Climbing standards have come on a long way recently, and the number of people climbing at a high standard seems to be increasing all the time. Much of this has come from the increasing popularity of competition climbing and the introduction of coaching for top climbers, alongside a growing understanding and knowledge of how to train specifically for climbing C
Christian Core is one of the coaches at the forefront of this new approach, having competed and climbed at a world class level for many years, he now coaches climbers from junior competitors to world cup competitors.
It’s very common for climbers left to their own training, to plateau at a level and struggle to improve beyond that point. To then push past that plateau requires a change how an individual approaches their training, but without some form of instruction it is often hard for climbers to do this. For many climbers (including experienced climbers) it’s a common belief that purely increasing the volume of climbing will achieve this, but this can often be counter productive and increase the risk of injury. There is also a tendency with many climbers to do the same exercises or training sessions week in and week out, which the body adapts to so that the training becomes less effective or the climber risks an overuse injury.
Core Climber has taken Christian Core and Stella Marchisio’s wealth of knowledge and experience in training to create online training programs that make modern training techniques accessible and achievable for climbers of all levels.
STRENGTH, MOBILITY & TECHNIQUE
In most climbing training there is big emphasis on specific climbing strength, which is of course important and is provided in our programs, but climbing is a complex mixture of strength, mobility and technique, so we incorporate mobility, stretching and conditioning into the programs, not only to improve your strength and control while moving but also to balance out training to allow you to maximize your gains and reduce the risk of injury.
What we also hope to give you by following the programs is good understanding of the training processes, from specific strength, technique, conditioning, mobility and flexibility exercises through to cycling training throughout the training period and the importance of recovery and rest periods. The big difference in modern climbing training is putting more emphasis on non specific climbing strength allowing climbers to train more but not over training specifically the fingers. Putting a focus on technique, mobility and flexibility for example, allows the climber to use the strength they have to maximum effect. The other key part of any training process is recovery, there is no point in training hard unless you incorporate adequate recovery periods as this is where you make the improvement.
EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT TRAINING PROGRAMS
What began as a fairly simple concept has developed into a much more complex system as we tried to create a platform to deliver the programs in a way that would simulate actually working with a coach. What resulted is video led programs, focussing on Sport Climbing, Bouldering, Specific finger training and general conditioning but we’re already working on more. We’ve also focussed our initial programs on people with more limited time. So the term ‘Recreational’ we use to describe, climbers not based on ability but more base on the amount of training time they have in a week, in this case 3-4 session of 2-3 hours.
Many of our programs lay out all the climbing and training you need to do over the week. The effectiveness of them relies on respecting the amount of training and importantly resting/recovery between training. If you ignore this and do more climbing than specified in the training then you risk over training and injury which of course negates the reason for doing the training in the first place.
Of course training isn’t for everyone so our programs are specifically aimed at those who want to improve their climbing through a structured training programs. These programs however are not only for people who have knowledge or experience in climbing training. If you have never trained though and want to try, we recommend giving it a go, it’s always a good feeling to improve and hopefully you will enjoy the process.
Developing programs for all levels
The goal of core climber is to offer training for climbers of all levels, and to start with we’ve put together many programs where we have used the term ‘recreational’. Rather than indicate the level of difficulty, this is more to indicate the amount of available time an individual has to train in a week. In the case of recreational, it means programs of between 3-4 sessions per week of between 2 and 4 hours sessions, depending upon the type of session. The level of the climbing specific training however is going to be based on your own personal level so these programs will be effective for a wide range of abilities. We are also developing more advanced training programs and have plans for programs aimed specifically at the beginner.
A developing process
We’ve tried to provide a feature rich experience with lots of functionality to make the training programs as easy as possible to use. We are of course always trying to make it better, to improve the experience either through the programs themselves or how they are delivered to you. Therefore having feedback from you is hugely important, we want to hear how it worked for you.
So if you sign up for a program, we really hope you enjoy the experience and it helps you realize your climbing goals.
Happy training! – the Core Climber team.
