In Episode 6, we sit down with listener favorite Steve Bechtel at his gym in Lander, Wyoming, and talk about the question everyone always seems to be asking, "Will running help my climbing?"

We delve into running as both a weight loss tool and as aerobic training for climbing, whether or not you should be running, and if "CrossFit" is even worth it.  

You can always find Steve at: www.climbstrong.com

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Kris Hampton  00:00

 What's up everybody? I am your host, Kris Hampton. Welcome to Episode 6 of the Power Company Podcast brought to you by powercompanyclimbing.com. I have gotten some messages recently, a few of them from people asking if I'm going to be putting out more podcasts more frequently? And the answer is probably not. Maybe. I've been toying with the idea of doing some rants, just about the things I see around the climbing industry that specifically about training that I don't agree with. And maybe I'll drink a couple of beers. And then I'll rant, we'll see, is that a good business decision? I have no idea. However, I'm going to keep doing these things, because you guys seem to like them. And I also don't do the Skype interview thing. I would rather sit down with someone and have a conversation, I think there's a certain quality to that, that I really appreciate. And and frankly, I'm doing these because I want to talk to people and I want to learn, you guys just get to learn as well. So I do them even if there wasn't a microphone, and I'm not gonna do that over Skype, because that kind of sucks. Okay, you can, however, support the podcast. I'm not asking for money. I'm not asking for donations. But you guys have been great. Everybody is buying the books and they're loving them. And if you just keep doing that, buy them for a friend, buy them as a gift bomb for yourself. You keep doing that we'll keep doing these things. Also, if you're, if you're in near anywhere where we're having workshops, stop in and and check us out, talk to us learn from us, let us learn from you. We've got some coming up in Akron, Ohio, if you happen to be in the Akron area, and I believe those are May 10 and 11th. Let me look here. Yeah, May 10 and 11th in Akron, Ohio at the Rock Mill Climbing Gym. So if you happen to be around Akron, stop in and see us. Also, we just got back from a couple of workshops, Nate and I did. We were down in Knoxville, Tennessee at Onsight Climbing Gym and had a great time. Several people came out for the workshops. It was great. I think they got a lot out of it. And, and honestly, I think we got a lot out of it. It's good practice for us. And we just like to hang out with people and talk to people about their climbing. So like I said, come out and see us at the next workshop wherever we're near you. While I was in Knoxville, I did get to spend a day outside at the Obed, which is amazing and definitely in an unheralded gym in the climbing community. So if you if you happen to be in the Tennessee area, don't just get sucked into Chattanooga, the Obed is pretty badass. And I got out with my friend Yasmin and Rick. And we had a great time I got fed beta spoon fed beta and was able to flash one of the coveted 13a's in the canyon, which I'm pretty psyched about. So I'm feeling pretty good about my climbing right now. Even though I haven't trained for routes at all. I've done absolutely zero endurance work. No endurance, no power, endurance, nothing. I've climbed routes maybe four or five days, but I'm feeling good about it. And I'm headed to Vegas tomorrow to Red Rocks for a week. So just to try and get my feet up off the ground a little higher. Get my feet back into that arena. Yeah. Episode Six, Steve Bechdel we're bringing him back. I know you guys love him. I love him too. We're going to talk about running, should you run? Or Shouldn't you run? We also get into CrossFit a little bit. Steve echoes my sentiments here we we share the same ideas and he knows quite a bit more about it than I do. And I appreciate his the way he approaches these things. So if you don't know much about Steve, I'm not going to tell you all about Steve. If you don't know much about him, go back to Episode Two. You can also hear Steve a couple of times on Training Beta. You can learn all about him there and on episode two here. So we're just gonna jump right into this thing with Steve Bechtel. To run or not to run. Oh, and one more thing, just like in the first interview Steve and in the next one that you'll hear, the sound quality was compromised by the fluorescent lights in Steve's office, and I had no idea that was going to happen. I've been a studio rat when it comes to audio. So I didn't know those fluorescent lights were going to fuck with me. So excuse that. I've done all the magic I could do to pull that sound out of there. Short of working for hours and hours and hours. So yeah, deal with it. All right, on Steve.

Steve Bechtel  05:30

Here's the deal. We have a limited amount of adaptations potential and how hard you push in all of these different directions, limits how much you can push in other directions.

Kris Hampton  06:01

Your definitely bettering yourself. Yeah. I think that's important.

Steve Bechtel  06:05

And honestly, like, you don't spend that much quality time with people in right day to day life. Most people don't get to. And but you know, you got climb with somebody or with them for like, seven hours. And yeah, all you got to do is like, try hard and talk. And those are two really great things. And you know, after a while, you look back and be like, gosh, you know, the best times of my life are with those five guys, you know?

