you're right.

That's good though. That's, I, that's important like, . A lot of times we, I find myself doing that, wasting my time being inefficient by trying to strength through something where if you have another outside pair of eyes, you're like, try this. You're like, oh my God. That made so much sense. . Yeah. Every time, well, I was feeling like it was on the Alzheimer's Boulder where I got really hyper focused on the foot around, and I just couldn't do the move.

So I was like, screw this foot, I'm just gonna jump for the edge. And I was like, oh, well now it works every time. But then it was this upper section that I then kept the high power, skipped the. Idea going and then that was my, where my inefficiency, uh, was kicking me off the rock. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I just got sucked into the same thing where I think, I think I'm good enough to always just feel out the correction.

But sometimes you just need to actually see the correction. And so I put in 15 attempts and just kept being like, oh, it's close. It's close. And then decided, I got frustrated, put on the camera for one, saw the error in like a second, and made the adjustment and then fired off the move. And so it was kind of like, yeah, sometimes you can think you're gonna feel your way through the movement, but like you just need to see it or So film yourself or get the outside's perspective if you don't.

Somebody who can identify that error, you know? And so like the people I was climbing with, they didn't, they couldn't see it and stuff and that's fine, but I knew I could see it if I filmed it. And so once I filmed it, it was a, it was a pretty immediate correction and I wasted, you know, 15 temps. But, um, you know, ne next time it should be pretty easy.

Cuz then I was able to like, lock it in. I was just tired to complete the rest of the climb. I think, I think that works in kind of what we're talking about where people. Getting away from strength training is important in season because it's obviously not, not the same skill that we're gonna be using in season, but it kind of gets people away from thinking that they just have to pull so hard or push so hard, or da da da so hard.

You know? Or like in season it's you wanna like, that's when your technical skills need to be. Absolutely the priority and sagging into your fingers and hanging straight arm and putting more weight in your toes and not overly relying on this, you know, like let's say active, like, you know, force production.

It's like you wanna like let the, let all of those, your savings be spent and use your time really efficiently in season, you know? And that doesn't require you. Have a huge amount of muscular force. Most of the time, most the time when people send something, it's super smooth and they're like, what the fuck?

I do that. Why can't I do that again? It's like, you know, we want the natural, natural smoothness to happen. Yeah, I feel like I see more people film their strength training sessions than they do their actual climbing sessions. , like, you know, go like, geez, guys, like, flip that around. You know, like there's sometimes, uh, a lot more skilled to be learned and to identify than to like, make sure that you stood up in a straight line for sure.

Um, yeah, I'd rather not see a pinky mono lever ever again. I just see people climbing on rocks. , good lord. But also why I probably film all my things is less for the likes and more for gives feedback. So , I be Gabe into commenting on my stuff all the time. Come on. , I think, I think anyone's that's, I think anyone's, that's climbed a lot and bolded a lot and like, Gotten a sense of how subtle the positions really can be and how important they are.

Like the filming is just so valuable just to like see, oh, a foot a couple, you know, inches above and to the right is like maybe a better choice than the one below. And you can't really, you can try and feel that, but we're so obsessed with like this effort and we put so. Priority and emphasis into trying hard, oh, I gotta try harder.

Like, that's one of the downsides of strength training I think is people just think that their try hard is enough to continually excel at a sport when it absolutely is not. You need to, we need to be more thoughtful about it. And I think like the stubbornness of like almost their ego where they're, they'll try to feel out.

A move, but they have a different fatigue level than they did the last attempt. And so then they get frustrated because they're like, well, you know, like you put in more power. Like if you hooked them up to the velocity there, you'd probably be like, oh, you moved faster on that last attempt. Now you're actively tired, but you're frustrated because you're trying to feel something that you just can't tap into because you're tired.

And so, and so I think that's always interesting of, um, , kind of like what I was saying with like filming it and repeating it, but I think sometimes what people need to do is, uh, like I'm really good at remembering beta. Like if I send it one time, like I can come back to it 10 years later and probably tell you the move and like the order.

But I know a lot of people aren't good about that. . And so I think like when you're end with your session like, and you had your high point like filming and just like the boulder and pointing out where you stood and the sensations you had and like what led to that high point is a good thing for you to just tap into the next time you come back to that boulder and repeat it so you're not starting over every time that you're kinda like, oh, okay, here's where I left off.

And you can kind of like you knew your beta.  like dialed in. Exactly. And you're not always changing it again. Um, so just like simple strategies like that I think can happen with the camera as well. Um, just like repeat your own beta and, and what the last sensation was. Um, pretty valuable. At what point?

Question for both of you guys. Did you become like fully comfortable filming yourself both in the gym and outside? Because I've seen this on like social media and three other coaches conversations about almost like a stigma behind the person with the phone at the gym, or the person with the phone at the crag.

