In this episode, Coach Alex Stiger talks about her experience being coached by Alex Puccio and Robin O’Leary (ROAP) for the past 6 months and what it’s done for her climbing. She started board climbing 2 grades harder and has improved her outdoor climbing experience as well because of the coaching she received. Alex strongly believes in the benefits of being coached and talks a little bit about being coached for the video game StarCraft as well.

She’s currently offering a 6-month coaching package for 15 new clients and she talks about what it’s like working with her at the end of the episode.

Episode Details

Collin McGee (@liftsmcgee) is a personal trainer and coach at C4HP with Dr. Tyler Nelson. He is also a personal trainer and coach to athletes of all sports, ages, and abilities and he has a firm grasp on how to become a stronger, better athlete no matter what your objectives are. In this episode he breaks down the basics of training and how to get better at climbing even if you have a busy schedule. Here’s what he covers:

Doug Hartman is a 46-year-old ER doctor from Oakland, CA who is married with 2 kids. He’s a busy guy, but he figured out how to optimize his training and climbing in order to send his first 5.13a at the age of 46. He’s going to tell you the main things he learned from podcasts and coaches that helped him the most, and a little bit of advice about how to be a good spouse and parent, even when you’re a passionate climber. The two main things Doug changed about his climbing were:

He wrote up an entire description of everything he changed and how he trains so you can peruse it for yourself.

>See Doug’s Training Plan 

In the beginning of the episode I asked for suggestions for guests to talk about their personal experience with perimenopause/menopause and clinicians who work with people going through menopause/perimenopause. I want to educate climbers about this topic because it’s super important and impactful, and doctors are not doing a good enough job of educating us. Please email me at [email protected] with your suggestions! I’d prefer to have people on who are also climbers.

This interview with Jeff Rotkoff is about how he used simple information from the TrainingBeta Podcast to improve his climbing. Jeff is a 46-year-old climber from Austin, Texas, who has a full-time job and 13-year-old twins. So he’s a busy guy. He started climbing seriously about 9 years ago and started making these changes a few years ago.

He learned one nutrition tip from me and one weightlifting tip from Matt from this podcast and was able to start climbing harder, doing more in his sessions, and feeling more resilient to injury. Listen up to hear exactly what he changed and how it affected his climbing. You can find Jeff on Instagram @rotkoff.

Coach Matt Pincus recently got back from a 7-week trip to Margalef, Spain, where he intended to get into projecting mode and climb 5.14. It turns out that the weather was rainy and he didn’t reach that goal, but he came away from the trip with some insights about his own climbing and some wisdom for the rest of us. Matt is taking a few new clients right now if you’re interested in working with him on your own climbing training. You can find his services here.

More Details:

I asked Dr. Tyler Nelson to come back on the show to talk about some new research about finger strength-to-weight ratio and climbing performance. In other words, how much does all that finger training really affect how hard you climb? He goes over some studies done on the topic and we talk about the point at which people see diminishing returns and how (if at all) training your fingers contributes, or is correlated, to injuries.

I recently asked my audience to tell me about their climbing training success stories so I could present them on the podcast, and I got some good ones! This story from Lea Cleary stood out to me and I think you're going to love it.

Lea is a 40-year-old woman from Boston who's been climbing for 15 years. She felt like she'd plateaued due to fear and performance anxiety. While she'd tried our Performance Route Training Program and made strength gains, she still felt very held back by her performance anxiety. 

Then she started working with Coach Alex Stiger and while they continued working on her strength training and climbing technique, they really worked on the mental aspects of climbing. When she started working with Alex, the hardest sport climb she'd sent outside was one 5.10a, and after about 3 months of work together, she surprised herself by sending a 5.12a ("Fear and Loathing" in Red Rocks) in just 4 tries! 

Since then she's been regularly sending 5.11's in the gym and feels way less performance anxiety and fear while climbing. She's able to regularly get herself into a flow state while climbing and just enjoy the process instead of being all revved up about performing well. 

In this episode, we talk about what she and Alex did together to help her change her mindset, some tools they used, how she stays in the moment while climbing, and what helped her most with performance anxiety. 

I hope this episode gives you some motivation and confidence that you, too, can overcome plateaus in your climbing with a little intentional work! 

Madeleine Crane is a Sport Psychologist from Austria who runs www.climbingpsychology.com. In this episode we discussed the mental and emotional struggles that many people encounter while projecting climbs. Hopefully this discussion will help you bring awareness to your own mental experience and give you some tools to deal with fear of failure, negative comparison to others, and knowing when to call it quits on a project.

Madeleine is offering a 30% discount on her mental skills training programs at unblocd.com using the code “trainingbeta” at checkout.

Alex Bridgewater is a Sport Psychologist who works with climbers and other athletes to help them be the best person they can be. That work carries over into their sport to make them perform well and have a great time doing it. He uses mindfulness, acceptance, and commitment theory as part of his practice, and in this episode we dive into what that means.

Alex is also a climbing coach at ClimbStrong.com and has been for about 7 years. He recently finished his Master’s degree in Sport and Performance Psychology and now has a consulting business at www.InnerSourcePerformancePsychology.com, where you can work with him from anywhere in the world.

TrainingBeta was started in 2012 to provide people with all kinds of resources about training for climbing. We offer expert advice on how to get stronger, braver, and more skillful in your climbing with these offerings:

We are here to help you with your climbing training needs! You can always email us at [email protected] if you have any questions about what program or service is right for you.

Steve Bechtel is one of the OG big daddies of climbing training. He founded and runs climbstrong.com where he has 19 coaches helping climbers all over the world get better at their sport. He’s written countless books, a ton of online climbing training programs for climbstrong, he’s hosted training seminars around the US (that I had the pleasure of teaching at), and is an accomplished 5.14 climber himself.

He was my 7th guest on the TrainingBeta Podcast back in 2014, and I’ve had him on many more times after that (see below for the list). We decided it would be fun to catch up on how things have changed in the climbing world and how his philosophies have evolved in the decade since we started collaborating.