Kris Hampton  06:29

Yeah. And you know what the conversations, when you're not at the crag are always about climbing. But yeah, when you're at the crag, you're not talking about climbing necessarily. Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  06:38

Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Kris Hampton  06:41

Okay, so talking about climbing. I was just downstairs talking with Inge Perkins who I work with some online. And she's, she's as well as being a rock climber. She's also an you know, she loves being an Alpine. She loves skiing, she loves these mountain traverses that she does. She's basically a machine. And one of her questions when we first started working together was, "Do I have to give up cardio?" Yeah, because she really loves to run, she loves to ski. And for me, I very rarely prescribe cardio to anyone, unless they're a really base level athlete. But for the people who really love it, and get a lot out of it, just mentally or emotionally or, you know, their life feels better when they're running or doing cardio. I just say go for it. You know, as long as it's not impacting your, you reaching your goals climbing wise, then I don't see any problem and doing it. But there's a big argument around cardio right now around the importance of running and and is it the best weight loss method? Or? It's just a big argument. So

Steve Bechtel  08:02

yeah, I've I get a I get a lot of questions about it. Because I, I famously said that, you know, running was as important for climbing as climbing is for running. Yeah. And, and here's the deal, we have a limited amount of adaptation potential. And how hard you push in all of these different directions, limits how much you can push in other directions. And so we talked about it when you and I had our conversation about resistance training. If you are going to town on a bodybuilding program in the gym, it's gonna limit how hard you can climb outside, mountain biking, skiing, ice climbing, any of that stuff is going to take away from the energy that you can put into into serious rock climbing. Now, that being said, developing a base level of cardiovascular fitness is is important for recovery purposes, because all of our recovery is cardiovascular. But you don't have to be super dialed in on training for running. You don't have to be doing intervals and hills in order to develop that cardiovascular capacity. What's interesting, like on a long enduro pitch, I'll be sweating like crazy and breathing hard and you know, you've got that you can feel that the lactate in your lungs, you know, the copper breath. And so we'll we'll go Gosh, I felt that way running before. So therefore, running is good, good training for that. Right. And so we can look at that as a systemically similar adaptation, but it isn't the same thing. And and what's really important to understand is that aerobic adaptations are very motor specific. And so just because you've got a big engine for one sport, like say, you're a really great cyclist, right, it doesn't automatically mean you're going to perform well in another one.

Kris Hampton  10:24

Right. And we saw that with Lance Armstrong when he was in his prime. Yeah, he tried to move to marathon running and wasn't, wasn't great.

Steve Bechtel  10:32

Yeah. And and he did, okay, because this both, and that's really interesting, because cycling and running are linear, extremely cyclic sports. Yeah. But it's, it's really fascinating. I've been talking with Mark Twight a little bit, and he's getting more and more interested in rock climbing. And he's like, holy cow, this sport is so tough. And here's the guy that was, like, one of the best ice climbers and alpinist in the world and he's like, super tough guy. This is this is way different. Yeah. And, and so it is it has to be super specific. And you even seen it coming from the Red to to climbing on the limestone? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, definitely, yeah.

Kris Hampton  11:16

When I, when I'm at this altitude, the, you know, long pitches at the Red, I'm not winded at all. I can climb a 30 foot pitch here, do 15 moves and be out of breath. Completely winded. And I noticed this morning, actually, I was getting acupuncture. And normally when I'm in town, I'm running. And I don't get to focus on me and just my breathing. And I don't slow down much because I'm so busy when I'm here. But when I was getting acupuncture this morning, I was laying there and really focusing on my breathing and realizing how difficult it is for me to breathe at this altitude just coming from being a flatlander to coming up here Is cardio training, something you think would benefit that? Or is it just something I need to adapt to? 

Steve Bechtel  12:09

Yeah, well, that's that's a fascinating thing. The adaptation to altitude. Randy Wilber wrote a great book, few years ago on on high altitude training for athletes. And we, what's it's really interesting, because it's counterintuitive, we used to think like, if I go up and I run in the mountains, like if we go run it wildfires, it's at 9000 feet, right, I'm gonna get more bang for my buck come down, and you're gonna be silly, strong, right? But what happens is that adaptations are, happen over time. And so if you're here for a couple of weeks, you're going to adapt to the altitude, and you're going to be good, right. And so what they're doing now is they're having athletes sleep high, and train low. And so the Olympic athletes will, they'll have them sleeping high outside of Colorado Springs at nine or 10,000 feet, come back down to Colorado Springs, which is still high altitude, but do their training because the oxygen density is higher, and they get more intensity out of their training. Gotcha. And they go back up high, and recover in the thin air and they see better adaptation that way. We do it the other way. And we sleep down here and we go round up at wild Iris, our intensity the or the difficulty with which we can actually perform it that is limited by our oxygen uptake. And so so it's the opposite of of what you would think intuitively. But the number one factor to adapting to altitude is time is spending the time in that area. And, and so really, like, the more time you spend camping out, up up top, the faster you're going to adapt. So you and usually it's a couple weeks. Yeah. And, and so and we've kind of learned that in, in alpinism and in the mountains that you know, time spent up there is difficult and so that's why we climb high and sleep low. But ultimately, if you are training if you're there to train you do it the opposite you'd like to sleep up at camp four and then run laps on the ridge below you

Kris Hampton  14:20

Yeah, makes total sense. Do you think there's a base level of cardio that a climber of cardiovascular fitness that a climber needs?

