About my project

Climb 5.13 – The project.

Rock climb better. Thats my goal. This blog is designed to track my progress as I test and evaluate different training methods for improving rock climbing ability. My goal is to climb 5.13. (See why I chose 5.13 as my goal) I have done much research on this topic and there is quite a bit of information out there on how to train to climb better. But like anything, its hard to tell what works and who dose not. With only a few real studies done, most of the info I found was in various books or on message boards. Much of this information was very helpful, but a lot of it is opinion. And the training ideas and regimens of professional, full time climbers, while helpful, dose not really apply to a 31 year old working father who isn’t climbing every day. So with that said, I wanted to document what training works. Using my training ethic and all the info out there, specifically training methods from the amazing blog Power Company Climbing and The Ryan Paleo Diet, I am going to try out different training methods and develop a training plan that will be more realistic to us non-professional, recreational rock climbers. By posting my progress for you to read, I hope that my training project will help give others ideas on what might work for them and shed some light on stuff that works for average climbers like me.

As the months go by, I will take selected methods and apply them to a training regime and keep track of my progress via this blog. I will use the following benchmarks to track my progress and update them periodically:

Hardest all time sport climb (top rope)- indoors and outdoors

Hardest all time sport climb (on lead) – indoors and outdoors

Onsight level – indoors and outdoors

Redpoint level – indoors and out doors

Hardest trad climb

Hardest boulder problem

I will use the blog to post my current training plan and methods, but will mostly follow the most popular methods such as Periodization, Power (Hypertrophy), Endurance, ARC training, Hangboarding, bouldering, etc… Essentially I will be a Guinea Pig for what is already out there. Lets see what happens!