But clearly there's a ton of value when it comes to climbing better by doing the whole phone thing. So when did you guys become comfortable and. . I always train by myself. So . Yeah, I was just gonna say, I was like, never had that. Interesting. Well, me and my friends, you know, I, I'm, I don't know, I'm used to trad climbing and so when we go trad climbing, if we take pictures or photos, it's just like you and another person.

So it's never been mm-hmm. . I very rarely climb around groups of people at a boulder, cuz I climb in the morning and no one's out really. You know, so I've, I very rarely have that problem. But in the gym I don't, I'm not really, I don't really care, but I don't climb there much. So for me it's. Never really a problem.

Okay. Yeah, I would be similar to that. Where I think in the gym session, I don't tend to care that much. If I am sending per se, like most of the time I'm trying to learn something and like doing a skill session or just getting like some kind of adaptation, but like sending a gym problem. Isn't normally up on my priority list, and so I probably am not filming it too much unless it has some kind of unique move that I just like don't understand.

Mm-hmm. . If that's the case, then I actually don't really care to just ask somebody around me, whether it's in my partner or not. K. Hey, can you just film this for a second? But I don't really care if I'm not trying to go for Send Foot yet. I'm trying to look at Right. Just that section. And so, I mean, I would say I'm, I'm not comfortable having somebody film me for like a send footage because I feel like it adds pressure on myself that I don't want like somebody like, Hey, like, hey, could I hold you here for a couple minutes so you can film me Sending something like, I mean, you, I don't think I have any send footage.

I usually do better when I send on the video. I probably, like do, I, I tend to actually do pretty well climbing in front of others, but I just don't ask it because I feel like I'm, I don't know. I just don't do it. Like I, my friends try to film me and take photos of me to like, give me the footage, but like, it's never something I'm gonna ask for.

I just never, I usually travel with a trip. Just, and just like set it up and then just leave it up and you know, like, then you just don't have to worry about it. It's just like in the background. You just get to climb with it. Yeah. I think it's a great thing to have. Um, I just.  don't always do it as much as I probably should, honestly.

So if there's any tripod sponsors out there, , I usually break a cheap tripod twice a year all the time. Tripods aren't garbage these days. I dunno what the tripod economy is or what plastic is coming from, but it's garbage. I'm gonna drop mine. I beat it up, but it's usually really cheap too. Yeah, yeah. Like I bring stick clips like crazy for some reason.

I've gotta do like three stick clips lately and I'm like, I'm not even. It's that big of a sport climber right now, but my stick lips are dying like crazy and so that's great. Also, you can get some really cool footage. You put the phone on the stick clip, you can just follow it up, climb. You get those overhead shots, inspect those holds easy

Yeah. This got a drone, like little drone brush for . Yeah, exactly. It's quieter than a drone. All right, just a little aside. I was always curious about that. Cause I feel like there's literally a lot of value, but I know. My perspective sometimes when you go into a gym and you're filming as a coach, I always saw it through perspective.

Forget who I learned this from, but, um, like I'm there filming to try and help people not to be like selfish and be the person filming in there. So if there's anyone listening to this is there's gotta be a few people where you're kind of like tentative to film yourself because you don't wanna seem like that person.

Just do it. Like know that it's helping you become a better climber. And if you're a coach, it's helping you. Coach more people to then help them climb better. So there's all positive value there. Um, just a little aside there. Um, okay, so bringing it back, that would get a little distracted from power training.

And in season two, should we film ourselves on video or not?  Um, , so to sum so far in season and the goal is to get better at climbing, so priority number one should probably be.  and really focusing on the skills and tactics and all the things that go into getting on the physical rock and doing it as often as possible.

Anything around that should be supplemental to keeping yourself fresh, healthy, and having high energy when you're outside. So for those who are trained and have experienced training, that means was in exercises that are supplementing the climbing specifics that are low fatigue and that are keeping.

Recruitment and greasing the groove there, but done so under management of volume. And for those who don't have a training history are pretty new to the weight room, perhaps it's saving that for the off season. Just focus on climbing, focus on not running marathons while you're trying to climb, and then introduce those new movements and those strength movements in the off season so that you're more prepared to do them in season.

Next season. I would say people could. Video, well could replace their random strength training movement, or what they would call a strength training movement with videoing themselves on the climbing wall. That would be a way better intervention than it would be some random exercise. Yeah. You know, like just as a simple like statement.

Filming yourself and having someone give you some feedback on the climbing movement and skill would be much more valuable than introducing new exercise in season or trying to like massively increase your strength or your capacity or whatever. Those are bad, that's a bad time. If you don't have capacity or strength in season, you, you done messed up in your training plan, like that's not the time to get it.