Steve Bechtel  14:32

 There there is and is there a way to measure that, you know, yeah, it's real individual and you can go and get your vo2 max tested and stuff or your, your anaerobic threshold, all those sorts of things. But honestly, I think if you're if you're capable of running about, let's say half hour, you know, nice steady state pace. You've probably got enough for recovery from anaerobic bursts because really  Climbing is, is sprints of anaerobic right? via recovery. Yeah, recovery, whether it's at a jog or back on the ground, right. Um, and so, and I don't think there's any harm in doing a little bit of running. But I think things like these self limiting modes of running, whether it's like only nasal breathing, or running in minimal issues or things like that. They're great. And that's probably a fine recovery mode. But, but when you get to a point that you're like training for this race, and you're also trying to climb hard, that's when we start to see that the split in your ability to adapt, sure. And anybody that thinks that they can perform very well at two different sports is not performing as high as they could in either one of those sports.

Kris Hampton  15:50

Right. Right. So Bo Jackson could have been amazing, even more than he was at one of those sports, right? And you can't use that outlier as the example.

Steve Bechtel  15:59

Right. And that's, that's a hard thing. You know, one of my my good friends Ty Mac is a fabulous rock climber, he can climb 5.14, he's freed El Cap. And he's also a fabulous, fabulous runner. But he, you know, he's not, you know, if he's trying to do both of those sports, again, he's not as as able to perform as he might be if he was focusing specifically on one thing.

Kris Hampton  16:30

Sure. Now, I know the Anderson brothers cite some reasons why they think cardio shouldn't be included in climbing training programs, you know, things like it makes you hungrier. And I don't know if they've made the leg mass argument, though. I feel like I heard them make that argument. And and I don't necessarily disagree with their arguments at all. I'm just curious as to what your take on? A is it, can it be detrimental to a climbing training program? If say you aren't running enough that it impacts your training, necessarily, but can running at all be detrimental to climbing? 

Steve Bechtel  17:16

Yeah, so the general thing is, Mike, Mike and Mark both have a great background as competitive runners. Right. And there, they both did very well with that they both been successful with recreational cycling. And so you look at these guys, and you go, okay, they have a substantial aerobic base,

Kris Hampton  17:40

right? They already have the engine there.

Steve Bechtel  17:42

Yeah. And, but but the main argument is, the intensity of it is too high. And I'll give you an example. On a rest day, Mike will often go on long hikes like three and four hour hikes, which is low intensity, cardiovascular training. But it's not detrimental to his performance. And so I think that's one of the things like they're just saying, unless it's unless it's dead easy, you shouldn't be doing it. And, and there are some times that you, you want to develop your aerobic or anaerobic capacity, and people automatically will turn to running. And so there are two things we should talk about with running is like, like you were saying, weight loss, and then developing aerobic capacity. And so talking about weight loss first, I don't think that you're going to gain a lot of leg mass unless you're doing a major running program. And, and so I think that that's sort of neither here nor there. And it's probably more driven by nutrition. But for for weight loss and fat loss, there is nothing like controlling your intake, like you will never out, out train your diet, right. And so you can, you know, if you've got some non negotiables in what you take in, like, I love to have yogurt for breakfast, or I always have a beer at the end of the day. That's where you're going to be knocking yourself out. It's not whether you're, you're running, you know, half hour or 60, you know, 60 minutes a day. Average person will burn around 100 calories a mile, whether they're running or walking. I mean, you know, as a matter of physics, and there's, you know, there's an adjustment for how much you weigh and what not. But if you and I go out for a half hour run, you know, we're going to cover three four miles, right. That's three or 400 calories 

Kris Hampton  18:15

You'd cover three or four miles. I'd get about half a mile 

Steve Bechtel  19:50

let's see half hour the half hour that six miles.

Kris Hampton  19:53

If I'm out here, I might not make it to the quarter mile.

