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http://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/commen ... bing_part/

Quote from reddit user thesneer:

"People are goddamn convinced there's some magic formula for climbing hard, a secret training method that a few weaker climbers (cough Eric Horst) have almost figured out, a secret method that the pros are said to practice under the cover of darkness, as if it were the secret recipe for Coca-Cola. Well, people are wrong.
If you listened for one goddamn second to what Chris Sharma, Dave Graham and Adam Ondra suggest for climbing hard you'd realized that the secret to climbing hard is obviously this .... (OMG SUSPENSE)
Climb a lot. Try really hard. (Maybe like train on the campus board/hang board if it's raining out.)
I know what you are thinking right now. That can't be "it". "It" cannot be so simple. Guess what. It fucking is. Let me first rant and then explain myself. I am sick and tired of hearing that climbing sick-hard is something you can achieve by doing a sufficient number of push ups, pull ups, and barbell curls or some elusive combination thereof that is the Christian equivalent of the Prayer of Jabez. Fuck. That. Noise. What people miss completely is that the number one key to climbing hard is finger strength, and if you add a lot (hell just a little bit) of superfluous body-bulk your fingers can't hold you on. Key number two is abs and they can't suck your muscle-heavy body back onto the wall either. Want to train for climbing? Train your fingers and abs. Now what's the best way to train your fingers and abs? Climb.
So why don't people just "climb?" Answer: Because climbing is hard. People would rather do the familiar, fairly easy routine of push ups, pull ups, and barbell curls. Anyone can do these things, and these things will make you better at climbing on jugs, but climbing on jugs will never make you an elite climber. What makes climbing hard so hard then? 1) Climbing hard requires constant flailing and falling (which is not compatible with the typical male ego or gentle female temperament) and 2) because climbing at your limit feels fucking horrible, it is uncomfortable and it hurts. So to really advance at climbing takes a lot of mental effort to break through 1) and 2) and most people just don't want to deal with that because it's simply humiliating and difficult.
Who the fuck am I to tell you how to climb? Just someone who has climbed V10 and knows a lot of people who climb a whole lot harder than I do. And when I ask those guys and gals how they climb hard they tell me the same thing that Chris Sharma, Dave Graham, and Adam Ondra tell you.
Why aren't you listening?"

Thought you guys might like that.

So, train on a campus and hangboard? gotcha.

And take up ballet for those sick slab climbs.

Sharma, Graham, and Ondra can say that "climbing a lot" helps because they are full-time climbers, and so their definition of "climbing a lot" is more than anyone with a full time job would be able to do. Not to mention that in any discipline, prodigies tend to be terrible teachers and trainers because they are so displaced with what it actually feels like to be average.

And if you want to climb your best with the most efficient use of your time, there are better ways to do it than just climbing. You'll get stronger fingers faster on a hangboard than by bouldering a 45 degree crimp problem, with less chance on injury, too.

I'm talking out of my ass here, but take a survey of 5.14 climbers who also have full-time jobs, and see how many of them reached that level by "just climbing a lot." I'd be willing to guess it would be approximately zero.

Man, you gotta love when the genetically endowed give you beta.

Genetically endowed... lol. Made me think you were talking like John Holmes endowed.

I guess that analogy would be John Holmes teaching you how to have sex. No matter how you hard you try, you probably won't do it like him.

Well...Eric is training his sons and they seem to be doing well.
You do not build yourself up by talking trash.

camhead wrote: I'm talking out of my ass here, but take a survey of 5.14 climbers who also have full-time jobs, and see how many of them reached that level by "just climbing a lot." I'd be willing to guess it would be approximately zero.

i dont train apart from maybe 100 pushups a week, hangboarding less then a dozen times a year, and climbing 200+ days a year.

i get emotionally attached to my projects. i try to do LOTS of new (to me) routes and boulders. The way to climb harder is to try harder things. the path to becoming a better climbing is by climbing lots of different things. by traveling both these roads, you can do relatively hard things without dedicated training.

I'm looking forward to finding that full time job that lets me work 165 days a year. Siked!!