Gotcha. Yeah, I was gonna say pretty much the same thing. Just spend time doing technical training and not like, , you know, you, you don't always have to go with strength training or, or if you're done power of days, three times a week, like make sure that you're doing some just skill sessions and they can be just as short duration.

But most of the time people know why they're falling on their projects and it's a skill that they can go hone in. Hmm. So I think there might be a sport climber or two listen to this saying, well, what about endurance? , is there any reason for us to do endurance in season? Is there any maintenance of endurance type stuff or any value there?

Depends I would say on the athlete's goals and their training history and how much they're pushing themselves, what their goals are for the season. The goals are to climb a new red point grade. You should be resting and recovering and just going and trying as hard as you can on that, and whatever tactics you use, maybe bolt to bolt, first half, second half, three quarters, one quarter, you know, like breaking the problem down.

But doing a bunch of volume in season is not going to give you. Any sort of advantage because every time you do that, when you go back to the crag, you're gonna be in a deficit in, in terms of energy. So you would be much better off between outdoor sessions, doing a float tank and visualizing the project, you know, and like actually resting and recovering and.

Being efficient in your strategy and your mental tactics than you would like trying to zap a bunch of endurance into your system. Cool. Maybe they could do some limit bouldering during the week. Like I've had clients where they can go out and project on the weekend two days, and they're like, what do I do midweek?

it sure as hell is not of capacity session. It's like do some limit bouldering. Keep your power up. You know, have like a short limit bouldering session on a Tuesday for 60 minutes. Then do that maybe on a Thursday for 60 minutes. For someone that has a training age that shouldn't be hard to recover from, but that should give them more of an advantage to their projecting on the weekend on a rope.

Then it would be having, doing a four by four midweek. That would be a bad strategy. Is there?  any cap on the amount of weeks that you can extend an in season phase. And perhaps, ideally, maybe the answer's like, you know, it depends, but, um, can you train power too long or can you be in season too long? Is there any nuance there?

Or if your season is one week or if it's three months, we just continue these in-season training principles through those do. I, I would say there's definitely a time limit on performance that I think people you like keep your goals, you know, the goal. Like, like don't just once you send something, you know, keep extending the next and the next and the next.

Because I think you can keep extending your season that way too. Where like if the weather window in your area, you tend to know. So like in Minnesota, we have a pretty short season in, in like the fall. Um, so I. Likely I'm not gonna be climbing, you know, to into December. Um, it'll probably come too much snow and, and I can probably get out in Boulder a couple times here and there on nice weekends.

But like, I'm not going to continue to stay in a performance stage just for those extra a couple weekends. So I think knowing that I'm getting out regular, like if I can stay out often where I'm doing my two to three days a week, whatever the case. Once that falls down to one every other week or something, I'm out of season and I should probably start a new intervention.

Yeah. I, I like that idea. I think the, the desire or the attempt to push it for longer than, than we should is everyone that's been climbing along enough knows that they do that and that happens, and that, in my opinion, is why people get hurt more than. But you're, you're, you know, you'll know when your season's over, like even for bouldering in a season, at some point you're gonna be sick of walking to the boulders and carrying your paths and following your ass.

Like you're gonna get sick of doing it and your performance will go down. So at some point, and this, I always had my thought about this when I was in college and we would ski, like the skiing is so good in Utah and it's so accessible. How many goddamn powder runs do you need to do until you're like satisfied?

Like, are you ever satisfied because it's all so similar. At some point you just gotta be like, I am satisfied. I will go home right now and then I can like recover. Cuz all of that work is certainly has consequences on other parts of your life. So I usually tell people if you're gonna try and extend a season like.

That's when I would switch a training design, maybe do more of a non-linear phase, but couple months is pretty long, I think for a training phase, you know, like, yeah, two months I would say is kind of the cap for most people. I would say the people who struggle with it the most are actually people who finally break the grade barrier that they've been working on, and they're just riding that high for so long that they just are too afraid to go down again.

And so they're like, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going. And like the next one. The next one you. No, like it's okay to have a performance drop, like your grade might go back down and then you're gonna recycle it and then you're gonna come back up. But you still acquired those skills. It's just like you can't keep riding that high for that long cuz you're gonna get, you're gonna get hurt unless, unless you do a recovery run between  Recovery.

Yeah. Recovery marathon, you know, just here and there.  the key to extending your performance phase. . Yeah. You hear it her first. Followed by some hard arching recovery donut lock offs, . Oh, then any, uh, other information you wanna include in this thorough podcast screening? I mean, maybe the, and I can't recall if we talked to me, you talked about it.

