how to climb 5.12 by eric horst

good morning guys! I am sure some of you still know the book "how to climb 5.12" by eric horst. some 10 years ago I worked out with it and found it super helpful as I improved a couple of grades. and right now I am inclined to do it again,
however, this book first appeared first in 1997 which is an eternity ago and it is most likely that it is not state of the art anymore ...

so, my question, what better manual/reading would you recommend to tailor my own trainings plan? what worked for you _in practice!!_? of course, I googled the zillions of articles about this topic but thought I'd ask for your personal experience.

warm rgds, axel

Rock Climbing Training Manual
Best training book ever!
I think every climber should have one, highly recommended.http://rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/

Jason Lai wrote:Rock Climbing Training Manual Best training book ever! I think every climber should have one, highly recommended.http://rockclimberstrainingmanual.com/

+1

... thanks for that! started looking into it and looks really great!

If you need to be told exactly one way to do it, then the RCTM book is the way. In addition to a focused actionable program, lots of other helpful detailed suggestions.

If you're comfortable seeing several good options and deciding for yourself, then get one of Eric Horst's more recent (2008) books -- Training for Climbing or Conditioning for Climbing. (I forget which is better, and I have no idea why there are two books with similar content).
I got more of the ideas I followed successfully from those than from RCTM. But I've done lots of training in other sports, so I was glad to have more options, rejecting some and choosing others (then changing my mind a year later).

Since you've done training before, sounds like you're ready for:
Dave MacLeod's deep + meaty book: 9 out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes.

If you believe that lots of climbers have succeeded with lots of different training approaches, and that in the long run a healthy athletic body will figure out how to develop stronger and better performance from a variety of possible training strategies (some a bit faster or slower than others) ... then a possible conclusion is that the true limiting factor in your long-term (lifetime?) climbing performance is ...
injury that you do not recover from.

Which leads to the recommendation that the most important reading for long-term climbing success is the excellent new book by Dave MacLeod, Make or Break.

Ken

There is plenty of info on the web that will take you into and beyond 5.12 if you actually apply it. It's not about a book or which book (although I do highly recommend the Rock Climber's Training Manual), it's about the discipline to train and REST properly. These forums contain about everything you'd ever need thanks to an ongoing conversation over the years with dedicated training folks who have the results (not just personal, but in training others too). The Andersons, Shumin and Slim, Bechtel, Palo, and countless others have provided the accumlated knowledge acquired from decades of training between them.

For me, what worked and continues to work in middle age was dedicated hangboarding, hard bouldering, and sport climbing, in that order for a cycle (strength, power, then power-endurance in a cycle essentially, doing each phase for about 3-4 weeks each before switching to the next phase of the cycle) with some supplementary core work and pre-hab type work to keep the shoulders and elbows healthy. I followed the Rock Prodigy approach (The Anderson's scheme) for years prior to the book and it allowed me to climb things I never thought would be possible for me in all realms...trad, sport, and bouldering.

My personal opinion is that Horst's stuff isn't very good (yes, I've read them, and have owned copies at times). If following his stuff, I'd look to avoid all the repetitive pullup, typwriter, lockoff type work on fixed bars, as well as the "HIT" weighted jug hauling routines. IMO, it's recipe for chronic elbow problems.

I'm a big advocate of weighted hangboarding, because of the ability to control and measure the work and the relative safety of choosing exactly which holds, gradually increasing the load, and the ability to drop off at any time if something feels weird or painful. It is also supremely time-efficient. If you're a regular working joe, with limited free time during the week, hangboard cycles can be a welcome reprieve from multi-hour gym sessions and allow you to get the whole workout done in about an hour in the comfort of your own home/garage/barn/porch with your own music, and no distractions from chatty friends or the hottie in booty shorts.

thanks everybody for your input!
so, I just ordered the RCTM; today in the gym I flicked through Training for Climbing and Conditioning for Climbing; and while they are adding a lot to how to climb 5.12 (more information/more verbose with more illustrations) they seem to be down a very similar alley.

I looked up the reviews that Dave MacLeod got and from that I never considered it a hotter contender. it seems that he is rather verbose and abstract (only). background information, abstract considerations, research etc is of course great to motivate a training but I really want to move quickly to an executable trainings schedule.