Steve Bechtel  19:56

Yeah, but so say that say we run three miles we both burn 300 calories. Yeah. That the adaptation or the the, the load of that training session costs you so much more than cutting three tablespoons of peanut butter out of your diet. Sure. Yeah. And, and so that's where, where the argument starts to fall apart. Okay. So we want to train for aerobic capacity and our ability to recover. But we want to do it in specific ways. And so when mission ways, right, so when we look at specificity, we have motor specific, specific things, and we have metabolic specific things. And so when we are trying to train as ultimately, or as specifically as possible, we want to line up both of those things. So when I'm training for aerobic capacity in climbing, I should be doing things that involve the same muscle groups as climbing, and at the intensity with which I'm going to be using those muscle groups. And that's where the

Kris Hampton  21:05

ARC training things like that

Steve Bechtel  21:06

yeah, extensive endurance style stuff comes into play. You know, yeah, like climbing up and down on the climbing wall is more boring than trail running. But at the same intensity or same heart rate zone, we're going to be seeing the proper adaptations, mitochondria, capillarization, all those sorts of things that are that are needed by rock climbers. And so that's where we want to be specifically developing in those capacities.

Kris Hampton  21:37

So if you, let's go back to weight loss for just a minute, if you burn 100 calories per mile, roughly running, how many calories do you burn per roughly the same amount of time, let's say it takes you seven, eight minutes to run a mile. If you're, you know, going at a pretty good pace. How many calories do you burn in eight minutes of resistance training,

Steve Bechtel  22:06

you would burn probably a little bit less. But there's an interesting thing there. And the easiest way to look at it is called an after burn effect. And, and it's this elevation in metabolism that comes with intense exercise. So if you and I go out and we go, nice, easy steady pace, run for three miles, we burn 300 calories, our metabolism, our base metabolism will return to normal levels very, very quickly, quickly, right, our heart rates drop back down, we recover. And we've burned mostly aerobic metabolism, we burn mostly fat during that time. But if you and I go down and we do a bunch of circuits and and you know, say we do some kettlebell complexes, or some sprints or, or any of these sort of high intensity conditioning things, we'll we'll maybe burn the same number of calories in in our, you know, our workout, but we'll still have an what's called as afterburn effect for the metabolism takes longer to slow down afterward. And so you're still burning extra calories as as the hours ticked by, as you recover. Gotcha. And so that's where weight loss be, or excuse me, weight training becomes a superior tool for for fat loss. For rock climbers, though, the problem becomes a matter of recovery. And this is my argument against against group training against going high intensity in the weight room too often is, you know, 36 48 hours to recover, you've only got a few sessions like that a week. And then where do we fit the climbing. And so that's why I think, again, like interval climbing, climbing combined with strength training, even our low intensity  ARC training, that's where we're still going to see superior results would be to add more more volume in those specific rounds. Or to do something that's, you know, like you're, you're on the right path, things that start to have motor patterns that are similar. So if I, if I'm doing total body weight training, that's more like climbing than running is,

Kris Hampton  24:18

right?

Steve Bechtel  24:19

It's not, it's not the same, but we're taking taking that direction.

Kris Hampton  24:23

Now, I've always sort of along the same lines there. I've always told my climbers who want to lose weight at the same time as they're trying to work through a climbing training program. They often just make the logical connection between running is a good way to lose weight. So doing high volume climbing should be the more the superior way to lose weight. And I try to get them to do more hard bouldering and things like that. What are your thoughts in that realm?

Steve Bechtel  25:00

I think I think you're right. And, and it's interesting because like the whole idea of steady state, cardiovascular, as of superior fat loss tools, I mean, yeah, it's exercise. But if you've watched the finish line of a marathon, I mean, fat people come in across that line all the time, right. And if if running was doing the trick that would have done it. And, and it is, you know, high volume climbing is nice, super, and a lot of calories and things like that. But I think, the high intensity of bouldering, like, boom, you're on the wall for 15 seconds. And it takes you five minutes for your metabolism to drop again, or your heart rate. And there's some interesting things where people have worn heart rate monitors for these different sessions. And over time, the heart rate during a bouldering session will have a higher average than it will for like an ARC session, you know, you ARC, you get your heart rate up to 125. And they keep it there for an hour, right? bouldering, it's going to like 179, drops, 170 drops, and, and that sort of up, down, up down. Has that a superior metabolic effect? Course, really, a combination of the things is probably the most effective. But again, it's all about I mean, the whole game is is controlling what goes in your mouth.

Kris Hampton  26:23

Sure, absolutely.

Steve Bechtel  26:25

And so then we come to this

Kris Hampton  26:26

is what I'm terrible at.

Steve Bechtel  26:27

Yeah, right? Yes, you come to this thing, how do I, how do I train hard and lose weight, right. And this we make fun of bodybuilders. Because you know, it's kind of a silly sport, or if it's an activity or whatever, right? But those guys know how to get lean, like, way more than anybody else. And we can we can snicker at him or whatever. But you when they start talking about fat loss, man, I'm listening. And, and so what what they'll tend to do will be to, you know, build up and shred. And so when when we're trying to lose weight needs to be when we're not trying to perform our best,

Kris Hampton  27:06

right, that's what I was gonna ask the bodybuilders version of losing weight. Do you think they could do that while simultaneously performing at a sport?

