In this episode, we talk with honorary co-host Steve Bechtel and his co-author Charlie Manganiello about their new resource, "The Climb Strong Deadlifting Manual."  They tell us why deadlifting is the number one bang-for-your-buck exercise for strength training for climbers, and give us some background on the how, why, and when. 

For me, and for the seasoned deadlifter, the book is not only a great refresher, but a good resource of how to incorporate the deadlift into your climbing, particularly some great ideas concerning programming.  If you haven't deadlifted before, this is the practical guide to getting started.  These guys are both climbers, and this book is directed toward climbers, NOT toward lifters.  As with everything else that Climb Strong does, it's to the point, easy to read, and easy to put into action.  

You can find out more about Steve and Charlie at climbstrong.com, or by visiting their gym: Elemental Climbing and Fitness in Lander, Wyoming.  

You can purchase "The Climb Strong Deadlifting Manual" here:

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And check out these other books from Steve Bechtel and Climb Strong:  

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Kris Hampton  00:32

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton. Welcome to episode eight of the Power Company Climbing Podcast brought to you by powercompanyclimbing com. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Pinterest. And you should look for us there. If you're on Facebook, check out our Facebook community group. It's a new thing we just started, you can come and talk about training, talk about what you've been doing, get some advice, or just spray a little we don't mind spray. We're okay with that. So come and check us out. A couple of well, you know what, before I do anything, let me first say thank you to you guys, because I'm sitting here right now in Lander Wyoming. And sitting on the back patio outside, it's beautiful here. And I'm here because you guys believed in what we're doing. And I was able to quit my job. My career over the last 18 years, left my home in Cincinnati. And now I'm here in Lander Wyoming indefinitely. So yeah, thanks, Big thanks to you guys. A couple of points of business here. Before we go anywhere else, Nate and I will be leaving for our Boulder Better workshop tour very, very soon, we're going to be hitting a few cities back across the country from Salt Lake City over to North Carolina. So first, let me tell you a little bit about the workshop. It's actually I think it's pretty unique. It's a two day workshop. Day one, during this whole tour is going to be free for the gym members. And it's just a it's a session with the Power Company. So we're gonna come in, we're gonna boulder with you guys. I will be in the gym for a few hours. And just offer advice, where where it's wanted. And if you have questions, you can feel totally free to come and ask us if you need advice on your projects, if you need relationship advice, I'm happy to give it. It may not be good advice. But I can give you advice. So talk to us if you need anything while you're in the gym while we're in the gym. While we're bouldering with you. Yeah, we just want to meet everybody, we just want to come out and have a good time. So that's, that's day one of the workshop, day two is a little more, a little more in depth. It's, it's limited to 15 people. So you're gonna want to get in on it pretty quickly, if you want to participate. And it's gonna be about 30 minutes of classroom time, then about an hour, hour and a half of climbing and then a question and answer session. And basically, we're just kind of delving into the art of practicing bouldering. And being a little more mindful of what you're doing. And being able to sort of take apart your, your climbing and figure out where you need to be putting your energy and how to do that. So, so yeah, I think it's something that that everybody can get something out of it at any level. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, V2 boulderer, or V10. boulderer. We can help you out. So yeah, come and check us out. We will be in possibly in Salt Lake the week of August 1st. I'm trying to set something up there. That will just be me. Nate will be meeting me at the next stop in Colorado. So I'll let you know more about that Salt Lake date. We'll be definitely be at Earth Treks Golden on August 9th, 10th, maybe the 11th. We will be at Soill and St. Louis, August 15, and 16th Boulders Gym in Madison, Wisconsin, August 22 23rd and 24th. And we've got a date in North Carolina that's a little bit different. Those workshops are totally filled up. But if you're in town and you want to talk to us, let me know. And then we'll be back in RockQuest in Cincinnati for August 30 and 31st. And any of those dates, if you happen to be in town, if you want to get with us for a private session or an assessment. Let me know and we can hook up with you. So yeah, we've also got some exciting things coming with our with our E-books. The popular ones Boulder Strong, Boulder Better, and Climb 5.12 all versions of that are going to be they're going to get some updates there get some refreshers, and they'll be plans that you can buy on the app. And you'll have a coach who's watching over you. If you're not doing the workouts, he's going to get on you. Some of you need that. And we'll be good. You'll be able to get feedback, ask questions, things like that. So it's a little more, a little more in depth than the E-book is. So that'll be coming soon. And you'll hear more about that on our next episode, which, which will be coming pretty quickly after this one. I just had a really great talk with Jon Cardwell here in Lander, and I can't wait to get that out to you guys. But first things first, this episode, episode eight dead lifting with Steve Bechtel and Charlie Manganiello. You guys all know Steve. Charlie is a trainer at Steve's gym. And I really, really respect what both of these guys do and the approach they take to strength training and the training for climbing. I'm actually going to set some sessions up with Charlie before I leave on the workshop tour. So Charlie and Steve just recently released their Climb Strong Deadlifting Manual. They gave me a copy before this interview. And, and it's really great. Even though I've done a fair amount of dead lifting, I've still got a ton to learn. And they, they definitely put it in a really simple, easy to read, easy to take in format. And it helped me you know, just refresh what I was doing. I needed to hear some of the cues that they've got in there and I needed to, just needed to brush up. So if you're deadlifting, if you're considering deadlifting, I would definitely recommend checking out the Climb Strong Deadlifting Manual, you can find it at climbstrong.com. You can also find it on Amazon. And of course uncle Google can find it for you pretty easily. So let's get on with this thing. Dead lifting with Steve Bechtel and Charlie Magnaniello.

Charlie Manganiello  06:55

strength training throughout your whole life increases your quality of life. And hopefully your climbing will be better.

Kris Hampton  07:00

 Good posture that's all we're asking for here. All right. So we're pretty much live.

Steve Bechtel  07:27

Kris, thanks for coming. Welcome to the podcast. I guess my first question. 

Kris Hampton  07:32

You're... You are the official co host. Now you know that right?

Steve Bechtel  07:36

I'm like the I'm like the guy that sits in the corner behind the keyboard and says, "Hey, Oh"

Charlie Manganiello  07:42

Oh, yeah. Just like all the sound bites?

Steve Bechtel  07:44

 Yeah.

Kris Hampton  07:46

People want the Steve Bechtel podcast

Charlie Manganiello  07:49

toilet flush and like the fart noises.

Kris Hampton  07:53

Alright, so since we got two have you here, why don't you both just tell me who you are. And just give me your name. That's all I really want. I don't care what you do, frankly.

Charlie Manganiello  08:03

My name is Charlie Manganiello.

Steve Bechtel  08:05

I'm Steve battle. And we're both strength coaches, since he's more than just Charlie Manganiello.

Kris Hampton  08:13

And you both work here. Steve. You own Elemental? Correct? Yeah,

Steve Bechtel  08:16

Ellen, my wife and I own Elemental and we've had the gym for about 15 years. Charlie's been with us for about five or six years now. So yeah, Lander Wyoming.

Kris Hampton  08:30

Cool. Yeah. And if anybody if any of you guys listening are ever in Lander I urge you to come in and you know, even if you're just here for a short time get a workout and Steve's gym because I just really appreciate the simplicity here. And just how easy it is to be comfortable working out it doesn't feel like you know, the big crazy commercial gyms that that I went to when I was a high school kid so definitely try to come in and get a workout if you're in Lander we booked a session with these guys.

Steve Bechtel  08:59

Yeah. Or at least come eat doughnuts with us. The It was funny. We had somebody come in and see our climbing space which is very the bouldering room is very small and she she asked me like well do you think you're going to expand make it bigger and I I had actually that morning been thinking about reducing the size of it you know, trying to focus focus more on on the training aspects and so so it is funny it's a little different design than a typical climbing gym.

Charlie Manganiello  09:31

I think what's cool about it is it's kind of feels like almost a home woody where I personally get less distracted in my in my sessions are way more focused because I'm kind of like the: ADD, Oh, look shiny new route or,

Kris Hampton  09:46

oh, yeah, I think we're all that way. You know, I have I have a little room in Cincinnati where I just moved from and called the engine room and I generally just disappear from the main gym up into this little tiny attic space. That's just dark and dusty, and train up there because I get distracted in the main gym and end up just working myself on moderate problems. Yeah. 

Steve Bechtel  10:10

Well, you know, that's an interesting thing, Kris, because we would assume that with a larger, you know, more expensive gym more variety that that you would see that, you know, up, you know, uptick in the ability or in the in the level of the overall climbers. But that's not always the case. And some of the best climbers come out of somewhat moderate gyms, you know, like that the gym down in Albuquerque is just incredible for producing great climbers, these these places that have like a fixed set of holds on on a bouldering board, you know, small campus board, I mean, the, the people can really focus on training. And I think that I think there's a big future in training specific gyms.

Kris Hampton  10:55

Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. Let's get down to business. So you guys have got a an actually, I was pretty excited to see it, I just saw that it was coming a couple of weeks ago, and, and I've been in a, you know, really kind of digging into exploring kettlebells. So I haven't dead lifted since the end of last summer. And I'd been getting excited to get here to Lander, get into Elemental, and lift some heavy weights, it's just something I don't have available in my training space at home. And then I saw that you guys have a dead lifting manual coming out. So first off, Why deadlifting?

