This is a recorded version of my two-day clinic discussing strength and conditioning principles and their application to the climbing athlete. The goal is to equip each participant (coach or athlete) with knowledge on how to use these principles to better program for themselves or their clients. This course is 8-hours of material and has been certified for CEU’s through both the NSCA and NASM.

The course is broken down into 4 sections. Each has their own video recording(s) and supplemental notes for you to review and study.

Part 1: The basics of exercise physiology. What are muscle fibre types and how are they different? What is the difference between your muscles and their connective tissue? Why do we care about the sliding filament theory of contraction and how we use energy? How to consider mechanical leverage at specific joints of the body, and muscle bio-energetics. These are a few of the important topics of this section.

Part 2: Demands, Needs, and Testing. This section breaks down how to think about the physiologic demands of our sport (demands analysis). The goal is to teach you to analyze the tasks (times under tension, move number, wall pitch, velocity etc.) of climbing. This allows the coach to be more specific with testing, and thus identify the needs of the individual. This section is all about how we can better assess climbers.

Part 3: Training methodology. There are many methods used to train athletes. This section is designed to teach coaches the many options for training strength, power, and capacity. We also dive into the theories of periodization and how we can track and manipulate performance with high-tech equipment (velocity based training).

Part 4: Practical applications. This section is designed to tie it all together. We go through video examples demonstrating the different strength qualities for pulling, pressing, extending the hips etc. In addition to the videos there are basic programming examples for coaches to learn about “phases” to take their athletes through. Towards the end there is some information on training the shoulder and also some slides on diet types from the international sporting community.

This course is dense to say the least. It’s all about exposing the participant to the many topics of exercise science. There’s a lot to learn and I hope to expose you to as many of those ideas as I can in this course. With the exception of a few “prescriptions” that I use, this course is all about teaching principles (the ingredients). It is the job of the coach to put them together in a specific order for their individual athlete (the art).

Due to the length and density of this course the files are saved on my google drive. Once you purchase the course you will get an email with access to the recordings and material. You will have that indefinitely, so don’t worry about learning it all in one sitting. This is the equivalent of a multiple semesters of a college course. It will take some time to digest.