I talked about it earlier today, but at some point, the volume of your performance phase will reduce your power. . And you know, with a lot of training volume, whether that's a lot of bouldering volume or a lot of sport climbing, especially a lot of sport climbing volume, you'll start to get more fiber shifts to where your motor units that are big and strong, they will be really efficient and more aerobic, which is gonna make them less powerful.

And so, you know, if we're in season and we have the ability to measure like your power,  at a given load, at some point your power output's gonna drop. And if you're using some sort of testing metric to quantify that all the time, when that starts to drop at a given load and it's maybe into your season and you're not sending anymore, maybe that's a red flag where you gotta back off.

You know? Cuz eventually you will lose power if you try and extend your season too long, just based on the sheer volume of the sport. You know? Because when we get out, when we can, we like get out when we can. Sometimes that's. Twice a week. Sometimes it's three days in a row, you know? And I usually tell people when the season's good, you gotta go hard, you know?

And try for it, you know, and take those risks. But at some point it's gonna catch up. Gotcha. No, that's good to know that. That's interesting. That makes a lot of sense. . Yeah. I feel like that's the hard part with like going on, uh, like outdoor trips during season two, that like you're somewhere for a week and you haven't probably trained every day, you know, of a week in your whole year so far.

And then you're gonna go hard because every day you're excited to be at the boulders and stuff like that. That like including the rest days and also just like,  limiting your volume. So you have a lot more intention that like, yeah, you might climb each one of those days, but it doesn't mean you have to go hard for eight hours each one of those days.

Like give a couple attempts here and there and recover when you can. Happens every time we would go down, we have like little three day trips to a new, and we're like, all right guys, this is the moment. This is the year. We're actually gonna take it easy on day one.  bunch of five eights. Bunch of five nines.

We're just gonna see the rock. And we're like, oh, it's a cool five 12, let's try it and burn bolt to bolt die. Come. I can't see my skin. And we have two more days left. And you're like, we did it wrong. So we get it wrong. Easy to be psyched. . I feel like if you repeated the area, like if you know what you were going to go do and like you've been there before then day one can be kind of worth it because you're high energy and you're psyched and you can probably just go after it.

And if that was the goal, but if your goal is to sample, you know, it's kind of like, that's the other thing is I think a lot of people go into trips not knowing what they want to achieve during that trip. Like, am I here to run all the classics or am I here to do. One or two climbs and just try really hard.

Mm-hmm. . And so, I mean, the classics is so fun. If you're brand new to an area and it's like you're gonna climb more, but you don't necessarily have to climb more, you know, like sometimes it's better just to go there and do the one or two lines that really are hard and cool and you get multiple days to work it out.

Right? So go. You gotta go to the buffet often. Yeah. . Because if you go to the buffet, once you, you, you do it lot, you just go crazy. But if you go a lot, then you just like get to enjoy the things that you like, but then you leave when you're not stuffed and sick. Totally. So yeah, learn for lessons. Oh, unless it's Tutorings Biscuit World.

Oh, who you guys been to? The West Virginia? Yeah. Uhuh, no tutors. I have a long time ago though. Uh, tutor's Biscuit World. Every time I go, I need to live there. It's so good. It's like the, I need to live there. It's like the chick, it's like the Chick-fil-A Breakfast of the South, but it's, oh God. It's so good.

That, that sounds good. I haven't been there in a year, so sad. It's, I like biscuits, . That's a reason to go. All right. That's awesome. Any final tidbits for the power? Training. I think that was very thorough. We covered a lot of like warmup to exercises, to protocol, to principal running. We expanded our podcast horizon, actually smart and not dumb, but they just suffer from, you know, or not ulcers, Jack's nicknames.

Jack's got something to say.

Oh, don't be scared. What do you get to say,

The chicken strips. What you said macaroni with the chicken strips.

I thought you said the chicken shits. I'm like what? He said what? There you go. That'll be the intro of macaroni with the chicken strips, the strips. I can like plug the little TikTok original thing. Have him there. Getting slowly better at my, my real thing. Alrighty. Cool. And that's a wrap on the in-season training conversation.

The biggest takeaway I think makes a lot of sense is that the goal is to get outside and do well. That means climbing outside, focusing on skills, tactics, mindset, and being fresh while you're outside and realizing that in season is not a good time to make up for lost time by trying to force a bunch of strength and endurance into the sessions.

This is a maintenance mode. Grease the groove, be smart, and get outside and climb. Thank you again so much for your support for listening to this episode. And remember, we've got some awesome educational services coming up soon in Tyler's course, my mobility course, and our live course in Philadelphia at TFAs Bouldering Lounge.

Please reach out to any of us at any time and remember, visit camp four human performance.com for all of your rock climbing, performance, rehabilitation, and training needs. We'll look at you next time.