Our friend Trevor Ragan from Train Ugly, whom we talked to on Episode 64, said that "Common sense isn't always common practice." While he actually said this during a conversation we had for the "We Scream Like Eagles" Podcast, for our patrons, Nate and I have been talking sporadically about this concept. 

We originally intended to do one episode, but it quickly became obvious that we needed to expand on that idea, as we came up with more and more instances in climbing that proves the theory. Common sense isn't always common practice.

In the following 5 episodes, over the course of one long afternoon/evening, Nate and I sit down to discuss different aspects of this idea. 

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (EP. 83):

Kris Hampton  00:31

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton.

Nate Drolet  00:34

And I'm Nate Drolet.

Kris Hampton  00:36

And together we form The Low End Theory. Do you know where that comes from?

Nate Drolet  00:42

Lindsey Lohan?

Kris Hampton  00:46

How did that just pop into your damn head? That's ridiculous. No, it's A Tribe Called Quest album. It's our favorite Tribe Called Quest album, actually. I know some of you out there argue that Midnight Marauders is better, but you're wrong. And I know that's true, because I'm saying it on my podcast. There you go. Nate and I are sitting in Denver, Colorado. It's not Colorado, even though that's what I've said my entire life. Colorado. Nate is wearing his yellow Power Company tee which is now and forever known as the Alex Megos shirt.

Nate Drolet  01:28

Which even Alex Megos knows that now, thanks to Kris.

Kris Hampton  01:31

Yeah, and he thought it was great. And Margo thought it was hilarious. We saw them at the gym last night along with Megan Martin and Angie Payne and Matty Hong and Brooke Raboutou. And basically, by walking into CATS, we brought down the mean average of grades climbed just by our presence. It was a pretty strong crew. And immediately I said, Oh, look. Your your shirt twin is here and told Alex that Nate was wearing his Megos shirt. And it went over really well. I'm just sad I didn't get a photo.

Nate Drolet  02:14

Should have. Me rosy cheeked from blushing, him rosy cheeked because he's just perfectly rosy cheeked.

Kris Hampton  02:20

Yeah, it would have been really cute, but it didn't happen because we were a little bit focused on getting spanked by all the ridiculously strong climbers.

Nate Drolet  02:27

Getting crushed. 

Kris Hampton  02:28

Yeah. We're here actually filming some videos. Nate's filming them for La Sportiva. He worked on some blogs, is filming these training videos for Sportiva and it's really ironic actually, that Sportiva reached out and then things came to a head and I recorded the public service announcement, "Don't believe the hype" last week, because Sportiva is doing it right. They're asking people who actually know what they're talking about, instead of reaching out to one of any number of their incredibly talented athletes saying, hey, make these videos and tell us how you train, you know, because they know the information is going to be better and, and be able to be scalable for their audience. So I appreciate that. So thanks, Sportiva. 

Nate Drolet  03:21

Yeah, I'm psyched to work with them.

Kris Hampton  03:24

And that sort of leads us into what we're going to be talking about here. After the PSA, we realize that that's a giant topic, like we could talk about how to parse this information and how to decide what to do and what not to do. That could be this entire podcast. For the next five years, we could just keep talking about it. So we decided to slim that down so it's not quite five years. And instead, it's going to be five days. Five episodes over the next five days on common sense versus common practice. And you want to tell them where we got that phrase?

Nate Drolet  04:06

Yeah, that was a that was from the Trevor Reagan Patreon episode that we had and I was listening to it in my car and I immediately just, like, stopped and texted you. And I was like, that's perfect. Like that phrase, just right there, common sense, ehat he said was, "Common sense isn't always common practice".

Kris Hampton  04:27

Yeah. And that's so true. And if you don't, if you don't remember Trevor, he's from Train Ugly. We did an episode on mindset, fixed versus growth mindset. And that one's still one of my absolute favorites. And the way that came up is when Trevor and I were talking, he was like, you know, all this stuff is just common sense, right? Like, should we even bother telling people this stuff because just common sense? And someone said to him, common sense isn't always common practice and I think that is very evident in climbing. We see it all the damn time and we're going to talk to you a little about it here. This first episode is quality versus quantity, you know, 

Nate Drolet  05:14

One of the classics.

Kris Hampton  05:15

 Yeah, we all know that we're supposed to go for quality. But what do we all do? We all go for quantity. So let's let's jump into that. Where do you see it happening? Where do you see it happening often?

Nate Drolet  05:34

Fast Food. Buckets of fried chicken, though I will argue that's both

Kris Hampton  05:39

It's it's definitely quality, depending on where you go, yeah. Popeye's Spicy Chicken? Quality. 

Nate Drolet  05:45

Oh yeah. Oh, man. 11 pieces of chicken for $11? I mean, come on. 

Kris Hampton  05:50

Yeah, you can't beat that.

Nate Drolet  05:54

So I think one of the most common things and that a lot of people can relate to is things like power endurance workouts, 4x4s. And this really stems to off of how we define what is difficulty or what is intensity. And that

Kris Hampton  06:13

Because you are kind of blurring the lines here, like you're, you're getting close to endurance, and then you're still close to power. So where does the quality happen? Where does the quantity happen? Which direction do you go? You know, it's kind of blurry.

Nate Drolet  06:17

You know, if power endurance or strength endurance is somewhere between strength, pure strength and pure endurance, then if you want to make it harder, which way do you lean? Do you go make it more endurance? Do you make it more strength? 

Kris Hampton  06:44

Right.

Nate Drolet  06:44

 And so, or, you know, obviously, there are other ways we can go about it. But the most common thing that I see is people go towards the way of endurance to the point where they're, they're not even close to power endurance at this point,

Kris Hampton  06:57

Right. Add more, add more. 

Nate Drolet  06:59

Yeah

Kris Hampton  07:00

Five more routes of Peter Pans. 

Nate Drolet  07:01

Yeah, I mean, honestly, just a regular, like a  by itself, is 4x4 actually a lot of times not even power endurance, because of how tall gyms are these days.

Kris Hampton  07:12

Right. Totally.

Nate Drolet  07:13

 If you're doing four 12 move rock climbs in a row, like you just did a Madness Cave route. 

Kris Hampton  07:20

Yep.

Nate Drolet  07:20

Like 12 move boulders, it's like that is all a ton of climbing. It may not seem like it because you know, you're like it's a 4x4, I'm sticking to these measurements. But, you know, if you're doing something more like a 4x4 on like a systems board where you're only doing five, five moves, maybe, then you're really starting to hit the mark a lot better. Because frankly, you just, you can't be strong for 40 and 50 moves. Like it's not possible.

Kris Hampton  07:46

Right. Right. And that, you know, that's a, that's something we've talked about quite a bit. Like, if you're, if you're doing those 40, 50 moves, and you're trying really hard, it feels intense. Feels like high intensity, feels like high quality, high intensity training and it might be high quality, depending on what you're going for. But we've been batting around these phrases trying to figure out how to describe this because it's kind of tough. And we've settled on perceived intensity versus max intensity. And that would be, your perceived intensity is how hard are you trying in relation to this exercise? Your max intensity is essentially, what percentage of your absolute maximum is this?

Nate Drolet  08:47

Yes. So if you're what that would look like, if you're a V7 climber, then your maximum intensity would be V7. Where your perceived intensity, let's say you're doing 4x4s and your last boulder is only V4, that may still feel like it is 100% for you. But that is your perceived intensity.

Kris Hampton  09:08

 Right.

Nate Drolet  09:08

Like it is still only, oh gosh, seven and four. 

Kris Hampton  09:12

Haha, you should have went with V8.

Nate Drolet  09:14

So you're a V8 climber. You're doing 4x4s and your last ones V4. You're really only at 50% of your max intensity. 

Kris Hampton  09:23

Right.

Nate Drolet  09:23

See what I did there?

Kris Hampton  09:26

Math, that's what you did.

Nate Drolet  09:30

So that's a really common one. But so yeah, like and this is kind of what spurred the quality versus quantity, quantity, debate work talk.

Kris Hampton  09:40

So many people want to go to quantity.

Kris Hampton  09:43

That seems to be the way to make your workout better, your workout harder, you know. We just hit on that quite a bit in the PSA. You know, it seems like they took these workouts that were normal workouts and they're like, let's make them better. And like 10 more Peter Pans and, you know, just keep adding, keep adding volume, quantity, quantity, quantity. And that's, that does not equal quality.

Nate Drolet  09:43

 Yes.

Nate Drolet  10:09

Yeah. And I mean, you know, to a degree, quantity is better, like once you hit a certain point like so let's use route climbing in the gym or actually outside, as an example. If you are sport climbing outside, if you're only capable of doing three pitches a day, I don't care what kind of quality you're doing, like you're drastically limiting yourself. You only have so many good days in a season, if you can't go out and do 5, 7, 8 pitches, like you're really shortening how many rock climbs you can do in a year, just simply because of a lack of volume.

Kris Hampton  10:44

 Right. 

Nate Drolet  10:45

But once you hit a, you know, I think once you start getting over eight, depending on the situation, you know, if you're going out and you're just doing like easy onsights, whatever. Once you hit a certain number, like, like if, if you're like, I want to hit 15 pitches every single day, that's that's not better.

Kris Hampton  11:03

Right, and I think what I think what you're, what you're alluding to here, that I think we need to get to the point of, is that you build up a certain amount of quantity in order to be able to reach a high quality and then you don't need to continue with the quantity part of the equation in most cases.

Nate Drolet  11:29

 Yes

Kris Hampton  11:30

You know, you have to know what you're shooting for though. I think that's the that's the big important thing here. If you're an alpine climber, if you're gonna go be a big wall climber for a little while, quantity might be what you need. And in that case, you can combine quality and quantity. They can be a similar thing.

Nate Drolet  11:49

 If you're doing like alpine, Iwouldn't even worry about quality. Just throw a pack on. I think you just eat a lot of calories.

Kris Hampton  11:57

Haha yeah, yeah yeah.

Nate Drolet  11:59

Train for eating.

Kris Hampton  12:01

Wear knickers? 

Nate Drolet  12:02

Yes. 

Kris Hampton  12:05

But you have to know what you're going for. And you have to be able to define what quality is. If you're a boulderer, just because you did more of your 50% max intensity that session, that that doesn't give you a whole lot. Once you can already climb V8, it's not going to help you a ton to do a bunch more V4s as a boulderer.

Nate Drolet  12:30

As a boulderer and if you're just doing it simply for fitness.

Kris Hampton  12:33

Right.

Nate Drolet  12:34

 Yeah, absolutely. So when you think quality versus quantity, what's the first thing that jumps out to you?

Kris Hampton  12:40

You know, honestly, the first thing I see, and I wrote about this a long time ago in a Five Bad Habits of Gym Climbers post, that I see so many people in the gym base their work their workout on how many pitches did I do? Like, oh, I had a great workout tonight. I did 15 pitches, you know. So what? I don't know what that means, you know, maybe you did 15 pitches of 5.7 and you want to send 5.12 this year. It's not gonna happen just because you can do 15 pitches of 5.7 you know, and they want to keep raising that number and keep raising that number. And it's an easy to quantify thing. Like, this is a number I can latch on to and I can make better the next time and make better the next time and make better the next time. You're not really making it better. You're raising the number. But you're not necessarily becoming a better climber because of it. 

Nate Drolet  13:38

And as someone who has also done 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell, yeah, please tell me how much stronger did that make you? I can I can tell you right now, I trained really hard for it. And I was a worse rock climber. Fitness-wise and strength-wise. It did not do me any good to be able to do 100 pitches in a day.

Kris Hampton  14:00

Yeah, you know what I did? Interestingly, because I ended up sending my hardest route within a month after Horseshoe Hell. I didn't train for Horseshoe Hell. I just did hard boulders, a bunch of hard boulders. I did like three training days for Horseshoe Hell where I would come in and I would do volume boulders and that was really just to toughen my skin up more than anything. So I was able to do my 100 routes, my 105th route I think was 12b, you know, so I climbed well through it. I didn't break any records like you did. But then I was able to go on and have a successful sport climbing season after so

Nate Drolet  14:50

Well, you know, one of us had a good season and the other one got to beat Alex Honnold and Matt Segal's record. So I'm just saying....Suck it Segal.

Kris Hampton  14:59

 Yeah, so that's that's the place I see it the most often. And the most glaring to me is people just counting how much you did. And I think that's a really bad way to go about it. And and even if you're the person who goes in and you project a route or you project boulders, or whatever it is, I've seen a lot of people get down on themselves, because they don't have an easy to quantify method. And these other people do, you know, so they're comparing notes with their friends. And they're like, Oh, I sent 27 new boulders tonight. And you're like, I did, I did two moves that I hadn't done. It's not as, it's not as exciting to be able to say that. But your quality is far higher than that person who's just spinning their wheels and going through the same motions, again.

Kris Hampton  15:15

Totally. So is there a time when you can overdo it on quality?

Kris Hampton  16:14

Ah, yeah, for sure. I think. I think if you are...and depending on your situation, if you are going to, say you're our dude, Dru Mack, you're going to Spain, and you're going to be climbing on, you know, 50 meter routes. If you're super focused on quality, so to speak, and you're only worried about I want to be able to do the hardest moves. I want to, you know, my like 

Nate Drolet  16:48

I want to leave fresh every single day. I don't want to get tired

Kris Hampton  16:51

Yeah, I want to get close to my max intensity all the time.

Nate Drolet  16:54

You don't get stronger if you leave getting tired.

Kris Hampton  16:56

 It's true. That's, that's what everyone says. Then you do that for six weeks, you head over to Spain, and you get to bolt number three, and you're wrecked. 

Nate Drolet  17:08

Oh, man, 

Kris Hampton  17:09

You know, that's how it happens. So at that time, you have to understand that quantity is is a necessary part of the equation there. You know, you have to get yourself tired, you have to push into those places that being really focused on quality isn't going to take you.

Nate Drolet  17:32

And you can still get a lot of quality out of that. 

Kris Hampton  17:34

Totally.

Nate Drolet  17:35

 But and when I wrote that question, that was exactly what I was thinking as well. It's really, it can be really easy to over oversteer and say, well, I'm just gonna do, if I want better endurance, I just need better strength, because that's gonna make every move easier, so I'm just gonna go full bore pure strength. And suddenly you're Yeah, you're not even making the third bolt. And that's, that's a problem, because in Spain, they belay like 30 feet away from the cliff, like you're hitting the ground. Like, they're probably like, eating a tuna sandwich and smoking a cigarette and hands aren't on the brake end, like, it's bad news. 

Kris Hampton  18:11

Oh man. Don't let those people belay you Dru.

Nate Drolet  18:15

Ooh sore subject. So, are there like, another thing I want to bring up, and this is, this is kind of where the line is blurred a little bit, of quality versus quantity and where I think a lot of people think that they're doing quality, and they think they're just like nailing it down. And that's when when they go into the gym, they're like, I'm gonna go in, I want to climb a ton of different problems, bunch of new problems. I'm gonna climb like, everything I do is gonna be new and they go in and man with how gyms set these days, like, it's easy to do. You go in, like, 

Kris Hampton  18:54

That's a problem, man.

Nate Drolet  18:55

It, it totally can be. And it's like, I have so much respect for setters for the fact that they can turn over boulders and like, keep them good as fast as they can. 

Kris Hampton  19:06

Yeah, totally. 

Nate Drolet  19:07

But man, unless you are training for 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell or something, like keeping up, or if you're just mutant strong, like it's really hard to keep up with all the new problems that are going up while keeping quality going.

Kris Hampton  19:18

Yep. Yeah, I think it's a trap that a lot of people fall into. And I'm totally not faulting setters for this. I know that it's the way that the gyms operate. I mean, that's how they make their money, so

Nate Drolet  19:32

 People would complain if there wasn't fast turnover.

Kris Hampton  19:34

 Yeah, so you should definitely keep doing it. But as a climber who wants to keep progressing, you need to be aware that there there's high potential to fall into this quantity trap, where you're, you go in there's new section of the wall set, you flash all the things you can flash. You send the first few things in a bunch of tries that you can and then you start projecting the things you can project. And next week, next week, there's a new section of the wall set. And you do the exact same thing over and over and over. And for some reason, three years down the road, you're doing the same thing on the same grades, and you can't figure out why you're not progressing.

Nate Drolet  20:21

Yeah, maybe a little bit better, maybe a little bit strange, but it's not anything like very significant, like you have increased at the same rate that everyone else in your gym has.

Kris Hampton  20:29

Right. 

Nate Drolet  20:32

And so to me, this is a really big problem. And just simply that most people aren't aware of it, or they think they're doing the right things. So what I recommend is actually distilling down and saying, okay, instead of climbing on 40 different problems tonight, once I warm up, I'm going to pick two problems. I'm going to do my perfect repeats, or I'm just going to focus on them. Like even if I can climb it well, I'm going to do it multiple times. And just climb it perfectly as best as I can. Try and really dial it in, so that I understand them very well. And then I'll have, you know, my project after that. And then you can also even have circuits as well. So once you've done a project, you come back and you say Okay, can I do this better? And can I repeat it consistently? 

Kris Hampton  21:17

Yep.

Nate Drolet  21:18

 Because it's one thing to just go in and look at problems as completion points. Like, Oh, I did it. Like I may have messed up the beta, but I did it, I got it done. Next.

Kris Hampton  21:27

Right. And this is where quality becomes a little more esoteric. And I think perfect repeats are a really great example of that. Because you can't just go through the motions of a perfect repeat, you know, saying, I did five laps on this problem. I sent it all five times, done. No, that's not enough, you have to be hyper aware. You're, you have to be concentrated, you have to be focused. And the whole idea there is to really learn how to be aware of the subtleties while you're climbing, and be able to faster and faster, change those things. And, you know, that's what you want to do on the crux of a problem or crux of a route that's 80 feet off the ground. You don't want to have to spend five days up there figuring out the subtleties. If you could figure it out in a few attempts on that sequence, then you're far better off and that's what you're training in there. But by just going through the moves the way you did it the first time, you're not really learning anything. So that's where quality becomes this harder to grasp thing, I think.

Nate Drolet  22:48

Yeah. And it's, you know, it can be a bit of a trade off, and it can, it can be hard to kind of swallow that pill, because you say, well, wouldn't it be better for me to do 20 unique problems, rather than just three problems that are repeated five times each. And I would argue against that. I would say you're better off doing, yeah, if you did three to four problems that repeated five times each and you actually learned something from them, rather than....a warm up should not just be a way to get your body ready.

Kris Hampton  23:15

 Right

Nate Drolet  23:15

 Like if you're climbing, every time you pull onto the wall, it's an opportunity to become better or worse. There is no stagnant. Like, if you're pulling on and you're just slopping your way through saying, Okay, I need to get my big muscles warm, I need to get my hands warm, like, I'm kind of pissed I have to warm up, I just want to go get on my project, you're wasting time. Like in a two hour session, you may only be climbing for, I don't know what, like 10-12 minutes, something like that, like on the wall actually moving, you know, like not that much time. So if you're pissing away the bulk of that time, which will be spent in your warm up, because you don't really spend a lot of time on the wall when you're actually projecting. If you're pissing away the bulk of that time just mindlessly going through the motions to like get your body ready, you're wasting so much potential to get better. 

Kris Hampton  24:01

Yeah we all want to, you know, sing the praises of climbing being this cerebral activity, but then we don't want to get our brains involved when we're warming up. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Nate Drolet  24:14

Yeah. And so for me, that's a really big one. I think circuiting is great too. Will Anglin posted on the Tension Climbing blog, a whole series of circuit workouts and there's one that we use frequently, that we refer to as the Three Strike Circuit. So picking five very hard boulders, three goes each and man trying hard is a skill. 

Kris Hampton  24:34

Yeah, yeah. 

Nate Drolet  24:35

Going up to a really hard boulder, imagining yourself doing it, running it through your head and pulling on and executing that is a skill. Like it's not just simply muscle memory and strength and are your fingers, you know, strong enough today. It is do you know how to perform?

Kris Hampton  24:50

Yeah, and if you can, over time, build that skill up and, you know, get better at flipping that switch when it's time to flip that switch, you know, that's that's really high quality work that's happening. It's not just going through the motions again. 

Nate Drolet  25:07

Yeah that's not just, oh, I sent that project once. I really don't want to ever get back on it because that was luck. I'm just gonna get some get on something else.

Kris Hampton  25:16

Yeah. Do you see this quality versus quantity thing happening outside as well? Like, do you see people getting into one trap or another?

Nate Drolet  25:26

 Oh, totally. Yeah, you know, I think you can go both ways. Yeah, I mean, for a lot of people just like going out and climbing a ton of volume. Like, which I can get and it's a, it can be a ton of fun. But if you want to progress, like, you know, going out and go out and do 500 new rock climbs at an area, but if they're all like, things so easy you could do them in your tennis shoes, like you're probably getting worse and you're just getting jug rash.

Kris Hampton  25:57

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't really it doesn't really get you anywhere. It definitely doesn't make you an accomplished climber. 

Nate Drolet  26:05

Definitely not. 

Kris Hampton  26:06

And one of the things, here's a question for you. One of the things I see that that often bothers me is, again, I'm back to this counting pitches thing, but I hear people, whenever I say, what does your, what do your days look like outside? And they can tell me, "Oh, I get eight pitches in or I get ten pitches in. Yeah, I always try to get 10 pitches in." And I'm like, why?

Nate Drolet  26:35

I was once told by a person that if you climbed 10 pitches every day, didn't matter the grade, didn't matter if they were new, that you would keep getting better.

Kris Hampton  26:45

Really? 

Nate Drolet  26:46

Yeah, I know.

Kris Hampton  26:47

I screwed up a long time ago. But I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't know. I can't possibly predict that I'm going to be able to do 10 pitches the next next season when I'm out there. If I'm projecting and I'm trying something that's really really hard for me, there's no way I'm going to climb 10 pitches that day. You know, especially if I've got something like, I can warm up on the woody at home. And I don't have to do a bunch of warm ups that day out at the crag. I can, I might get three pitches in and be a mess. 

Nate Drolet  27:26

Yeah. But it will still be high quality.