Steve Bechtel  11:36

There's a couple things did the manual came from a document that we created just teaching the hip hinges and the deadlift. And we're, we for the last few years, I've taught a strength clinic at the International Climbers Festival. And the two years ago was incredible. It was it was like the the single best educational opportunity ever for rock climbers. But we tried to fit like 20 hours of material in two hours, it was just a cluster. And so. So then we stripped it down and we said, okay, we're only gonna teach four exercises, basic strength principles, and it was still just a fight to get through it. And we said, okay, we're gonna back off, we're going to strip this down to just one lift, we want people to come in and get get it, they want to be able to go into any gym in the country, and know how to deadlift after this to our clinic. And this was our spiral bound manual to go with it. It turns out that having this manual printed in the local coffee, or a coffee shop, in spiral bound was gonna cost a lot of money. And so we looked at small run publishing. And so we learned that we could actually publish it for a lot cheaper, and then offer it to other people, if they're interested in it, then have it for the people that come to the clinic. And so it's sort of an an adjunct to the clinic, but we decided to make it a standalone document.

Kris Hampton  13:07

Good. I'm glad you did, because, you know, I've dead lifted a fair amount, not a ton. And, and I'm mostly self taught other than some coaching in high school. And just coming back, I think two days ago was my first day back to deadlifting. And I, I hadn't seen your manual at that point. And, and I was definitely rusty. And just looking through the manual, even though I've got some experience doing it was really helpful in remembering the cues that I need to remember for myself when I'm doing it, and I'm still rusty as hell, but it's gonna come back a lot faster, because you guys have laid it out in a really, really simple way. And that's one of the things I appreciate about what you do kind of across the board is it's simple and straightforward. Yeah, so,

Steve Bechtel  13:55

Um, well, it's important to remember like when you come back to climbing after a long layoff, how, you know, uncoordinated and terrible, you feel, and everybody needs to address strength in that way that it's not just like, Oh, I'm back at it. 100% It's like getting back on the guitar or getting back on the rock for us.

Kris Hampton  14:15

Right back to the idea that strength is a skill.

Charlie Manganiello  14:18

Yeah. I think also another big reason. You know, Steve and I have kicked around the idea over the last year or so. But strength training and climbing is definitely gaining popularity, as we see with Training Beta, and folks are getting super psyched on it. And deadlifts kind of, not kind of, it is one of the best exercises we can do as climbers for general strength training. And a lot of folks are approaching it with little to no knowledge and we're hoping to kind of lay it out and make it easy for people and it's the manuals also for folks that are experts. I think anyone picking up that manual is going to pick up some cues, some tip, even how to incorporate into your climbing whether you've been deadlifting for zero days or five years.

Kris Hampton  15:05

Yeah, definitely. So let's let's just dig in a little bit. I kind of want this episode to be something of a, you know, just something that people can listen to, in addition to your book and maybe learn a little more just they're hearing you guys talk, then what they're picking up from the book. Some people just learn better, you know, having audio than they do from reading. So, let's just dig into the deadlift. First off, it's a hip hinge. So, Charlie, would you explain to me hip hinge versus squat? I think that's a big misconception that a lot of people make.

Charlie Manganiello  15:41

Yeah, it's it's a hard one to conceptualize or to kind of get dialed. But yeah, so we're talking about four major movement patterns, we have hip hinge, so that's hamstrings, glutes, lower back, so the posterior chain or as I call back abs, and then we have our knee dominant. So quads, like squatting or step ups, and then push pull. And so the deadlift is a hip hinge. And it's when we're drawing our hips back and hinging from the hips. It folks always say, Oh, I'm bending my knees, it feels like I'm squatting. You do feel that way. And it depends on how long your arms are, how long your shins are, you might have to squat a little lower than other folks. But as long as your hips are above your knees, and your shoulders above your hips, you are hip hinging in the deadlift or kettlebell swing, or a Romanian deadlift.

Kris Hampton  16:33

Gotcha. Gotcha. And so, let's see, where should we go next from just what the hip hinge is when talking about the deadlift?

Steve Bechtel  16:45

Well, a good place to go is why train the hip hinge?

Kris Hampton  16:49

 Yeah, good.

Steve Bechtel  16:50

 Um, you know, climbers go like I'm on climbing on steep rock. I need stronger abs. I need more and more abs.

Kris Hampton  16:57

Yeah, I hear it all the time. Every time I see somebody whose feet cut there, I need to do more abs. 

Steve Bechtel  17:01

Yeah and so the rectus abdominus is responsible for 10 degrees of trunk flexion. That's the only thing that it's the major movement pattern for it. So if you can imagine, trunk flexion that's doing a crunch, right, right. Yeah, when your feet come off on on a route, and you need to bring your legs back up like on an overhang, you do use your abdominals to help do that. But to keep your legs from coming off, right, you need to train the posterior chain to be able to keep your hips in there, a really great exercise for a climber to do is to get a bathroom scale, set it in the hallway in front of their headboard, and then hang straight on from the headboard with their butts straight below their arms and their feet out in front. So there, they've got to bend that their hip. And then when they try to drive their weight onto that scale, or straighten their hips out, right, using a hip hinge, they can see that extreme change in the amount of pressure that's being put on that bathroom scale. And so you know it like if you if you go from having 40 pounds of pressure on the bathroom scale to having 100 pounds, that 100 pounds comes off the arms, right? And if we can maintain that ability to keep our hips in, both through mobility and improving the strength in the in the posterior chain, that athlete all of a sudden just got better arm endurance. And so I think that, you know, all injury prevention aside, creating a strong midsection, which is primarily the posterior chain, or like Charlie said, the back abs. 

Kris Hampton  18:37

Yeah. 

Steve Bechtel  18:38

That's gonna be that's gonna serve the climber really well.

Kris Hampton  18:42

Yeah, I agree. And I try to point out to a lot of my folks because they, they definitely tend to jump onto this, you know, I need more ab work, I need more ab work and I try to back them off, like we let's not do ab work, you know, let's calm down a little bit. And I explained to them that the only time you're, you're using trunk flexion is when you're lifting your legs, and you're never doing that with anything more than the weight of your legs. You know, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't train your abs but your, the thing that you're using extra strength for is to hold your hips into the wall, hold yourself into the wall. And that's essentially a hip hinge.

Steve Bechtel  19:25

Yeah, and and that the core thing or the ab thing is an interesting one. Number one, a lot of people want to train ab because they're getting a little fat in the middle. Right? And that is not going to work. There's a great study came out I think it's maybe University of Virginia, where they showed that you had to do 700 crunches a day for a year to lose a pound of fat. And okay, so it's a worthless exercise. We all know that but it can also be potentially damaging to the low back unloaded spinal flexion. But But what what also happens is people get get into the having that abdominal burn. And, you know, we really have a fondness for specific core strengthening exercises, but we never go beyond five or eight reps, right. And so these are very, very hard exercises and a lot like you'd remember from your days of gymnastics, you know, like, the various variations of planks, you know Pike's Leg Raises, things like that.

Kris Hampton  20:23

Right? Right. And, and I think something that the deadlift does, it's really important that you just sort of touched on is, you know, when I was a gymnast, and we were doing planks and leg lifts, and things like that as training, it wasn't a, keep your body as loose as possible and, and hold the plank for as long as possible. And it wasn't a, throw your legs up with as much momentum as you can muster and arch your back and keep your legs up. It was it was more about keeping your body really tight, and making that movement perfect. And I think when you're lifting something heavy, you're much more inclined to want to keep that perfect, or you're gonna end up hurting yourself. And with bodyweight exercises, like the plank or the leg lift, people tend to get sloppy, really fast, just to get more reps and even even the pull up, you know, so

Charlie Manganiello  21:14

yeah, you stole the words out of my mouth. I think, I guess I only really started deadlifting, maybe three years ago. And I was just like an average climber before that. And I guess I still am an average climber.

Steve Bechtel  21:28

We all are.

Charlie Manganiello  21:29

I know. But that was what I learned was able to when I asked my body to, you know, keep the kinetic chain as we talked and climbing from your toes all the way to your fingertips on the deadlift taught me how to fire my quads, my glutes, my abs, all the way into my closing my hand for a crimp. When you really needed to turn it on through like a cruxy section, or some super hard boulder problem. That was the biggest thing that I thought I gained from it, besides just getting stronger and having stronger posterior chain, but being able to fire those muscles exactly what I wanted to, and then also learn how to relax them exactly when you want to because that is a key thing. 

Kris Hampton  22:04

Yeah, I think that's really important. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's just put that into climbing speak. I think that's something that, you know, boulderers, boulderers tend to be better at firing more muscles while they're climbing. And route climbers tend to be better at relaxing them, especially if you come from the Red like I do, or these long enduro areas, you know, here at Wild Iris might be a little different. But it's really good as any style climber, you know, what if you're getting on a long boulder problem, or even a fairly short boulder problem that ends with one really, really hard move, you need to stay as relaxed as possible for as long as possible until you really have to fire everything. And I think these kinds of exercises where you go between that, relax, tighten back up, lift, you know, when you go through that cycle over and over, it teaches you to do that. 

Steve Bechtel  22:56

Yep.

Charlie Manganiello  22:58

Especially when it gets heavy. You can't relax.

Kris Hampton  23:01

Yeah

Charlie Manganiello  23:01

it's not gonna go up.