Steve Bechtel  27:16

I think the general idea is they get to be weak as a kitten as they get really, really, right. Right? And, and we've seen that with climbers, like they get to lean and then they'll either get injured or sick, or they just start to tank and they aren't performing. And so what we really want to do is to try to bring that weight down during a base phase, prior toif you're doing like an endurance phase, or whatever. But when you start having to really up the power, when you're really trying to redpoint, it becomes pretty challenging. And the most important thing is to not get too far away from it. If you're if you have more than a five to 10 pound fluctuation. seasonally, we're probably letting it go a little bit too much offseason. Sure. And, and, and then that sort of leads us into, like, how lean is too lean? Yeah. And so then you just always have to be looking at your performance parameters. And saying, like, can I? You know, can I still hit these basic values? You know, how many pull ups can I do? When I'm fat? How many pushups can I do when I'm my skinniest? And if you start to get lean, lean, lean, and you start to have those those strength to weight ratio, things start to drop, then you know you're overdoing it.

Kris Hampton  28:35

Yep. That's, that's a good, good way to look at it. I had a girl just yesterday, say I'm feeling way stronger. But I'm feeling like I need to lean down some more. You know, and I'm like, well, how about we just keep going where we're at for a little while and see what happens? Yeah. Because if you're feeling stronger, you're you're reaching your goals. Yeah. You know, you don't necessarily have to be lean to reach your goal. So 

Steve Bechtel  28:59

Right. Well, and and I think there was, in the 90s, there was a huge amount of like, trying to stay super skinny,

Kris Hampton  29:07

seemed like it was more of a problem back then.

Steve Bechtel  29:09

Yeah, and and i think that we're seeing people understand that, that, you know, regular training, keeping very, very strong and powerful. makes up for a lot of that, you know, drop weight, right during season. And even if you're trying to lean down for a redpoint, great, you know, losing couple kilograms isn't going to be a big deal. But, but, I think, honestly, we want to try to find a good way, a good way where we continue to get stronger as we're, as we're building through the power and strength phases of a training program. And then if you need to cut back a pound or two, great, but, but trying to make these huge drops in weight tends to be counterproductive, especially for females. Athletes they have they have a lot more health concerns with with fat loss than males do.

Kris Hampton  30:04

Yeah, for sure. And I've convinced myself, that's why I can keep cupcakes in my diet. Yeah. Because when I am trying to send, then I have something I can easily pick out.

Steve Bechtel  30:12

Yeah, I feel right. Yeah, and I think that that's an interesting thing is like to, if you're always super disciplined on your, on your eating, there's, there's no room for improvement there and all joking aside, like, there's got to be a time of the year that you, you let your feet off the gas. And, and, you know, maybe it is training a little less, or maybe it is allowing a few of these other things into your diet. But, but we do see a lot of problems with people, like making a big chronic mistake, and then trying to make it up with harder training, like adding running in or, you know, doing a Zumba class after after a climbing day and right and really needs to it needs to happen on the intake.

Kris Hampton  30:59

Yeah, and they're just getting more tired when they try to do right, more training. 

Steve Bechtel  31:02

And I think then we can start looking at your macronutrient profiles. And you can say, like, we don't need to necessarily limit the amount of calories that are coming in. But we got to make sure we're getting enough of the right stuffs. Yeah, you know, what's, what's your, what's your, some people are real tolerant of lower carbohydrate diets, kind of across the board, athletes will do better with more protein in their diet, I've never run into any rock climber that that was pushing the outside bounds of how much protein that they could bring in. And, and that tends to be more satisfying a higher protein diet makes you feel fuller than than a higher carbohydrate diet.

Kris Hampton  31:45

Gotcha. I wish pasta was made a protein. But it's not. You said something a few minutes ago, that that I want to get back to when you mentioned group training and HIT style training and CrossFit style training. And you You said something a while ago, I believe in an article that if CrossFit makes you better at climbing, then you probably suck at climbing. And I'm have the exact same thought, yeah, and where I don't think that CrossFit or group training is necessarily just a bad thing inherently. But I think it's become this, this culture of destroying yourself in the gym. And that's where I think people are going wrong. But I'm interested in hearing your take on it as it relates to rock climbing, because people really do love group training and getting worked. Yeah, so

