Some training thoughts from Steve House

As most who follow Alpinism know, Steve House had an accident on Temple a month or so ago. I saw him in the hospital, he was a mess but in far better shape than not being a mess (Being alive sucks sometimes, but it's better than the alternatives). Anyhow, he wrote an interesting report on his blog, which got me going on his training blog.

I am a very firm believer in looking at what the best in any sport (or business or whatever) actually DO. There are many coaches who have a lot of theories, but I always look at the very best to see what got them in that position, and then work backwards. It only makes sense, but many athletes somehow follow some junk-science "program" that does little to nothing for their performance levels. In the spirit of examining "the best" I posted a link to an interview with Adam Ondra, likely the current best sport climber in the world, so that others could look at what the best did there. It is much harder to define "best" among alpinists, but Steve House is certainly successful, and is a thinking alpinist for sure. I think his training regime is instructive for anyone who wants to be an alpine climber, good of him to share it. Check out his training blog, it has some useful info and thought, and the last entry is an account of his fall on Temple and also definitely worth reading.

One of the things I'm working through in my own training is intensity, and Steve gets into that in a way I can relate to. About 20 years ago I blew up as a sport climber due to too much intensity, and then I blew up (injuries, headspace, etc) due to too much volume. As Steve notes, any training is training, and we can only handle so much of it. I'm feeling incredibly good at the moment due to a few days of rest; I was likely training too intensely in the last month, and not allowing myself enough rest. My back is still injured, but I WANT to train today, and that's a sign to me that I'm back fresh. If a workout is drudgery then you're over-trained... Get really overtrained and it may take a month or more to totally recover, and there are still sport climbers form the 90s battling chronic fatigue and other issues brought on by horrendously hard training regimes with famine-like diets, that was a very, very bad combination for a lot of us (we would all have likely been better off just eating high-quality food instead of the caloric restriction and resulting mental waste of time).

Anyhow, good reading from Steve, who I course wish a speedy recovery to!