Kris Hampton  27:28

 Right

Nate Drolet  27:29

Yeah no, absolutely. You know, and the funny thing too, is ten is, I mean, the reason we go to ten is because it's a nice round, pretty number.

Kris Hampton  27:38

 Yeah. 

Nate Drolet  27:39

So like, if there was no science behind, you should do ten pitches or you should be able to do 10 pitches. It's just a good number. 

Kris Hampton  27:46

Like there's not even really any rationale behind it. 

Nate Drolet  27:49

No, like, I mean, who knows if your partner is trying something new, God forbid, you're somewhere like Rifle where they're like, Hey, I'm gonna go project shopping today. Like, good luck getting ten pitches, and you're going to be on belay for like four hours that day.

Kris Hampton  28:03

Yeah. Yeah. So I see about the same mistakes outside, as I do inside when it comes to quality versus quantity.

Nate Drolet  28:14

Yeah, one thing I wanted to add. So not everyone is always psyched on perfect repeats. You know, if it's not your thing, it's not your thing. I personally think they're amazing. But one thing I like to recommend to people is if they go go into the gym, and let's say there is a new set, and you want to go through and you do want to flash all the boulders, which is cool, go do it. Anytime you hit a spot where, you know, let's say you flash it, you come down. If you hit a spot to where you're like, I could do that better, just do that one move, maybe do that two, three, move sequence. Like you don't need to repeat the entire 15 move problem or whatever. But just take that little spot, and climb it well. Climb it 2, 3, 4 or 5 times. And then when you're done and you realize, okay, this is what I should have done, add one extra step. Take a step back and look at it and say how could I have read this the first time? When I look at this, like, why did I think the thing that I thought? Did I even bother reading it? Or did I just pull on the start holds and start climbing? But it's like, if you did read it and you read it incorrectly, like what needs to change in your way that you view problems. you know, to fix this. But yeah, and that's something that I mean, that won't take you more than three or four minutes. And if you can, if you can prevent from making an error twice, good news, you're going to be an expert in like two years. Like most errors that we make are thematic, like they repeat. We keep making the same mistakes. You know, a lot of people have talked about this in the past. But yeah, so like the best thing you can do to get better faster, is stop making the same mistakes.

Kris Hampton  29:44

Yeah, and I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, I know I've talked about it in workshops. I was climbing in Rifle with BJ Tilden, who climbs 14+. His first pitch of the day was a 5.11 warm up and when I was lowering him down from the warm up, he said, "Hold me here a second". And I was like, initially, I'm like, why? You know, what the hell for? You could climb this 5.11 via 20 different sequences, you know, it's not gonna matter.

Nate Drolet  30:15

One of which with oven mitts on.

Kris Hampton  30:18

 But he knew that that one little section right there wasn't the best way to do it there, you know the rhythm was off or whatever it was. And he wanted to make it better so that when he warmed up on it the on the next time, it would feel better to him and get him into a better place. And that's a really great example of just taking that extra minute to make yourself a little bit better, you know, to recognize something was off your, you just want to make yourself better. And it only took, I mean, what was it 15 seconds or something for him to do that sequence again, and then he's on the ground.

Nate Drolet  31:01

Yeah, he learned something from it. 

Kris Hampton  31:02

Yeah. 

Nate Drolet  31:03

And the thing is, too, and this is, to me a very crucial idea that a lot like, it's easy to miss out on, when looking at kind of quality versus quantity. And this is even more towards like, quantity being the higher intensity of like V grades, for instance. So if you look at most problems, or like even routes that are hard for you, you're not doing like one rep max intensity movements.

Kris Hampton  31:28

 Right.

Nate Drolet  31:28

 They happen, but they're rare. Like they're very rare, like even limit boulder style climbs. While they have a lot to teach you, they're more rare out in the wild. Like it's rare that you're going to get on, you know, if 13a is your project level, it's rare that you're going to get on it, and it's going to be a one move V8 in the middle of it. What is much more likely is you're gonna have to do three, maybe four V3 on it, and you're gonna have to do them maybe a little pumped. So the thing is, like, yes, getting stronger, is better for that. But if you can learn how to climb V3 beautifully, and well and efficiently, like that's going to be what's going to apply to your sport climbing more. So like learning how to take your 70 and 80% max intensity, and being able to make that as smooth and as dialed in as possible. 

Kris Hampton  32:15

Right. Yeah, you hear all the time, "You don't even look pumped", or "Why did he fall? He didn't even look tired". You know, it's not because they weren't tired, or they weren't trying hard, it was because they've gotten really good at keeping their technique together, keeping their head game together, standing on their feet when they need to, and moving smoothly. When everything in their head is falling apart, like, like they can feel that it's all going downhill. But keeping all those things together, means they're gonna stay on the wall longer. And so often you can't see it from the ground at all. You know, you see it all the time, people saying, "Oh, my god, I was so pumped!" and everybody else is like,"You don't look pumped at all." You know, that's a that's a really good way to tell that it's a good rock climber, I think.

Nate Drolet  33:12

 Totally. Yeah, I mean, this applies to boulders as well. I mean, you know, if you did four, 2-move V6s back to back, that's like roughly V10. Like, it won't have a single V10 move on it, but it's still hard. Like, you know, that's going to be eight very difficult or eight moves that are difficult to string together. So if you can learn how to climb V6, very, very well, like two move V6s,  like very well, and you can learn how to just own them and climb them perfectly instead of just, you know, just making it through. Like when you do get on these problems that, or even if it's just like, oh, there's an intro V6, to a hard move. Like, if you can climb that opening even better, perfect. Like that's going to help you so much more. And it's going to mean, you don't need to be as powerful for that one move at the end. Like yes, more power is helpful, it's good. But there's a time to look at quality as well.

Kris Hampton  34:06

Yeah, and I really want to highlight the fact that that, you know, getting smooth on a V6 doesn't necessarily mean just go into the gym and do as many V6s as you can. It means be very intentional. Be very aware. Try to make each attempt really high quality, instead of just jump on as many and scrap your way to the top as you can.

Nate Drolet  34:33

 And if you think you can do something better, take the time and do it better. Yeah, like, I mean, especially if you're in the gym. There's no, like all those problems are gonna disappear in a month. They will never exist again, like it doesn't matter if you send them really. Like it doesn't matter if you go do more V6s or whatever. Like in the end of the day, all that matters is did you get better?

Kris Hampton  34:36

Yeah, if you're writing a training plan, let's say for the people out there who are writing training plans for themselves, how do they make sure that that it's high quality and not just focused on more and more and more? You know, what, what steps can they take early on in that process to ensure that it's not just being quantity?

Nate Drolet  35:24

I think step one is looking at the goal.

Kris Hampton  35:27

Good answer. 

Nate Drolet  35:29

Thank you. I mean, yeah, it's as almost cliche at this point, but you know, keep the goal, the goal. And that's where so many people fall short. But what, what is your goal? What do you need to be there? Like, what are the steps? If your goal is to go out, and you're going to spend a three day weekend in Hueco Tanks and try and climb V10, you need to be able to climb three days on.

Kris Hampton  35:54

 Yep.

Nate Drolet  35:55

 Well, you need to understand how you can moderate your intensity level for three days on because you can't go hard for three straight days. Like, if you think you can, that's probably not actually like that hard.

Kris Hampton  36:05

Right. Yeah, a good. A good way to look at that is look at a like an ultramarathon runner. They're going hard for a long time. But I guarantee you, not one 100 yard portion of that ultra marathon is at their all out sprint. 

Nate Drolet  36:27

Yeah, 

Kris Hampton  36:28

It's not happening.

Nate Drolet  36:29

 Or even all out jog. 

Kris Hampton  36:32

Yeah, totally. So a three day weekend in Hueco, ifthose are your only days, you need to understand that some of that time is going to be spent walking, jogging, and understand when to turn it up to a sprint. 

Nate Drolet  36:50

Yeah, so being able to know that and saying, okay, like, this is my base amount of quantity that I need. Like, maybe you're not always going three on one off, but you need to be able to withstand that much volume.

Kris Hampton  37:03

Right.

Nate Drolet  37:03

 So you say, Okay, this is my base. This is what I need. And you can even break it down more from there like, and you need to know what your goal in Hueco is.

Kris Hampton  37:11

Yeah. Is it, is your goal to go climb as many classic V7s as possible, 

Nate Drolet  37:15

Which would be a ton of fun.

Kris Hampton  37:16

 It would be

Nate Drolet  37:18

 Or is it to try one boulder?

Kris Hampton  37:19

Do you just want to do one boulder? Yeah,

Nate Drolet  37:21

 Yeah. And so if it's one boulder, like that's much more manageable. And then you say, Well, okay, like, how long is this boulder? Like, how many quality goes...can I increase the number of quality goes that are given today, because I only have three days? I don't I'm not allowed to rest and then I'm gone. Like, it doesn't matter how strong I am if I can only give two good redpoint burns in a single day and then I'm just toast. Unless I'm flashing that thing, like, I'm gonna be in trouble. 

Kris Hampton  37:48

Right.

Nate Drolet  37:49

 Like, if it's at your true project level, it's like, Okay, can we increase how many good efforts I can give in a day? Like maybe you want to worry about things like your skin or something like that. What would you say, for this question?

Kris Hampton  38:05

I would say that you gave a much better answer than I expected, so

Nate Drolet  38:08

I tried to buy you time.

Kris Hampton  38:12

So I don't know that I would add much to that. I think that, I think that takes care of a lot of the issues. If you're really looking deeply into what the goal is and how to prepare for it, then you're more than likely hitting the quality elements that you need. I would add to that, however, that once you get there, once you're standing in front of your goal, don't fall into that quantity trap. I see it alot. What I, what I mean by that is if your, if your project is to do or if your goal in your three day weekend in Hueco is to do one route and the first time you try that, that boulder It feels really hard, don't automatically bail out to the

Nate Drolet  39:09

 I'm going to do a bunch of sixes

Kris Hampton  39:10

 I'm gonna go do a bunch of sixes and sevens, right. Yeah, because you need, we have this need to feel accomplished, you know. And for some reason, quantity gives us that feeling of accomplishment. 

Nate Drolet  39:24

Totally.

Kris Hampton  39:24

 I did so much while I was in Hueco, but then you go home and you're alone and you're like, I didn't do the thing I wanted to do, you know. So I would definitely strongly caution against that trap and say keep the quality going all the way through the goal. You know, don't stop with the training plan.

Nate Drolet  39:46

Yeah. And so, how about this? What if you don't have a goal? What if your simple goal is I just want to get better? These next three months, I want to go into the gym and I just want to be a better climber.

Kris Hampton  39:57

I think then you need to make a goal. I think you need to come up with a goal that fits what you want, you know, something tangible that fits that goal, you have becoming a better climber. You know, what does that look like? Does that mean I want to do five 13as of five different styles? Will that equate somehow to me becoming a better climber? It's gonna demand a lot of me, you know, I'm gonna have to be good at slab climbing and I have to be good at steep climbing and long climbing and short bouldery climbs and offwidth for god's sake.

Nate Drolet  40:37

No.

Kris Hampton  40:42

I think that having that tangible goal, I think is so important that even if your goal is something big and broad, like I just want to become better, you need to find a tangible goal that you can attach to it and push toward.

Nate Drolet  40:58

Totally, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, and then as far as just inside, like climbing inside if you are doing stuff, and you're like, am I just doing things to do things? I can't tell. The things I would what I would recommend is do what feels hard. Like if climbing extended, feels hard for you, climb extended a bunch.  If climbing bunchy feels hard for you, and I don't give a shit how tall you are

Kris Hampton  41:23

 I think uncomfortable might even be a better word than hard. 

Nate Drolet  41:27

Yeah, uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. I was ranting. As I was saying, I don't care how tall you are, like tall people like to complain how they can't climb bunchy, but the thing is, you have no excuse. Have you ever climbed with someone who's tall and flexible?

Kris Hampton  41:44

Oh, yeah, man.

Nate Drolet  41:45

 They are fucking cheaters man. Like you realize that they can keep their feet low. They can sag out further from the wall because they're taller. And they're so flexible they can get their foot even higher than you because they've got longer legs. Like I used to climb with a guy who is an incredible climber like sport climber, boulderer, well rounded. About six foot two, just very flexible with strong legs. And man, there was nothing he couldn't do. 

Kris Hampton  42:08

Well, I've climbed with a lot of tall guys who don't use their height. 

Nate Drolet  42:11

Oh, I mean, that's

Kris Hampton  42:12

You know, they can't climb stretched out.

Nate Drolet  42:14

Yeah. Which is hilarious. Like, I've climbed with a climber guy who's six foot five, who I could do, I could match him span for span.

Kris Hampton  42:21

Yeah, totally.

Nate Drolet  42:23

I mean, and I am a giant, but not quite six foot five.

Nate Drolet  42:27

You're a small giant.

Nate Drolet  42:28

Yes. In my heart. But also, whatever is difficult for you, like that small rant was to simply say that find what's uncomfortable, like, don't make an excuse for why it's uncomfortable. If you are a very short person, and you say ah climbing spanned is really hard for me. Because I'm sure it is but like, well, suck it up buttercup. Like, yeah, you know, it's always going to be difficult for you and it's gonna be even harder if you never focus on it. So take the time. And whatever challenges you, whatever makes you uncomfortable, spend a little extra time in that. And that's how you can guarantee that you'll find quality.

Kris Hampton  43:06

Yeah, yep. And I think you can do that outside too. I think if you're one of those people who loves to go outside and do a million rock climbs, and and you find yourself not getting better, then get uncomfortable and go check out some hard rock climbs, you know, maybe put some of your season into projecting. You know, I think I think it makes you more well rounded. I think it makes you a better rock climber to understand all of those things. And I'm not going to allow myself to rant on this because I think this feels like a segue. Yeah, this is going to be topic of number two, which is

Nate Drolet  43:55

 Tomorrow

Kris Hampton  43:56

Tomorrow for all you guys. Until then, you can find us on the Instagrams and on the Facebooks, and you can find us at our website, which is powercompanyclimbing.com. If you have not, for god's sakes, if you have not listened to the Public Service Announcement, "Don't Believe The Hype", you should go do that now. And then you can listen to "Pyramids versus Towers" tomorrow, and you can share it all over the internet including on your Twitter machine, which is where we are not because we don't tweet, we scream like eagles.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (EP. 84):

Kris Hampton  00:31

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton.

Nate Drolet  00:35

And this is Nate Drolet.

Kris Hampton  00:36

And together we form the Midnight Marauders. This time do you know where that's from? 

Nate Drolet  00:41

Yes. 

Kris Hampton  00:42

Where?

Nate Drolet  00:43

You mentioned it in the last podcast. 

Kris Hampton  00:45

Yeah

Nate Drolet  00:45

Yeah, that's what a lot of people say is the best album

Kris Hampton  00:49

 By?

Nate Drolet  00:52

Ahhh.....I'm losing it.

Kris Hampton  00:52

A Tribe Called Quest

Nate Drolet  00:53

A Tribe Called Quest.

Kris Hampton  00:54

But they're wrong because it's Low End Theory. But anyway. All right, we just finished up some research,

Nate Drolet  01:04

 Crunching a lot of numbers

Kris Hampton  01:06

 Crunching a lot of numbers, which is hard for us. In in preparation for this "Pyramids versus Towers" conversation, and we battled with the word "towers" quite a bit, because it could just be one giant plateau, a mesa, so to speak. You know, it doesn't have to be a tower straight up and down. 

Kris Hampton  01:33

A grade pancake, even.

Kris Hampton  01:34

 A great pancake. Yeah, grade pancake or the great pancake?

Nate Drolet  01:38

Both sound great. 

Kris Hampton  01:39

Yeah,

Nate Drolet  01:39

 One sounds better.

Kris Hampton  01:40

Yeah, pancakes sound good, too. We're going to have wings and pancakes later.

Nate Drolet  01:44

I'd support this.

Kris Hampton  01:47

Okay, so, you know, building a pyramid, building a base and, you know, slowly adding up to a harder climb, or going for the harder climb? You know, do you want to be a better climber? Do you want to climb harder grade? Is it synonymous, necessarily?

Nate Drolet  02:11

No, I don't think so.

Kris Hampton  02:12

Okay, do you think one is always better than the other? A pyramid or a tower?

Nate Drolet  02:22

I'm trying to think of a phrase other than it depends. There are times when one is better than the other and even depending on what your timescale is of your pyramid, like a pancake could even be ideal, at certain times.

Kris Hampton  02:40

I agree. I guess let's just jump into that then.

Nate Drolet  02:45

 All right. So what do you see, well, first off, like, this is part of a series. We're doing the five day series of "Common Sense versus Common Practice". So would you say that having, building a pyramid like that, when was the first time you were told you should build a pyramid if you want to get better?

Kris Hampton  03:07

Oh man, really early on. Actually, I think I probably read the concept first in Eric Horst's Training For Climbing book. I don't know that anyone had ever called it a pyramid to me, though, the concept existed in the gym. Like, early on, there were a few guys who were my mentors in the gym, Chris Ecklund and Josh Dees several other guys who instilled the idea that if you want to climb this, you know, 5.12, you should try to go to all the 5.11s first, you know, in the gym. So they definitely built that idea into my head before I ever heard it called a pyramid I think. So, early on, in the Dark Ages.

Kris Hampton  03:21

Yes, the Dark Ages. And would you agree that it's you know, common sense practice. Like most people these days, like,

Kris Hampton  04:16

I agree that it's common sense.

Nate Drolet  04:19

Or yeah, I guess I said common sense practice. 

Nate Drolet  04:20

Haha yeah, 

Nate Drolet  04:21

Is it...words are hard.

Kris Hampton  04:23

Are you trying to confuse me, Nathan? 

Nate Drolet  04:25

Yes.

Kris Hampton  04:26

 I agree that that's the common sense, I don't think it is necessarily the common practice. And I'm hesitating here because the common sense should be that it's a pyramid, which means it comes to a point. But even a lot of the people who believe in the pyramid idea, never bring it to that point. So...........I don't know where I'm going with that. But it is common sense to do it, yes

Nate Drolet  05:01

Even the people that try to practice often fall short in one way or another.

Kris Hampton  05:06

Yeah, totally.

Nate Drolet  05:08

All right. Before we dig in a little further, we've been talking a bit about currency lately. So how current are your skills? How do you feel about how current your pyramid is? Like and how relevant is that?

Kris Hampton  05:24

That's a good question. I know initially, when I believe when I read it in Eric Horst's book, he talked about a 12 month pyramid,

Nate Drolet  05:34

Which is great, because 8a.nu tracks that for you. 

Kris Hampton  05:36

Yeah, exactly.

Kris Hampton  05:37

 So you should be looking in your last 12 months. And I think that's a really good way to start looking at it. I think as you get into the upper grades, you encounter some problems with that 12 month pyramid. Those problems could be, you don't have the time to travel and you've done everything around the bottom of your pyramid, you know, over the last decade, so it's tough to add to the bottom of your pyramid. Or you've kind of hit your ceiling and if you want to do the next level, you have to spend all your energy, all year on it, you know, so you can you can definitely run into problems. And I feel like I feel like I start picking skills, particular skills, to be current with for my pyramid, so I don't necessarily need to do.... if I want to do 14a, I don't need to do eight 13as, or sixteen 13as, or whatever the pyramid would tell me to do. I only need to do a couple of 13as of a similar style and build my little tower up to 14a, you know. So it gets tricky, which is why we're having this conversation.

Nate Drolet  07:11

 Yeah. You know, and how much time do you have? If you only have and we talked, we've talked about this just recently, it you know, if you only have, let's say 20 days of climbing outside your entire fall

Kris Hampton  07:23

Yeah or some people only have that in their entire year.

Nate Drolet  07:25

Yeah, I sure as shit hope you aren't going to be like, well, I want to climb 12a, so let's start by climbing 124 5.10bs, and then start tapering down from there. Like, no, it's like a, you know, you need it is necessary to build some form of momentum, get that confidence going. Remember how to clip chains like,

Kris Hampton  07:48

Yep

Nate Drolet  07:48

That, you know, as silly as that sounds, it's really important to know how to execute and how to send things. Like you can forget how to send things. And it's, it's kind of funny when it happens. And you're like, oh, like, you're like, Oh, I'm just going to go out and go try the project today. It's like, what are you going to send it?  Like no. Well, what do you need to work? Just I'm working it. It's like, well, what are you doing? Like, you're just you have planned to spin circles because you forgot how to pull the trigger.

Kris Hampton  08:17

Yep, totally. You know, I kind of like the like, 4-2-1, the tiny little pyramid, I kind of like the idea of that. And, and making whatever you've done in the last year that you've done three of, that's the goal of the base of your pyramid. So that, 

Nate Drolet  08:45

So if let's say if last year, I went out and I did three 12ds and one 13a, then my goal next year is to make 12d the base of my pyramid?

Kris Hampton  08:57

Yeah. So add a 12d, do another 13a and then try to add a 13b. I think that's a good setup for like a weekend warrior, someone who doesn't get to travel extensively, and climb all the time. If you've got a small time period throughout the year, if you only get out 20 days or 30 days in the year, then I think that's a decent way to approach it. You know, whatever you've done three of or you can build to four of in this calendar year that should be the base of your pyramid for the next 12 months. If your goal is to climb something hard.

Nate Drolet  09:36

Yes. 

Kris Hampton  09:37

For you.

Nate Drolet  09:38

Fewer goals for a harder redpoint. So keeping with the topic of currency, when does your pyramid, when is it no longer current? You know, when have all those things kind of dropped off?

Kris Hampton  09:54

For me, it was a while.

Nate Drolet  09:55

Can they?

Kris Hampton  09:58

 Yeah, I think they can. I definitely I definitely think they can and really, I think 12-18 months might be a good number to start thinking about. You need to get a little more current with some specific skills if you haven't done those things, and they are necessary for your projects or for your goals. I think after 18 months, they really, really need to be updated. 

Nate Drolet  10:33

Okay. So let's use an example, if I wanted to go do Beer Belly at the Red River Gorge, let's say, I built myself a nice little tower last year. I've got plenty of days, I can go weekend warrior all spring, all fall, 3-day weekends, not a problem. And I don't even mind climbing when it's a little warm. And I've done a 13a, a 12d, and two 12cs in the last 12 months. Before that I've maybe done a bunch, like a lot more 5.12s, but I really tapered to try and send that 5.13 last year. So how should I approach this season?