Steve Bechtel  32:46

yeah, well, and we've talked about this before. training or less a fitness is a result of what you did, not how it felt. And so if you come in and pull some heavy weight off the floor, and you do some mobility, and you walk out of here and you didn't puke, I'm really psyched, because you may have improved your strength as an athlete. Now, when we look at CrossFit, we're like, okay, you know, it's high intensity, you do some, you know, you do see some athletes getting pretty strong. But, but really the adaptation arc on that is fairly low. After about six weeks, most people adapt out to metabolic training. And so if we look at the adaptation, persistence, of different facets of training, like strength versus hypertrophy, versus anaerobic training, we can start to look at this, what they call heterochronicity, which means how long it takes for you to adapt to a given stimulus. So to look at adaptation, persistence, you say, okay, hypertrophy, if I get my muscles nice and big, it takes a long, long time to do it. And it takes a long, long time to lose it. And you've seen that with people that get big legs, and then they're like, how do I make them smaller, can't get rid of them. So that's a persistent factor strength, as you know, is a persistent factor because it takes you forever to build up that strength to be able to hang a small edge or to do a heavy benchpress or whatever. But again, that stays with you for a long time, you can stop strength training for a year and still be a fairly strong person. Okay, so on the other end of that is anaerobic conditioning, which is very, very fast to increase up to a high level and goes away but it goes away very, very quickly. And so when you have a workout program that's based around anaerobic conditioning, with with sprinkling in of strength and other sorts of things. You you can add dapt up to it, but then you you hit a hard plateau and you'll hang out there for a long time. And, and typically people will, will get really good results at first, and then they stay because of because of the enjoyment or because of the group. And so when I say that CrossFit is isn't great for climbing, I mean, like, anytime you're reading an article about the benefits of CrossFit for a sport, just take CrossFit out of it, and replace the word with Zumba. And see if you're still interested in doing it is gonna be like, no, Zumba is not my not my gig. In CrossFit school. Zumba is not? Well, it's the same thing. It's non specific training. It'd be like, you know, lots of people are like, Oh, yeah, you should do yoga to become better at climbing. I was like, No, I mean, you're not gonna get better at climbing for doing yoga. Yoga is can support climbing in a lot of ways. But it's not, it's not the replacement. And the same thing goes for CrossFit. Where you do the more general hard, intense stuff you do, the less you're able to do on this highly technical, highly intense sport that you're trying to perform at.

Kris Hampton  36:06

Yeah, I agree completely. You made a great analogy. The other day, and we're talking that CrossFit works on the same principles as Justin Bieber, right? That it's really popular, but that doesn't mean it's good. Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  36:22

And, and that's the thing is like, it's Yeah, you can get generally fit and people, people. I mean, those guys that compete in CrossFit are unbelievably fit, guys. But here's the crazy thing. The people that perform well, in CrossFit competitions, don't train by doing CrossFit. You know, they train the way in athlete trains, and they do strength, they, they have a very organized program. It's not random, it's not designed to hit the, you know, Greg Glassman, 10 facets of fitness. And so, you know, I don't like to, you know, say like, it's wrong, but if you want to climb hard, it's wrong.

Kris Hampton  37:03

Yeah. And I think people get blinded by that. By the fitness. You see, in CrossFit, you know, you see those people, they're super strong, they're obviously athletes, they move really well. And I think people get blinded by that. And they just believe, oh, I need to be that so that I can climb? Well, because that's what an athlete looks like. And that's how they got there. You know, they did CrossFit, and they became an athlete.

Steve Bechtel  37:29

Yeah, I think people get blinded. Well, and that's the thing is like, trying to be good at at several things. And, and, you know, it's sort of, like we talked at the beginning, I, you know, if you want to be a champion runner run, if you want to be a champion climber, you climb, but you're not going to probably be able to do both of those things. You you look at you look at the way that general fitness is presented, and it's seen as a really good thing. And one of the things that, that the tagline of CrossFit is specialization is for insects. Well, it's not, it's for human beings and right, it's, you know, as indicated by the number of people that are successful doctor, lawyer, accountant combos, sure, you know, like, you don't do lots and lots of things, right. And the other thing is that with the random nature of the training training, I get, I get worked up about training, because people think that anytime that they're getting tired or sweaty, it's training, but training is extremely, extremely organized, right. And so, randomized training doesn't bring the results that systemized training does. And I'll give you an example. You know, you go to college, and you get all these textbooks, and you have to read those textbooks and studied for the classes. Well imagine we take all the textbooks and we tear the pages out of these books, we throw them all over the room, and then you just randomly read one page at a time at based on what you pick up off the floor. Are you going to come out of college with the same understanding? As if you had done it in an organized fashion reading like page one, page two, page three, you know, and you know, of course not. And that's the same sort of thing that happens when you throw random stuff into your into your training and a lot of people mistake variability for random and variability we know is important. Random is not important.

Kris Hampton  39:32

Yeah, I felt that way about the I feel that way about all the videos I see online, I get worked up when someone says, you know, this is how I train and it's a workout video. It's not a there's nothing to do with training in there necessarily, other than this might be one of the components of their training. Yeah. And I felt that way about the Gimme Craft book. While it's a great book of workouts. It's not a training book, and and it bothered me and maybe that's just me, you know, worrying about semantics that, that it was called a training book. And they do say in the beginning of the book, I believe that it, you know, we're not trying to lay out your training program for you. And it has a lot of great exercises and good workouts but but there's really is no training in the book.