Steve Bechtel  23:02

Yeah, yeah, and that's what brings up an important point of where we talk about technical Max, you know, your Max Max is the most you could pull off the ground ever, you know, with any kind of terrible form, your technical Max is the max at which you can perform the movement flawlessly, you know, flows perfectly, there's no sway in your posture, there's no bend in the low back. And that's, I mean, you're maybe it's, it's 10%, lower than your what you could possibly pull. But it's a it's a really important zone to train in. And we really like to keep people in that maybe 75 to 85% of their max zone, especially climbers, I mean, we just need you to get stronger in the core, stronger in the in the posterior chain, we don't need to set kind of some kind of deadlift record. And that's why we are absolutely against using belts or bands or special lifting shoes or anything like that, because we're not training for a high deadlift number, right. The the belt is used to create thoracic pressure. And the core muscles, the abdominals are also used to create thoracic pressure. And so wearing a belt during all your training would be like wearing, you know, taping your ankles to go for a trail run. You don't want to train with that belt. Right? You're defeating the whole purpose. Yeah, same with the shoes. Same with everything. And, you know, we get some flack about that. But the rod deadlift is really as far as any climber needs to go.

Kris Hampton  24:38

Yeah, and I think, you know, your point with not using special shoes or belts or whatever. Not only is it just defeating the purpose, but you know, Dan John, I think said,  "keep the goal, the goal." Right. And, you know, our goal is to get better at climbing and get stronger for climbing. Not to necessarily become a great dead lifter. 

Steve Bechtel  24:59

Yep. 

Kris Hampton  24:59

You know so

Charlie Manganiello  25:00

And you'll find yourself as you as folks start to get into the deadlift. Same way you chase grades

Kris Hampton  25:07

Oh yeah, man.

Charlie Manganiello  25:07

Like, it is so easy to be like 10 more pounds. 

Kris Hampton  25:10

Yeah, 

Charlie Manganiello  25:11

Like, right after you did your PR, like, I can do 10 more and then you put your back. 

Kris Hampton  25:15

I think especially because it's so easily quantifiable, you know, climbing is people love to be able to quantify things. And climbing is so hard to do that, you know, even though we've got this really broken down grade system, it still means basically nothing, when it comes down to it, you know, and, and weightlifting is really black and white, you know, you can add two pounds, and you know, you've done something different, you know, something better. So I can definitely see getting wrapped up in that.

Steve Bechtel  25:46

Yeah, I think that's part of the interest in in hangboarding, you know, because you can hang with a certain amount of weight for a certain amount of time, and then you can judge that up and make a little bit of progress. And I think that that's a little bit dangerous. Because our in our structure tends not to get as as fatigued, we don't feel the fatigue in it the way we would in a muscle. And so usually the first sign of a finger injuries when you hear the sound, and it pops and so I really like people making, you know, very big jumps on those weights, with with hangboarding. Because then you know, like, you got to own body weight, and then we're gonna go to 10 pounds. And then once you own 10 pounds, we're gonna go to 20 pounds, you know,

Kris Hampton  26:31

Do you do the same thing with with your deadlifting clients?

Steve Bechtel  26:34

I do. I like that. I, it's not all the time. But one of the things that that is a great idea is just use the big wheels, 45 and 25. Yeah. And so then you're going from, you know, you'll take these big leaps of around 50 pounds. And so you're really going to own 185 before you go 225. Right. And which is really great, because then it forces them to groove that technique and get excellent at it. But that that only works part of the time. I think part of the time people really do want that little those little progress things. And deadlifting is not near as dangerous as hangboarding as far as like adding a pound might or might not break you.

Kris Hampton  27:18

It's not as much about the tendons at that point 

Steve Bechtel  27:20

Yeah, and so I think and and the availability and the ease of changing the weight on a deadlift makes a little different.

Kris Hampton  27:28

Yeah. Tell me that. Steve, how long have you been deadlifting? 

Steve Bechtel  27:32

Oh, I? Well, I my first good deadlift was probably last week. No, it's it's funny. Um, we, we did a little bit in, in college. But you know, I was I came through college in the 90s. And it was still very much the machine era.

Kris Hampton  27:52

The 1890s

Steve Bechtel  27:53

 Yes, exactly. And so. And so we were lifting gin wagons, no, we, we had had a lot of machines, like, you know, the hip sleds and things like that. 

Kris Hampton  28:04

Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  28:05

 And so my first real serious deadlifting was in Salt Lake City, I worked there for a couple years in a gym and train with a guy named Neil Anderson. And he's like, you know, we're gonna pick these barbells up. And so that was, that was really where I started with that and learning the Olympic lifts. Since maybe 2002. 

Kris Hampton  28:25

You and do you still approach it, like a skill all the time? Or do you get into this quantifiable? I want to add more weight to my deadlift thing.

Steve Bechtel  28:37

No, you know, and it's funny, Charlie and I were talking about max's the other day. And if if you asked how much I can deadlift, I would give you my max. Of course, it's like, how hard do you climb, but the Max was in 2011. So like, five years ago, I haven't lifted that much sense, right. And so I really look at it as making sure that I'm staying within a technical framework of being able to do it. And I'm a huge fan of two sets of five, especially with the amount of focus I put on it. It's it's easy to implement in other programs. And I can do two sets of five a couple of times a week, and I'll still have those weights up. And so, you know, even if you come back off a long layoff, you're hanging out, say like 200 pounds the next week and go to 205 next week and go to 10 making really safe progression there, right? And the deadlift We not only use for strength, but I use it as an adjunct to hang boarding for the metabolic benefits of it. 

Kris Hampton  29:43

Gotcha.

Steve Bechtel  29:43

 And this is this is a really interesting thing because I think that in the future we'll see more weightlifting integrated with hangboard training, because the strength response is partially nueralogical and is partially metabolic. But if we're trying to get strong, you need both of those things. The metabolic response to the forearm musculature being strengthened is very slight. It's not a very big muscle group, right. And so if you get in there and you do some heavy squats or heavy deadlifts on heavy weighted pull ups, combine those with with your hang boarding. One, it makes you rest between your hangboard sets a little bit more to it's going to up that metabolic value. And I think that people will get stronger faster. Sure, if they combine the two plus, it helps with scheduling as you know, as a coach, it's hard to figure out when to put all this crap in.

Kris Hampton  30:41

Yes, exactly. You just can't run at all. Yeah, consecutively. Or they end up in the gym for four hours. 

Steve Bechtel  30:46

Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello  30:47

Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  30:47

 And I would say with the maxing, like, it's, it's I mean, it's fun to chase numbers. And, and 

Kris Hampton  30:52

yeah, definitely 

Steve Bechtel  30:53

get a better PR, but I know, I'm about two years from my max, or maybe two and a half years. And I think Steve said it and we might have gotten from someone, but you only have to be strong enough. Like we're climbers, we're not power lifters. And so if any climber that's dead lifting two times are bodyweight for males, and one and a half times for females, like, you just need to stay around that weight. And you don't really need to go any stronger than that. Like it just there's no reason to. But if you fall off the bandwagon, and don't keep deadlifting get super weak, then you gotta pick it back up.

Kris Hampton  31:31

Yeah, definitely. And so quick question just based on that. Like I said, I haven't dead lifted since end of last summer. So it's probably been 10 months since the last time I dead lifted. But I have been really digging into kettlebells and doing a lot of, you know, heavy kettlebell swings, and just really learning kettlebells. Since there are so many modalities, so many implements to use, do you suggest that people should continue deadlifting through experimenting with other strength training? Or is it was deadlifting just something that they should always keep coming back to?

Charlie Manganiello  32:18

Steve might have a better answer for that. But whether you're dead lifting or not, we're really just talking about hip hinging So you know, I just came off like, this spring, I did like two kind of six week cycles of like heavy deadlifts. I'm not dead lifting now, because I'm focusing on some other stuff like front squats and my bench press. But I'm still doing the hip hinge in my workouts. And right now I'm just I've chosen the heavy kettlebell swing. Or you could choose to do the Romanian deadlift, which is kind of using the hamstring as a primary mover, and still getting the hip hinge within your workout. But you don't necessarily have to keep 100% deadlifting every single workout. 

Kris Hampton  32:57

Gotcha.

Steve Bechtel  32:58

Yeah, I agree with Charlie. And the way we look at the four movement patterns is like a four burner stove, you have three of them simmering and one of them, you're really pushing and so if you're working your one arm pull up those, you know, the squat, the hip hinge, the press, they they should just be maintained at a very low, low intensity, or low volume at a at a moderate intensity. So you, you know, like Charlie's, you know, he can deadlift in the low four hundreds, you know, when he's simmering the deadlift, we take him back to like the low three hundreds, he's gonna be, you know, he's not gonna be losing any strength, but it's still not going to be destroying him. And when he's really focusing on deadlifting, then, you know, the benchpress the pull up in the squat are really backed off. And all of these numbers, it's important, Kris, to to understand that the amount of time that we're spending on these is very slight, compared to like, what a power lifter would would do. You were never sacrificing a performance climbing for this. And, and so, like, like Charlie said, you'll deadlift for six weeks. And then we'll go into specifically like ballistics, like like the swing and and let that deadlift come back. But you may be doing heavy squats at that time, you want to have something that's stimulating you. During all those times, and for men, especially well for men and women. But for people that are over 30 over 35 lifting is huge for maintaining your growth hormone. It's so critical to your testosterone levels and things. They there's these great studies that show that a couple of sets of front squats would be equal to X amount of testosterone supplementation pills, you know, whatever it is, it's so I think it's a critical factor in staying young and and continuing your climbing career as you get older. So...