Kris Hampton  11:12

What did you say you were able to, how often are you able to climb? Are you weekend warrior or?

Nate Drolet  11:16

Weekend warrior but all the way, like all weekends, I have no life responsibilities. Rock climbing is life when I'm not working.

Kris Hampton  11:23

Okay. How should you approach the season after you've already trained?

Nate Drolet  11:28

Mmmhmm. Already trained. Like, what kind of pyramid should I build? Basically saying like, I have no currency when it comes to having done routes near my limit.

Kris Hampton  11:37

Right. I think you need to start back at the 12cs, maybe even some B's when you first go out. Get some momentum, like as we talked about before,

Nate Drolet  11:51

Yeah. When you touched on style, how would like so what would I be looking for?

Kris Hampton  11:55

 I would look for steeper, a little thuggier. I personally like to do something early on that's off style of my major project. I don't think that's a necessity. So I would look for steeper, big moves, thuggier, slopier, I would, if Beer Belly was my real focus, I would avoid doing the 12bs and 12cs that are vertical crimpy, you know. I would do a handful of C's or handful of B's, then move up to C's and fill those out. You know, do at least three or four of those. And then I would move up to the Ds and probably do a 13a before I got to Beer Belly. 

Nate Drolet  12:52

Okay.

Kris Hampton  12:53

Beer Belly is a hard one, I think I think it's an upper 13a. And I wouldn't go to the Madness Cave. I wouldn't do the long super pumpy stuff the Red is known for. I would stick to the shorter, more bouldery climbing. 

Nate Drolet  13:13

Cool. So we look at a pyramid, we can have issues on all sides. As far as I mean, like it can be too tall, it can be too flat. You can even take pyramiding too seriously,

Kris Hampton  13:27

Yeah totally.

Nate Drolet  13:28

 Maybe trying to build your base a little too low. Like we were joking around about earlier, if I want to climb 12a, I need to go do like 256 5.9s first and build up. But you know, time, energy, all that, doesn't make sense. And at a certain point, you know, if you're climbing things that are too far below you, are you really getting much value out of that?

Kris Hampton  13:48

Right, exactly. 

Nate Drolet  13:49

So let's start by talking about that. Pancakes, grade pancakes or grade puddles, whatever we want to call them

Kris Hampton  13:56

 Haha grade puddle. That's a good one. I like that.

Nate Drolet  13:57

Just, you know, you're like, I'm gonna build the greatest pyramid. I'm gonna build this base as wide as possible. And then you forget that it goes up at some point. 

Kris Hampton  14:09

Yeah, I think if you've done, let's, let's even just say you're a person who loves doing a lot of routes at a grade or boulders at a grade. If you've if you're that person, and you've done eight or ten of a route, it's time to try something a little harder.

Nate Drolet  14:33

Like eight or ten in that year? 

Kris Hampton  14:35

Yes in that 12 or 18 month period. If you've done eight or ten of those, it's time to try something harder. If you're a person who wants to do the bigger grade, which is totally okay. I have no problem with grade chasers, if you do it smart. If you're that person, then I think once you've done four or five of those, it's high time to step up to the next grade. I don't think there's, honestly, I don't think there's any excuse for grade puddle bigger than about 10 routes, 

Nate Drolet  15:17

Okay. 

Kris Hampton  15:19

Unless you're just in an area where there's nothing else to do. 

Nate Drolet  15:22

Okay.

Kris Hampton  15:24

 If you're limited by geography, that's the only reason. 

Nate Drolet  15:29

Cool. So let's talk a bit more on that. Because I think that is something that there can be value out of the grade puddle. 

Kris Hampton  15:37

Okay.

Nate Drolet  15:39

 So and I think geography is exactly the point. And the way I see it, like one of the best times where it can be advantageous to say, Okay, I'm not going to build my pyramid up super tall, I'm just going to do all the lower levels is, if you have the opportunity to travel a ton, you know, let's say,

Kris Hampton  15:57

Yeah, for sure.

Nate Drolet  15:58

 Let's say it's like, Hey, I'm going to, I just finished grad school, I'm taking a year off. And then before I joined the workforce and have to start adulting, I'm going to go everywhere I've ever wanted to be for two weeks at a time, so I'm going to go to Siurana, Margalef, Olianna, Ceuse, Verdon Gorge, all these places. You know, at that point, if especially if you've never gotten to travel and climb on different rock styles, it might be advantageous. And I, this is what I would recommend, just climb a ton of stuff, maybe around your, you know, 80-85% level, like things that are still hard, and they challenge you, and you're going to have to try them, you know, maybe 2, 3, 4 or 5 times, but you can do them fast enough that you can see a lot of these areas, learn a lot of new skills. And so, you know, at the end of that year, you may have just the greatest grade lake you've ever seen.

Kris Hampton  16:49

Yeah, yeah, I like that actually, I like that. That thought that would never have occurred to me, because I've never been in a situation where I could do that. You know, I had my whole climbing career, I had two-week vacations, once a year. So it would never even occurred to me to spend a year traveling to a bunch of different places. And you're right, that'd be a great time to build the the Great Lake of Grades.

Nate Drolet  17:16

Yes. And so from there. You know, if you looked at that year, you'd be like, oh, wow, like I didn't, it would be easy to say I didn't do anything hard, or I should have, you know, focused but if you can take those skills and then you know, once now that you have a 9 to 5 and you hopefully live near some climbing, you can start really sharpening off that base.

Kris Hampton  17:34

Yep. No, I think that's a really, really great point. Is there a time when it's okay to have the tower?

Nate Drolet  17:46

Um, yeah, there is, you know, I....okay....is...yes, there is a time. So there's a time where I wouldn't say it's ideal, but it's best case scenario, and that's when you know, you live, you live near crag, it has 40 rock climbs, and you've done 38 of them. Like, you know what, you've got your next two routes picked out.

Kris Hampton  18:16

 Yep.

Nate Drolet  18:17

 Like, and that's not ideal, like, ideal is that you'd have more. But if that's what you got to work with, man, that's what you've got to work with.

Kris Hampton  18:23

Yeah. Do you feel like you should go back again, on the idea of currency, should you go back and repeat some things to get your levels current again?

Nate Drolet  18:35

I, I would rather keep things in as a circuit. Rather than simply going back to repeat just for the sake of repeat. 

Kris Hampton  18:43

Right. 

Nate Drolet  18:44

So maybe it's you warm up, you try your projects twice, and then you've still got energy for more climbing, and you just want to get fitter. So maybe go back and repeat like 2,3,4 hard routes that were difficult for you. And you can kind of keep those in rotation of like, keep rotating them through. So it's not that you just get them so dialed that it's like, oh, I can, you know, do this 13b every single time. It doesn't feel hard. It's like well, okay, if you've done it 100 times, it might not feel hard. So maybe sub it out for a 12d, that's really difficult for you right now. So I think there's value in that. I haven't found a ton of value in just repeating for the sake of repeating, but if I keep something in a circuit for building fitness, and especially if something represents a specific style. So for instance, if there's a vert line where I just have to really trust some bad feet, like every now and then coming back in and re redoing it like that, then to me, that's helpful.

Kris Hampton  19:41

Yeah, cool. I think another time when all of these iterations are okay, including the tower is, if that's really what you want to do. Like, if you're stoked on it, do it. I don't have any problem with that. Like if your whole goal is to only climb on Ro Shampo, go climb on Ro Shampo. Have fun. If you've ever done the 10s on the 10 Wall, because all you want to do is Ro Shampo, then whatever, go to Ro Shampo. And I don't think it's going to make you a better rock climber. So if that's part of your goal, you're fucking up. But if the thing that makes you most happy is to climb on Ro Shampo, be my guest.

Nate Drolet  20:27

Yeah, man. I mean, man. God bless them, there are people who, they would like nothing more than to spend 10 seasons on the same project, doing the same two, first two warm ups and they go straight to the project, they bolt to bolt, and they just keep doing that until it's done. And, you know, for them, that's happiness. I I don't like that. I'm not into it. But, uh, yeah, man, if that gets you psyched.

Kris Hampton  20:51

Yeah, and it's the same way with the pancake. I think that if you, you know, happens in the Red a lot, actually. Because new crags are constantly opening up, there's constant new development. Let's just go do the other new 12as.

Nate Drolet  21:06

 Yeah,

Kris Hampton  21:06

 You know and then somehow you end up with people who've done 700 12as and never done 12c. You know, it happens.

Nate Drolet  21:16

Totally.

Kris Hampton  21:18

 And that's what makes them happy. So,

Nate Drolet  21:20

Yeah, I mean, and that's a huge thing. So, earlier, when I was contemplating on the tower, on what is best case scenario, and what is just makes it work. I liked your answer of best case scenario if it makes you happy. The other one where I say a tower is fine, is if you feel like your athletic career is closing in on you. Or if you just have like, whether that's age, or whatever, or your big life responsibility coming up, maybe in nine months, you have a new member of your family coming in, or something like that. And you're like, Hey, I have another six months before, like, we're gonna have a kid. And so I'm going to try and send my megaproject because I know

Kris Hampton  22:04

You act as though like, as if having a kid stops your life or something,

Nate Drolet  22:06

 You know, I don't know. Don't, frankly, want to. But

Kris Hampton  22:12

 It's not true people

Nate Drolet  22:14

 But you know what I mean. Like, it is going to be a change in your life. And so 

Kris Hampton  22:18

And most people are gonna freak out about it.

Nate Drolet  22:20

Yeah, I mean, especially if it's your first kid.

Kris Hampton  22:22

 Yeah.

Nate Drolet  22:23

 So, you know, let's say you just you're like, hey, like, pyramid be damned. I want to go climb V11. I'm just gonna go, like, slam my head against this for the next X amount of months.

Nate Drolet  22:34

And until it's done, or yeah, you know, like, I know plenty of people who are like, Oh, well, I'm gonna start a new position next year, and like things, like, I'm gonna have three to five years where it's just going to be super rough. So maybe that's the time when you say, I'm not gonna worry about my base. I'm going to focus on this and I'd like to get it done.

Kris Hampton  22:34

 Yep. 

Kris Hampton  22:53

Yeah. You know, we've got, we've got lots of good examples of really great rock climbers with giant pyramids. Can you think of any great rock climbers who just have a tower? Or who have just a massive mesa? 

Nate Drolet  23:16

The mesa. That's a good question. You know, I'd say the closest thing and this is almost blasphemy. Like, if we were looking at currency, the closest thing to a tower and a great climber is probably Sharma. 

Kris Hampton  23:30

Okay

Nate Drolet  23:30

Massive base from being younger, having traveled,  done everything. But more recently, you know, let's say last like five, six years or so, his volume is definitely not as high of new climbs. However, roughly 80% of the 5.15s, and this is off the website 99 Problems, I think is what it was called, roughly 80% of the 5.15s he has climbed have been FAs.

Kris Hampton  23:55

 Right.

Nate Drolet  23:56

 And so with someone like that, when you're doing that much developing, you just can't climb as much volume. It's not possible. So there are, when we look more currently, and you see this with a lot of great boulderers as well, when they first start, they do this tremendous amount of volume. Well I'll mentione Jimmy Webb's accomplishments later, but like for him, between 2008 and 2014, which is a seven year span, there was only one year that he didn't climb over 100 double digit boulders.

Kris Hampton  24:29

Right.

Nate Drolet  24:29

 And that's massive. But if you look at now, within the last few years, that's tapered off dramatically.

Kris Hampton  24:34

Sure

Nate Drolet  24:34

But he's climbed a lot more. He's doing more developing. Like, also he's just damn near climbed them all.

Kris Hampton  24:42

The first the first example that came to mind for me was Honnold. Maybe I should go in fact, let's pause this. I'm gonna go look at his 8a and just see.

Nate Drolet  24:54

Break. 

Kris Hampton  24:57

 Hey, everybody, Kris here. I'll try to keep this short and sweet. Since this thing became officially official, I have basically been obsessed. I've got dozens of episodes waiting to go out, and I'm constantly recording new conversations. I want to continue putting this level of energy into it and you all can help. We've created a page at patreon.com/powercompanypodcast where you can help support what we're building, and in return, even for as little as $1 per month, you'll get access to the brand new We Scream Like Eagles Podcast, which includes tips from our guests, extra conversations about hot topics, and Q and A's with your questions posed to our guests. If you think it's worth more than $1 a month, we've got other rewards available on top of the bonus episodes like stickers, ebooks, t shirts and training plans. So if you've been considering pitching in, now's the time. That's patreon.com/powercompanypodcast. Thanks a ton. 

Kris Hampton  25:55

And back to the show. All right, we are back. And while I was over there searching on the computer, on 8a.nu, which, you know, you guys can disparage all you want but frankly, it's pretty good source of data to look at. It's kind of cool. I thought of an even better one than Honnold. But I did look at Honnold and and I think I was mostly right. In the last 12 months, he's kind of created a little mesa with ten 13cs, nine 13ds, seven 14as, and then only one 14b. So he has added on to the top of that but he's pretty consistent across 13c, 13d, 14a. And, and having had a long conversation with Alex about this, I suspect it's largely because he defaults to quantity, he defaults to doing more, and has a tough time with going to max intensity, like we talked about in the previous episode. However, if you look at his all time, it's a little better. He's got fifty-five 14as, nineteen 14bs, only three 14cs. So again, when he gets near the top, he tends to fall off. He doesn't fill in those top couple levels of his pyramid. You know, it's like a mesa with a little boulder sitting on top. A person who I think is an even better example of having to build a tower of sorts, is BJ Tilden and it's because he's climbing in an area where he's done all of the hardest routes. You know, like you mentioned with Sharma, his hardest routes from now on are going to be FAs. He has, it's not easy for him to travel because he's got a career. He's got a family. He's got a son now. So and he's done all the hardest routes in his home area. So in the last 12 months, he's got  three 14as, four 14bs, one 14c. So his is a wonky little tower. You know, it does get better when you look at the all time though. And BJ is somebody who keeps his skills current by having a circuit you know, he's got quite a few 13 pluses, 14 minuses on lockdown that he can he can bring his skills up to current pretty quickly on. So his all time shows thirty-five 14as, eighteen 14bs, ten 14cs, two 14 ds. So much more typical of the the pyramid as we understand it. And I think your concept of currency is a really important one in that situation. BJ can build the tower because he can keep his skills current through his circuit. 

Nate Drolet  29:16

Totally. So if we're looking at a gold standards of pyramids, 

Kris Hampton  29:24

Oh, Jesus.

Nate Drolet  29:26

 Got a couple. And I'll go ahead and start with Jonathan Siegrist.

Kris Hampton  29:33

Yep. He just put his stuff on 8a not long ago.

Nate Drolet  29:37

Yeah. Which I've already had discussions with multiple people who are just like, have you seen Siegrist's 8a? Shit is fucked up. Like I counted the other day. I think in the last three years, he's done sixty-two double, or sixty two 5.14s, second go.

Kris Hampton  29:54

 Wow.

Nate Drolet  29:54

 Second go ascents of 5.14 in the last three years, roughly 62. I think it was three, I think yeah, it was either three or four years.

Kris Hampton  30:01

He's really good at the second go send.

Nate Drolet  30:03

Yes. So, one thing that I wanted to see, because I thought this would be interesting. He's a very prolific climber, he has climbed so many routes everywhere.

Kris Hampton  30:15

Yeah. And he gets them done fast. 

Nate Drolet  30:16

Yes. I wanted to know how many 5.14s he did before he climbed 5.15.

Kris Hampton  30:23

 Okay.

Nate Drolet  30:24

 And this all spurred on, was spurred on by I was doing some research on a route for a guy I train. And interestingly, if you type in almost any 5.14 in the West, like, just type out the name, Jonathan Siegrist's blog will come up in like the top five results. He's blogged about having sent almost every 5.14. Which is, it's kind of neat. But so I typed it in, and it pulls a blog from him. I was like, oh, check that out. It's from 2010. So he's talking about trying this 14c and he's just having a real hard time with it. Like, it's starting to drive him crazy. And he was, he was just like, Man, this is a it's really starting to get to me mentally. I'm starting to close in on a double digit number of goes and that's, that's the most I've tried any 5.14 in over a year. So he hit go number seven, and was just like, starting to fray at the ends. And when I saw that, I was just like, holy shit, like, that's insane. Yeah, this is like a 14c that doesn't get repeated very often. And so then I was like, Well, how many 5.14s did he do before he climbed 5.15? And did I already tell you that... I did tell you that. 

Kris Hampton  31:34

Yeah

Nate Drolet  31:35

He did. 123 5.14s before climbing 5.15. 

Kris Hampton  31:39

Right.

Nate Drolet  31:40

 And a lot of them at that exact rate I was just describing, in like five goes. Where seven and eight goes would be a siege effort basically.

Kris Hampton  31:52

Some people would argue that's too many. Like you spent way too long in that grade, 

Nate Drolet  31:56

You could say that, um, and so I, I think you could even argue and I kind of would. Like he said that, like he was very open about he had plateaued for four years, because he had climbed 9a and it took him four more years to climb 5.15. So he felt like he plateaued. But if you look at the volume that he was climbing, he was doing, he started got to the point where he was doing 14c, second go. Like he did did several of those. And it's like, if you can do 14c second go like, are you really plateauing? Even though like,

Kris Hampton  32:28

Yeah, so so maybe it's not plateauing as much as having trouble embracing the double digit attempts on a route.

Nate Drolet  32:36

Yeah. And I think Biographie ended up taking him somewhere in the range of 50 goes. So I mean, honestly, you could argue that, and it'd be cool to get his opinion on this. But if he was doing all these hard rock climbs super quick, in just a handful of goes, and then he went and actually put in a ton of time on Biographie, like, was he in a plateau during that time? Or was it that he was building a necessary base? Or, you know, a massive base and this was finally, you know, him utilizing that base?

Kris Hampton  33:07

Yep. No, I think that's a I think that's a really good and valid argument. And while you were looking at Siegrist, I was looking at Ondra to see what his numbers look like. His are similar in that same grade range, he took 106 5.14s prior to doing 5.15. So again, a pretty massive volume and doing them fast. In fact, he had already done Silbergeier by that time, in a day. So he had done a big wall 5.14 with multiple pitches of 5.14 you know, so he'd pushed the limits of staying in one grade range, before he busted out as well. I also wanted to see with Ondra how many 5.15s he did before doing Silence. And I was kind of surprised that he had done forty-nine of them. It didn't even, hasn't even really registered with me that there are forty-nine 5.15s out there. You know, I guess there's around double that number.

Nate Drolet  34:22

 Something like that 

Kris Hampton  34:23

Around 100, but he did forty-nine 5.15s prior to doing Silence. Now the thing that really floors me here, from the time of doing his first 15a, which was La Rambla to the time he did Silence, he didn't just add those forty-nine 5.15s. He also added 442 new 5.14s.

Nate Drolet  34:53

Jesus.

Kris Hampton  34:56

So he's he's not messing around. He built a giant base under Silence.

Nate Drolet  35:03

 Yes. 

Kris Hampton  35:05

So, I mean that's 500 routes over 5.14 in those eight years or whatever it was between 15a and Silence. 

Nate Drolet  35:16

That's insane. Also, we're gonna get some sort of email about how you said Silbergeier.

Kris Hampton  35:25

 What is it? 

Nate Drolet  35:25

I think it's like Silbergeier, or something like that. I don't know. I've only heard a French person say it. And they weren't from Quebec. So they weren't just like adding French flair.

Kris Hampton  35:34

On the Enormocast, they call it Silbergeier, so if it's not Silbergeier, in talking to people who've climbed it, I'm blaming it on Chris Kalous. 

Nate Drolet  35:42

I would. Equally. This is coming from person who said it too. 

Kris Hampton  35:46

So take that Kalous.

Nate Drolet  35:51

Yeah, that's insane. So Siegrist's total 5.14 and up is 279, with seven 5.15s at this point. So that's a wide base. And for a point of reference, I believe Margo Hayes did nineteen or twenty 5.14s before she did La Rambla. It was right in that range. So roughly a fifth.

Kris Hampton  36:13

Do you think, do you think one approach is better than the other? And I guess this is just, I mean, this is an argument that could go on forever, which is the better of the two? So

Nate Drolet  36:26

I think currency has a lot to do with it. Margo, I believe, did most of those within like the two years, two to three years prior to her doing La Rambla. So it's a very dense amount of time. I think she had one year where she did fourteen 14s in a year. I believe that happened. Which is dense. That's a lot. You know, it's not, it's one thing to do twenty 5.14s over the course of a lifetime, and it's another one to do them, you know, in two school breaks.

Kris Hampton  37:00

Totally. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I like this. I like this idea of currency and how it applies to having a pyramid or a tower or whatever. Yeah, I agree. And I don't know that necessarily one approach is better than the other. I think that, again, a lot of it comes down to what you're stoked on, you know. Siegrist was obviously stoked on climbing more 5.14s.

Nate Drolet  37:31

And has traveled a ton as well.

Kris Hampton  37:33

Yep. Yeah, so I think that has to be factored in as well.

Nate Drolet  37:41

Do you want to guess how many double digit boulders Jimmy Webb has flashed?

Kris Hampton  37:46

 Oh, flashed....gee 

Nate Drolet  37:49

First Try Friday.

Kris Hampton  37:53

I'm gonna guess he's flashed 378.

Nate Drolet  38:00

 That's a lot. It's 186.

Kris Hampton  38:02

Okay. I was I was way over estimating because I had high expectations.

Nate Drolet  38:07

Yes. Because that's all you ever hear. He's done 1021 double digit boulders.

Kris Hampton  38:14

And Jimmy Webb's not like, he's not been around as long as Fred Nicole. 

Nate Drolet  38:19

No. 

Kris Hampton  38:21

I mean, he's not, he's not a new kid on the block either. Not by any means. But that's in a relatively short period of time. 

Nate Drolet  38:27

Yeah, I think maybe 11, 12 years of climbing double digit boulders.