Steve Bechtel  40:21

Right. And I thought I thought that was really a disappointment too, because they clearly have a fabulous facility and I know what they're doing. Yeah. And and maybe that's, that's coming down the pipe, like there's, they're gonna come out with it, right magnum opus of training, claiming, but, but I think, I think that's an interesting thing is that people do get confused about, about what to do, you know, training program to training program, and honestly, like, like we we've talked before, the most basic one, the most simple progressive training program is invariably the best. And then once that stops working, then you complicate it. But, but, you know, it's, it's easy to start, start getting too much information coming in, and, you know, gosh, there's, you know, there's a new training program, you know, every two weeks on the internet now, and, gosh, you can, you can easily get worked up and going, Oh, man, I'm gonna start doing, you know, these style intervals, and I'm gonna buy this hang board, and I'm going to get some of those, you know, the atomic bombs and start training on those and all of those things are valid, but within a systemized program to where you're actually going to see progress from them. Otherwise, if you only do something like say you do, you know, a workout on the atomic bombs, like, killer workout for an hour, you know, once every six weeks, that's seen more as a traumatic event by your own than something to adapt to.  And so the all those things need to be carefully placed into your program.

Kris Hampton  42:09

Right. I think we're on the same page here. As far as you know, the cardiovascular fitness aspect of climbing goes, I want to give you a couple of a couple of examples, a couple of instances. And I just want to see what how you would suggest those people. What, where they go with their training. And so I have a friend who is a good climber, he does tend to gain some weight when he when we're somewhere in the offseason. And he's very disciplined about getting back to completely shredded and ripped and at his fighting weight, which is, you know, 20 20 25 pounds less than what he's at in the middle of the winter. And he does that largely by being very strict about his diet, and quite a bit of running. And I'm curious what you would say about the running portion of it, would it be advantageous for him to do something else? Do you think it's maybe he's never done? Only the diet and not running? So maybe it's far more diet than than running that's, that's causing that adaptation? I'm just curious what your thought on it is?

Steve Bechtel  43:32

Well, um, you know, they, they asked a bunch of strength coaches, what, you know, what they would do if they could only work out for 45 minutes, like you have 45 minutes a week to work out. And Josh Hillis, who has a great book called "Fat Loss Happens on Monday" he said, I would go shopping, you know, that's the 45 minutes would be all about the food. And, and this guy is the fat loss guy, like if you want to get skinny, like this book is killer, and it's all about building good habits and, and making sure that those habits stick. And so somebody that's got a 25 pound weight fluctuation, losing weight is a massive stress on your body. Yeah. And so when he's taking time and using energy to lose those 25 pounds, he's taking away from potential high intensity training time that he could be putting into the sport. And like I said, if it's more than five to 10 pound fluctuation, is probably needs to be controlled nutritionally. Running I'm sure helps when he gets that much weight on, but again, we're taking away from where we want to be pushing that a patient and especially if he's been climbing for very long, you know, that that window of opportunity, it's smaller and smaller and smaller, and you have to fight so much harder for each grade. That the silly things like losing a little bit of fat. It's a it's a huge waste of have a big chunk of your time. And and so I think maybe a little higher wintertime activity for the guy, try not to let the weight go quite so far. And, and see if you can see if you can mitigate it with a little bit more climbing training. I know not everybody gets to do that, but it sure help. 

Kris Hampton  45:20

Now what about if a person comes to you who they love running, that's, you know, that's kind of their rest day activity. It's their relaxation activity, they just love to do it. But they also want to improve their climbing. They're fairly well rounded climber female, let's say. would you suggest that they stop running? or cut back on the running? And if they if they do continue to run? Would it be more beneficial for them to do long steady state runs? Or something like interval running or running sprints, things like that?

Steve Bechtel  46:09

Um, well, here's a funny thing, that the word priority comes from the Latin root, the first thing, and sometime in, you know, maybe the last 50 years, we pluralize that and have become priorities. But really, you can only have one priority. And and so you you've got  it and with with my athletes, I'll say, what, what is the goal for this training phase? What is the one thing the non negotiable, what's the one thing that we're going to work on, and if it's redpointing, then everything falls to the wayside to make sure that the redpointing happens. If it's fat loss, I don't care how much stronger you're getting in the bouldering. gym, we're gonna work on losing weight, the only the only metric we're using is how much you fat loss we're seeing out of the athlete. And so for your athlete, I would say, you know, what are your non-negotiables? Are you willing to continue climbing at the same level to continue enjoying running? Or are you willing to drop back on the amount of cardiovascular activity you're doing to try out and see if you can get better climbing. And and that's my main thing is like, let's back off on it for a season, you know, you can quit running for six months, and then get your running fitness back in a month. So let's try it. Let's let's see if what we're doing isn't working. And it's like Dan, john says, He says, what you should aim for in the future is to quit making the same mistakes over and over again, as often. And it's what we do with our you know, when we look at those non negotiables, I always like to benchpress I never stretch. I drink beer every night, those sorts of things are going to hold us back more than how hard we can train in the bouldering. gym.

