Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

best—not only in terms of physical ability but in the broader context of per-formance, Gill being the epitome of performance excellence in virtually all his pursuits.

     
    One of the first climbers to train with weighted pull-ups, John Bachar, could pull up with nearly 140 pounds hanging from his waist! Here he trains with a “light” fifty pounds circa 1985. PHIL BARD
     

    From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, the worldwide growth of technical rock climbing and the first climbing competitions produced an unprecedented exchange of ideas and innovations among European, Russian and Caucasian, and American climbers. In Yosemite’s Camp 4; Boulder, Colorado; and the Shawangunks of New York, small groups trained and free climbed with increasing fervor, as energetic newcomers such as John Bachar, Kevin Bein, Jim Collins, Christian Griffith, Lynn Hill, Jim Holloway, John Long, Ron Kauk, Todd Skinner, Tobin Sorenson, Alan Watts, Tony Yaniro, and others arrived on the scene. Similarly, small groups of energetic climbers began to train in England, France, Italy, and Germany. The boulders of Fontainebleau and the ubiquitous limestone crags of the region became the proving grounds for first “sport climbers” in the early 1980s. The hard-training European climbers of the early sport-climbing era were Brits Ron Fawcett, Jerry Moffat, and Ben Moon; French icons Jibé Tribout, Antoine LeMénestral, and Patrick Edlinger; Italian’s Roberto Bossi and Heinz Mariacher; and the powerful Germans Kurt Albert and Wolfgang Güllich.

     
    The author (circa 1986) on his version of the “death board,” a training tool used by a handful of climbers in the pre-climbing-gym era. HÖRST COLLECTION
     

    In the United States no technique or aesthetic had a bigger impact on the rapid development of extreme free climbing then the import of sport-climbing tactics from Europe. Rappel-bolted routes eliminated the psychological stress and risks associated with marginal protection, and through liberal use of hangdogging, the practitioner could safely work extreme sequences and thus bring Gill-level difficulty (5.13 moves) to roped climbing. At about this time, articles on physical performance and training began to appear in American climbing magazines; academic studies, too, began to proliferate, although initially focused on the subject of injuries specific to rock climbers. Strength-training techniques remained relatively unsophisticated, although a few key innovations such as the Bachar Ladder and fingerboard jacked generic finger and pull-power training up to a higher level of intensity and specificity.
    In Europe’s sport-climbing culture, indoor walls had already taken hold, but it was not until 1987 that the first commercial climbing gym opened in the United States. Around the same time at the Campus Center—a weight-lifting facility at the University of Nürnberg—a strong German climber named Wolfgang Güllich developed a sport-specific form of reactive training known today simply as campus training. Between 1985 and 1991 Güllich went on to establish the world’s hardest free climbs and wrote a breakthrough training book, Sportklettern Heute (1986), and campus training quickly became a staple of elite climbers around the world. Toward the end of the century, as at its beginning, German climbers led the way to new levels of technical difficulty and athletic achievement.
    The 1990s saw climbing go mainstream with televised competitions and dozens of well-sponsored full-time climbers in training year-round. The first two books on training for climbing by American authors were published in 1993 and 1994—Dale Goddard’s Performance Rock Climbing and Flash Training by this author—and articles on training became regular features of Climbing and Rock and Ice magazines. But the proliferation of indoor walls was the real wild card that allowed the average climber to practice more frequently and climb harder than ever before. All the above-mentioned factors, along with improved equipment, made what was once the maximum grade, 5.10, achievable by the masses; 5.13 quickly became attainable by a handful of youngsters not even old enough to drive.

     
    The legendary Todd Skinner cranking hard at his beloved Hueco Tanks in 1995. ERIC J. HÖRST
     

    Beginning the new millennium, climbing is as popular as ever, and the limits of quantified technical difficulty have stretched to 5.15a/b and V16. The first edition of Training for Climbing,