Kris Hampton  38:31

So almost 100 a year? 

Nate Drolet  38:33

Yeah. Damn near.

Kris Hampton  38:36

Yeah. Geez oh, Pete. So I mean, I think those guys make a great argument for the big pyramid. And then I think you can look at guys like BJ who are in a different situation that sort of make an argument for the tower. You know, I sort of ran into that problem in the Red, right around the 13c level where I had, I had done three 13cs and there were only two left in the Red. There were five 13cs at the time. How do I progress to 13d when there are like three of those? You know it's, you don't have all these, all these routes to choose from. It's not the Frankenjura where there's 1000s of routes 5.13 and harder, you know? So there's there's an argument for the tower.

Nate Drolet  39:30

Do you feel like there's a time when circumstances be damned, ou messed up with your pyramid or how you planned it, whether that's you got greedy or you overbuilt?

Kris Hampton  39:45

Yeah, I think I did. And, and I can, I can blame it all on something that's not me.

Nate Drolet  39:54

 Perfect.

Kris Hampton  39:55

 And I'm gonna do that.

Nate Drolet  39:56

This is gonna be an ivory tower.

Kris Hampton  40:00

So, redriverclimbing.com has this, they have this competition that is points based and you get a lot more points for doing two 11as than you do for doing one 12a. And I built a giant mesa over several years because I was so entrenched in that I need more points attitude. And it doesn't reward projecting at all, because you're not putting fucking points on the board if you're projecting. And you can go out and climb all day long at the 5.10 level, and pass up people who just did 5.14. It's a fact I know, because I did. And but it doesn't make you a better rock climber at a specific point. Like once you've done a certain volume of 5.11, 5.12 and you can do that volume all day long, it's no longer making you a better rock climber. And it took me a little while to realize that because I was really focused on the points. And I just need more points.

Nate Drolet  41:20

Just because you're capable of doing fifty 11as doesn't mean you can do twenty-five 11bs and twelve 11cs and  keep going up like that. 

Kris Hampton  41:30

Exactly, exactly. And there were actually times where I was projecting something, and really stoked to want to climb that next higher grade. And I would look back at those rankings and be like, I'm fucking slipping in the rankings. I got to go do some 5.11s. You know, let me check and see which 5.11s I haven't done and I'm just gonna go knock them all out. And and that's a dangerous place to be. 

Nate Drolet  41:56

Yes. 

Kris Hampton  41:57

So So yeah, I think I did screw up for quite a long time by not projecting, and just trying to do onsights all the time for years. I got to a point where my hardest onsights were only, well, for a while my hardest onsight was my hardest redpoint. And then for quite a number of years

Nate Drolet  42:19

 Classic red flag.

Kris Hampton  42:20

 Yeah, for quite a number of years, they were only one letter grade apart. And if you want to climb harder routes, if you want to become a better rock climber, and frankly, I think those two things do go hand in hand to some degree, then your onsight and your redpoint can't just be one letter grade apart. You're not you're not pushing yourself harder at that point. 

Nate Drolet  42:46

Totally.

Kris Hampton  42:47

 So yeah, I screwed up. How about you? 

Nate Drolet  42:50

Oh, yeah, I've spent a lot of time climbing with people who are much stronger than me. And while that's been beneficial in some ways, in other ways, it it was really hard for me to appreciate where I was at, like currently and say like, okay, like, for me, V8 is really hard. This is like, some it'll take me two, three days, like, I need to go around, I need to find the coolest V8s, the ones that inspire me and I want to do all of those. When I travel, I want to look at the V8s, Instead, I was like I want to climb you know V10, the magic number here in United States. 

Kris Hampton  43:27

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  43:27

 So I was always looking to those and like, never appreciating and so it was really easy for me to kind of build a tower doing that. And same thing with sport climbing, like, I would go through these phases, it would be....oh what would you describe that? It was like a tower with a moat.

Kris Hampton  43:47

Haha you are going to have to explain that to me. 

Nate Drolet  43:49

It's like, so I would build this base, and it would be tremendous, the greatest base you've ever seen. And then I'd be like, cool, base is done. I've done great, like great example is one season, I was like, I'm gonna climb as many 13as and bs as possible. And it was going awesome. In like two weeks, I did like 10 of them. And I was like, This is great. 5.14 right now. Like fully just jumped through all the plans. And what was funny is like, as I was going through these, I was like building this momentum, feeling more confident and I'm starting to do harder and harder of like, within the 13 a/b range. I was doing these routes faster. And I was like, feeling better about them. And it would make more so much more sense for me to be like cool, I'm gonna keep doing B's, and then I'll just start trickling in some C's and I keep doing that. Even had I never gone beyond that, that season would have been a great season. I'd have learned a lot. Instead, I was just an asshole. And I was like nope, 5.14, here I am and I just got stomped.

Kris Hampton  44:53

Yeah, I think and I think that's a you know, if you do just get stomped, then you should take a look at your approach and try to figure out what's wrong with it. You know, after having the conversation I talked about earlier with Alex Honnold, his, his plan was to switch from an endurance athlete to an intensity athlete. That's how he put it. But he had a hard time taking his mindset from an endurance athlete into an intensity athlete. And he wanted to just jump up to the higher grade like 14d, it's, it's this grade I haven't done yet and I just want to do 14d. But working on 14cs are pretty important to being able to do 14d if you're, if you just built a giant mesa at 13c. 

Nate Drolet  45:49

Yeah

Kris Hampton  45:49

You know, so, so I do, if you get smacked down, I think that's the that's a really good sign that you should reflect on your approach a little bit.

Nate Drolet  45:58

 Totally. 

Kris Hampton  45:59

Or give us a call and let us reflect for you.

Nate Drolet  46:02

 Mm hmm. Yeah, no, it's funny. I think I even told you this. This was last year. I was just like, man, I don't understand why bouldering to me makes so much more sense and it's so much easier than sport climbing. Like to me, I was just like, I just take more naturally to it or something. So I started thinking about it more and more. And I looked, and I realized I've done more double digit boulders than 5.13 rock climbs. That's not a good thing.

Kris Hampton  46:30

Well, I mean, it is if you're a boulderer.

Nate Drolet  46:31

Yeah. As someone who's spent more years sport climbing the bouldering, that's terrible. 

Kris Hampton  46:36

Right.Yeah.

Nate Drolet  46:36

But it's just a matter of I haven't taken the time to build a base. And so that's a huge goal of mine for this year. Boom, goal.

Kris Hampton  46:43

All right, goal. I'm gonna edit that into our goals episode from a while ago.

Nate Drolet  46:48

Please do.

Nate Drolet  46:49

So that's one of my goals this year is to really take the time and build a pyramid with sport climbing. I won't, I'm not bouldering much these days, so it's harder to do it with that. So I do just spend my time, like, for instance, this year in Hueco, I've got about a month in Hueco total, and so I climbed a handful of boulders to kind of get back in the swing of things. And then I was like, cool, like, I have the strength. I have the currency like, I feel comfortable here. Time to just like, build my Hueco tower.

Kris Hampton  47:16

Yep. No, I think that's a good approach. In a lot of cases. You know, like, like I talked about BJ. You know, our friend, Lee Smith, is in a similar situation where he's climbed in the Red for a long time. He's got a family, he's got a career, he doesn't get to travel and climb much. His wife doesn't climb, often. And so he has to build somewhat of a tower. You know, it's, it's tough to go back and continue building a pyramid. I would, however, suggest, in those situations, and this is something BJ is good at, getting out to other areas, really making an effort to get to another area that's different. And, and build some new skills there. You know, and really try to add a little bit to your pyramid. 

Nate Drolet  48:12

Totally.

Kris Hampton  48:13

 I mean, I think that's really important.

Nate Drolet  48:15

Yeah, you know, building a base, even if you're you climb on limestone, if you can, you know, build a base with a lot of like granite sport climbing or things like that. That's going to add a lot more than doing more of what you've already done.

Kris Hampton  48:28

Yep. Yeah. And you're becoming, you know, if you're, if you stick to one type of rock, one style of climbing all the time, you become this specialist. You know, that's the that's what a tower is, essentially, you're you're specializing in something. That's okay. It's not necessarily a problem. But there's another way as well. And that's what our next episode is going to be tomorrow. Generalization versus specialization. What are the pros, what are the cons? And I'm looking forward to that one, actually, because I, I have been a specialist several times with some types of rock. So I'm looking forward to that one. In the meantime, shares on your social medias, Facebooks, Instagram

Nate Drolet  49:25

Check out the newsletter.

Kris Hampton  49:26

Check out the newsletter. The Current just came out today. It won't be today when you're hearing this, but you should sign up on our website Powercompanyclimbing.com. Buy some new shirts while you're there. Tell everybody over on your Twitter machine. Even though you won't find us there, because we don't tweet. We scream like eagles.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (EP. 85):

Kris Hampton  00:00

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton.

Nate Drolet  00:01

And this is Nate Drolet.

Kris Hampton  00:05

And together we form Linden Boulevard represent represent. You must know what that's from.

Nate Drolet  00:08

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  00:08

Hahaha that look on your face, just, it was amazing. It's Tribe Called Quest again.

Kris Hampton  00:11

Yeah. Three in a row. If you forget it, then on the fourth one, because I'm already going to tell you it's going to be a Tribe reference, I've just decided that's the theme, then you're fired.

Nate Drolet  00:11

I really should write that name down.

Nate Drolet  00:29

....Called....Quest. Okay, got it. So what are we up to?

Kris Hampton  00:31

I don't know how you can read that, but

Nate Drolet  00:32

It's left-handed, Kris. 

Kris Hampton  00:32

Hahaha okay. So this is episode or part three of the Common Sense versus Common Practice conversation. It's common sense that you shouldn't eat chicken wings and drink beer if trying to climb hard. But our common practice is we just ate chicken wings and drank beer. So, yeah, there's that.

Kris Hampton  00:50

Yeah, I mean, practice what you preach and we're talking about how there's a difference, so

Kris Hampton  01:28

It's true.

Nate Drolet  01:28

 Living proof.

Kris Hampton  01:29

 And part three, we're talking about generalization versus specialization. And I was just thinking, is generalization the right word, or is, or would diversification be better?

Nate Drolet  01:42

Oh, I think I kind of like diversification.

Kris Hampton  01:44

Yeah, I do too.

Nate Drolet  01:49

Generalization kind of has the whole jack of all trades master of none feel to it. 

Kris Hampton  02:13

Right. And none of us are ice climbing.

Nate Drolet  02:15

Haha yeah.

Kris Hampton  02:16

 Yeah. So diversification. 

Nate Drolet  02:19

Yes. 

Kris Hampton  02:19

In all rock climbing styles. And and beyond. We'll talk about beyond too. And actually, this is kind of a big topic in the world of training kids. Like it's a massive topic that people

Nate Drolet  02:35

Oh, yeah, early specialization in sport.

Kris Hampton  02:36

Yeah. And it's funny if it feels like people are arguing about it, but they're all kind of saying the same thing. So I don't know if they're actually arguing.

Nate Drolet  02:44

I mean, I think that honestly goes right back to common practice versus common sense. Like, anyone who is speaking about it is saying early specialization in sport is detrimental to kids. 

Kris Hampton  02:57

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  02:58

On pretty much all sports. 

Kris Hampton  02:59

Yeah and for a lot of reasons. 

Nate Drolet  03:01

Yes, for lots of reasons. There are very few exceptions, like women's gymnastics where they have, you know, 

Kris Hampton  03:07

Their performance window is when they're 13.

Nate Drolet  03:10

Yes. You know, they peak by 15, like, and that's the end like, Okay, you got to specialize early because the career is over so soon.

Kris Hampton  03:18

 And even then I don't think anyone's arguing that it's 

Kris Hampton  03:21

Still detrimental to them as humans. 

Nate Drolet  03:21

Still detrimental

Nate Drolet  03:24

Yeah. When you have low back stress fractures at 16 years old. 

Kris Hampton  03:27

Yeah totally. And you know, those, not only are kids specifically, and I don't want to talk too much about kids in general, but not only are kids more at risk of injury, and risk of burnout, when they're specializing really early, but study after study has shown that they have a better chance of being more athletic and performing better in their sports, if they don't specialize early.

Nate Drolet  04:02

Multi sport athletes. 

Kris Hampton  04:03

Right, exactly. So. So I think that is a really great case for adults diversifying as well. You're going to become more athletic if you do more different types of movement and and you risk not getting injured,

Nate Drolet  04:24

Not getting injured and getting the most bang for your buck out of things. As far as you know, if you try and mine one single avenue for as much value as possible, then you're leaving a lot on the table. 

Kris Hampton  04:37

Yeah, totally. Are there times when you think specializing is a good idea?

Nate Drolet  04:45

Yes, like, definitely, I mean, if we're looking at the broad sense of so specialization in a sport itself, if we were looking back at the youth example, means that you were spending more than eight months of a year in that sport. That is what like the technical term "sports specialization" means.

Kris Hampton  05:02

 Okay.

Nate Drolet  05:04

 Dan John argues that if, if once you specialize, if you're not what he says is pretty much if you're not world class within I think he said three years, then you're not going to be.

Kris Hampton  05:15

 Right. 

Nate Drolet  05:16

Which, you know, some people might think of that as like kind of a harsh truth. But he also says, like, you know, that's post-specialization, which means you may have been doing the sport for 10 years, but you're now saying, This is what my life is. This is what I'm doing and I'm all out. And so for some people, there's a time to go 100% full bore specialization, because that's what it's going to take for them to hit their peak in their youth, you know, if you're in certain sports, where being between 21 and 24 is like the time, then yeah, specialization all the way.

Kris Hampton  05:51

Yeah, I mean, don't wait till the dadbod shows up to try and specialize in bouldering. Not gonna work for you. But yeah, I agree. And I think if you're, you know, in Dan,John's example, he's obviously talking about people who are professional athletes, and have made that their life their career. Climbers are a little bit different, probably than most of his, the people that he coaches, because it's also a hobby. It's a it's a, you know, recreation, it's, it's a lifestyle, to use the cliche word. So a lot of us know we're never going to be world class, and that's okay with us. Should we still be specializing?

Nate Drolet  06:44

So this is tough with climbing because I mean, it's kind of multifaceted. One, it's really easy to overdo climbing. And the reason for that is it's fun. Like, man, if I could climb seven days a week, I would. Like I am jealous when I hear about Alex Megos going sport climbing hard for like 25 days in a row. And then you know, climbing like two 9as on day 26. That's awesome. I would, I would fully settle to pull back an entire number grade, if I could do the same thing. Like that would be rad. 

Kris Hampton  07:15

You don't have to be jealous of his yellow shirt anymore, though.

Nate Drolet  07:18

I've got my Megos shirt

Kris Hampton  07:19

You've got your Megos shirt.

Nate Drolet  07:19

And he knows it. I'm on him.

Kris Hampton  07:23

I could see the jealousy in his face when he saw your yellow shirt

Nate Drolet  07:27

Yeah, he was envious. He saw the Power Company logo. 

Kris Hampton  07:29

Yeah. He was like, oh, all I've got this Patagonia shirt. 

Nate Drolet  07:31

Yeah. And the other 7,000 that they've sent me. And so the other thing that's really tough, and this is where comparing other sports gets difficult is, you know, let's look at like football. It's, if you look at something like that, a career doesn't last very long. Like an NFL career is I think, on average, like, what four or five years.

Kris Hampton  07:57

It might not even be that long. It's short.

Nate Drolet  07:58

Super short. You can like, I won't say the body can withstand that but like, if you try and take a career in the NFL, and you were to try to span it out to be like, yeah, you know, I'm a lifer when it comes to the NFL. I'm gonna keep doing this till I'm in my 60s. It's like, no, you're not. You're going to 

Kris Hampton  08:19

I can throw this football over that mountain.

Nate Drolet  08:20

Yeah. But it's just like, what we expect out of ourselves from climbing, like, I'm going to climb year round until I'm until I die, like that is what a lot of people want to do. 

Kris Hampton  08:31

Totally

Kris Hampton  08:31

It's like no other sport does the sport year-round, much less do they try and push keep continually pushing their limits into older age. So that's hard. Like, that's, it's really hard demand on your body. And it gets a double whammy of it's a lot of fun. So it's I think specialization, like over specialization and climbing itself can be detrimental in the long run.

Kris Hampton  08:58

What do you mean by over specialization?

Nate Drolet  09:01

I think if you try to perform in one specific facet, or if you try to develop a single facet too much. So this could be anything from developing finger strength to like, just bouldering on crimps, or, I mean, yeah, just picking one specific thing. Like, if you try even if you tried to just do endurance routes, year-round at max level for like, you know, X amount of years, like you're gonna blow up your elbows, your shoulders, 

Kris Hampton  09:29

Totally.

Nate Drolet  09:31

 So yeah, I mean, regardless of what it is too much, too much of anything is a bad thing.

Kris Hampton  09:37

Do you think you should ever specialize for a short time for any reason?

Nate Drolet  09:41

 Totally. Yeah, I mean, if you've got a goal, and that's what it takes, like, get it done.

Kris Hampton  09:45

Yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. What does diversification look like in rock climbing? Does that mean or does it mean all the things? 

Kris Hampton  09:57

Trad climbing.

Kris Hampton  09:57

Hahaha. It should never look like trad climbing. No, actually, I think it should. I think that's a I think that is an important part of climbing and I think everyone can learn a lot from it. Since you brought it up, though, we're just gonna go ahead and go there. I do think trad climbers are the most susceptible to specializing. 

Nate Drolet  10:29

I'd agree with that. 

Kris Hampton  10:30

And at least in the three major, you know, bouldering, sport climbing, trad climbing.

Kris Hampton  10:37

Yeah, of those three disciplines, I think trad climbers are the most susceptible to this problem. And I don't know exactly why it is. For me, it was a strange, ethical immaturity, I guess, in that, I thought I was this ethical giant. And in reality, I was this ethical midget who was just very close minded. And that led to being strictly a crack climber, like, face holds are off. Literally.

Nate Drolet  10:37

The disciplines

Nate Drolet  10:38

Hahaha. Oh, man.

Kris Hampton  10:44

 And and that just led to me getting really, really weak at rock climbing. You know, I was I was probably a lot physically stronger back then than I am now. But I'm about 1000 times better rock climber now than I was back then. And we've seen it over and over and over where a good sport climber or a good boulder decides, I'm going to go trad climbing. And all of a sudden they're climbing at the top level of trad climbing.

Nate Drolet  11:44

Yeah, turns out just pulling a cam trigger isn't that hard.

Kris Hampton  11:47

Yeah and you don't see that many trad climbers switch to bouldering and suddenly become V14 boulderers.

Nate Drolet  11:55

Have you ever seen it? Like someone who started trad, I mean, you could look back in the days of like Jerry Moffatt. But I mean, that was because gear climbing was all there was.

Kris Hampton  12:05

Right, exactly.

Nate Drolet  12:06

But someone who started off climbing gear, I can't really think of too many.

Kris Hampton  12:12

There aren't too many. Especially nowadays. 

Kris Hampton  12:15

When it was part of the natural progression of this is all we have. Now we have the availability of we're learning what bouldering is and bolts are getting put in, you know, then it makes sense. But nowadays, crack climbers becoming master boulders or climbing 5.15 sport after they've climbed hard trad, I don't see it happening all that often. Maybe it has. I don't know. 

Nate Drolet  12:15

Yeah. 

Nate Drolet  12:43

I don't know what Nik Berry started as, if he started as a gear climber. 

Kris Hampton  12:47

I don't know either. I don't know enough about Nik's background, but he's but he's, as he's diversified or as it seems that he's diversified in recent years, he's gotten stronger.

Nate Drolet  12:57

Oh, yeah. He's He's a great all around climber.

Kris Hampton  13:00

Totally. Mason Earle's the same way. Mason's a strong climber in several disciplines, though I did just see a picture of him in Hueco on an offwidth.

Nate Drolet  13:09

 Really

Kris Hampton  13:10

Come on Mason. I didn't even do that when I was there. But so, you know, these guys are good at rock climbing, period, but they are diversifying more than we think they are.

Kris Hampton  13:24

Yes. And those are still I mean, we just kind of racked our brains for a full minute there. And those are the two best examples we could think of. So it's not like there's this laundry list of trad gone boulder. Right.

Kris Hampton  13:35

Exactly. And there are lots of guys like Sonnie Trotter who was a sport climber. He's done Cobra Crack. You know, Ethan Pringle, sport climber. He's done Cobra Crack.

Nate Drolet  13:47

Said Belhaj, who I just got to climb with down in Hueco. 5.15 climber. Went out, did Cobra Crack.

Kris Hampton  13:54

Yeah, so there's a pretty long list that's pretty easy to come up with who climbed as sport, as boulderer, embraced trad climbing and excelled at it. Trad climbers tend to and I'm sorry for all you trad climbers out there who hate me right now. But the fact is more trad climbers feel like they should be sticking to trad to get better at trad. And I think that's a mistake. You know, I've gone back and climbed 12+/13- trad in a couple of tries, since I became a better sport climber, whereas before that would be a season long project. 

Nate Drolet  14:37

So that's, I feel like a fairly broad example of what specialization looks like you know, we look at the three disciplines and are you diversifying between the three. So let's dig into what some really specific examples would look like.

Kris Hampton  14:56

Specific examples of specializing

Nate Drolet  14:58

Specialization, yes. So, for me, the thing that really kind of brought a lot of this up was people who pick one single, like facet towards whether that's like sports performance or just general performance in general.

Kris Hampton  15:17

Like I'm a steep climber, or I'm a compression climber?

Nate Drolet  15:21

Like nutrition.

Kris Hampton  15:22

 Okay,

Nate Drolet  15:22

Something like that to where you say like 

Kris Hampton  15:24

Something to focus on for their development?

Nate Drolet  15:27

Yeah

Kris Hampton  15:27

 Gotcha,

Nate Drolet  15:28

Much better word. Yeah. So I think it's fair to say like, if you have good nutrition, like that's going to benefit you, like, it's gonna make you healthier person, you're going to be able to perform better. This is great. 

Kris Hampton  15:41

It's a cornerstone for sure of everyone's successful progression and training plan.

