Since my approach to climbing performance coaching in recent years has been informed by my work with the German Bouldering Team, you might wonder how the demands on a competitor at an international boulder comp relate to that of a general climber, who might have goals in for example rock climbing. If it is a higher overall competence in all climbing situations you are aiming for, your goal is remarkly similar to that of top competitor— to be prepared for whatever the climb demands!
Check out my on-going Climbing Performance Coaching mind map!
What the climb demands and if we’ll be ready for it, is already difficult to foresee in a formalized competition context and obviously much more complex on rock, outdoors or wherever your climbing goals are.
There are commonalities though, that I’ll try to outline in this text. As we will see, improvement in climbing can be greatly facilitated in the right conditions…
Designing Training
“No one can directly teach the learning system how to organize. All the coach, physical therapist or movement expert can do is create conditions that optimize the self-organizing system’s chances of finding generally valid principles of satisfactory solutions.”
Climbing Performance Coaching
Guided Discovery
My role as a climbing coach is in sharing what I know and providing guided discovery to my athletes. I’m neither a a drill instructor, who shouts at you to do one more rep, nor a motor-learning guru that feeds you specific information about exactly how to do a move. Human beings are self-organizing systems, that will develop good movement patterns and therefore improve in climbing. The movements patterns and solutions that you have deveIoped will be staying with you much better than somebody elses solution, regardless who this somebody is — you OWN them! I completely trust in that with careful guiding, you will discover the deep skills you already have (from millions of years of evolution, moving about in trees) under the right conditions.
My role as a climbing performance coach is in providing these conditions.
“Providing the right conditions” in climbing performance coaching starts with assessment, followed by exercise selection and designing meaningful training through creating challenges with for example route-setting.
Studio Bloc’s Robert Lux and I have devoloped a curriculum for Route-setting for coaches and Coordination Training and have done workshops for teams of all levels. At Studio Bloc we now have the perfect setup for catering to the needs of any individual climber or team and also offer coaching education!
For more information regarding a coaching for you or you and your team at Studio Bloc, please get in touch with mario@studiobloc.de — Mario will be happy to answer all your questions!
For individual coaching and related questions, please get in touch with me!
Assessment
Exercise Selection
Designing Training
Coordination, Motor Skills and Climbing Technique
Some random photos of Udo Neumann’s Climbing Performance Coaching workshops, seminars and presentations over the years here:
