Dai Koyamada Interview: Climb to climb!

It's been a really good spring for interviews with top rock climbers. Climbing's "The Low Down" just did an OK one with Dai Koyamada, surely one of the all-time best boulderers on the planet. He is repeating cutting-edge problems in short order, while living in a country without very many high-end technical rock climbers (Yuji and a few others obviously are amazing, but Japan isn't Europe).

Part of becoming really good at any sport is hanging with the best in the sport, at the places in the world with the best venues for the sport. Surfers go to Hawaii, Sharma moves to Spain, Graham to Switzerland, etc. etc. That Koyamada does what he does in relative isolation is extra impressive to me. This "get together with the best" program is important no matter what your climbing level; the fastest way to go up a grade or two technically is to climb with people who are a grade or two better than you. Anyhow, in keeping with Ondra, Sharma and others, Koyamada describes his training as, yep, climbing:

For training I just climb in the gym. But I climb kick-ass hard problems and volume! And I also do campusing occasionally.

If anyone has any doubts about what basic training apparatus is required to become a stronger, better and higher-performance climber the last three links to interviews with the best climbers in the world should remove them. Want to be a better climber? Climb. Of course there's some art and science with quantity, quality and programming, but that's secondary and not that hard to figure out if just get a little guidance from a book, coach, friends, whatever, and track your performance.

Specific injuries, rehab, etc. may require gym time as Clyde Soles noted in the comments.

Personally, I'm doing some Crossfit-inspired programming for general fitness as well as short rock and gym sessions, along with paddling, mountain biking and running. Yeah, I'm a multi-sport mess, but I've got some goals that are going to require high fitness in three different sports, so stoked!!

My elbow feels good, but I am sure that if I push it too hard it will blow up, I need to build it up slowly. I'm also getting some great results with these thera-bar exercises, which is what I'm going to do as soon as I stop typing on here.

Today's workout is going to involve a short (45 minutes of movement) session at the climbing gym, followed by moving a ton or two of logs (we heat with wood, time to get next year's wood!), then driving to the Crossfit Canadian Regionals in Okotoks, which my wife, Kim, has qualified for! I'll likely run part of the course before she has at it this evening, busy day. And some kid wrestling....

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