Nate Drolet  15:48

Absolutely. However, I feel like, the two that jumped out to me the most are stretching and nutrition. The two that people, the people that like, are into nutrition, are fucking into nutrition.

Kris Hampton  16:02

Like it's a religion.

Nate Drolet  16:04

Man, I would rather talk religion over nutrition a lot of times.

Kris Hampton  16:08

Oh, yeah. Every day.

Nate Drolet  16:08

Yeah. But yeah, Imean, it's just they take it to such an extreme, like, there's this idea of 80/20, you look at what is the 20% of things that do that give you 80% of the effect, and they put instead, they do 80% of their time into the thing that gives them 20% of an  effect.  And I feel like stretching kind of almost gets a bad rap, because we look at the people who are really flexible 

Kris Hampton  16:34

Because of the zealots.

Nate Drolet  16:36

 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like all we see are the extremists, for the most part, are the people who like, it's like, oh, yeah, they stretch like 90 minutes or two hours a day. And they can do a split in every direction. But they can tie themselves in a knot, but they're not powerful at all. So we immediately associate flexibility with being weak.

Kris Hampton  16:54

Right.

Nate Drolet  16:54

And same thing, like a lot of times with nutrition to just with these sort of extremists to where it's like, okay, we get it. Like I'm not allowed to have vegetable oils when I cook my food. Like, Oh, cool. 

Kris Hampton  17:06

Are olives a vegetable?

Nate Drolet  17:10

I don't know. 

Kris Hampton  17:11

Are they...is that a fruit oil?

Nate Drolet  17:15

Are there fruit oils? What's a coconut? Is coconut a vegetable? Or is that a nut?

Kris Hampton  17:21

It's not a nut. 

Nate Drolet  17:22

Oh, god damn it.

Nate Drolet  17:23

I don't know. But I mean, like, yeah, it's like these things get taken to such an extreme to where it's like, oh, so and so's walking in the gym. Hey, just as a warning, don't talk about like, animal based products. No reason, just don't do it, unless you want to get like cornered. 

Kris Hampton  17:36

Don't mention gluten.

Nate Drolet  17:37

Don't mention gluten. Yes, exactly. But so to me, specialization is people who pick this one thing, and this could be hangboarding, this could be endurance work, this could be building a pyramid. Like, it could be anything but anything taken to its complete extreme with disregard for everything else.

Kris Hampton  17:56

Yeah. Like endurance training.

Nate Drolet  17:58

 Like endurance training. Yeah. 

Kris Hampton  18:00

Yeah. I wouldn't know anything about that. Yeah, I agree. I think I think the zealotry of that sort of approach, A does give it a bad rap and B sort of traps you into having to uphold it. 

Nate Drolet  18:20

That's a great point

Kris Hampton  18:21

You know, and that's a scary place to be.

Nate Drolet  18:24

Yeah, suddenly you have to, like defend this, even if you wanted to branch out and be like, Oh, no, like, I think I need some power training because all I've done is endurance and that's a problem. And someone's like, Wait, you're training strength? I thought you're the endurance guy. And you have to be like "Oh, no, I'm just warming up for more endurance work."

Kris Hampton  18:39

Yeah, I wouldn't know anything about being in that position. Yeah, it leaves you in a funny place. It's much better to just be the person who is willing to try things and who has a solid approach all the time, because then you can you feel a little freer to be honest. 

Nate Drolet  19:03

Yeah. I mean, be open minded. Be curious. Be like, you know, test things out. See, try them out long enough to see if they actually work.

Kris Hampton  19:10

 Yeah. 

Nate Drolet  19:11

And still use reasonable judgment. Don't try anything. But yeah, I mean, there's it's kind of it's almost rare to meet the people who they will genuinely genuinely tell you. They're like, Oh, yeah, I tried this and it worked. And so I keep a moderate around like at a reasonable level and I see benefits from it. Like that's a conversation I don't have very often.

Kris Hampton  19:35

Hahaha totally.

Nate Drolet  19:36

 You know, normally, like what's more common is and I'm guilty of this, will be like, "Oh, I know that works but I don't really do it. And so I but I do these things over here that I like."

Kris Hampton  19:47

Yeah, 

Nate Drolet  19:48

It's like I know that I should work on flexibility more because it'd be beneficial. I climb with, when I climb with flexible climbers, I'm like, oh, wow, that's, that's really useful. Like you can get in positions that I can't and you can just own them.

Kris Hampton  20:02

Yeah, there were, there were two times last night climbing with Brooke and Margo, when I watched them do a move that I was like, Oh, yeah, they're I have no other options but to try it their way, and I can't try it their way. There is just nothing else I can do, you know. So I just don't have the hip mobility and flexibility that those two have, and they put it to really good use. So something like flexibility, I think is an excellent point because it is useful. We all know it's useful to some degree. But I don't want to be labeled a yogi or a, you know, flexy zealot, or whatever they're called. And I've had people approach me who are that, who are like, you should be doing this, this is what you need in your training. 

Nate Drolet  21:02

Totally, that's the difference

Kris Hampton  21:03

It's like you climb, 5.11. Don't tell me. You know, even though I know, to some degree, they're right. That that would be helpful for me. So,

Nate Drolet  21:13

So this just made me think of something. And so we'll take this down a similar path to what we're doing. But I want to talk about the idea that we tend to overvalue the things that we're good at, or the things that specifically, that we've worked on and that we've seen a lot of value add.

Kris Hampton  21:31

 Yeah,

Nate Drolet  21:31

 I think we sometimes undervalue the things that come naturally to us. But if there's things that we've worked on, and we've gained from them, we tend to drastically over value them.

Kris Hampton  21:40

 Yeah, totally.

Nate Drolet  21:41

 Um, what are some times where you feel like you've seen that? 

Kris Hampton  21:45

Well, I mentioned in the PSA last week, that, that there was a time when I mentioned on Facebook that I could attribute all my success that season, to the Moon fingerboard, you know, and then several people went out bought the Moon fingerboard and it wasn't as good for them as it was for me. When I first started helping people train, it was all endurance, because that's what I did. You know, and luckily, we were Red River climbers, and it was helpful and luckily, I realized the error of my ways, within the first year or two, of working with other people. I also, you know, exactly what you're talking about on the in the area of stretching, or being flexible. So many of the people who are already flexible really overvalue it, and believe that this is the way and I heard someone once say, if you go into a yoga class, everyone in there who's already flexible, is sitting in straddles, you know, and that's the one thing they don't need to be doing. They're, they're already super flexible there. Why are they doing it? You know, they might have horrible shoulder mobility, they should be working on that. But even though they're in a class where the the purpose is to become more flexible, they still want to do the thing that's already easy for them. 

Nate Drolet  23:30

Totally. 

Kris Hampton  23:30

And, and I think that's the case almost across the board. Far too often.

Nate Drolet  23:36

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we'll see this with like, as an example. for people who have like naturally strong fingers, they're like, Oh, finger strength doesn't mean anything. It's just about being powerful. But there are people who like developing your strength by a lot of hangboarding and they will tell you, that's the only way forward.

Kris Hampton  23:58

Yep. Alex Megos. Another example that I used in the PSA, he said, antagonist training, that's the best, best climbing tip you could ever have.

Nate Drolet  24:09

Yeah, which when you are as animalistically strong as he is, like he probably has to do a decent bit of antagonists just to balance everything out.

Kris Hampton  24:17

And he has for a long time.

Nate Drolet  24:18

Yeah, he's a well rounded, well oiled machine

Kris Hampton  24:22

 In a yellow shirt

Nate Drolet  24:23

In a yellow shirt, but not the only yellow shirt.

Kris Hampton  24:26

Yellow lightning. 

Nate Drolet  24:27

Yellow lightning. Oh my god. Yes. So, as an example, there's a photo that Daniel Woods posted on Instagram of him doing the crux move on Realization, the redpoint move. And it's a stab into a pocket. And I remember when I first saw this, it just jumped out at me so much. But here's the caption, "The move: accuracy, conditions, body tension, finger strength, one arm power, all needed to be at 100% to make this possible."

Kris Hampton  24:59

Sounds like a Daniel Woods description 

Nate Drolet  25:01

Yes. So the thing is do you think Margo Hayes has stronger one arm power, stronger body tension, you know, better finger strength than Daniel Woods?

Kris Hampton  25:13

 Yeah, no

Nate Drolet  25:13

Like few people in the world have better than that. 

Kris Hampton  25:15

Right. Right.

Nate Drolet  25:16

 But it's this idea of really overvaluing your strengths and saying like, Well, clearly, this is what I need. I just need to be able to pull a lot harder.

Kris Hampton  25:24

 Right.

Nate Drolet  25:26

 You know, not to throw Daniel under the bus. That's something we're all guilty of. But that was literally 

Kris Hampton  25:30

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Nate Drolet  25:30

To me a very, like, obvious example.

Kris Hampton  25:34

No, I think that's a really good example, actually. I wondered what you were furiously scrolling through your phone for.

Nate Drolet  25:40

 Tinder. 

Kris Hampton  25:43

Haha I'll leave that alone.

Nate Drolet  25:49

So specialization versus generalization?

Kris Hampton  25:51

Diversification.

Nate Drolet  25:52

Diversification.  So many cations.

Kris Hampton  25:55

Yeah, so what about when you're in your home area? Or your home wall? You know, a lot of people get one angle.

Nate Drolet  26:05

 Oh, yeah. 

Kris Hampton  26:09

Is that problematic? Is there a way to avoid that, other than building an adjustable Tension Board?

Nate Drolet  26:21

I mean, you know, if you can't have perfection,

Kris Hampton  26:23

Hahaha. But if your home area is one cliff, if you all you have to climb, on eight months of the year, nine months of the year, is vertical granite?

Nate Drolet  26:41

I'd say you got a pretty awesome season, if you get nine months out of it. I wouldn't even complain at that point. It depends what your goals are. If your goals are to never, if you never want to leave that stretch of rock, then maybe that's not such a bad thing. Like I still think there's a lot to be gained from other styles. Like, I learned a lot about how to climb on sandstone by going to Smith, or by climbing at the Monastery, which is granite. Like, you know, you can definitely take a lot from different styles. To kind of reverse segue, because last time we were talking about the pyramid, but if you build a pyramid all from one single style or one location, that's still specialization. And you see this all the time, you see people who, you know, they only climb at one area, or even when they travel, they only climb one style. Like they can just crush some vert crimps. 

Kris Hampton  27:36

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  27:36

 Which is that's a very common style to be specialized in, like this technical, slight overhang anywhere from like five to 20 degrees overhanging, 20 degrees, kind of steep for them, like five to 15 degrees, overhanging crimp climbs. And there's a lot of people who just specialize in that. And enough, there's enough rock out there to where you can just keep kind of doing that and never really expand beyond it. But you know, and so it depends, like, is that all you ever want to be good at? 

Kris Hampton  28:04

Right.

Nate Drolet  28:05

Like, you can take it for a while, like Siegrist used to be, very much that was his sole style. And when he would get on something steep, he would just get destroyed. Like when he would get on something powerful. And he's done a great job of making himself more well rounded. 

Kris Hampton  28:19

I mean, look at Paige. Paige, came up and was known for her ability on vertical climbing and then she went to Flatanger and did Odin's Eye.

Nate Drolet  28:32

 Yeah. It's all right, I guess.

Kris Hampton  28:33

There's nothing vertical about that.

Nate Drolet  28:35

 No.

Kris Hampton  28:35

 So for me, that's a much better model. You're never going to be a well rounded climber if, if you're completely specializing. I've had I've had friends that their hardest climbs might be in their, their preferred style, or the style that they've spent most of their time on. But I get way more stoked for them, I'm way more proud of them when they step outside of that style. You know, we talked about Lee Smith in the last episode. Lee spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort into hard vertical climbing in the Red, which sounds like an oxymoron.

Nate Drolet  29:24

 Yes. 

Kris Hampton  29:25

And and then he flipped it and went into the Madness Cave and spent a bunch of time in there. And I thought that was that's that's what growth looks like. He did a lot of the things he wanted to do in a specific area and then he and then he expanded.

Nate Drolet  29:49

Yeah, which is awesome. And now he's trying The Nothing, which is super bouldery. Do a big steep thing, about as far from like Sugar Magnolia as you can get.

Kris Hampton  29:57

Yeah, totally. And I think that's, for me, that's way cooler to, to see. 

Nate Drolet  30:03

Totally. And I think you know, as just as a climber, you get a lot of gratification out of, I know I do, out of climbing things that aren't my normal style. Like, I get way more stoked when I climb something that is hard for me then just something that's like another high number grade when it's like, well, yeah, of course I did that. It's my style. 

Kris Hampton  30:20

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  30:25

 So what are some other things? I guess, like one thing that jumps out to me, is when we look at training, you know, the thing that we talked about a lot on this podcast, physical training is something that it's great. It's objective, I can tell, using numbers, am I getting better or worse? And it can be really easy to fall into the trap of wanting to do more and more of that. And there's been a classic rule of thumb forever with skill sports of saying that 75% of your time should be spent practicing the skill and 25% should be accessory strength work.

Kris Hampton  31:05

 Right. 

Nate Drolet  31:08

And I'd say that's, you know, we all hear that, we're like, yeah, that makes sense. That's common sense. Like, we're in a skill sport, as much as I mean, this sport is as much of a skill as like skateboarding or something like that. 

Kris Hampton  31:19

Yeah, I think it's a good, good comparison.

Nate Drolet  31:22

And so yeah, it's like, Okay, I'm gonna work on being better. And you can easily go find climbers who are weaker than you, who can outperform you any day of the week. So clearly, it's like, like strength, it's good and it will keep you stronger and healthier, and let you do more, it gives you more potential, but it's definitely not everything. So I think most people would agree. Yeah, like, 75/25, that's reasonable. But the amount of emphasis, and the amount of time that people spend not only just doing but thinking about their physical training, like if you were to look at how much time people spend planning their physical training versus how much they plan their practice.

Kris Hampton  32:05

People plan their practice? 

Nate Drolet  32:06

It's probably, oh god no, they don't. It hurts my feelings. I mean, it's probably like 95/5, like 95% okay, this is the exact protocol I'm going to use for this. And this is what I'm going to do for this. And this is the kind of chart and sequencing I'm going to do for this. And this is, you know, they spend so much of their time and their energy and like their thought

Kris Hampton  32:28

What type of periodization

Nate Drolet  32:30

Yes, yeah, they put all this energy into the 25%. That's like, okay, that's cool. Like, nail that down, get it well, then let's worry about the other 75%.

Kris Hampton  32:43

Yeah, but that rarely happens. And I think you're right there. And I've thought about this for a long time. You know, I've got several climbing partners and friends who, who I think their biggest glaring weaknesses are that they need to spend more time on their practice. They're pretty damn good at working out.

Nate Drolet  33:15

Some people are amazing at working out. 

Kris Hampton  33:16

Yeah, they're really good at it. But then they can't take all that strength that they've developed, and apply it. And that requires concentrated effort to learn how to do. It takes practice to learn how to do it, every other sport on the planet does it. For some reason, we think we go in, we deadlift 2x body weight, and it just automatically applies.

Nate Drolet  33:44

I suddenly have body tension.

Kris Hampton  33:46

 Yeah. My feet just know what to do with all that extra strength. And that's not the case. And I think it's a it's a bit of a, epidemic is too strong a word, but

Nate Drolet  34:00

Plague, maybe not strong enough.

Kris Hampton  34:03

Haha the scourge of.... no, I think that talking climbing training through the years, no one has come up with a good way to talk about practice. You can go back as far as you want, you can look in as many as many places as you want and the smartest, best coaches and trainers are saying, practice your technique. Now let's talk about all the different hangboard and protocols and, you know, let's talk about which type of periodization you're going to use. And let's talk about your set and rep schemes and oh yeah, practice your technique. You know, that's the way it goes. 

Nate Drolet  34:51

Yeah, um, or and also what they'll do is, and this is something that kind of grinds my gears a little bit, is they get very prescriptive with technique.

Nate Drolet  35:02

You know, this is something we've talked about in the past is like, there are no, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to technique. Like whatever gets you up the wall the most effectively and efficiently, that's good technique. I don't care if that's you campusing. If that's the most effective and efficient way, then that's better than you looking like Francois LeGrand, dropkneeing, you know, due south for every single move. So yeah, there's straight arming and twisting through every single move. That's not good technique. 

Kris Hampton  35:02

 Right, right.

Kris Hampton  35:31

Right.

Nate Drolet  35:31

 For some things it is. But a lot of times, it's terrible technique. And so it's tough, because technique is this kind of nebulous thing and it is all about self analysis and thinking through the process and understanding yourself. 

Kris Hampton  35:46

Right.

Nate Drolet  35:47

 And so it is tough.

Kris Hampton  35:50

Yeah, I mean, we've, what is, these will probably be like the 100th hour of podcasting. And, you know, we've been struggling with this. How to convey it, how to communicate it, and how to get the point across and, and we still see, we still have difficulty with it. You know, and you and I have spent a lot more than the 100 hours that this podcast has, discussing wow do we talk about this? How do we communicate it? How do we get our point across to an audience who's just been told, practice your technique, 

Nate Drolet  36:30

Oh and footwork, practice footwear? 

Kris Hampton  36:31

Oh yeah, work on your footwork. And then over here on this hangboard is where all the details matter, but they don't they don't matter over here. You just need to practice it. You know, that's pretty much what they've been told. Anyway, I think we're getting off the topic here. We're about to start a rant.

Nate Drolet  36:51

Haha about to?

Kris Hampton  36:55

So do you think it's possible, and I think we've already answered this, but specializing within one of the disciplines even further, do you think there's a good time for that?

Nate Drolet  37:14

Can you elaborate on that?

Kris Hampton  37:15

Yeah. Like if you're a, we were just talking about if you're a sport climber, you only climb on crimpy sport routes. You know, that's, that's what your specialty is. That's what you you're good at. That's what people know you as. Is there a time when you shouldn't branch out from that?

Nate Drolet  37:39

Yeah, I'd say if you have a goal that's relevant and coming up. If I want to go do To Bolt Or Not To Be, you know, I'm about to go climb a bunch of vert crimp lines, 

Kris Hampton  37:48

You're not going in the Madness Cave to train for that?

Nate Drolet  37:50

  Oh, God, that would be awful. You know, what's actually

Kris Hampton  37:53

That would be a rude awakening.

Nate Drolet  37:55

You know, it's hilarious. As I was climbing, I went out to Smith and just for fun, I was like, I'm gonna bolt to bolt up To Bolt Or Not To Be becasue I just want to see what it's about. And I was climbing with a local out there. And I got halfway up and he was just like, "Ain't no Omaha Beach is it?" I was just like, you fucker. Oh, man, it was 

Nate Drolet  38:14

Haha yeah. To bolt to bolt. God. It was not Omaha Beach, turns out.

Kris Hampton  38:14

To Bolt To Bolt Or Not To Be. 

Kris Hampton  38:21

 No.

Nate Drolet  38:21

 Weird. Yeah. So yeah, if you have something that's very specific, I'm going to go to Voralpsee and go climb Speed, like, yeah, I'm going to be climbing all the vert crimps.

Kris Hampton  38:32

Yeah, I had a client a while ago, who, in their consultation form, straight up said, I have zero interest in ever climbing hard on vertical terrain, or on slabby terrain, so I don't want to do it at all. And I was like, well, I can't really argue with you there. However, there's going to come a day, when you get through the 13+ crux of your steep project, and you fall off the 5.12 slab finish, and you're going to be really pissed off that you didn't spend any time climbing on vert.

Nate Drolet  39:12

Oh, man, I have a friend who's going to be so sad to hear that. A buddy of mine Chad recently was like, so Nate, like in all confidence, like, yeah, it's just like, seriously, how much should I care about slab? Like, I mean, I can do it. I get it. I can I can slab climb. It's a thing. And but should I, do I have to work on it? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, how often you come across slab cruxes on your projects? Like do they stop you? He's like, I mean, no, but I think it's a thing? Right? Slab's a Thing? And I was like, ah, I mean, the thing is that's tough is slab in the gym is very different from slab outside. 

Kris Hampton  39:56

Oh yeah

Nate Drolet  39:57

 Slab in the gym is like weird slopers and like a good hard slab from outside would be just a horrible, terrible thing in the gym. It's like, Oh, well, I'm gonna, like, fingernail crimp my way up this thing. Like people would be pissed. So yeah, it's one of those things like, oh, like, how much time do you really need to put in? Like if you're going to the VRG and you need to go climb like 15 foot run outs on slab where all you can hear is like I-75 traffic, maybe dial in that slab technique a little bit. Work those shadow matches.

Kris Hampton  40:33

 Yep. Yeah, and that's the thing, I don't think, I certainly wouldn't say we should totally diversify. And you know, if you get, you have no interest in vertical or slab climbing. However, we should be doing everything. You should be trying finger cracks and offwidth

Nate Drolet  40:50

Ugh

Kris Hampton  40:50

I wouldn't tell anyone to go do offwidths. But you should be diversifying completely. I would never say that. But I also understand that his goals, it's going to be very tough to find the goals that are only steep climbing. You know, you look at Ghost Dance at the Sweat Lodge, which is a hard steep climb. And then you turn that lip

Nate Drolet  41:17

A little bit of a redpoint crux up there

Kris Hampton  41:18

And it's kind of, it's kind of heady up there. The clip is hard, it's it's vertical

Nate Drolet  41:24

Aww that would be so sad

Nate Drolet  41:24

Slab rockover move

Kris Hampton  41:24

 Slabby, it's not, you're not very comfortable. And when I did that rock climb, I was very nervous of falling up there. You know, luckily, I had enough experience on runout scary vertical slab climbing that I could keep it together. But if you were pumped up there and didn't keep it together, that may be the spot where you can never get past 

Kris Hampton  41:41

That would suck.

Nate Drolet  41:52

 Yeah. 

Kris Hampton  41:53

To fall off the 12a finish of your 13c project.

Nate Drolet  41:59

Yeah. So I think what you're trying to say is we don't have to be fully diversified, to be able to do absolutely anything that comes in our way. But there is a level of good enough. 

Kris Hampton  42:12

Yeah, yep.