Kris Hampton  34:58

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because I, I've always looked at it as, you know, the four movements and, and deadlifting isn't always what I do or always what I prescribe. So yeah, looking at it deadlifting is definitely the popular word. It's the trend, you know? Yeah, it looks cool. It looks cool. It is cool. Pick up heavy things is cool.

Steve Bechtel  35:22

Well, and it's it's hard to cheat. Like, you see, people cheat the benchpress by not taking the bar to their chest, right? People cheat the pull up by like rubberneck in it and sticking their eyes over the bar. They'll cheat the squat, you know, it's like the national American guy squat form is to go about three inches down and then come back up, right? But the deadlift you can't BS, because there's no way you're going to stop before you Stand up. Stand up, it's the only place you're happy, 

Kris Hampton  35:49

Right. 

Steve Bechtel  35:50

And you can't do anything but pick it up off the ground. Yeah. And so it's, it's really cool in that way, and it's a total body integrated thing. And, you know, if you're going super heavy on that thing you can be you can be wiped out for days, neurologically. And so it's a it's definitely one of the big bang things and and a lot of guys will say if you could only do one exercise, that would be the one.

Kris Hampton  36:12

Yeah, and I think I agree with that. You know, I've, since I've worked with a lot of people remotely, I don't generally just jump them right into the deadlift. But, but I also really like the kettlebell swing, learning the swing kettlebell deadlifts, kettlebell swings, as, as sort of the big bang exercise when they're just learning it, and then when they feel like the hip hinge is is something that they're accustomed to, then I can move them into deadlift. And in fact, that just moved quite a few of my girls into mostly dead lifting for their weight training. And I think it's probably the most important exercise for steep rock climbing.

Charlie Manganiello  36:57

Yeah, like keep, climbing, I would say to. I've certainly learned this from Steve, where you got to choose the lifts of the strength training where it makes sense in your cycle. And so around here, like we can climb pretty much year round.

Kris Hampton  37:13

Right.

Charlie Manganiello  37:13

 But like December, January is kind of when you know, the holidays is kind of hard you're traveling, we might get, obviously, shorter days, but more snow in the canyon, up it sinks. But like, you know, a climber should have maybe a month or two month block where they're kind of coming off a redpoint, kind of phase. And then really focus on strength training, and do it three times a week and do kind of lighter sessions in the gym or out at your local crag, and get strong. And then hopefully what you've done is got stronger, and then maintain it through the spring in the summer around here at least. And then you kind of go back into your strength session, December, January, having maintained your strength before and then it just keeps creeping up as you get older.

Kris Hampton  37:59

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up as well. So let's kind of dig into where to put deadlifting. When to put it in how to put it in. Because there's so many things everyone's trying to train, you know, everyone wants to do everything at once. And in fact, this is not a joke. I've had people buy my Ebooks and try to do the boulder strong Ebook at the same time as they're doing the climb 5.13 Ebook, . And send me an email and say, How can I make these two work together? You know, and what? Why would you do that? 

Charlie Manganiello  38:33

What's that? So I kind of run with a Dan John quote, it's like," if you do a little of a lot, you'll be okay at nothing." Or something like that.

Kris Hampton  38:42

 Yeah, that's Yeah, for sure.

Steve Bechtel  38:43

 Well, it reminds me of that there was that commercial where they like have the taco and then they add, you know,

Kris Hampton  38:52

all the different shells around. the taco.

Steve Bechtel  38:53

And then the pizza and then they deep fry it. Yeah. And, and that's the thing is like, the, that the adding is is always an issue. And so that's the it's the Saint Exupery quote of, "perfection is attained when there's nothing else to take away." And and Chinard did a great job of that. That's sort of Patagonia's guiding philosophy of like, how do we, how do we strip it away? How do we get away with less stuff? And and so, you know, what, what do we find is essential like that the fundamental basis of training should be movement, you need to be able to move correctly. And so your number one goal is mobility. And I I've had a couple of guys come in for assessments this last couple of weeks, and we've do a shoulder mobility assessment with an overhead reach. And we're basically just looking at how high they can get their their arms above their head and you want to have your arm line up with your ear or behind your ear right in order to have good shoulder mobility and To reach far, but these guys are like their arms out in front of them, like they're saluting Hitler, like a Trump rally or something. And they're, they're like, you know, and so here, these guys are trying to make a reach move on a cliff, and they can't get their arms straight up. And I'm like, you know, you're, you're gonna be two inches taller if your shoulder mobility, right, so we do hip mobility to get them against the wall, we want their mobility to to allow them to maximize their hip hinge. Once they've got the mobility, then we get them good and strong strength is so fundamental in time and again, in climbing, the stronger guy can can take that strength and and pull it out into endurance. And so we you know, we see it all the time that boulder becomes the good endurance climber becomes the big wall climber, you know, Tommy Caldwell is a great example started out as a kid boulderer. And, and so that fundamental amount of strength is, is really key. And so these four movement patterns and bouldering should form the basis of a person's training most of the year, the four movement patterns are part of being an athlete, it's not specific to climbing.

Kris Hampton  41:15

It's part of being a human.

Steve Bechtel  41:17

Yeah, exactly. It's gonna make you live longer and freer, more effective life. Right. And but so you know, we do adjust the times. And like Charlie said, there's if the athlete is keen for it, a couple of months a year, they should be focusing on on really getting strong and then maintaining it. Other people do well simmering along, but I do think that they should change their program fairly frequently, like, or, you know, go, you know, singles, doubles, part of the year, do a volume builds and other part of the year.

Kris Hampton  41:50

Yeah, that kind of thing every four to six weeks. Is that something? Um, how often do you switch things up?

Steve Bechtel  41:55

Yes, six weeks seems like it's the ceiling for everybody. Four weeks is a very convenient pattern within our lives and the cycles that we live. Yep. And so if you were to say, focus on three by three deadlifting, three sets of three, a couple of days a week, and I really rarely take guys more than two days a week on it anyway. But then the next, the next four week phase, maybe you would do a ladder where it's like, you know, 1 2 3 1 2 3, so you're changing the volume of it, you actually would try to hold that same weight for the whole four weeks, and adjust the volume forward. That works really well with older athletes. We have great success with pressing and hinging on that program, and then go to these five by twos or two by fives. And changing it occasionally is really helpful. However, a couple years ago, Charlie did a really remarkable experiment with Nick, I read this. Yeah. He did the same training plan for 40 days, and I'll let you tell him about it.

Charlie Manganiello  43:06

Yeah, so Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline had that book called Easy Strength. And I remember reading this section, it was 40 day workout. It's so easy, you won't do it. And I was like, Oh, right. Watch me. Um, but uh, yeah, so it was it was 40 workouts I Monday through Friday, it was the same workout I had weekends off. So it was eight weeks. And it was I chose a different method and suggested because I wanted to work on it. But the recommendation the protocol was hip hinge, a push, a pull, a ballistic like a kettlebell swing or kettlebell snatch, and then some sort of Dan John, Dan John called it the anterior chain or some sort of ab work or midsection work. And all you do is you're either doing two by fives of each of the hip hinge, pull and push two by 25 or two by 50 of the ballistics, so a lot more volume. Yep, with the swing, and then only one by five of the of the core and you just straight set, you do the two by five hip hinge and and so on and so forth. workout took like 45 minutes. And then you're also suggested to kind of wave the load. So some just kind of as it makes sense. I do five by twos or two by 25, two by 15. And I did the pistol squat. I chose not to the hip hinge because I'd come off with a bunch of deadlifting I did the one arm one leg push up. I did weighted pull ups, swings and then just ab roll outs like on a barbell and we'll and I started out I even have the number still. I started out doing the pistol squat my first day of the workout a two by five at 25 pounds in my hand like kind of in the goblet squat fashion. I could barely do a one a one arm one leg push up with like elevated on a 24 inch box weighted pull up was two by fives with 25 pounds to arm kettlebell swings was 35 pounds at 225. And I could like you know, do some rollouts. And then at the end, and I just did the same workout over and over again, I, I increased the load as it made sense as it got easy. I did a pistol squat five by two at 70 pounds. I was doing one on one leg push ups on the ground. At like sets of two, three and five. Weighted pull ups I was doing five by twos was 70 pounds, and then two arm kettlebell swing two by 25 was 70 pounds. And then was able to do like the standing from your foot rollouts with the barbell. And it was crazy. I didn't. I never felt tired going into workout. I didn't gain a single pound, which I was super skeptical of. 

Kris Hampton  45:47

Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello  45:48

 I was I totally come from a background of like thinking that lifting heavy weights was gonna make me heavy. 

Kris Hampton  45:53

Sure. And I think most people listening probably do as well. 

Charlie Manganiello  45:57

Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  45:58

That's why cyclists have such big legs is because they lift heavy. 

