Mountain Athlete - Rock Climbing Training Program

I haven't done it, but have also been looking into it. I hope someone chimes in with an experience.

MA seems to be about improving climbing by becoming a better athlete overall whereas Horst emphasizes improving only the aspects of athleticism needed to climb harder.

For me, as I'm more interested in long trad/alpine routes of moderate difficulty, I've found that the MA approach is more in line with my goals overall.

If you want to crush sport and hard trad a minute from the parking area then Horst may be the better option.

MA is a solid program for building general fitness and robustness, both helpful in the mountains. However, the programs are designed to be "tough" so there is little focus on technical improvements and they leave people too tired to train technique.

Just read through the FAQ. A good chunk of it describes the difference between that and crossfit. So Im going to go with it being not very useful for rock climbing. Tho that's not to say this type of program wouldnt be good for general pre season conditioning.

It's always seemed interesting. I know Jonny Copp and Michah Dash were doing it for their mountaineering exploits, and neither one of them were exactly slouches in the climbing department.

I remember looking at the program before they made access to their workouts by membership only. I even had a bunch printed out that the wife tossed, thinking it was just trash (doh!). They seemed pretty good for overall fitness and endurance, though much of the actual climbing part of the workout was done on HIT strips (or similar if you didn't have those), so may not be that different Horst when it comes to overall endurance. There's also a free climbing workout on the site that you can try.

My sense of the site is that it is overall fitness with a rock climbing specific component built in. If you're doing longer or alpine routes, that's a good thing. It's probably still useful (though not as) if you're looking most to improve for just bouldering or sport, though I suspect the overall strength/endurance/core training would probably go a long way to training neglected areas and preventing injury. I'd say try the free workout and see how you like it.

FWIW, Alpine Training Center in Boulder - which used to be Mountain Athlete until becoming independent and is where Copp/Dash did their Mt. Edgar et al training - posts all of their daily workouts online.

thealpinetrainingcenter.com…

Some of the workouts and acronyms are difficult to decipher (although there are videos for many of them on the MA website) and there is a mish-mash of ski/biking/ice/rock specific work outs. Still a very nice resource nevertheless. I hope they don't stop publishing online like MA did.

I've found their work-capacity exercises to help me immensely with ski-touring and approaches for alpine routes and I've even noticed a nice increase in climbing endurance as a result. I'm still a shitty climber though.

I was doing the MA "leg blaster" workout for a while...holy crap its a killer. They're supposed to be the best for all around alpine training.(ie-long slogs with a heavy pack, climbing, etc)

I followed their pre-season climbing training program prior to the trip I'm on as I type this with great results. Their workouts are very sport-specific as you lead up to your main event/season. For instance, their pre-season climbing training program had two days/week of full body gym workouts (lifting/running) in the first two weeks, then tapered to almost exclusively climbing-gym workouts in the last four weeks (4x4's, endurance days, bouldering workouts) w/ one day a week reserved for antagonist training to offset the workouts. I was super impressed.