Why do you train? What is the purpose of your training? What are your goals? Every time you exercise, you are wiring your body to do those movements. Every movement should have a purpose, and should be helping you on your path to your goal. This isn’t just important for your training and keeping it specific, but also for motivation and seeing progress. This doesn’t mean that you should be inside all the time. If your goal is to climb that...

Okay, that was easy, now where…? And there you are again, facing that same problem or crux that’s been bugging you for the last few climbing sessions. And you hang. And you hold. Crap. There. No, Here. Maybe. Ok, wait. Ahhh, burning. I got this. AHHHHH. No I don’t. And you let go, falling just short. Again. Standing feet flat, you look up at that last hold, pondering. Analyzing. You know it’s do-able, Johnny (or insert any of your...

After a long day of climbing, and your chest muscles and upper back are stiff, you can use this pose to relax and open up, restoring the muscles to resting length. Some days I would say this is my very favorite pose.*  I do it just about every day, sometimes twice.  When I’m sad, stressed, or generally less than optimistic, my mood is instantly lifted.  I once heard a teach say that when you’re feeling guarded your body closes in around...

The new year is always a great time to reassess your life. When I used to teach lecture classes on fitness and health at Metropolitan State University of Denver, the students first project was to assess their lives on a “Wellness Wheel.” The goal is to view the essential categories of life on paper. This way one can see where to add more focus, or where to back off some. I encourage you to do the same this year, so that you can be more...

We are very accustomed to a large variety of hand-holds, taped routes, and a forum for giving an opinion on the latest sandbag. That world did not always exist, of course. In 1987 when we were starting the first rock gym in the country there were no such things as hand-holds.  We had to use rocks brought in from our buddies that they picked up on their latest climbing trip. Hand-holds didn’t come about until late ’88. Metolius was the only...