Kris Hampton  46:03

Yeah

Steve Bechtel  46:04

 It's an interesting thing. And that's something that we deal with continually is, I'm gonna get big, but look at the morphology of a cyclist. Look at the morphology of a swimmer. I mean, they don't look that way. Because they lift heavy, it's because they do moderate loads at high volume. Yeah. big guys like weightlifter, guys also can be strong, but it's not, you know, A equals B. And, you know, if you look at Emily Tilden, or Ellen, my wife, I mean, these are, you know, very normal looking very thin women. But you know, like they deadlift a couple 100 pounds. Yeah, I don't know what their numbers are to 

Kris Hampton  46:50

I used Emily as an example just the other day, because, you know, I've seen her when the pull up competition here at the festival. And, you know, and she, she's also a, you know, ultra marathon runner. Yeah, she's just an exceptional athlete. And honestly, if you, if you weren't tuned in to how athletes move, you would never guess that she's an exceptional athlete, because she just doesn't, she doesn't exhibit this super muscular frame that you expect to see on an athlete.

Steve Bechtel  47:21

Right. And, and I think that that's the thing, you know, we will run into, like, I'm gonna, I want to, I don't want to look different, or I want to get leaner in it interesting thing, like people that are semi fat, and they're afraid of getting any bigger, they'll really shy away from resistance training, when the metabolic value of it is pretty high. And, you know, they've shown that with high intensity resistance training, and with intervals, your metabolism will stay high for several hours afterwards, like 30 35 hours later, you still got a slightly elevated metabolism, where if you go and you know, get on the elliptical and ride for 45 minutes, your metabolism goes right back down to the basement.

Kris Hampton  48:03

Right.

Steve Bechtel  48:03

 And so weight training is important for weight loss, and fat mass weight gain, everything is diet driven. If you're eating anabolically, you're going to get bigger, if you're eating more than you expand. If you eat less than you expand, you're going to get smaller, and lower. And so the training has very little to do with that. We used to like try to encourage people to get out there and in sweat and try hard to burn these calories. But it's really negligible. I mean, you can do a really hard workout. And that's equal to about like a piece of toast and peanut butter. So just don't eat the toast and peanut butter. And, and work out to be strong rather than to be sweaty.

Kris Hampton  48:47

Yeah, I agree. Let's, let's get back into the scheduling. So you're, you're deadlifting in, you know, four-ish week cycles. And then and then you like to switch to a ballistic for a little while. Is that right? Where in a climbing training program, should that happen to you?

Steve Bechtel  49:09

Well,

Kris Hampton  49:10

should they be deadlifting? before they're in a serious climbing training program? Should it be in the strength phase of their climbing training? Or how should they run it?

Steve Bechtel  49:20

Well, I feel like you should, you know, you should have all of these things sort of running all at once. But you should have these things that you focus on. And so what I mean by that is, there'll be a time of the year that you're wanting to push those deadlift numbers up. And at that point, you've got to or you know, or your pull ups or whatever. But you've got to say my priority in this training cycle is to improve these things. And so what I'll do with my athletes is say, Here are our three goals or two goals of this training cycle, like advance our deadlift max or improve, you know, pull up numbers or improve my average v grade in the bouldering workout. And so you've got these, these specific things. And those would conflict with redpointing at your max level.

Kris Hampton  50:14

 Sure.

Steve Bechtel  50:14

 And so but when, when you build up, say, your build up build up, they get to a deadlift of like, you know, 395, or something. Once you've attained that, it becomes easier and easier to get there. Again, it's easier to maintain it. And it's very much like our climbing grades like you, you get this thing called training age going. And so then when I built up and held that deadlift at a certain level, I can then back the volume off, back off, maybe slightly to say 375 or something, and then maintain that right into a climbing phase without a lot of neurological overload. It's really quite easy. And so like, there's a, there's a super good climber here in town named Devlin Junker. And he's, when he lifts, it's right after his, he climbs hard. And so it'll be like the same day as his climbing, or else the next morning. 

Kris Hampton  51:12

Yeah, so that's, I think that's a schedule that works for most 

Steve Bechtel  51:15

Yeah, it doesn't conflict. And, you know, it's hard to rally, like driving down from the crag, I'm gonna, you know, yep, grab a sports drink and head to the gym. It's hard to do. But it allows you to maintain enough of a climbing schedule that you're going to climb Well, the, you know, your two days later, or whatever. But more importantly, maintaining this overall physicality can increase your peak, and it can, it can spread out that peak to where you can maintain higher levels of performance climbing for, you know, instead of two weeks, or whatever a normal periodized program gives you, you know, maybe it's eight weeks, maybe it's 12 weeks, just by by not getting weak during that redpointing phase.

Kris Hampton  52:00

Yeah. So, you know, let's say you've decided you're, you know, you're going to be working on the deadlift during whatever phase of your climbing that you're in. How do you put that in during the week, if you don't have the option to, to do it right after you're climbing?

Steve Bechtel  52:19

Well, the weekend warrior schedule is really common. And so a lot of people climb on Saturday, Sunday, and then maybe on Wednesday, or something at a climbing gym. And so what I would say is put it at least one full day before a climbing day. It's okay to back it up after a climbing day. Because if you're a little bit weak from climbing, you can adjust the loads in the gym. Again, we don't care how heavy you deadlift, right. And when we back off, and we're training, like, if you're, you know, if your max is 300, I'm going to train you most of the time around 225 or something, you know, 75% of that. And so, at 75% of max, you can be a little bit tired, or you can be fresh, and you're still going to be able to pull it without any pain or injury. And so but what what you want to look for is making sure that you're always coming into the climbing days fresh. So you stack that that deadlifting as close to your previous climbing day as possible. And then give yourself that rest day in between. Yeah, I think it's really hard. You know, a couple years ago when I started to kind of do this integrated strength training with climbing is like hard to wrap your head around like, man, if I do lift today, or if I deadlift on Monday, there's no way I would be ready to climb on Wednesday. And I think I think it feels that way at first, especially when you're starting to learn a new lift and yeah, hamstrings are super tight after the first time you ever did a kettlebell swing, I'm sure everyone remembers that. But once you get into your groove and you're constantly training you get your own weekly schedule or monthly schedule dialed like for example, I'm a weekend warrior. Sometimes I get out Wednesday midweek or climb in the gym. But it's like Sunday I climb whether it's in a some sort of redpoint phase or volume phase. I strength train on Monday. I rest Tuesday I climb Wednesday I strength train and climb Thursday rest Friday. And I like always fresh for the weekend.

Kris Hampton  54:22

Yeah and when you say strength train and climb you climb first and then strength train or do you strength train and then go climbing

Steve Bechtel  54:28

I used to climb and then strength train first. I was like, you know under the impression that I should like climb first. But really we've been experimenting with it. The strength training really warms you up for your climbing sessions. And it's it's really hard to force yourself to like be in the gym for 20 minutes. I mean 30 minutes or whatever. It's like you actually warm your fingers up. Yeah, in pulling on the barbell or swinging a kettlebell. I come in here and I'm pretty much warm after 10 or 15 minutes, you know, you have to kind of get on some small holds and stuff. But it's it's been awesome. It's it gets you psyched to try hard. And again, it keeps those climbing sessions focused. Because you're not trying to climb hard in the gym. You're trying to climb hard outside

Kris Hampton  55:09

Right. Now, so how many days a week? Did you just say you strength train your strength training twice a week? three times a week?

Steve Bechtel  55:17

Yeah. If I'm not like in a strength focus, that's usually three days a week. But yeah, it's usually Monday, Thursday. Okay, two days a week.

Kris Hampton  55:23

Okay, good. That's about what I do. And what I usually suggest as well. And actually, I'm, I'm kind of toying since I've just moved here to town and I have this option to go outside for half a day, which I never had before. Because it was two and a half hour drive to go climbing. I've really been toying with this idea of coming home after climbing and doing a kettlebell workout or getting in here to deadlift or, you know, whatever, but half day's climbing and then go work out and then I've still got, if we get up early, get to the crag, I've still got most of my day ahead of me, you know, which is, which is a totally new thing to me.

Charlie Manganiello  56:04

 And I know Steve's talked about this in articles and other podcasts, it's also a really good way to increase volume, or work capacity and like a climbing day.

Kris Hampton  56:12

 Yeah

Charlie Manganiello  56:12

 Where like, sometimes you have days where your fingers just don't feel right and your skins' trashed. Yeah. And then you know, you kind of feel like you don't get a good climbing session, and you come in here and do a 45 minute kettlebell workout, you're, you're psyched.

Kris Hampton  56:27

Yeah. And so uh, you know, a lot of people don't have this, this schedule, this ability to pop into Elemental and train, you know, when I was in Cincinnati, even though we've got tons of gyms around, it's quite a bit more difficult for me to get to a gym where I can deadlift, you know, what's the least amount that somebody can do, and still make gains? Well,

Steve Bechtel  56:55

It's interesting, if you're, if you're trying to get stronger, probably training once every four days is, is sort of the bottom, if you're older or female, you're gonna have to train more frequently to get better, and you know, nothing against females, it's just the..