Nate Drolet  42:14

 Yeah. And that's, I feel the same. I mean, this goes with everything from nutrition to sleep, to your physical training, to all these things like, man, if you can just hit good enough on everything and just say like, oh, but I really like climbing powerfully on steep stuff and, you know, training fingers, or like, you know, you have a few little things that you enjoy, but everything else, you're at least hitting the bare minimum, you're going to be a damn good rock climber.

Kris Hampton  42:39

What's funny that when you say good enough, it sounds like a negative thing. You know, 

Nate Drolet  42:45

That wasn't the inflection I was going for.

Kris Hampton  42:47

Oh no, no, no, I just whenever anyone says, "Oh, that's good enough." It sounds like oh, yeah, but I could do better. But why? Why do you need to? It's like grades, you know, a C sounds like a bad thing. But that's average. That's what,  I mean, that's what most people get. So be okay with it. And be okay with good enough. 

Nate Drolet  43:10

Yeah, I mean, and that's just it.  There's so many aspects to climbing and just in sport in general. Like, if you can have a good enough lead head to where it's like, yeah, you're not Alex Honnold and you're not just like Adam Ondra of just like, skipping bolts to where you're going to ground fall in the crux on Pure Imagination, like and things like that. Why are you skipping the third and fourth bolt Adam? That's terrifying. But you know, you don't have to have that. But if you can just like climb with a moderate level of confidence above a bolt, like, cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Like, you don't need to be the most bold climber ever. But if you can just hit bare minimum with everything, you will be incredible. Yeah, like, even most of the best climbers I've met, have huge gaps, huge weaknesses, where you're like, oh, wow, like, you know, they did a great job of covering this, but like, this is still a big weakness. Like, there's only a handful of people and they are like the best of the best that I've ever met or seen that have really covered all the bases. 

Kris Hampton  44:13

Yeah, where it's hard to come up with something they should be working on.

Nate Drolet  44:16

 Exactly. 

Kris Hampton  44:17

Yeah. And the other, the other point to that would be be very wary of extreme specialization, especially in rock climbing. You know, we like to talk about how rock climbing is this really diverse sport or requires so many techniques. And, you know, it's so much more complicated than baseball or football. But then you want to, oh, I only climb steep crimps. You know, well, someday you're gonna get hit with a sloper. And you're gonna be like, well, if that sloper wasn't there, I could do this. But the sloper is there, so you're fucked. And you can't have it both ways. You can't have rock climbing being this super complicated sport that you love and also, I'm only going to focus on one thing and be a good rock climber.

Nate Drolet  45:04

Yeah, I mean, if I have strong hands, and if everything feels like a jug, then it's all gonna be easy. It's like, right, let me just go ahead and say that is a giant fallacy. Like, great example, two years ago, I was climbing in the park with Jonathan Siegrist and we'd gone up to boulder up in like, super Upper Chaos, and then we're hiking down and I was like, I want to go check out this thing called Eternia. And we both go to it and we're looking at it and it's like this big 25 foot roof. And I kind of look at him. He looks at me and we're like, okay, we're just gonna both flash this thing and get going, I guess cuz it's jugs. It's a V11 roof, every single hold on it as a jug. Like, and we're just like, yeah, okay, cool. Like, I guess we'll just do this. They're all pretty much all underclings. It's remarkable that you can climb 25 feet of roof underclings,

Kris Hampton  45:52

Right,

Nate Drolet  45:52

Um but yeah, it's a V11 jug haul. It's still hard. Like, it took us a surprising amount of time, like, end up taking us like two hours to do this jug haul.

Kris Hampton  46:02

 Right. 

Nate Drolet  46:02

But I mean, that's very common. Like you can go climb like, V10, V11, V12, climbing on enormous holds 

Kris Hampton  46:08

Pretty good holds

Nate Drolet  46:09

Yeah, it's like, hand strength is not the limiting factor when you're on something like this. And, man, you see it all the time. Like, I'm not a fan of throwing out absolutes. But like, if you can one-arm deadhang a one pad edge for five seconds, and you don't climb V10, you're good. Like, go rock climb, learn how to move. You're like, you've got that box checked.

Kris Hampton  46:32

Yeah. You don't need to worry about training your finger strength anymore.

Nate Drolet  46:35

Yeah. Like, and that's just it. Lke there are, and that's an oversimplification of saying that what makes a good rock climber is strong fingers, strong core and a strong shoulders. Like man, I've met people with all three of those who were garbage rock climbers, and I've met people who have none of those who could just climb circles around any of us.

Kris Hampton  46:56

Absolutely. Yep. Totally. Yeah, it's a complicated sport, so you might as well diversify. You know, I think, at least to some degree, that's a really smart way to approach things. And what about in your training? How much should you be diversifying in your training? In your opinion? And I know that's a really, really broad question. If you have a big goal, should all of your training be geared toward that goal?

Nate Drolet  47:36

Oh, I see where you're going with this. Uh, no. Like, so this is, this is definitely something that is 

Kris Hampton  47:43

I'm curious where I'm going with this too.

Nate Drolet  47:45

 I mean, I'll let you I'll let you know where you're going. So early specialization in a project, I think is a massive misstep that people take. Like, they are like, oh, man, I want to get my first V6 or not even that. I want to get my first V11. I'm going to, I'm going to have a trainer. Everything I do is going to be set for this exact thing. It's like they're trying to be like, Adam Ondra on Silence. Like, okay, I need like, because he talked about it. He had to train his obliques specially. He needed to 

Kris Hampton  48:17

Yeah, it's an incredible video watching him do that stuff.

Nate Drolet  48:20

Yeah. And then it's like, oh, wait, he did like fifty-five 5.15s before he did that

Kris Hampton  48:24

Right.

Nate Drolet  48:24

 And over 100 routes 9a and harder on his way to get there. 

Kris Hampton  48:30

Forty-nine 15s

Nate Drolet  48:30

Forty-nine 15s? I said almost 50. But I mean, he's what, I think he's done like something that close to eight hundred 5.14s

Kris Hampton  48:37

I think it was six something.

Nate Drolet  48:41

 Oh, I'm sorry. Well he's only done only 

Kris Hampton  48:43

I've got the numbers here somewhere. 

Nate Drolet  48:44

He's only done like six hundered

Kris Hampton  48:45

614. Step it up. 

Nate Drolet  48:47

So what I'm saying is, he's earned the right to specialize,

Kris Hampton  48:50

Right. and it's for the hardest rock climb in the world. 

Nate Drolet  48:54

Yes. He is allowed to prioritize calf training. Like, I'm gonna fuckin throttle someone next time I read, "Do calf training" on like Facebook or Instagram, because I've read it like 15 times in the last year since like, he said that,"Oh, Klaus told me I should be doing specialized calf training for these knee bars."

Kris Hampton  49:12

 Oh, man, 

Nate Drolet  49:16

That's like, you know, I don't think you needed to do specialized calf training for your like, 13c project. Like, that's probably not what's holding you back.

Kris Hampton  49:23

 Right.

Nate Drolet  49:24

 You know? So, specialization, I think to a degree, you know, if you're going to climb steep slopers, climb some steep slopers. But I don't think you need to make everything identical to what you're gonna project. Also, that's a really easy way to overtrain.

Kris Hampton  49:40

Totally.

Nate Drolet  49:40

I mean, it's the same flaw that a lot of people have when they pick one project outside and they only go to it. It's like, oh, it has like a really hard shoulder move. It's like well, suddenly your shoulder is only doing that move all the time. It's there's a good chance it's gonna get hurt.

Kris Hampton  49:53

Yeah, yeah. Even even on something like 4x4s or power endurance work, which often ends or is often one of the last things people are doing before it is performance time. Even in those cases, I'm like two of your problems should probably be similar to what you're planning on climbing on soon, you know, but you don't have to set a simulator. And, you know, simulator for the bottom, simulator for the middle, simulator for the top. And, you know, you don't have to do all that. What you need, your your body has no idea that you're doing the same moves or not when it's developing these physical attributes and you're going to get the fitness for those specific moves when you get back to the project. You know, Joe Kinder's article that you put in the newsletter today, the interview with him, I believe in Project Magazine, is that where it was? He had a really great point, when he talks about he comes into a project sort of at the end of his training, and, and finishes his training on that project, you know, learning that project. And I think that's a great way to do it, as opposed to all of my training is focused on this one very small, very slim goal and and I'm not, I'm not going to build my other athleticism and my other attributes.

Nate Drolet  51:31

Totally. Because thing is once you send that one thing that you trained for,

Kris Hampton  51:35

Like what happens after that?

Nate Drolet  51:37

 Well, yeah, what else are you in shape for? Nothing?

Kris Hampton  51:39

Yeah, 

Nate Drolet  51:40

That said, man. I've set so many trainers for like specific moves. Like, I think simulating a single move, or like, if you do struggle to understand something, yeah, train for it. But just don't go overboard. Like you don't, if you're on a route that has like, a six bolt 5.11 intro, you don't need to mimic the 5.11 intro,

Kris Hampton  52:01

Right. And if it's a movement issue, like if you don't quite understand the movement yet, a simulator can be great. If it's that you lack finger strength to hold on to the crux hold, then maybe a simulator isn't the best idea. You know, maybe you could be a little more efficient by working on finger strength a different way. So yeah, I think that's about all I have to say about this. You know, this idea of, I'm going to make my my this big goal and train for that gets people into a lot of trouble, I think, especially when your goals are big. Because there's a tendency to look to the people who've done, who've completed those goals and say, I'm going to do what they're doing. 

Nate Drolet  52:59

Totally.

Kris Hampton  53:00

 And, you know, I mean, that's, that's the topic of our next conversation. So I think we should just cut this off and refill beers and start over again, we're going to talk about training where you are versus where you want to be. And I think that's pretty important topic. So in the meantime, until tomorrow, you know where to find us. The Facebooks, the Instagrams at @powercompanyclimbing. You can find us on the interwebs at powercompanyclimbing.com. And you can probably find us on the Twitter because all of you are sharing out there, I know you are, but you won't actually find us there because we don't tweet. We scream like eagles.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (EP. 86):

Kris Hampton  00:31

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton.

Nate Drolet  00:35

 And I'm Nate Drolet.

Kris Hampton  00:36

 And together we form Skeff Anslem. He gets props too. What do you think that's from? 

Nate Drolet  00:47

It's....I mean, it's A Tribe Called Quest. I even I looked at their Wikipedia between our two. 

Kris Hampton  00:51

Okay. It's Tribe Called Quest. That's all I need. That's all I need. You're not fired. You still have a job.

Nate Drolet  00:56

I still have a job.

Kris Hampton  00:58

 Yeah. Skeff Anslem. It's from a song. 

Nate Drolet  01:02

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  01:03

We will just leave it at that. So, before we even start here, I just want to note that I'm staring at my notes from a couple episodes and Adam Ondra did 442 5.14s between the time that he did his first 15a and Silence.

Nate Drolet  01:23

 And he did 106 before his first 15a, is what I believe we said.

Kris Hampton  01:30

 Yeah.

Nate Drolet  01:31

 That's impressive. 

Kris Hampton  01:31

That's crazy.

Nate Drolet  01:32

 Yes. It's a lot of rock climbing. 

Kris Hampton  01:35

It is.

Nate Drolet  01:35

There's a lot

Kris Hampton  01:36

It is a lot of hard rock climbing.

Nate Drolet  01:36

 Of people who won't do 500 pitches of anything, much less 5.14.

Kris Hampton  01:41

 Okay, let's let's move on now. We are in part four of the Common Sense versus Common Practice and even though 442 5.14s was Adam Ondra's common practice, it does not make common sense. 

Nate Drolet  01:55

No, it makes no sense.

Kris Hampton  01:57

 And in this episode, we're going to talk about training where you are versus where you want to be. And...shit that sounds so simple and like, common sense

Nate Drolet  02:12

 That's obvious

Kris Hampton  02:13

 When I say it. But so many of us have, I've literally got 1 four part note for this whole episode. And my note says, "You ARE NOT", "are not" is in capital, all caps, "You ARE NOT Sean McColl, or Adam Ondra or Patxi Usobiaga or Alex Puccio". You're none of those people. I mean, you might be actually be, but unless you're one of those four people, you're none of those people. And you shouldn't necessarily be training like those people. It doesn't matter if you want to go climb Silence. Like Nate so adamantly mentioned in the last episode, you probably don't need to train your calves to climb your Madness Cave project. It just doesn't work that way. You You don't need to be paying attention so closely to what the pros are doing because they're where you want to be.

Nate Drolet  03:16

So I shouldn't go on a ketogenic diet, even though Dave McLeod did it to climb V15?

Kris Hampton  03:20

 You shouldn't, you... I mean, you know, if you want to go on a ketogenic diet, I'm not going to stop 

Nate Drolet  03:25

I mean, bacon and butter. Sounds great.

Kris Hampton  03:27

 The same as if you want to be Catholic. I'm not going to stop you.

Nate Drolet  03:31

What about uh, what if I want to do a certain pro's hangboard workout that he used to go from V14 to climbing more V14s?

Kris Hampton  03:41

I mean, if you want to do Chris Webb Parson's hangboard workout, you can do it if you want to. But you shouldn't expect that doing that same workout is going to get you to where that pro is. That's not how they got there. In 99% of cases, you don't see what got those people there. We're already ranting. We're three minutes into this episode, and I'm already ranting. So 

Nate Drolet  04:09

You started out with all caps. 

Kris Hampton  04:11

I know, I did. You're right.

Nate Drolet  04:12

 Angry voice

Kris Hampton  04:12

 That was a mistake. Let's back up here. Train where you are versus where you want to be. Let's dig into that a little bit. Why is that difficult for people?

Nate Drolet  04:26

Because man, I want to be better. 

Kris Hampton  04:28

Yeah. 

Nate Drolet  04:29

Like, I don't want to be where I am right now. I want to be where all those people are like doing hard shit and like cool-looking rock climbs. Clearly they're doing something correctly, because they are there and I am not.

Kris Hampton  04:40

Yeah

Nate Drolet  04:40

So I should follow them. 

Kris Hampton  04:41

Yep. And I think, you know, again, we mentioned this already, but this whole series stems from the Public Service Announcement, "Don't Believe The Hype", that I recorded and and really a lot of the problem comes from the fact that the media portrays things this way. And now we can portray it ourselves this way through social media. But initially, it was the magazines, you know, train how such and such trains or videos showing you this person training for whatever specific route it is they're going to go do. That's a really great way to teach people bad ways to prepare themselves. 

Nate Drolet  05:34

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  05:36

 But it's, but it's what we have. It's what we were given. It's what we believe, when you're coming up as a 5.10 climber or whatever. You know, I definitely watched a lot of the videos. I was obsessed with the magazines and I read every damn training article that came out in those magazines, whether it made sense or not. And oftentimes, it's companies or magazines, or whatever, asking these athletes to write them a training article. It's not that the athlete wants to say, Hey, everybody, here's what you should be doing because it's what I do. It's that the companies that are going to pay them money, the sponsors that are giving them money are saying, "We need you to write this for us". And I think that's a mistake. And, again, props to La Sportiva for having you come out and give some common sense approaches to training. You know, that hopefully will become common practice. You see how I did that there?

Nate Drolet  06:42

Oh it was good.

Kris Hampton  06:46

So it is, it's a big, it's a big problem in this in this media driven world that we live in now, especially. Are there other problems other than the media, because I'm totally harping on the media right now and it's not all bad.

Nate Drolet  07:04

Ummm....I mean, fads in general, like, yeah, I mean, so many of these things, I mean, I guess, like it's propagated by media. Our own expectations.

Kris Hampton  07:20

Yeah, like,

Nate Drolet  07:21

I mean, because this doesn't even

Kris Hampton  07:22

That's an age old, forever problem.

Nate Drolet  07:24

Yeah. This isn't doesn't even simply have to be, "I want to train like the pros", though that is kind of where this stems from. Like, I think, what we can all agree, like trying to train like a pro, we know that's dumb. That's not what we should be doing.

Kris Hampton  07:38

 Right.

Nate Drolet  07:38

That is the wrong way to go about things. But it does not stop us from doing it. Like, how many people have you heard talk about the Chris Webb Parsons hangboard program? 

Kris Hampton  07:48

Yes. So many, so many.

Nate Drolet  07:48

Hundreds, thousands Like, tons and tons of people. Like there are people who can barely like, they struggle to hang with one arm on a jug. But they just want to take off enough weight that they can one-arm hang on a one-pad edge.

Kris Hampton  08:02

Right.

Nate Drolet  08:03

 It's like if you're taking 50 pounds off, like what are we doing here? Like, you know what, Chris Webb Parsons certainly wasn't doing that. Like, this was something specific to him at a specific time.

Kris Hampton  08:14

 Right. 

Nate Drolet  08:14

Like, if you were in his exact same shoes, maybe it's, it's probably tremendous. Like, I'm sure it would be great.

Kris Hampton  08:21

And to and to be totally fair to Chris Webb Parsons, you know, we're not harping on him because he's giving bad advice. Again, it goes back to that PSA. You really have to pay attention and parse this information to see how it fits you.

Nate Drolet  08:42

 Yes, I think it's great advice for the right person.

Kris Hampton  08:46

 Right. Exactly. And he put something out there, like, at the time that when that went out, there really wasn't a lot of information that said here's what you should do. And that's what people were looking for. People want someone to tell them what to do. 

Nate Drolet  09:06

Totally. 

Kris Hampton  09:07

So at that time, it sort of filled this need for people to be told, here's how I use this hangboard. So to be fair to Chris Webb Parsons, it is not just that he was giving bad information, it was that people were so fast to latch on to it, regardless of whether it fit them or not.

Nate Drolet  09:33

Totally. So to kind of go back when you asked Is this just media's fault? And I said expectations. Another time when you need to be training where you are and not where you want to be is if you're coming off an injury or coming off a break.

Kris Hampton  09:50

Yeah, I'm I'm definitely deeply mired into all of that right now.

Nate Drolet  09:56

I mean, yeah, it's, this is something that at some point, we all have to deal with, like, whether it's injury or just like you took a month off or a few months off, whatever it is, you can't come back and train immediately as hard as you used to,

Kris Hampton  10:10

Yeah, this could very easily be train where you are versus train where you used to be. Yeah, you know, and in that case, and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. And that's, you know, when I, for instance, we built this 45 degree wall at my house in The Machine Shop, my goal, my training plan, which I've been detailing for the patrons in the Patreon episodes, was to do some low intensity, volume type days on that wall. 

Nate Drolet  10:45

The intentions were so good

Kris Hampton  10:47

The intentions were very good. But the intensity was way too high. And I hadn't put the time in yet to really flush out a low intensity enough circuit for it to work. I just assumed I'll go and I'll do the easy problems on the wall, do them all back to back, should be fine. No big deal. And that might have been true, when I was at 13+/14- level. Now that I'm coming off of this extended, large break from climbing, that wasn't even close to true. So those low intensity sessions became far too high intensity very quickly, and probably helped along my finger injury. I don't think they are the only cause of it. But actually, you know, those low intensity sessions aren't the only cause of it, but the major cause of it was trying to train where I used to be, and not where I am at the moment. So I've had to take a step back, because I was forced into it. And a lot of people who are trying to train where they used to be are also going to be forced into it. That's not a good, not a good thing. I don't recommend it.

Nate Drolet  12:12

Yeah, absolutely. And this, I mean, this doesn't even have to be the you get injured or took time off. It could just be that, you know, you took a year to go sport climbing, and now you're going back to bouldering. Like, you're going to have to slowly go back through, man and going bouldering to sport climbing, one of the worst things you can do is try and go back to the exact same type of volume you were doing initially. 

Kris Hampton  12:34

Yeah

Nate Drolet  12:34

Like if you want to blow up your elbows and shoulders and wrists, like, that's a guaranteed way to do it. 

Kris Hampton  12:38

Yep.

Nate Drolet  12:39

 Like, you know, we all it's really easy to think that intensity, like, you know, crimping down really hard and trying really hard is what injures us but ramping up the volume really fast, that's just as easy a way to do it.

Kris Hampton  12:52

Yeah, totally, totally. Are there, are there specific, specific things that you see happening repeatedly, that are examples of people trying to train where they want to be instead of where they are?

Nate Drolet  13:11

Calf raises.

Kris Hampton  13:14

Hahaha

Nate Drolet  13:15

Um,

Kris Hampton  13:17

I think one of them that I see really often is campusing

Nate Drolet  13:21

Goddamnit. That was mine. Continue. That was a great point, Kris.

Kris Hampton  13:26

Haha. I see it all the time. People thinking they need campusing because so many times you hear Oh, you need power?,

Nate Drolet  13:39

 Go campus board 

Kris Hampton  13:40

Go campus. That's not the only way to gain power. In fact, I would call it a fairly high level expression of power, more so than a way to gain power.

Nate Drolet  13:52

I'll even go a step further. 

Kris Hampton  13:53

Okay.

Nate Drolet  13:54

 I will say that most people aren't physically capable of being powerful on a campus board.

Kris Hampton  13:59

Totally. I agree completely.

Nate Drolet  14:01

Like, if you watch someone campusing they don't move anywhere as fast as they are capable of moving while climbing. Like they move really slow actually. Most people when they campus, even when they do 1-4-7, 1-5-9, it's a very slow movement. 

Kris Hampton  14:14

Yeah,

Nate Drolet  14:14

That's honestly, it's more strength than it is power like, and I totally get it guys, campusing equals power and like weighted pull ups equals strength. Like, that's what we've been hammering in forever. But really, like most people are not strong enough to train power on a campus board.

Kris Hampton  14:30

Yeah. And you know, it's funny, I watched, I watched Adam Ondra, a video of him campusing a couple of weeks ago, and he's giving some really fantastic advice. He's like, this isn't for everyone. You know, he's, he's laying out all of the, all of the right things. And he's getting on the campus board and he's going to do 1-5-9. He's like, Oh, this is my standard, you know,

Nate Drolet  15:00

God, that's your standard

Kris Hampton  15:01

 and I'm like oh, yeah this is your standard. Well, I expected to see this super slow lock off, like, reach, like everyone does, 

Nate Drolet  15:12

Like a big slow pull through?