Kris Hampton  47:58

Yeah. Okay, one last one. Let's look at me, I've been mostly, you know, I've been able to do no activity until the last two weeks for the last 12 weeks. So I've never been the type to cut weight, I kind of always hover around between 143 and 147. You know, and when I'm redpointing something hard, I might just watch my sugar intake a little more closely, or watch my carb intake a little more closely. And then I dropped down to 143. Now I'm, I'm at right around 152 or so. So I haven't gained a considerable amount of weight. But I have lost some muscle mass in my arm shoulder back because of my surgery. So I know that that weights come from elsewhere. And I'm definitely getting the you know, the dad bod thing going on, because I haven't been able to do anything. You know, there was no running. There was no, I couldn't I couldn't do anything. Basically. You just don't know how much your shoulder does until you can't use the damn thing. Yeah. So now as I'm being able to do some sort of weight training, some sort of movement, am I going to be better off doing you know, high intensity, anaerobic activities like squat jumps, things like that, should I go running and get some cardio to you know, build a little engine to support my strength training, even though I have a background in having pretty good cardio fitness, or do I just go straight back into strength training and, and that's going to help me burn the calories I need to?

Steve Bechtel  49:57

Um, well I always like to look at at injuries, I think I have to because they're so devastating as opportunities. And so you can say, let's, let's develop some of these other things that you can do without without the shoulder. And so maybe you really can say, I'm going to take two months, since I'm so far away from performance climbing, you don't get to start climbing again for another eight weeks. And then that's, that's starting at the basement. And so probably the next time you're going to be sending hard stuff will be next March or April, right. And so we're so far out from performance, that base fitness is going to be the main thing, keeping the metabolism fired up, you know, keeping yourself lean, all those sorts of things. And so I think a combination of those things is right, you know, a little bit of running a little bit of strength training for the legs and, and the core as, as tolerated. But, but really keeping that metabolism turned on. And that's what you've seen is, you've probably continued to eat about the same amount. Yeah, but your activity levels of drama...

Kris Hampton  51:06

more cupcakes

Steve Bechtel  51:07

  Yeah. Right. Yeah, well, like you'd like to hell with this, I'm hurting, I'm gonna eat whatever I can. And so but we say that and another thing that happens is as you age, your metabolism changes, and we'll see people that eat the exact same thing, like I'm being this my whole life, but now they've got a little bit of flab, and they get a little bit more, and adults tend to gain just about it's not too much but like point 2% body fat per year. And unless we start working a little bit harder and use our, our adult discipline and, and our desire to continue performing in the sport, we start to see that you know, you turn into the pear shape, you know, he start going to all the, you know, American Alpine Club meetings. So, you know, you you're a has been so you gotta really watch that. And so what we really want to do is, is continue to stay fit and strong in whatever regard you can and combine that with your rehab stuff. And so I think looking at your three energy systems, we want to build you know, the your a lactic will be you know, strength. You know, your lactic stuff, you could do some some sprints like aerodynamic style stuff when the arm allows, even if it has to be just legs Sprint's is going to, again, we're in that metabolic specific stuff, not motor specific. It's better than not doing it. And then, you know, keeping your legs under you, you know, hikes, getting to the crag to belay your friends. You know what, whatever else it is. So as long as we're working all three of those energy systems, you'll hit the ground running when you can start actually training and

Kris Hampton  52:52

Cool. Well, I appreciate it. I'm gonna take your advice. Yeah. So thanks for sitting down with me again.

Steve Bechtel  52:56

 Yeah. Thanks, Chris. This has been great.

Kris Hampton  53:00

Yeah, I I didn't take Steve's advice. Well, sort of, I guess I sort of did because I did a bunch of kettlebell energy systems work that I think really set me up well for coming back strong for my shoulder surgery. And I'm climbing better now than I ever have. So So yeah, maybe I sort of did take his advice. Anyway, check out Steve at climbstrong.com and if you happen to be in Lander, check his gym out Elemental Performance and Fitness. It's a really great gym and you'll you'll definitely have a good session there. So yeah, if if you happen to be in the Akron area, check us out for those workshops on the 10th and 11th of May, Nate and I will be there teaching you how to get the most out of your bouldering sessions. Check out our ebooks at powercompanyclimbing.com You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Pinterest, all the social medias except for the Twitter's we don't tweets. We don't do that stuff. And yeah, let me know what you think about those rants if you if you want me to drink a little get a little surly. And yeah, just rant a little let me know if that's something you want to hear. All right next time.