Kris Hampton  57:17

sure

Steve Bechtel  57:19

The hormonal profile of females is such that they, the strength hormones are at a lower level, and so that the frequency of stimulus has to be closer together. So maybe, maybe three days a week, for an older athlete or a female athlete to be building strength, to maintain strength, you can go out to once every seven days, once every 10 days, but then you start risking degradation of skill. Because anything that you do that infrequently, you get a little bit worse at anything over 10 days, and you're going to be starting to nosedive on your strength. And although that's acceptable for like a young man to like, you know, under 25, take, you know, take two months off, all right, really, you should just do the very basic that you can, you know, the bare minimum, and I'm talking, when we do bare minimum, it's like warm up, then two sets of two, at at the number, hit the shower, or, you know, go on to the other part of the workout. We, we asked very little other than to make sure that we're hitting those numbers. And when I, when I say two sets of two, it sounds really easy, but, it. Which reminds me of a story, I sent a workout to a guy, you know, and you've done this like communicating I find very frustrating. Communicating long distance with my athletes. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, we're gonna do five squats. And we're gonna do squat variation, like a pistol, and then a push up variation for five reps, and do a variation. So it's hard. And then do a pull up variation. five reps, so it's hard. And he, you know, he emails me the next day. He's like, well, that's the easiest thing I've ever done. Like, you know, he did five bodyweight air squats with both legs. He did five push ups and five pull ups. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, my mom can do that as her warmup. Right. But what I had expected for him is to keep trying to make it more difficult, you know, five pistol squats and each leg followed by five one arm push ups followed by five one arm pull ups is quite hard. 

Kris Hampton  59:26

Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  59:26

 And so when we say two by two, it's not just come in and lift 135 for a couple reps, it's usually you know, that very close to your it's, well, the 85% here of your max. Right. And, and so you're going very, very hard. But then it's brief and it's over and you're on to your day.

Kris Hampton  59:44

Yeah. And that brings me to another thing I was really interested in. I got to look at your book the other day and and I was really interested in how you set it up in basically doing 10 lifts per session. You know, that's that's what you're doing. And I'm right now since I'm just coming back into it, and I want to build the skill back up. I'm doing what you suggest and doing about 20 lifts per session. Is that right? That the number that you suggest in the book?

Charlie Manganiello  1:00:20

 Reps. Yeah, reps.

Kris Hampton  1:00:21

 Yeah. 20 reps per session. Yeah. And, and it really doesn't take much time at all. Especially if you're, you know, I'm super setting it with a with a pushing exercise and, and then doing some mobility work. While I'm resting. And I feel like I get a ton done in a really short time today, right? Before we recorded this, I showed up at, you know, 4:15, or something, and you guys close up at five, and I was done and ready to go. 

Steve Bechtel  1:00:51

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  1:00:52

 So I think that, that's good news for the people who are like, I don't have time to do all these workouts, because you can get a lot done especially with the deadlift in a pretty short amount of time. And like you guys have said, you get a lot of bang for your buck out of that exercise. So...

Steve Bechtel  1:01:09

Your your focus has to be on becoming stronger or becoming a better athlete, rather than getting tired. And we've talked about this before the exerciser mentality. Like if your goal is to sweat, and be nauseous and puke. You you can train that way. But if your goal is to perform better on the rock, and to be stronger as a human being, you need to train that way. And those are those are divergent goals. And, and so one of the great things is to look at it as a long term investment. I read a great thing a couple of days ago about successful people that are financially successful, who continue to increase their wealth, versus people that continue to struggle. And they said that 77% of the people that struggle financially bet their money on the lottery or in a gambling environment. We're only 4% of successful people do that. These guys are putting their money into a retirement account, and watching it grow. And they're not like rolling the dice and going like, man, I hope this makes me richer. And so if you are just randomly hitting the gym and doing whatever's, you know, posted on the wall, that's that, to me is lottery thinking. If you come in and you go, Okay, I'm doing five sets of two at 215. Again, and you punch through it and it felt easy. Well, good for you. You hit the numbers you wanted and you move on. You've probably experienced this redpointing. It's not like you use it. Here's I'm going to tell you what happened. And I wasn't even there you sit the hardest route of your life. And it felt easy. And you didn't go home that day going god that sucked. I didn't try very hard at the crag I'm not even sore. That was that was a terrible climbing day.

Kris Hampton  1:03:01

 Right.

Steve Bechtel  1:03:01

 No, because your climbing day it was performance based and your training in the gym needs to be performance based too. Did I hit the numbers I wanted to hit. If I if I sweat it or not. If I felt nauseous or not, is a side effect of that we we care about performance. And so we've got a sneak that way. And that's that's exactly what this is about. You know, you do 10 reps, if all of those reps felt great, you know, in 10 reps in in any of the combinations of like two sets of five, three sets of 3 1 2 3 1 2 3. Whatever that is, the volume stays low. We don't need to smoke the athlete on the deadlift because we wanted to try hard at the crag. And hit those numbers. If they all went really, really well. We take it up a little bit with the deadlift. We never progress people more than five pounds per workout. Even even at the very beginning. It takes them forever and it drives them crazy. But yeah, but eventually they they get really, really good.

Kris Hampton  1:04:04

Yeah, and I think that's important because a lot of people like you said before really want that tired feeling, you know, and just giving them giving people 10 reps to do even if they're hard reps. They're gonna want to burn themselves out because that's kind of the mentality we've all been plugged in to us. You know, it's just just how we go into the gym thinking we want to come out sweating and tired and you know, we have to crawl out the door. So looking at it, like we want to become better athletes not we want to become pools of sweat on the gym floor is a pretty good way to look at it.

Steve Bechtel  1:04:44

Yeah, we we have the airdyne to answer that quest. Yeah, yeah. The, if you're not tired at the end of the workout, do the one minute airdyne test. And that's a that's a really great one. See what see how many calories you can get in a minute. That's up. That's a nice challenge.

Kris Hampton  1:05:02

So what are the most common issues you guys see with new deadlifters? Because I think a lot of people are going to be, you know, they've been watching this trend in the climbing world and, and your resources going to be the place they go to learn to deadlift. What are the most common issues you see with new deadlifters?

Charlie Manganiello  1:05:26

I think, oh, man, there's a lot. But...

Steve Bechtel  1:05:30

Mobility.

Charlie Manganiello  1:05:30

Yeah, but certainly mobility like folks just not being able to get into position correctly. And so working on getting those folks hips more mobile,

Kris Hampton  1:05:41

do you see that with climbers often is that a, you know, let's just say that people are,

Charlie Manganiello  1:05:47

 I don't know if I've worked 

Kris Hampton  1:05:48

climbers coming in

Charlie Manganiello  1:05:49

 where I've seen it,

Steve Bechtel  1:05:50

but I'd say yeah, I'd say hip mobility in the in the ability to turn out. And also hamstring flexibility.

Kris Hampton  1:05:58

hamstring flexibility is definitely something I'm lacking in and working on. So...

Steve Bechtel  1:06:04

the mobility, again, mobility leads strength. And so we can get real strong on the deadlift, but we want him to be able to make the most of it. And so one of our initial screens is a hip mobility screen. And if if athletes failing that hip mobility, I would be real inclined to have them learn like a kettlebell swing, do some trap bar deadlift, or one of the variations of a deadlift, and then spend, you know, spend all of our cash on getting them more mobile, because mobility is going to pay off like crazy. And we have these two basic screens we start all of our assessments with, and if they can't pass the shoulder mobility and they can't pass the hip mobility one, then we've got, we've got gold as far as making that athlete better. Because all of a sudden, you get somebody mobile, and then they can exploit all the strength they already have. And so yeah, that the number one issue would be hip mobility, then hamstring flexibility. And then we get into the movements. And we've actually got a little section on all that. that was the four most common errors

Charlie Manganiello  1:07:10

 Four or six. Yeah, I think, I think when folks are learning how to deadlift, I don't want to say like the theory of deadlift, or I guess mechanics would be a better phrase. But I think people don't understand exactly what's supposed to happen when you deadlift, I think people a think it's like actually having a ton of arm involvement. Like, yeah, you got to hold on to the barbell, and you don't want to let it go. But it's really that's all you're doing like you're not shrugging your shoulders at the top. And the barbell needs to move in a completely straight line. Like if we had the either end of each barbell like on a single track like or like a plumb line, the barbell should not deviate from that line, it's not doing a little s turn or a little bit to get around the knees. People think just because they've bent down and their knees feel like they're in the way, as soon as they stand up, it's the knees are gonna clear their knees and get out of the way. And then also the knees over the toes. This is probably more hip flexor issues, folks have really tight hip flexors from sitting in office all day long road trips, commuting to work, where folks will get down to the bottom of the deadlift and their knees will be over their toes. And really, we want to be as efficient as possible. We don't want to start moving our knees back before we lift. We want our shins to be completely vertical. And you're just dragging that barbell up the shins and then clear

Kris Hampton  1:08:30

Yeah, and I think people have a tendency to want to keep the bar out from their shins. 

Charlie Manganiello  1:08:35

Absolutely, yeah. Oh, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. Right and with climbers, right? We I think we even set it in the in the in the manual. We all understand what like direction of pull is right. And we're setting anchors. It's no different than the barbell and I hate seeing and I try to, I try to correct it before it happens. But if you start with that barbell out away from your shins, as soon as you pick it up, you're gonna whack the crap out of your shins and get hurt for sure.

Kris Hampton  1:08:58

Just slightly in another direction. Are there things that you know if if a climber feels like they don't have the hip mobility, and that ends up you know, if their hip flexors are tight, and that's pushing their knees out over their toes? What's something that they can do to start working on that?

Charlie Manganiello  1:09:19

I can think of two stretches that's helped me over the last couple years a really simple ones called the frog stretch. Kind of hard to explain on the over the podcast, but folks can look it up. If anything says strong first frog stretch or hip flexor stretch. It's kind of half kneeling position. Those two things on every single workout in front of the TV when you watch Netflix all the time. Do that and folks will get open, hips open.