Ken, thanks a lot for putting this much thought into your reply! and yes, I think indeed that very different trainings approaches can yield similar results and that things might just fall in place for a healthy and athletic person. however, I think most commonly the limiting factor is a bit less dramatic than a never healing injury: "trivial" things like family, after hours business meetings, becoming lazy and not going to the gym 3 times a week - basically a life after or besides climbing. ;-)

I am curious what lays ahead of me with RCTM, warm rgds axel

Will, I only saw your input after I sent off my latest reply; and, yes, I can kind of connect to what you are saying:
rests; yes, I am currently overtrained and hardly give myself enough time for recovery. I know that which is why I want to follow a trainings plan.
elbow: hm, this is where you got me stop and thinking; yes, I had an elbow issue which resulted in a surgery ( completely fine for many years now). and yes, at the time I followed how to climb 5.12 ... still, I am kind of in denial to establish a causality here. ;-)

anyway, thanks for the input everybody and I'll see how I'll do in the near future!
safe climbing everybody!

The Rock Climber's Training Manual is detailed, specific, well-produced, and a lot of book for the money. It is particularly good in outlining how to fit training around a busy life which makes it instantly appealing to me. It provides a detailed recipe, a solution, without asking the reader to think too much, which is always appealing. It's marketed as being for everyone but I think it is the wrong book for most people here, assuming that most do not on-sight 5.12. It pays little attention to movement efficiency and barely mentions psychological issues which, from personal observation of hundreds of climbers over decades of climbing, are the two biggest limiting factors for most people at lower grades. Paying too much attention to this book will be detrimental to lower grade climbers since the emphasis on physiological minutiae will distract from what is really limiting their performance.

More thoughts here

9 out of 10 climbers is badly edited, has low production values, is not particularly cheap for a slim softback with no illustrations and low quality paper. It has no training plans and offers no instant solutions. It encourages people to think for themselves, many people don't like this. I liked it a lot and it spurred me on to rethink what I wanted from climbing and start training effectively again for the first time in 10 years.

Not gonna jump into the debate about which book is better than the other, but any thread on this topic needs to give a shoutout to "Gimme Kraft." I've not followed it as thoroughly or for as long as I have the RCTM, but it has some interesting exercises and approaches in it.

Gimme Kraft is nicely produced, pretty to look at...and very disappointing. It is certainly NOT a primary training manual, it's a supplemental exercise book primarily focused on core and shoulder girdle.

9 out of 10..yes, low production value, no pretty pictures and a little odd on the organization side, spendy for the size, and it's not a primary physical training manual, although there is a little of that. BUT, it is absolutely packed with wisdom, and almost any climber would benefit from reading it and applying it. It should absolutely be in your climbing library. One of the very best climbing books I own, and I have a large library.

Pnelson wrote:"Gimme Kraft" ...has some interesting exercises and approaches in it.

As Will S says, to me it's a book of supplemental exercises (and campusing). I knew most of the campusing exercises from other sources. The other supplemental exercises (as Will S said, mainly core and shoulders) - I felt were mostly for climbers beyond my difficulty level, and tended to require apparatus that plainly was not going to fit in the little free space in my apartment.

I did find several little gems that I most definitely incorporated into my training approach.

Perhaps most interesting to me was that the "Gimme Kraft" approach to Fingerboard training seemed like the strategy of Adam Ondra.

Ken

beaki wrote:I just ordered the RCTM; today in the gym I flicked through [Horst 2008] Training for Climbing and Conditioning for Climbing

My perspective is that almost all the good ideas in RCTM are also in the Horst books. Because most of those good ideas have been around in American websites and books for a while.

The big value-added of RCTM is focus and selection and a level of specificity -- much appreciated by climbers with busy complicated lives. And an implicit overall psychological strategy for staying motivated and focused which seems to work for lots of people (though not me).

The Horst books have so many ideas, that ... 1) It would take more than 24 hours a day for any single climber to do all of them; and 2) of course with that many, a significant number are going to be unhelpful for lots of climbers.

So for me the Horst presentation approach has worked because I just ignore the unhelpful ideas, but appreciate having a stimulating wider range of potentially helpful ones for me to try (including some not in RCTM).

Ken

kenr wrote: to me it's a book of supplemental exercises (and campusing). Ken

The campusing section is extremely limited, don't buy Gimme Kraft if that's your main interest.