Kris Hampton  15:14

 Big slow pull through. And it was way better than I expected. Like his 1-5-9 was way closer to powerful than I expected.

Nate Drolet  15:24

 Huh. See, I disagree. But continue. 

Kris Hampton  15:27

Maybe we watched two different videos

Nate Drolet  15:28

 Totally possibly.

Kris Hampton  15:29

 I've seen one video where he talks about 1-5-9 lock offs. So maybe that's what you're thinking of. The one I saw, I was I was waiting for the lock off and he did a really fast pull through and I was like, holy shit. Someone just did a powerful version of 1-5-9. Because I think those big max pulls like that tend to become more lock off static exercises for most people, 

Nate Drolet  15:58

And just a really slow grind, of like, just really, like kind of trudge through it.

Kris Hampton  16:03

 Yep.

Nate Drolet  16:04

Yeah, campus boarding, I think is a classic example of people training where they want to be versus where they are. I mean, because, like, kind of, well, yeah, look at the campus board. Like it is, by Design, it's meant for a very specific, specific thing. It's 20 degrees overhanging. If you're a boulderer, when was the last time you're really projecting something 20 degrees overhanging? Definitely not in the gym. Like that's like the warm up wall and then you go to the 45, or the 60. But not only that, like it was developed by like Wolfgang Gullich, used by him, Jerry Moffatt and those guys who were already climbing 5.14+

Kris Hampton  16:40

Right

Nate Drolet  16:41

Like, and they used it to climb more 5.14+

Kris Hampton  16:45

Yeah, I was, early on, when I was starting to look at climbing training as a potential business, I was writing a training plan for someone, for for a company to sell. And it had campusing in the program, and it was a program specifically for higher level boulderers. And I was told that I needed to make it work for beginners as well. And I was like, uhhh can't happen.

Nate Drolet  17:23

 Campusing, yeah.

Kris Hampton  17:24

That's not, this isn't the place for them. 

Kris Hampton  17:27

Yep, this modality is not useful for beginners. 

Kris Hampton  17:29

Yeah, they're going to get way more out of climbing powerfully, trying to learn to use momentum than they are being on the campus board. No, you have to, this has to be completely scalable. I was like, well, then I can't do it. Sorry. You know, I'm out. And, and I stand by that. I see a lot of people who, if you can't do 1-3-5, then you shouldn't be trying bumps and touches and all these other, more powerful, harder on your fingers, harder on your elbows, harder on your shoulders, exercises,

Nate Drolet  18:10

 And 1-3-5, in control.

Kris Hampton  18:12

 Right.

Nate Drolet  18:14

 Yeah, no, I completely agree. 

Kris Hampton  18:16

So I think that's a really, really common example of people training where they want to be. I want to be able to do this stuff, so I'm going to try it. And that makes sense. I mean, I want to be able to do this, let's try it.

Nate Drolet  18:30

Yeah. And you got to take the training wheels off at some point. Like, you know, and the thing is, if you do want to try something, go for it, just be smart about it. Like, honestly, campus boarding, I think is one of the easiest things to overdo. Because a good campus board session, you're....it's almost boring. You're like, Oh, I'm sitting.

Kris Hampton  18:49

 Lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of sitting.

Nate Drolet  18:51

It's so much rest. Like if you're doing it alone, like if you if you have a group of like four or five people, then it's cool, then it like, there's only a little bit of pause between every single person. But if you do a campus board workout by yourself, like, man bring a book. Like, it's, it's slow. It takes forever. And it's so easy to be like, Oh, I guess I'm I mean, I feel fine, because I only did two moves and so I guess I'm rested. I'll just keep going. And it's really easy to get hurt, to overdo it and just not get the benefits out of it.

Kris Hampton  19:20

Yeah, and you've said something in the past that I think really, really works here as well, that you almost always know when you're about to get hurt. Like there's always, almost always, something that says, maybe I shouldn't do this. And then you do it anyway and then you get injured. 

Nate Drolet  19:39

Right.

Kris Hampton  19:40

 I mean, before I hurt my finger, before it went really bad, I thought I probably shouldn't be trying this hard right now. And then I tried hard anyway. And lo and behold, I got injured and that so many of those people on the campus board or you know, getting underneath heavy weights or whatever it is, hanging with heavy weight on their, off their harness, whatever the situation is, so many people, there's something in their head that says, this is dangerous. Maybe I shouldn't do this and they don't listen to it, and they get hurt. And I think that's often a voice telling you, you're not here yet. You know this, this isn't where you're supposed to be. So I think listening to that voice is important.

Nate Drolet  20:28

Totally. Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to having a long term outlook for where you're trying to be like, and it's hard to do. Man, it's so difficult to say, like, this is where I'm at. This is what I need to be doing. And that's where I want to be, but it's gonna take me, you know, years to get there. But it's a serious endeavor and I want it, so it's worth the time. That delayed gratification is such a difficult thing to try and achieve.

Kris Hampton  20:57

 Yeah, totally. 

Nate Drolet  20:59

So yeah, this can, I mean, this can even stem back to what we talked about with building a pyramid. It's so easy to try and pull the trigger on a hard project too early, to be like, well, I did the move, so I'm just gonna start trying it. And in that time, you could have I mean, a great example. Like, my last year of college, there were two  V10 in the South I wanted to do because to me, they represented when I first started college, I looked at them and I was like, if that's V10 I'll never climb V10.

Kris Hampton  21:27

Which two?

Nate Drolet  21:28

The Womb and Biggie Shorty. 

Kris Hampton  21:30

Mmm. Okay.

Nate Drolet  21:31

 And the summer before, I had gone out to Colorado and done like six new V10s. But they're in Colorado. So I had to come back and 

Kris Hampton  21:40

Colo-RAD-do

Nate Drolet  21:41

Haha Colo-RAD-do. Here. They were here. 

Kris Hampton  21:43

They were here.

Nate Drolet  21:44

 Yeah, we're here. 

Kris Hampton  21:45

We're here.

Nate Drolet  21:45

 We haven't left this house all day, so we are really. But so I had to go prove myself back in the South. And to me, these were the two that I remember when I first saw The Womb it, I was like, that's not possible. Like humans don't grab those holds like, it can't happen. And so I was like, Okay, cool. I'm gonna put in the time in my last season here and I want to do these two, because to me, they were like, more than just V10. Like, they prove something. But they took me close to 15 sessions each, which is insane. And I look back at it now, knowing now the time it took me, I could have easily just gone and done you know, probably like ten, fifteen V8s and 9s. And then with that kind of experience, I would have gone and done each of those like three, four sessions. But at the time, my eyes were bigger than my..... hands?

Kris Hampton  22:36

Haha I don't know how that applies to climbing.

Nate Drolet  22:39

I don't, yeah, I don't know, either. My eyes are bigger my hands. And so it took me a combined like 30 days to do those two. But yeah, and so it obviously hindsight is 20/20. So it's easy for me to look back and be like, well, this is what I should have done. But I've fallen for that same mistake before and I've also I feel like I've had times where I didn't fall for that mistake and it paid off drastically.

Kris Hampton  23:03

Yep, totally. You know, I think I think we're often given this this cliche of, you know, walking the walk, or, you know, if you want to, if you want to be it, you have to embody it or you know, whichever cliche you choose, that says,

Nate Drolet  23:29

 Dream big.

Kris Hampton  23:31

 But not even just dream big, but like, if you want to be an athlete, you should walk like an athlete and talk like an athlete and, you know, embody the athlete. And if you want to be a V11 climber, you should walk and talk and act and and go climb on V11s. You know, and we often say, you can't send V10 if you never try V10, you know, so there's a lot of conflicting advice there. You know, it could be taken a bunch of different ways. I think the thing that's important to understand, or maybe one of the things that's important to understand is by walking and talking and acting and embodying these high level athletes, that means you're being very aware of where you are right now. And, and training appropriately. Acting appropriately, getting on the appropriate level rock climbs. That doesn't mean I want to be like Joe Kinder, so I go, jump on 14d. You know, that's that's not what that means. Joe takes a very different approach to his rock climbing. He doesn't, he's not going to jump in on Silence, even though someday he wants to climb like Adam Ondra. You know, he's being smarter about it. And I think that's the thing that should be embodied, should be paid more attention to, not the not the outcome. But the journey they're taking,  the the their approach, the path they're on. 

Nate Drolet  25:23

Totally,

Kris Hampton  25:24

 You know, that needs to be paid more attention to.

Nate Drolet  25:26

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Like there, this is not in any way to just trash on high level climbers or anything like that, or

Kris Hampton  25:35

No, not at all.

Nate Drolet  25:36

 Like, if anything, it's the opposite. Like, they walk the walk. And that's what got them there. Like every step of the way, like they said, said, okay, like, what do I need to improve right now? Like, because if they tried to overreach and say, Oh, what is Chris Sharma doing? And it's like, they would get injured or they just wouldn't benefit. And so there are a lot of great things that pro climbers do. And we can take them and look at the principles and say, This is great. Like, I should embody that principle.

Kris Hampton  26:06

Yeah, and they're not, they're professional climbers, they're not coaches. It's not their job, to break down the things they did that got them to that place. It's their job to get to that place and continue pushing their limits. Asking them to tell you what you should be doing to get there is like, asking a chef at some restaurant to go paint your car. You know, it's, it's not the same thing at all. They're they they are not qualified, nor do they necessarily want to be qualified, to tell you here's what you need to do to get to where I'm at.

Nate Drolet  26:49

Totally. And you're going to run into recency bias as well, which is 

Kris Hampton  26:52

Exactly

Nate Drolet  26:53

 Basically saying like, whatever they've most recently done, like, that's what they're going to say is what's working. So for them, it's like, like, oh, a pinky front levers. I've just started doing them and man, my core tension and like, my pinky strength is through the roof. Do that. It's like, yeah, for them, maybe that's a thing. For you? Not so much.

Kris Hampton  27:16

Yeah, pinky strength isn't gonna do a goddamn thing for me. 

Nate Drolet  27:18

No, definitely not.

Kris Hampton  27:19

 No. So yeah, I think you have to be really aware of where you are. And, and think more about the journey, think more about the path. And that sounds so cliche to say, and I don't, you know, I'm not trying to be all super esoteric here, but but getting to a destination is a journey, no matter how you look at it. And you can't just skip over that part. You can't just land there at the top level. It doesn't work that way.

Nate Drolet  27:55

No, totally. And one thing I'd like to add as well, as far as, there's some advice I feel like has gone out for a long time. And I think it's almost a bit misleading. When people say always climb with people better than you, I think that can easily be taken to an extreme of climbing with people who are so far better than you that, yeah, they're just not walking the same walk that you are right now. Like they're not on the same path. Like it can be useful because you can look at it and be like, hey, like, maybe that grade isn't so unrealistic. Like they climb three grades harder, so like, is this really big deal? No. It can put things in perspective for you. But I've been recently reading Top Dog. You read it.

Kris Hampton  28:44

Yes

Nate Drolet  28:44

And it's the book that's going to be our book club. Have we come up with a name for the book club, Power Company book club yet? 

Kris Hampton  28:51

No.

Nate Drolet  28:52

If anyone thinks of a good name for The Power Company book club, let us know. But our first book is going to be Top Dog, which is on the science of competition. And more or less the summation of the book is be around people who are around your level or just barely better than you. 

Kris Hampton  29:08

Yeah. Yep. 

Nate Drolet  29:09

And that's, it's huge. Like having that close, it is a close competition that is super important. 

Kris Hampton  29:15

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  29:17

 And so yeah, if you try and overreach by climbing with someone who's like 10 grades better than you or five or whatever, like, there is benefit, yes. You can see the tactics they use and a lot of these different things

Kris Hampton  29:29

Yeah there are lessons to be learned. 

Nate Drolet  29:30

Absolutely. But you need that close competition. You need someone who is there training the way that you should be training and they're at the level you're at, and they're pushing at the same level you should be pushing.

Kris Hampton  29:42

Yeah, and we're, you know, we're we've sort of by default, started talking about this on a on a level of like 5.13 or V8 or V9 looking at much higher levels, but this applies as well too, if you're just starting out, and you want to be that 5.11 climber you see in the gym. You shouldn't just go do what that 5.11 climbers doing, you know, you should spend a lot of time climbing where you're at. You know, climbing on the, all the 5.8s, all the 5.9s, all the 5.10s, try to be very aware of what's working, what's not working. Watch the people who are climbing the 5.10s and the 5.11s, and then try to emulate what they're doing on those easier climbs that you're on, you know, to make them better. So, so this applies across all levels, not just Joe Kinder looking at Adam Ondra. You know, that's not, I just want to make sure that that's not seen as the entire purpose here, that the entire argument here.

Nate Drolet  30:55

 Totally. 

Kris Hampton  30:59

Any other thoughts on training where you are? I think, for me, this one feels, I mean, again, all these feel like common sense, but I feel like 

Nate Drolet  31:07

That's kind of the point. 

Kris Hampton  31:08

Yeah, I feel like this one, I'm just going to keep hammering home the same point.

Nate Drolet  31:15

Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's one of those things that and with all of these, like, if you take a step back and look at it, it's easy to know if you're guilty of it. And so what we're really saying is, take a step back and look. 

Kris Hampton  31:29

Yep. Yeah, it's it comes down to principles. And that's what the next episode is going to be about. We're gonna try to wrap this thing up into a nice little bow. It's getting late here and we've got more beer, so who knows if it's gonna be a nice little bow, but principles versus prescriptions, is what we're going to talk about. And particularly in this social media driven world, I think this is a pretty big topic. Pretty big, problematic topic.

Nate Drolet  32:10

Totally.

Kris Hampton  32:10

So all right, till tomorrow, you know where we're at. Facebooks. Instagrams. Powercompanyclimbing.com. You can still find us on the Pinterest. I haven't mentioned that in a while but we're there.

Nate Drolet  32:24

How am I surprised. 

Kris Hampton  32:26

Have no fear. 

Kris Hampton  32:28

We are still on the Pinterest. We are not however, on that damn Twitter, because we don't tweet. We scream like eagles. 

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (EP. 87):

Kris Hampton  00:30

What's up everybody? I am your host, Kris Hampton.

Nate Drolet  00:34

And this is Nate Drolet.

Kris Hampton  00:35

And together we form Award Tour with Muhammad my man. I assume you know where that's from? 

Nate Drolet  00:43

Yes. A Tribe Called Quest. 

Kris Hampton  00:45

All right! All right!

Nate Drolet  00:47

It only took five episodes. 

Kris Hampton  00:49

Nate's keeping his job here. It's amazing. I love it. You're practically a superfan now.

Nate Drolet  00:54

 Pretty much.

Kris Hampton  00:55

 Yeah. Okay, we're on the final episode, sort of a wrap up, I guess, of "Common Sense versus Common Practice". And, you know, just to just to reiterate where this all started, so much of what we see, so much of what we hear, we think, "I didn't need to be told that. It's just common sense." 

Nate Drolet  01:28

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  01:29

 And, and we as coaches, as people who put out a lot of content and media, think, "Do we really need to say this? It's just common sense." But the reality is, and we first heard this phrase from our friend, Trevor Reagan from Train Ugly at trainugly.com, that common sense isn't always common practice. And I think that's a, that's an all time mega quote, as far as I'm concerned.

Nate Drolet  02:03

Totally.

Kris Hampton  02:03

 And I think it shows up in so many places in the climbing world, in the, you know, the sports world, the training world in general. And, right now, we're going to be talking about "Principles versus Prescriptions". And this is kind of a tough topic to pin down. You know, we were just sitting here going over notes, and we're like, this is gonna be a tough one, I don't know. But we're gonna see what happens here. I mentioned in the previous episode, "Train Where You Are versus Where You Want To Be",  that I think, especially in today's world, there's a lot of relevance to this topic of "Principle versus Prescription", because we want everything in little quick sound bites. We want them in 140 characters, if you're on that dirty word over there. And and we want to be told what to do and quickly. This shouldn't be this long process, just fucking tell me how to get there. And prescriptions don't don't necessarily work in these cases. But if you want to catch someone's attention on Instagram, or on the Facebook, or on the Twitter, 

Nate Drolet  03:33

Prescribe.

Kris Hampton  03:34

You prescribe. You say, here's what you have to do. Here's the absolute, here's the answer. And that catches people's attention. And it's a great way to catch people's attention. But you're really only talking to a pretty small percentage of those people and I, in my mind, that's fairly dangerous. And that's why we try not to talk in prescription, even when we're writing training plans. You know, I've battled with myself about, do I sell these ebooks, you know, that are prescriptions? And I tried to narrow it down as much as possible, like this is for the 5.12 climber who's climbed a fair amount of mid 5.12, wants to climb 5.13 and even then, when people email me, I'm like, tell me what your strengths and weaknesses are. Tell me what your goals are. I can send you in a better direction. "Climb 5.13" might not be the plan for you. So even then, when I'm being pretty, I'm delineating who I'm prescribing to, even then it makes me nervous. But some people are just like, I'm prescribing all damn day long. You know, I'll just throw it out there on Instagram and "Everybody, here's the secret. This is the key." That scares me a little bit.

Nate Drolet  04:59

Yeah. I think it should. What do you..........what do you view as the most dangerous prescriptions that you see going on in climbing?

Kris Hampton  05:16

That a simple way to gain power is to try difficult moves when you're already tired? No. But I think it's things like that. Things where you're telling people, this is the way to do it. And I guess that's a prescription in general. So not a really specific example. But again, you know, we've talked about climbing is a really complex sport. 

Nate Drolet  05:48

And it's very personal. 

Kris Hampton  05:50

And it's very personal. And you can make things work via several different avenues. You know, like your example of Daniel on Instagram, I think it was saying, this the crux move of Biographie, it requires this and this and this, and this, which just so happened to be my strongest four attributes. However, other people have climbed it, who those are not their strongest attributes. And they would probably say it requires finesse, and the ability to really stand on your feet and get your hips into the right position. So being that prescriptive, saying, this is the way you have to do it. This is the way you must choose to go to make progress. I think not only is that, can that be dangerous, physically, but it risks mental damage and emotional damage to people who, who don't have those factors and are just like, should I just give up? You know, I can't, I'm not that strong. I can't deadlift three times bodyweight, what am I gonna do?

Nate Drolet  07:06

 Oh, yeah.

Kris Hampton  07:07

 You know

Nate Drolet  07:08

Or I mean, a great example is, like, one arm deadhangs like, there are metrics and standards out there

Kris Hampton  07:16

 That's a really good example, actually,

Nate Drolet  07:18

Like, yeah, there are metrics and standards out there that for some people are just unrealistic. Like, there is a standard that you should be able to, if you want to climb 5.14, like 14a, you need to be able to one arm deadhang a one pad edge for five seconds. Like, I'm here to tell you, that's bullshit. Like, for some people, they may need, they might need to be able to do that with like, plus 10 pounds. But, you know, I would say the mass majority of people like, probably never need to get that strong to be able to climb 14a or b, or maybe even c. Like, I know, multiple V13 climbers who cannot do that. 

Kris Hampton  07:54

Yeah, I know a whole lot of double digit climbers who can't even begin to do that.

Nate Drolet  07:58

Yeah. And I have worked with people who've been discouraged, because they said, I can't meet these metrics, which means I can't climb my goal projects. Like, it was one plus one, like it was that simple to them. Like, if they could not do this, they didn't they, they wouldn't even go try. Like to them, it was not even worth it because they could not measure up to this. And to me, that's dangerous.

Kris Hampton  08:23

Yeah, metrics in general, are scary. I'm not, I'm not the world's biggest fan of metrics. I understand their usefulness. Well, at least I think I understand their usefulness. And I'm willing to give them more of a chance. I think that in climbing, again, it's so complicated, you can get to the same results via so many different avenues, that metrics are really really difficult to come by. And in our very early, very, very preliminary, largely guesswork, I'm going to go ahead and throw all that out there, in all the measuring we've done it's, it appears to be so much all over the board that coming up with an average is unfair,

Nate Drolet  09:20

It's insane. 

Kris Hampton  09:21

And, and having in telling people you need to meet this metric to be at this level, because it's the average of this giant spread out group of people, that seems equally doubly unfair, you know, because so many people are never going to meet that that metric, and still be able to perform at that level and higher,

Nate Drolet  09:51

Yeah, or even so, like they may hit, hit some of those metrics and they say well 

Kris Hampton  09:56

And not be able to perform

Nate Drolet  09:57

Well I must be a terrible rock climber because I hit those metrics. But there are some people who can just, man, tests can be cheated. Tests can be...some people are really good at taking tests. Like you can train for tests like and metrics. You know, even ones where you shouldn't be able to like,everything is trainable. 

Kris Hampton  10:15

You know, you can hack, any test. You know, one of the, one of the podcasts I've listened to often, The Performance Podcast, with Will Fleming, and Dos...Robert, Robert Dos Remedios. They talk about in one of their episodes, the NFL Combine, which is, which is a big money test, essentially. If you do well on this Combine, you get picked up by an NFL team, then you stand to make millions of dollars. You can be a top prospect. You can perform at a really high level, but if you don't do well on the Combine, your stock drops. So there are companies who charge top dollar to teach you to hack the NFL Combine, that you could be a low performer, someone who's not even on the radar of the recruits, go to this school for four, six weeks or whatever, where they teach you how to do better on the NFL Combine tests. And then all of a sudden your stock goes through the roof, because you just outperformed the best performers in the league, on the test.

Nate Drolet  11:33

 Yes.

Kris Hampton  11:34

You know, you're going to get on the field and you're going to tank. But you just made a million and a half dollar signing bonus.

Nate Drolet  11:42

 Boom.

Kris Hampton  11:43

 So, you know, that's a really good example of hacking these tests and then the metrics don't tell you a thing.

Nate Drolet  11:53

Yeah. And so I think there, there is an importance for metrics and keeping them and I think they're individualized.

Kris Hampton  12:05

Yep. Measure against yourself.

Nate Drolet  12:07

Exactly. Like to me, that, from what I've seen, what we've seen, from measuring with our own athletes. I mean, yeah, like comparing multiple people is startling. You can account for bodyweight, for training age, for all different things. Man, it's all over the place.