Steve Bechtel  1:09:46

We've got Ellen which is really good because she's got good mobility she does frog stretch, kneeling hip flexor, prying cobra, and tug of war squat. 

Kris Hampton  1:09:58

Oh yeah, you have those videos.

Steve Bechtel  1:09:59

We have em all. They're on the climbstrongTV, YouTube channel. So they're, they're good, she does a good job with them. And, and those, yeah, those are critical and and the general rule of thumb on that is to do your hip mobility one day a week for each decade of your life. So if you're in your 40s is four days a week for you in your 50s is five days a week, if you're older than that you got a full time job. Yeah. And, and we like to integrate it with the training, I used to. Oh, man, I apologize to everybody that I trained before 2005. Because, you know, it's funny, we used to have him walk on the treadmill to warm up, and then we, you know, lift and then they'd stretch at the end. And that was that was the rule back then. Yeah, but if I'm standing over you telling you to stretch, you're gonna do it. But if you're on your own, like you're you got somewhere else to be right. And so we really like doing like, I was talking about the integrated strength stuff earlier, Kris, with like a strength exercise like a deadlift, then hangboard. And then we throw in a mobility, right. And so what's really great there is then I've got my several minutes of rest between my deadlifts, I've got, maybe I do a minute of frog stretch after a deadlift pole. And then I go, and I get on the hangboard, for 10 seconds or whatever, you can do little sets of hangboard, whatever it is, but those sequencing through those things is, is really quite efficient if the facility allows for it.

Kris Hampton  1:11:03

Right.

Steve Bechtel  1:11:29

Otherwise, hangboard and mobility, I mean, nobody's gonna stop you from stretching anywhere, there's a hang board in the world. Same thing with with a barbell. And if you're in a really crowded gym, it's great to do mobility, because then you can stay there and guard your barbell keep people from stealing your weight. 

Kris Hampton  1:11:47

Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello  1:11:48

I was gonna say to another thing that the mobility in between your sets does not only are you helping yourself, be more mobile, to be stronger, it's also forcing you to rest. And I know, Steve gets this question a lot, like, how long should I rest for, especially with the hangboard stuff, right. And the protocol that folks say is like 300 seconds, which is five minutes, which seems like an eternity. So it actually gives you something to do instead of like playing on your phone or thinking five minutes went by, but really only 30 seconds went by. And it's forcing you to be completely ready for that next set, because we're working on a heavy load.

Kris Hampton  1:12:26

And just a quick question for you guys. I've really been loving using like this Rogue supernova, and lacrosse balls and things like that as part of my mobility, especially my hamstrings with the supernova, because they're my hamstrings are so tight, so ropey, and I feel like I don't get much out of stretching them at all. Until I break that up. Yeah, you know, is that something that you guys use? Often, you know,myofascial release type things?

Steve Bechtel  1:12:58

We do a little bit of it, and we we do a protocol that we got from Alan Cosgrove that's called ramp which is range of motion, then we start with range of motion, then we will go to the foam roller, things like that. And then movement prep. And so if you've got got issues with the, you know, like your hamstrings, you can roll them out. And one of the great analogies is, you know, think about your hamstrings as a string with knots in it, well, you can stretch it, but the knots just get worse, right? If you take the knots out first and then roll and then stretch it, then it's going to improve the quality. And so that's where that stuff comes in self self massage. And, you know, the posterior chain, your glutes and hamstrings tend to tend to loosen up pretty quick. They're very vascular. But yeah, that's that's generally within the movement prep stuff. The first 10 to 15 minutes of the workout.

Kris Hampton  1:14:00

Okay, that was just totally a selfish question. So yeah...  Yeah, for sure. And I think I think we devalue what feels good sometimes. Or like, I like foam rolling between sets. Well, if you like it, and it feels good, it's probably not gonna hurt you. You know, and so whether it's like, Don't stress now stretch now Don't do this. I there's not a lot of strong evidence on any of that stuff. So.. So let's say somebody wants to get started deadlifting they, you know, they're climbing gym doesn't have it. They don't want to join a full blown gym. what's the what's a good intro for them budget wise, what should they buy, which they get ahold of?

Steve Bechtel  1:14:46

Oh, man, you know, like they're so CrossFit is so big right now. And there. It was really fascinating. This This was a stat from a couple years ago, but they were like Two CrossFit gyms opening every week or something across the US. But then the other stat was that there were two per month closing, right. And so they were still growing, right. But that made it, you know, just this great resource for getting barbells and, and bumper plates, especially bumper plates are nice because they're quiet, he base the place to look for sure. And especially if you're in an urban area, eBay or Craigslist, you can be able to find stuff, you can also find the old standards, the steel plates, which are just fine, they're just louder. But they're gonna be really cheap, and you can get them for less than $1 a pound. And then a good barbell, I think it's worth the investment to get a good strong dark barbell. And and their sources for those would be like, Soren X is really good. Rogue is really good. I mean, Perform Better has a bunch of them. And so, get get the good barbell, then get, you know, as much weight as you think you're gonna lift. It's real common to see people get up into the 400. So I think, you know, start start with two or 300 pounds and then be willing to buy some more.

Kris Hampton  1:16:12

Yeah, and you you have a guideline for climbers, specifically in your book. And I think you say, you know, kind of the guideline for a good deadlift for climbers is one and a half times body weight for women, two times body weight for men. Is that right?

Steve Bechtel  1:16:28

Yeah. And that's after, you know, that's, that's up there. That's after months and months of training course. But and it's like Charlie said earlier, that's the that's the end goal. And then you're gonna you know, you might visit that again, occasionally. But I would say for, you know, a guy, start at 135, that's easy to load up for a female, maybe start at 95. And if you go through your workout, three sets of three or whatever it is, feels really good. Boom, five more pounds next time. Make sure everything is technically perfect. Right, a video videoing yourself seems weird and egotistical. And it usually is. But in this situation, it's educational. Shoot the video. 

Kris Hampton  1:17:16

It's kinda a thing we all do now anyway, right?

Steve Bechtel  1:17:19

Yeah. But you know, it's fascinating. You know, we were going to a strong first certification last year and working on an exercise called the benchpress. And there's, you know, like, you video yourself, and you go back and you watch it, video stuff, go back and watch it. And this is like, this constant feedback loop of like, that was wrong. That was wrong

Kris Hampton  1:17:40

I've actually done this with the benchpress. Just to see how bad I was. 

Steve Bechtel  1:17:43

Yeah, yeah

Charlie Manganiello  1:17:44

I thought for sureI was doing it right and then I saw the video.

Steve Bechtel  1:17:47

Yeah, and then we Yeah, then we get with this guy, Dave Whitley, who's like super, super dialed on the bench press. He's like, you guys are bunch of goddamn idiots. It was great. But the video helps, you know, cuz you do get this feedback and feedback. And, and, and so and you know, do you know, watch stuff on video? Look at it. Was it perfect? Did it look weird? What was strange about it, you know, the problem with going to YouTube is you might or might not see a great video of a deadlift. 

Kris Hampton  1:18:21

Right. 

Steve Bechtel  1:18:22

And I don't think we have any dead lifting videos up yet. But we can sure get some up here pretty quick. That'd be handy.

Charlie Manganiello  1:18:30

And I think also too, even for the veteran lifters out there. I was deadlifting recently, and it just wasn't feeling right. It didn't feel strong, or the numbers didn't really make sense to me the way they should be from previous like logs was looking back. And I just had Steve come down. And I probably deadlift, I don't know, 10,000 times in the last few years. But I was like, Steve, this doesn't feel like what's wrong. And like as soon as before I even pulled the barbell off the ground. Okay, just get your shins more vertical. They're like over my knees were over my toes. And boom, that was all I needed. So like don't be afraid to revisit that stuff. And like always, not necessarily think like a novice but just because you mastered at once doesn't mean you might lose it.

Kris Hampton  1:19:14

Yeah, for sure. When I when I first started deadlifting again, kind of in my shoulder rehab. I posted a video on Facebook, you know and and I posted it because I had screwed it up so bad. You know I'm like, "What the hell was I doing here?" You know, and I got crucified of course because out of the woodwork came all the experts  People are awfully tough behind a computer screen. Yeah, it didn't matter that I said in my caption, you know what the hell are my elbows doing here? It's everyone wants to tell me how bad it is. But it was right but they were right. You know, it's, I didn't realize that. That while worrying so much about my shoulder and trying to think so much about my back and where I was standing and how I was typing. In my midsection, I wasn't fully straightening my arms and I was jerking it up off the ground a little bit. Yeah. And even though it's just a slight bend, it's it's enough to hurt me if I would have kept with that. And if I hadn't videoed it, I might not have seen it. Yeah, so...

Charlie Manganiello  1:20:14

Absolutely. 

Steve Bechtel  1:20:15

Well, I think it's one I think it's brave. And, and not only useful, but brave to do something like that and put it out there. And, and then you've always got to keep in mind that the easiest way to seem smart is to make fun of other people. But that never helps them. You know? And so I think it's so good when, when your athletes send you videos, and they'll say like, what, what's wrong here? How can I make this better? You know, yeah, because you really put yourself out there every time you do that. And you know, if you set up a video camera, and video yourself, I think on people on projects, people should video every single burn. Because then you go away for three weeks, you can watch that thing, right? learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And, and, you know, and it's cool when you you know, when you do get it right, and you get it dialed in. And part of that, especially in today's society, part of communicating is sending video to somebody, yes. Not everybody's gonna be able to come and see you. You know. And so I think it's a, I think it's a really useful tool.

