Ondra Interview on Training Beta

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Just listened through Ondra's interview on trainingbeta.com. Was surprised to hear him say "...[fingerboardin] is not an effective use of [his] time". Interesting talk about how he prepared for his world cup performance.

Smoke and mirrors its all false info he just doesn't want any competition.

Yeah, probably something like that. Was also surprised to hear he has a relatively low protein intake.

Not surprising, it's how the fitness industry works. Create a product to sell. Write a book based on some sort of research to educate the public about the theory behind the product. Then have some pros endorse the product to market it. Fingerboards aren't the only way to get strong and they may not be the best.

Why would anyone need a lot of protein?

Ryan Palo... Ondra explained why and it makes sense. His finger strength is more than good enough. For a while his biggest weakness has been power. It should be no surprise that his training involves a lot of campus board. For mere mortals who lack great finger strength I'm assume he would advise hang boarding.

Long Duk Dong wrote:Why would anyone need a lot of protein?

Protein is critical to building muscle mass, which hints the reason why bodybuilders inhale the stuff like crack. When you stress muscles you develop micro tears, and when you rest those tears repair and develop the muscle, but protein is needed to move the process along. If you do not have sufficient protein, additional exercise becomes kind of a circular logic where your body just burns muscle to fuel the exercise and you don't really get stronger.

You dont necessarily need to take supplements if you eat enough food with protein, such as steak, hamburger, ect. However, you should eat meat on a regular basis if you're not taking protein and you want to build muscle.

20 kn interestingly ondra eats meat approx twice a week. Gets other protein from non meats. Not as much as I would have guessed.

Great interview. He mentioned this Heinz Zak book called "Rock Stars," which got him into climbing back in the 1990s. I actually just picked up a copy of it, it is awesome!
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The vast majority of people eat way more protein than they need. Look at recommend amounts, it's like 60g a day for most of us. Even if you double that, it's still not necessary to cram loads of meat. Super high protein is a training myth, hopefully Aerili or someone will also chime in on this.

if i were training for the world cup i wouldn't really use the hangboard either. look at the routes - they aren't super fingery. they require more explosive power out of odd positions and being able to accurately control momentum, particularly in rotational directions. training on specifically created bouldering problems and roped routes in the gym would probably be the best way to go for this style of climbing.

Yeah Protein is good. A balanced diet is the key tho. Ondra is about as far away from a body builder as you can get. Look at Sachi Amma and what he just did. I'm guessing that guy weighs 120? You don't want Mass in our sport. You wanna be about as Burly as Tommy Caldwell. Eat your veggies.

it's not just world cup, top end climbing has been moving away from crimping up micro edges up a near vertical wall for quite a while now. And that's probably a good thing IMO, because it has introduced much more complex movement patterns to the climbing world.

This is a very good and useful interview. Adapting his approach to your lifestyle would undoubtedly help almost anyone improve their climbing, as long as you understand some of his more subtle comments and the depth of his training base (developing his body from a child as a climber). What also might be veiled a little is, though now much given how many times the interviewer says "wow", is how psyched he is. Long time friend of mine climbs with him sometimes and says that his psyche is so high it's almost unbelievable. That alone will get you pretty far. Besides psyche, he seems super smart and intuitive on how his body works. Very impressive package, though not too surprising given his resume.

Fingerboard question was answered but it's good to keep in mind that his situation is very rare. You almost need to be a child climber for your fingers not to be your weakest link. For most of us--and especially those with athletic backgrounds in other sports who are generally fit or "strong"--fingerboard training is super efficient. I heard Adam talking a few years back and saying something like he never found hold that he couldn't use. Well, okay, use that as your barometer. But if there are hold you can't use sometimes than a fingerboard is quite useful.

Campusing multiple times per day, six days per week is just so rad I can hardly stand it. Of course, most people won't last a week doing this. He warns us. What's pretty important is that he only does this for four weeks and, then from the sounds of it, since he didn't detail his blocks, he doesn't do it again for months. As someone who loves campusing, and has been doing it for 30 years (and has quite a few friends who consider campusing more important than actual climbing) this level of restraint does not come naturally to those who love their boards.

Your body can generally only use somewhere in the vicinity of 30 grams of protein at any one sitting to elevate amino acid activity. Larger people can utilize a bit more but climbers don't generally fit in that group. There are stacks of studies confirming this (I do this for a living). It is possible to train this response to improve, which you see touting by intermittent fasters, but only to a degree. The excess protein you eat is either eliminated or stored in adipose tissue (or in extreme instances if converted to glucose via ketosis, a starvation response). High protein diets mainly work because eating a lot of protein satiates you and you stay away from junk foods (mainly sugars, which Americans in particular have a huge issue with). Almost every Paleo-ish person's diet I've evaluated has more protein than the need and their performance would not change if healthy swaps for were made changing their macronutrient ratios. I find the issue with most people is that they can't make healthy swaps. Ondra's diet, mostly plants, tiny bit of meat, seems more or less a perfect fit for his lifestyle. Of course, his lack of will cravings elicited another "wow" from the interviewer, so it's not all that easy, even for someone (like her) who more or less climbs for a living. Again, showing psyche kind of trumps everything.

First,
This interview provides a great example of why getting advice from elite level performers is generally not useful, and possibly dangerous (this applies to most areas, not just in climbing). If you listen to the other episodes on training beta you will find the same trend, in that most elite level climbers are training in ways that would not be effective for the general population.

Second,
Although Ondra's routine may be very ineffectual and possibly dangerous for the general population, it may be what is required for him to make any progress at all. As one moves from novice->elite the necessity for training volume and complexity grow at a non-linear (maybe exponential rate?). For someone like Ondra who is arguably the strongest in the world at the moment, he may need to train 6 days a week, to get the same %-strength increase that I could get with 3 days a week.

Third,
I have found that the best people to turn to for advice are those who are making steady progress despite limiting circumstances such as; late entry into a sport/activity (age wise), reduced practice/training time, unlucky on the genetic lottery, etc. Look for people who are defying their circumstances, they often have something you can learn.

I think all of your points should go without saying. It would be foolish to drop everything and follow Adam's routines. I started the thread to discuss how much different his approach was from us mortals.

I do want to incorporate some foods he mentioned. Anyone have links to recipes that use the foods he mentioned? I haven't eaten many of those things.

Pontoon wrote:I do want to incorporate some foods he mentioned. Anyone have links to recipes that use the foods he mentioned? I haven't eaten many of those things.

You could ask Neeley to post some on trainingbeta. She is a nutritionist after all!

Pontoon wrote:interestingly ondra eats meat approx twice a week. Gets other protein from non meats.

Yes.
I did not hear him say that he eats little protein. Only that he does not get much of his protein from meat.

slim wrote:if i were training for the world cup i wouldn't really use the hangboard either. look at the routes - they aren't super fingery.

What I heard him say about hangboard was not about his World Cup training -- rather about training in general
... Words pretty close to ...
I've never found fingerboarding to be very effective for me.

Broccoli has more protein per gram than beef and whoever wants to point out that it's not a complete protein should also explain why that doesn't matter.

Long Duk Dong wrote:Broccoli has more protein per gram than beef and whoever wants to point out that it's not a complete protein should also explain why that doesn't matter.

Except it does not...at all. Broccoli has close to the same amount of protein (still less) per calorie as beef, but it's also way less calorie dense than beef, as most leafy plants are when compared to meat. Not only that, it also does not contain the amino acids found in beef.