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No 186, June 15, 1999
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Rock Craft | Trad Rock | Destinations | Training
Recommended Reading | Gear | Higher Education | Ratings

A trad competency program

A top traditional climber is an all-around athlete, but never trains. She must be able to run, hike, and scramble as well as climb steep rock. A strong back and legs for load carrying are essential, as is all-day endurance. In addition to fitness, the trad climber recruits specific techniques from various climbing disciplines.

Trail and off-trail running is one of the trad climber's best overall fitness recreation activities. Here, you'll build not just cardiovascular capacity and leg strength, but coordination for moving fast on rough terrain. The mixed footing of trail running reduces the repetitive impacts and stresses that can lead to many road-runner's injuries. This is not to say that running isn't dangerous. Recreational activities like running talus fields carry serious risks.

Running does nothing for your upper-body strength, but you can add that component to your outings by combining runs with bouldering. Flagstaff Mountain, above Boulder, Colorado, is one popular area perfectly set up for this combo. You can park at the bottom of the hill, stuff your bouldering shoes in a fanny pack, chug up the trail to the summit, then hit the boulders on your way down. Your local bouldering area may offer something similar.

Hard trad climbing, however, requires more than general mountain fitness. You want to be able to blast in eight miles and 2000 vertical feet to the wall, then face the steeps with the alacrity of a sport climber. Phase two of a well-rounded trad competency program, then, is sport climbing.

Good sport climbs put you near your physical limit and keep you there for half a ropelength or more. With protection problems minimized, a skilled sport climber executes extreme moves efficiently and moves on, seldom recovering full strength until he reaches the anchors. Spending time on steep rock at or near your pump-out point not only makes you stronger, but it develops important body knowledge of your limits.

Perhaps the most important thing you'll learn from climbing hard sport routes is how to fall. Longtime trad climbers often carry a huge reluctance to fall off a climb, even when it's safe. In general, this is a good survival skill — trad routes are full of lousy pro, low-angle rock, and ledges to hit.

Often, however, a trad crux is well protected with good gear, and the fall is clean. Meanwhile the seasoned trad bears down and overgrips, clinging to a habitual need for complete control, instead of relaxing a bit and sending the move in a breezier frame of mind.

Phase three of your trad competency program is to travel and climb on different types of rock. Climbing on limestone will help you on sandstone, climbing in Eldorado will help you in the Gunks.

Seek out your weaknesses. Take a roadtrip to Indian Creek, Utah, and force yourself to learn finger stacks. Lace up those edging shoes and dedicate a week to the Tahquitz slabs. Go to Paradise Forks, Arizona, and learn that a #0 TCU really will hold a fall. Run laps on a challenging crack size to gain endurance and hone technique.

So, there you have it, a trad climber's non-training program. You never need to set foot in a gym, or do anything that's not, in some twisted sense, fun. Follow this recipe, and you'll realize the twin trad training adages: There's no such thing as training. Everything is training.

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Rock Craft | Trad Rock | Destinations | Training
Recommended Reading | Gear | Higher Education | Ratings

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