Kris Hampton  1:21:21

Yeah. And honestly, I, you know, I don't see any excuse for not doing it at this point, because 90% of the people who are saying, we don't want to set up a phone and videotape ourselves in the gym, or Snapchatting from the bathroom.

Steve Bechtel  1:21:36

So yeah, you know, it's Yeah, there's really no excuse it takes it takes a little bit of just being bulletproof. But one of one of our best lifters here in the gym, this guy, Mark, and he videos, every single workout like he's got that camera going, and he just comes he's like, what do you think of this one? What do you think of this one? And lo and behold, he's the guy that's getting better. He's form is improving, his numbers are going up. I mean, like, that's not that's not the norm, like getting better is not the norm.

Kris Hampton  1:22:08

Right? Yeah. And it's no different than climbing. You know, if anyone has ever videotaped themselves climbing, they don't look nearly as much like Chris Sharma as they thought they did. Yeah, you know. And it's the same with lifting, even though it seems like a much simpler movement. If you're still not going to be doing it as perfectly as you think you are. 

Steve Bechtel  1:22:29

You know, there's there's this huge value in in watching experts. And so, for a deadlift, you know, or for climbing either one to go and watch video of a powerlifting meet. Or, you know, if you find a good resource, like ?Juggernaut Training is really good, Westside Barbell is great. You, you watch those guys deadlift, and you're like, okay, that's good, that's good. You watch enough of the right thing enough times, and you can start to pull that into your ability and into your movement patterns. It's the same thing with climbing. And this is people laugh, but I think that you should watch climbing videos, more, you know, elite level climbing videos. 

Charlie Manganiello  1:23:12

We did this morning. 

Steve Bechtel  1:23:13

Yeah, that's right. And you should be watching these guys. Like, yeah, this morning, I was showing I was showing Charlie a video of BJ climbing. You're like, you know, this is why this guy's better than we are. Yeah. And but it's it's the more of that stuff you watch. Whether it's just BJ trying hard, or you know, somebody who's got super good technique. Do you can start to imprint that if even if you can't get out to the crag or get to the gym to practice your deadlifting. And so, although it seems like entertainment, it's also educational. 

Kris Hampton  1:23:47

Yeah, I agree. Totally. In fact, I just watched a video BJ last night. So yeah, definitely. And actually, I'm gonna go off topic a little bit and just ask you another sort of selfish question. So I talked to BJ just the other day, we were driving down from Wild Iris and he's working on Mutation, this new link up on the rodeo wave that's going to be 14.d or 15.a or something he's not sure, you know, impossible how it looks to me. And he's realizing that he needs a little more power endurance, to have a real shot at it. And we were talking about what would be the best way for him to gain power endurance, sort of in short order. And something like a four by four isn't going to work very well for him simply for the skin aspect because he's not willing to give up the days on the project. You know, he wants to get out there and do it and it's gonna destroy his skin. So something like four by four isn't going to work. And I had just read, you know, the part of your manual that you sent me And my suggestion was, I'd be interested in hearing what Steve has to say about this or even what Emily has to say about this. But maybe something like campusing, interspersed with deadlifting could be power endurance sort of campus workout, to save the skin, interspersed with something like deadlifting might be a good tool for BJ to use. I'm just curious what you would think about something like that.

Steve Bechtel  1:25:32

Um, normally I would say yes, but he doesn't lift, right. So he would have such a learning curve, like it wouldn't be this year, right. But but that sort of thing is really good. And and this non specific, or what we'd call metabolically specific work, because we, you know, we've talked about motor specific would be climbing metabolically specific, would be something that has the intensity and duration and an approximate load of the same thing. ie, those sorts of things like a rowing machine, the airdyne, those sorts of things that put you into that anaerobic zone would be useful. But it's, I think that that would still want to fall into a pre pre season. Right? situation. And, and it also has to be something that's within within his comfortable realm of training, and he's not, you know, everything that skill sets

Kris Hampton  1:26:35

That he's good at, yeah.

Steve Bechtel  1:26:36

Yeah, he needs to eat less or drink less.

Kris Hampton  1:26:44

I'm actually going to talk to him for the podcast, believe it or not, so we're gonna get him talking.

Steve Bechtel  1:26:50

I'm impressed he can climb at all at the one month old kid in the house. 

Kris Hampton  1:26:54

Yeah, yeah. The kid was at the crag yesterday with us. So...

Charlie Manganiello  1:26:58

 Nice.

Steve Bechtel  1:26:59

Yeah, um, I think the, the the second pitch method is really good. And this is a Scott Milton thing. You know, go up the go up the route. As soon as you get to the top, you know, if you're doing burns, jumped down untie do another route that's like a grade easier, right away. And to top that out, so you could do like, you know, one of the 13c or something on the on the wave there. And it's going to trash your skin, but you give a couple of climbing days to it. And in that, that those numbers should top up?

Kris Hampton  1:27:41

Yeah, yeah, he's making progress. I think he'll continue to do that.

Steve Bechtel  1:27:45

 But, yeah, that's the thing is like, he always got to be careful. It's like, you don't mess with something that's working. And, and he tends to, you know, tends to keep getting up these things. You know, and getting further and further. And so it's like, yeah, let's not change what you're doing.

Kris Hampton  1:28:00

Yeah. I'm glad you answered that way. Because I hadn't really thought about the fact that deadlifting right now isn't going to help him as much as it could someone who's already dialed that skill in? 

Steve Bechtel  1:28:13

Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's an important important factor.Yeah.

Kris Hampton  1:28:19

 Anything else you guys want to say about the book or about deadlifting in general? Why should people buy the book? 

Steve Bechtel  1:28:29

Um, I think it's, it's a really great basic introduction to the lift for climbers there, there are fabulous resources out there for for learning these things. But from the framework of a climbers mentality and how to fit it in with with a realistic climbing training program. Because,

Kris Hampton  1:28:51

Yeah.

Steve Bechtel  1:28:51

 We never want to sacrifice climbing performance for some silly lift. And so that's sort of how we approached it. And you can use it as a launching pad to other educational resources. But the main thing is use it as a basis for beginning the practice of deadlifting. And think about it like you're learning piano or learning how to ride a skateboard, you know, take it nice and easy. Don't worry about the numbers. Those, you know, a higher deadlift number won't get you up harder route. You know, we're just building the base. So I think it's a great resource and really a super starting place for for integrating a strength program with your climbing.

Charlie Manganiello  1:29:40

Yeah, I just think it's another tool in the toolbox that we're all just trying to put into our strength training. And if we learn it now, like it's awesome to be able to do these lifts when you're injured. And stay strong. I mean, deadlifts...

Kris Hampton  1:29:54

Especially for finger injuries

Charlie Manganiello  1:29:56

 Yep.

Kris Hampton  1:29:56

 Yeah.

Charlie Manganiello  1:29:57

And that and that's actually a question. We have an athlete right now that has a finger injury. And that's a one time we would prescribe using the straps. So you're kind of hanging off your wrist rather than flexing that finger. 

Kris Hampton  1:30:09

Yeah.

1:30:11

 But yeah, strength training throughout your whole life at your quality of life, and hopefully your climbing will be better.

Kris Hampton  1:30:17

Cool. Yeah. And I think you guys did a great job of really directing it at climbers. You know, like you said, there are lots of resources out there on deadlifting. But it's still, it's still hard to figure out how to put it into your climbing schedule and into your climbing life in general. And where you should stop as a climber, and I think you guys did a really good, easy, easy to understand job of putting that into the book. And it reads short, you know, it reads pretty quickly. It's easy to get through. And pretty simple to understand. So I think you guys did a great job with it. 

Steve Bechtel  1:30:52

Thanks.

Kris Hampton  1:30:54

 All right. Thanks, guys.

Steve Bechtel  1:30:55

 All right.

Charlie Manganiello  1:30:55

Thanks for having us.

Kris Hampton  1:31:01

All right, as usual, great stuff from Steve and a great introduction to Charlie. Hopefully, we'll be hearing more from him coming soon. Definitely go pick up the book, you guys need to be deadlifting. I think that's the big takeaway here. And there's a safe way to do it, there's a better way to do it. And there's a they make it really easy to fit it into your climbing program. And you know, they lay that all out for you. So pick up the Climb Strong Deadlifting Manual at climbstrong.com You can also find it on Amazon, Uncle Google, as we said before, can find everything for you, including this book. So go check out Steven and Charlie's book. And if you happen to be in Lander, hit him up. The best workout you're going to get in town, and you're going to learn a lot no matter what. So yeah. Check us out on the workshop tour. Whether you're in Salt Lake, Golden, St. Louis, Madison, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Cincinnati. We're available for private sessions while we're in town. Definitely check us out also be on the lookout for the ebooks that are becoming app training plans. If you need a coach on your back all the time because you like to slack and fool yourself and and not actually do the workouts that you that you plan on doing. Then you need this. And we can help you. Check us out. You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. Find us on Pinterest. We live everywhere on the internet. Except for Twitter. We don't tweet, we scream like eagle's.