Kris Hampton  12:25

 I have I have 5.14 rock climbers who can't do pull ups. 

Nate Drolet  12:30

Yeah, I have, I mean, I have 5.12 climbers who can hang with more weight than I can. 

Kris Hampton  12:35

Yeah.

Nate Drolet  12:36

 And it's just like, but that's just it, like, they can hang that much, but when you when they actually try and climb like they can't leverage it onto actual holds.

Kris Hampton  12:46

 Right.

Nate Drolet  12:46

 Like there's some sort of disconnect. And so it's like, that's something that needs to be worked on. But if I simply looked at and said, oh, wow, you can hang an extra 100 pounds on you like, Good news, your hand strength is great. We don't need to worry about that. It's like, that's not the thing. You, they actually need to be, a lot of them actually have to spend a ton of time on fingery, like hard hand intensive climbs, so they can actually learn how to use their hands.

Kris Hampton  13:09

Yeah. And we're talking a lot, you know, you could very easily say, Oh, well, there's outliers. You know, there are exceptions to every rule. But what I'm seeing with all these numbers is that everyone looks like an outlier, compared to what the average is.

Nate Drolet  13:27

What did we say? Are we just calling ourselves the average?

Kris Hampton  13:31

No no, not not ourselves at all. Like if I took all of the numbers and averaged them out

Nate Drolet  13:37

Then everyone seems like they're all over the place. 

Kris Hampton  13:38

Yeah, it seems like everyone is an outlier. 

Nate Drolet  13:41

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  13:41

 So this average number becomes unfair. 

Nate Drolet  13:45

Totally, 

Kris Hampton  13:45

You know, and maybe it's just that we have too small a data set at this point. But it's enough to give me pause. And we're spending a lot of time in the beginning of this harping on prescription. Let's talk a little bit about what we mean by principles. And you know, just to make sure that we're delineating between the two and we can tell the difference. So what do we mean by principles?

Nate Drolet  14:13

Principles are these underlying rules that kind of govern everything. They are the basis that we can judge are we doing the things correctly. So if I was to reference 

Kris Hampton  14:23

Like deadlift two times bodyweight

Nate Drolet  14:25

Principle, yeah, doesn't matter if the first day you ever deadlift you can deadlift two times bodyweight, you're good. But, like, so to use metrics, to me a more principle approach is saying, I'm going to track my own numbers, like and I'm going to reference them off myself. Am I getting better? Like, did I move the needle? Like if here are all my, like all the things I measured, and I think having these big in depth measurements are awesome. Like I think they're great and I think doing them maybe once a year or something like that, that that can be great, because then you can check in and say, hey, did I get better? I think it's can be very easy to say, "Where do I compare with other people?" Because that like,

Kris Hampton  15:10

Yeah, that's a powerful thing for people, man.

Nate Drolet  15:14

Yeah. But it can be a bad road to go down like I, the most people I've talked with have come away disappointed when they compare themselves using metrics.

Kris Hampton  15:25

 My answer, my stock answer has become, which people do want me to tell you about, the people you're better than or people you're worse than, because I can give you both. You know, which do you want to hear?

Nate Drolet  15:37

But what it comes down to is, I mean, the principle is like, "Am I getting better?" Like, that's all that matters, it doesn't matter how everyone else around me performs. Like, is my training making me better? And so let's just say like, it doesn't matter if I can't hang bodyweight on a one pad edge, if my training means that I can slowly go a little bit stronger, just tiny bits and I can get the point where I'm climbing V14, who gives a fuck what my metrics are? Like compared to everyone else, if they're improving for myself, and I am climbing better because of it, that is what matters. 

Kris Hampton  16:13

Yeah, exactly. I talked to Dan John this last summer and

Nate Drolet  16:19

Still jealous.

Kris Hampton  16:19

Haha eat your heart out. And when, when I read his book...

Kris Hampton  16:28

"Now What?", one of the things he talks about that I thought was really cool, and really important, is that you should measure something. He essentially says, I don't care what that thing is, as long as it somehow pertains to your performance goals. Measure something, train, measure it again. If the number goes up, then you're doing good.

Nate Drolet  16:28

"Now What?"

Nate Drolet  17:02

 Yeah.

Kris Hampton  17:03

 Doesn't really matter what that thing is. Doesn't matter what the next guy did. You know, it doesn't matter what the average number of people do. Are, should there be standards? Sure. Maybe there should be. You know, I think that could be a really important thing. Do we have enough information to come up with those standards on our own? Obviously not, because nearly every standard that's been thrown out for rock climbing is taken from somewhere else, is taken from another sport. It's not taken from doing a study of a bunch of rock climbers to see what they can deadlift. 

Nate Drolet  17:41

Because most rock climbers can't deadlift,

Kris Hampton  17:42

Yeah. And do what, I mean, this goes exactly what we're just talking about, train for where you are, and not for where you want to be and where you want to be could be anything else but if where you are is, you know, metrics that may not line up with anything. Like where you want to be, it doesn't matter like, like you are just trying to make yourself better. Like, do what is good for you?

Kris Hampton  17:42

 God knows. It would be .75 bodyweight. So so all of our supposed standards that we've been espousing are taken from elsewhere. And I think there's some validity in that. But it shouldn't be taken as the gospel. So I think the point here is this principle that we're talking about is measure something, move the needle, then you're making progress. You know, it doesn't mean.... you shouldn't be trying to hit a very specific number with a very specific thing.

Kris Hampton  18:48

 Yep. Yep, totally. Other principles? Let's keep on that. I've got a question about prescriptions. But let's keep on principles right now. Are there are there principles you think are really important?

Nate Drolet  19:04

Master the basics. In my mind, that's key.

Kris Hampton  19:09

Yeah. Why is it that in climbing that seems to be overlooked? And in so many other sports, you know, you look at Wayne Gretzky, famous for warming up the same way since he was a youth hockey player. You know, Jerry Rice, who was one of the best wide receivers in history, did very basic drills his entire career. So many great athletes do the same basic drills throughout their entire careers. I've never heard of Chris Sharma doing basic drills. Why is that?

Nate Drolet  19:49

Well, I think one thing you just said sort of highlights it is those are great athletes. And I'm not saying Chris Sharma isn't

Kris Hampton  19:54

Are you saying Chris Sharma isn't a great athlete?

Nate Drolet  19:56

I don't even know if he would consider himself an athlete. But I think there are

Kris Hampton  20:00

Fair enough

Nate Drolet  20:01

I think there are a lot of climbers who do that. Like, they would never say that they are doing drills. But you watch their intention when they warm up, 

Kris Hampton  20:09

Right.

Nate Drolet  20:10

 And they are so intentional, and it's unbelievable. And you can see it when it happens and like, they may never voice that they are building these pyramids, or that they are working their weaknesses.

Kris Hampton  20:21

 Totally. BJ warms up with Sloth Monkeys. If I told him he was doing Sloth Monkeys, he would leave the gym. But it's what he's doing. I've watched him in there. He's doing contrast warm ups, aka, Sloth Monkeys. And it's just the way he warms himself up to be able to move the way he wants to move.

Nate Drolet  20:46

Yeah

Kris Hampton  20:46

Just intuitively

Nate Drolet  20:47

 Like watching a lot of great climbers, man, they, they do so many of these things. And they've made it to where it's this unconscious part of their being to where they just go through all these steps, and they cover so many of the basics. You know, they may not think of it like that. They may not recognize it like that. But it's just ingrained in them at this point. 

Kris Hampton  21:08

Right. 

Nate Drolet  21:09

So yeah, that's just it. I think great athletes do it. But there's, I mean, I think not mastering the basics is a common issue for everyone in every walk of life. I mean, that's business, that's relationships, that's diet. That's everything. It's, it's a hard thing, because I mean, for multiple reasons, like, god it would be really nice if magic bullets worked. Yeah, I mean, if I could just pick one thing and be like, Oh, I just have to do this, and it'll make me better, cool. Instead of being like, well, I need to shore up like these 15 different things and like, do them to a reasonable amount and that's going to give me a reasonable amount of progress over time. And if I do it for long enough, I'm going to get me, make my goal in a couple years. Yeah, like that's hard to, I don't want to swallow that pill, like, you know, give me some like, forearm implants or something. I don't know.

Kris Hampton  22:04

I've got a good example of someone who is working on the basics, even though they've essentially mastered them already. I was in Rifle this past summer. And it was a who's who of American sport climbing. I mean, you name a good American sport climber, they were there. All of them. 

Nate Drolet  22:31

Kris Hampton.

Kris Hampton  22:32

 He was there.

Nate Drolet  22:33

 Oh, man. It was everyone.

Kris Hampton  22:35

 He was flailing like crazy. Not mastering any basics. But he was there. But Dave Graham, at the end of the day, was getting on Pump-a-rama which is popular 13a in The Arsenal at Rifle, way below Dave Graham's level. And he's done it a lot of times. But we were talking before he got on it, and he was like, oh, man, I haven't been sport climbing a lot. I know I'm gonna get pumped. I'm gonna get on this and really go for it, like really try, because I know I'm gonna get pumped stupid. I want to remember what it's like, to get pumped and try hard. You know, and I was like, that's cool. You know, A, he's training where he's at. He knows he's just been bouldering. I'm going to, I know I'm going to get pumped on 13a, so I'm going to work on going hard on a level where I can focus. I know I'm gonna send, you know, I'm gonna have to battle, but I think I can send this and this is what my focus is going to be. It wasn't just, I'm gonna do this to show off. It wasn't just, I'm just gonna run a random lap on here. It was I've got to focus. I'm going to go up and do it. And it was fun to watch because he, he's in the upper crux, his elbows are above his head. He's obviously at battle mode but he slows it all back down. He pulls it back together and he looks effortless to the top. You know, you could see the moment he remembered how to do it and it all came back together. So you know if Dave Graham, who is essentially a wizard, needs to work on the basics, why don't the 5.11 climbers need to work on the basics anymore? I think they do. So I think that's a great principle. Keep, keep practicing the basics. You know, focus on the basics. They should always be a part of it. Any others?

Nate Drolet  24:49

Some other basics or some other principles? Look back at my notes over here. I mean quality versus quantity.

Kris Hampton  24:57

Yeah, pretty much all the things we've kind of gone over our principle versus prescription in one way or another? You know, there's, and that's sort of the direction that that we at Power Company Climbing take, is we try to be very mindful of the correct prescription. But I think we operate on a very principle based philosophy.

Nate Drolet  25:29

We definitely try to, where we recognize it.

Kris Hampton  25:30

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's tricky. You know, I think this whole conversation is, is tricky. But things like, move well, you know, maybe that fits under mastering the basics. But and like you mentioned earlier, move well doesn't mean move with straight arms. It doesn't mean keep your hips close to the wall. It doesn't mean you should always be dropkneeing, or you should always be square. There is no always, it's not a it's not a prescription. That's the point. You know, moving well can mean lots of things. So being aware of that, recognizing when a move didn't feel like it was done well, and trying to figure out what it was and come up with a better way to move is the important part. So you could go principal, geez, all sorts of directions.

Nate Drolet  26:35

You can I think, I think there are a lot of, I think when it comes down to it, a lot of the things fall under just a handful of the main ones like what we've talked about. You know, something you just touched on, which is, I think, a principal is watch out for absolutes. Like I fear absolutes, when someone says always do this or never do that. First thing I do is I say, Okay, what are they trying to sell to me? And the next thing is, it's like, is this something brand new to them that they're still like in the honeymoon stage with?

Kris Hampton  27:05

Yeah, that's a really great, great point.

Nate Drolet  27:08

And to me, those two alone, like cover a large bulk of when someone says always, never every time, things like that. Like they're trying to sell you something, or they're just like, a little too infatuated with something in the moment.

Kris Hampton  27:22

 Yeah.

Nate Drolet  27:23

 So yeah, because 

Kris Hampton  27:24

Which we are all guilty of 

Nate Drolet  27:25

Totally, I mean, 100% like, there are so many things that I mean, like right now, I'm reading through Top Dog, and it's on the science of competition, so everything I see I'm seeing it through the lens of competition, and I'm like, I totally understand this is a close competition. That's why I'm thriving right now. I need to find more more friends who are climbing right at my level, because I'm sending a lot of projects currently. So totally, I mean, we're all guilty of it. But these are just things that you want to try to keep in mind.

Kris Hampton  27:58

Are there popular prescriptions that you see recently?

Nate Drolet  28:03

Oh, that's a good question..........You give your answer first. I'll think on this.

Kris Hampton  28:12

I don't have an answer, that's why I'm asking you. You know, I think and maybe I'm guilty of perpetuating this myth to a degree as well, but I think the always be strength training is a myth. I think it's a prescription that doesn't necessarily fit because I can come up with times when I don't want to be strength training. I shouldn't be strength training...... You just had one......just that look on your face. You're like, Oh, shit light bulb just went off.

Nate Drolet  28:54

 Yes. 

Kris Hampton  28:55

Hit me with it.

Nate Drolet  28:57

"Do what makes you happy." 

Kris Hampton  29:01

Hahahaha

Nate Drolet  29:01

No, I'm serious. Like, 

Kris Hampton  29:03

Okay. Is this a principle or a prescription?

Nate Drolet  29:06

 This is a prescription.

Kris Hampton  29:07

 Okay. 

Nate Drolet  29:07

And I don't think it's a principle. 

Kris Hampton  29:09

Okay

Nate Drolet  29:09

Like, because here's the thing, and I very much strongly believe this. When you train hard, training isn't fun. Like there are times when training can be fun. It can be Type 2 fun.

Kris Hampton  29:21

 Yeah, yeah yeah

Nate Drolet  29:21

 But man like and don't get me wrong, like if I'm training for bouldering that shits always fun like, because training for bouldering is easy, but if you're training for sport climbing

Kris Hampton  29:30

 Oh man

Nate Drolet  29:31

It's the worst

Kris Hampton  29:31

 I used to love it. Not anymore. Not anymore.

Nate Drolet  29:34

Oh man like hard, hard power endurance work or hard endurance work, it's terrible. 

Kris Hampton  29:39

Yeah,

Nate Drolet  29:40

 It's not fun. Like, if if I only did what was fun, I would never sport climb again for the rest of my life. Like I would always remain out of shape and I'd be a boulderer. But when I am, and not only that, like trying things at your limit, like it doesn't to me register as immediate fun, like I get nervous. Like if I'm about to tie in for, you know, a redpoint effort on a big 110 foot pitch and like, there's a crux of the top, like I'm nervous. It is not an immediate joy. It reminds me of back when I used to race or like different, do different types of competitions. Like, it's not enjoyable. It's not fun in the moment. Like, it is a thing that like you have to the you have to do, though. And it's all a part of it. And so I think this goes everything from training to trying hard redpoints, like, there are times where you're going to be nervous, like you might be uncomfortable. But it's like, that is what it takes for you to move forward.

Kris Hampton  29:40

Yeah, totally. You know, I think, I think a prescription that pops into my head that is, I don't know if it's popular, or if something is hated by lots of people. that's still popular, right?

Nate Drolet  30:44

 I mean, a lot of people know about it. So yeah,

Kris Hampton  31:03

 It's still popular. That means I've always been popular, hahaha. No, I think the idea of you shouldn't run is a prescription that I think is false. Is it going to necessarily help your climbing? Not necessarily. It could. There is evidence that it could, you know, I've been talking to Eric Horst lately, I've been running a little lately myself. Do I, am I convinced that it's going to help me? No. I'm willing to give it a try. However, I have had several clients who I've said, yeah, go run, because they love it. You know, it's what keeps them sane. It's what allows them to go train for climbing because it puts them into a place where they're okay spending their time training for climbing. They feel like they've done what they need to do. In that case, they should go running. So I think the prescription of don't run for climbing is a bad one. And I think there's lots of those.

Nate Drolet  32:33

Totally.

Kris Hampton  32:34

I mean, they just don't fit everybody.

Nate Drolet  32:35

 I can think of a bunch right now just off the top of my head. Like, anytime someone says, Oh, you need to be climbing at this level before you can do this. Like you need to be a V5 climber before you can campus board, or you need to be climbing x level before you did this. Or you need to have this strength before you do that. Like, you just can't, like you can't throw that around. Like, I mean,

Kris Hampton  32:58

I understand it. Like I understand prescriptions, because I've written things and when you're writing, you don't get the chance to spend these, you know, 45 minutes, all total, throughout this whole series, it's like four and a half hours or something of conversation to flesh it all out. You get one sentence, so you have to say something,

Nate Drolet  33:25

Yeah and it has to apply to a lot of people and that's hard to do.

Kris Hampton  33:29

So I get the prescriptions, you know, I understand why they're there, when they are in the situation like, you shouldn't campus until you can climb V5. You know, there are cases where someone who's climbing V3 might be able to go campus and there are situations where people who are climbing V7 shouldn't be campusing

Nate Drolet  33:52

 For sure. 

Kris Hampton  33:55

But you have to come up with something general to say when you're presenting it. So I get that there's some prescriptions. However, things like you should never run, things like you should never hangboard with a closed crimp. 

Nate Drolet  34:18

Oh, I disagree with that.

Kris Hampton  34:19

 Things like that, that are just incorrect. You know, that don't even need to be said. You don't need to say you should never hangboard with a closed crimp. You know, you can very easily just say if you're going to hangboard with a closed crimp, be pretty careful. You know, really think it over. You can say that. It doesn't have to be this absolute, one size fits all prescription.

Nate Drolet  34:54

 Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, that's I that's taking us down a road that's gotten a lot of people in trouble, where a common one that came up forever was oh, you should, you should climb open hand as much as possible because open hand strengthens your crimps and, you know, it's gonna keep you healthier. And the problem is I know a lot of people who spent years only open hand climbing and the second they had to start grabbing crimps, they got injured. 

Kris Hampton  35:20

Yeah, totally. 

Nate Drolet  35:21

That didn't actually make you more resilient. What would have made you more resilient was getting your body used to that type of stress

Nate Drolet  35:27

Yeah, like of crimping. Like, yes, you can overdo it and get hurt crimping. But if you never do it, when you need it, you're going to be in trouble. 

Kris Hampton  35:27

Yeah

Kris Hampton  35:34

Right

Nate Drolet  35:36

So, yeah, those big absolutes, like they'll get you in trouble.

Kris Hampton  35:42

Yeah, I don't, you know, I think it's kind of funny, I think we've, we've sort of hit on the principle behind prescriptions. These big, big absolutes, big, always one size fits all, this is what you should do no matter what. Anytime you see that, be wary. Look at it critically. Try to decide if it's for you or not. You know, there, there aren't many things that should actually be prescriptions. Instead, we should be looking at the principles, these overarching ideas that when molded, can fit nearly everyone. Is that a good way to say it? 

Nate Drolet  36:32

Yeah. Do you have a favorite principal?

Kris Hampton  36:37

Favorite principal?

Nate Drolet  36:40

I'd tell you mine, but you'll be mad because I stole it. 

Kris Hampton  36:42

No, you better go ahead then, so I can 

Nate Drolet  36:44

Keep up the goal, the goal.

Kris Hampton  36:46

Oh, god damn it.

Nate Drolet  36:47

I told you.

Kris Hampton  36:49

Yeah, that that is a really good one. 

Nate Drolet  36:50

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  36:51

The goal is to keep the goal the goal. 

Nate Drolet  36:53

Yes. Classic Dan John.

Kris Hampton  36:55

Yeah. And in case that sounds confusing, the idea is that, you know, if you're strength training for climbing, the goal should not become get stronger for strength training.

Nate Drolet  37:10

The goal is to strength training for climbing to get stronger for climbing.

Kris Hampton  37:13

Yeah, if you're improving at climbing, then you're doing the right thing. Doesn't mean drop all your climbing work so that you can reach that 2x bodyweight deadlift. It means do your strength training, if it's improving your climbing, you're doing the right thing. And then you're keeping the goal, the goal. So off the top of my head, I don't know that I can come up with a better principle than that. I don't know. If I come up with one, in an episode down the road, I'll let people know. 

Nate Drolet  37:48

All right. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And I think that one really is pretty all encapsulating. 

Kris Hampton  37:53

Yeah. Okay, anything else to say on this?

Nate Drolet  37:59

No. I mean, this, that's, that's the full series. This is day five.

Kris Hampton  38:07

It is day five. It's actually hour four and a half for us, so it's getting.... I think we made a mistake and ending with "Principle versus Prescription". Because it's really hard to come up with something new to say about it, when that's what we've talked about for the last four episodes, essentially.

Nate Drolet  38:29

It's okay though, because everyone, it's Friday for everyone right now. They are psyched for the weekend. 

Kris Hampton  38:33

You're right, it is.

Nate Drolet  38:34

 They're really happy. We gave them some really solid like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we got them through this week.

Kris Hampton  38:40

We did.

Nate Drolet  38:41

You're welcome. 

Kris Hampton  38:42

We did.  Get through your week. That's that's the principle. You know what, you know what I think a good principle is and I don't have a really handy, like, phrase for this. But look at all the factors. I think that's something I've learned over the years, where you can't, if you want climbing to be a lifestyle, if you want it to be part of your life, and not just a sport, you go play on Thursday nights with all the other guys while you're drinking, then you need to look at all the other factors as well. You know, climbing becomes part of your relationship, it becomes part of your job, it becomes part of your sleep, your nutrition, everything, it's so look at everything. It's not all just about what grade am I  climbing. So for me, as someone who has a daughter, has a family, has a career, has started a business, throughout my climbing career, I've gone through several iterations of myself. I think that's the number one overarching thing is keep all those other factors in mind as well. Don't get lost in the singular goal of climbing. So with that, your singular goal should be finding us on Instagram and the Facebooks and the Pinterest

Nate Drolet  40:23

The newsletter

Kris Hampton  40:24

 The newsletter, "The Current". Pin the shit out of us on Pinterest. I don't even know what that means. But go do it. Pin us. Is that what they do? Do they pin us? I don't know how it works. Yeah, do some pinning. 

Nate Drolet  40:37

Yes.

Kris Hampton  40:38

 Do some pinning. Don't do some tweeting. Don't do some twittering. Whatever that is, because we don't tweet. We scream like eagles.