"I like Your Philosophy."

...whatever that is.

It has to have happened 20 times in the last year. I'm chatting with a new athlete that is starting to begin coaching with the Climb Strong team and I asked them why they chose us. The answer?

“I like your philosophy.”

I have to admit that sounds good and it makes me proud that they saw this as an important factor in their choice of coaches. The only challenging part? I don’t truly know what that philosophy is.

A philosophy is a set of rules for behavior. It’s a set of instructions on what to do when you don’t quite know what to do.

This year, I started to think a lot about what that philosophy might really look like. What rules and behaviors do we, as a coaching team, put forth that makes athletes choose to work with us.

As young climber, I was mentored by an older climber that needed a climbing partner. It was an effective relationship, and one that worked for both of us; he had somebody that was willing to climb with him on all of his projects, and I had somebody that could teach me what rock climbing was really about. I had been instructed on how to tie knots and belay and what hand jams were, but I didn't really know how to engage with becoming better at the sport. My first instructors taught me how to do climbing. My mentor, Steve, taught me how to be a rock climber.

He was relentless about learning. He was relentless about trying to be excellent. He expected the same from me. In all honesty, my parents were too forgiving. School was too forgiving. I could basically coast, and no one corrected that. Climbing with Steve was the crucible. It was the first place that I could not hide. It was where I realized that the only path forward in the sport was through personal confrontation.

Climbing, then, led me to be a better student and probably a better family member. I made it through college with decent grades, and afterward I kept trying to learn more about exactly what I needed to be a better rock climber. By fully obsessing about improving there, it brought along every other thing in my life.

In the early 1990s, I started climbing regularly with my friend Todd Skinner. We had lived in the same town and climbed around the same people for a long time, but it wasn't until Todd needed a steady partner for a big wall route in Yosemite that we started climbing together a lot. It was a remarkable experience in that Todd did not have the classic fragile ego of an elite climber of that time. It was fascinating to me that he seemed more interested in my climbing than in his own. He was avid about asking exploratory questions and talking about beta and training ideas, and all of it around the things his partners were trying to do. It really struck me that to him, every person was fighting for this optimal experience in climbing, and he just wanted to be a witness to it.

To Todd, the team was always the thing. In training, in climbing new routes in remote ranges, in searching for new crags in the hills of Wyoming, there was always something to be gained by doing it together.

Over time, I learned more and more about training. Yes, methods. Yes, details of interesting workouts. But more and more, it was principles that kept rearing up. And the more I learned about the training, the more I understood that coaching was not about sets and reps and motivation. It was about the people doing the training. It was organization, change psychology, flexibility in planning, and having the skill to break people out of destructive mindsets. It was having confidence and belief in their capability. It was helping them find help from other professionals. Very little of it was programming specific exercises.

I am not sure what the Climb Strong philosophy is, but it is a reflection of not only my learning, but that of Ellen, and Ken, and Alex, and Joel, and each person who has joined our team. We work hard to build a set of best practices for our athletes, and we constantly welcome challenges to those practices. If a coach disagrees with the progressions we have for a particular training quality, instead of “going rogue”and doing the sessions the way they want, we ask that they teach us why we’re wrong.

Once a year, I try to throw out all of the things in my list of beliefs and start over. Ask questions like: “If I were building an all new plan, what would it look like?” “Are hangboards really the best tools?” “Does being generally strong really matter?” “Can just climbing more really be the answer?”

I get tired of faith-based methods—no matter what we’re working on. Every month, it seems, there is a new one. A miracle pill, or a different shoe design, or a garment meant to support or compress or release this or that. A six-week program for reprogramming your brain. More coffee, less coffee, or coffee made from friggin’ mushrooms.

Some of these things might work, but I prefer to put a lot of energy into the things we know work, and put just a little effort into trying out other stuff. There is a chance that, say, blood flow restriction training is useful, but I could only recommend it in conjunction with solid, principle-based training rather than instead of it. Shortcuts only work for those that are doing the work in the first place.

I climbed with a person back in the 1990s who had purchased a thousands-of-dollars ultrasound machine to take care of his injuries, yet refused to do any preventative work.

I witnessed a climber try to make it through a season without drinking water (to maintain a low weight), claiming “I get all the water I need from fruits and vegetables.”

One who claimed that step aerobics was all the non-climbing training anyone could ever need.

And so on.

My philosophy, then, involves what Dr. J said a professional does: “the things you need to do on the days you don’t feel like doing them.” It involves accepting that there is no quicker way and that seeking out the quicker way is, in and of itself, a liability. It involves remembering that there are many paths forward for each of us, none the same.

In a notebook, sitting at a table in St. George one early morning at a Climb Strong coaching team gathering, I scribbled these lines (none my own):

Effort is the missing ingredient almost every time.

You are your own worst enemy.

Clarity comes when you’ve taken a beating.

Fatigue-seeking is not the way to fatigue-resistance.

The trick is not minding that it hurts.

This is fun, but for it to be really fun, it’s going to be hard for a while.

Progress is probably not where you’re looking.

Don’t wait for the research. This is a delaying tactic.

When you’re not sure what to do, getting stronger is a good guess.

Restrictions are infinitely useful.

Looking for the hack is a mistake.

Never waste a moment wishing it was easier.

Tests are tests, not performances.

Do your sessions. Results are on the far end of them.

You probably already know what to do.

You picked this. Stop complaining.

I have a lot of these reminders written in a lot of notebooks from lots of years. You’d have thought the lessons would have stuck. Maybe a little. And maybe I just need to keep stoking the fire. The finish line keeps moving.

I’m not sure what our philosophy really is. A mission statement seems too simple. I’ve been accused of ignoring the fun component of climbing. Of not promoting the community feel of cragging. It’s true. I’m no good at virtue signalling. Look: This is not our job. If you want to have fun and hang out with friends, that’s a wonderful use of your time. But if you burn to be better, stronger, tougher…well, now you’re speaking our language.

Maybe it’s a simple as this: do what you say you need to do.