The closure of the gym during lockdown prompted climbers to turn to home workout alternatives. As the offer of workout plans and the availability of online exercise videos increase, it becomes relevant to question the reasons for getting coached. Each person has his / her goals. Whether it is to continue to climb without getting injured, to climb harder grades, to be more versatile, to be stronger in a particular style, to practice a specific aspect (for example to hold volumes, crimps or slopers), to modulate your level of intensity of effort, among others; a coach can take the following steps to make you achieve these many goals.
selection of exercises
Social media is great for building exercise craze, but when it comes to choosing exercises, it gets complex. What works for Sean McColl probably won’t be relevant to me or you, and the exercises he presents are probably a small part of his training plan.
The coach can take an overview of your goals and your physical capacities and suggest exercises that will allow a progression adapted to your needs and your body. The number of sets and reps should also be suitable for you.
injury prevention
A very important but often overlooked aspect of training is the form of exercise. The alignment of body segments and the movement performed can lead to short, medium and long term injury if done incorrectly.
Form also plays a key role in climbing on the wall. The way you crimp, the positioning of your hips, the engagement of your shoulders on the slope, among other things, are all factors that can predispose your body to injury. The role of the coach is to offer an outside perspective that is trained to target these aspects to put you on the right path and suggest that you consult a professional if necessary.
embracing failure
It is obvious that it is not in our nature to accept failure, to fail on a problem that has a rating that we should succeed. I would be lying to you if I told you that I didn’t happen to run into a boulder that I should have done. However, those are the times when I learn the most.
My point is that working with a coach gives the ability to work with failure while removing our emotions. The coach’s outside perspective can coldly assess the bouldering and get you thinking about the little details that make the big difference between succeeding and failling in a learning environment and not looking at it as failure.
the motivation to surpass oneself
A good coach is someone with passion who wants to help you progress at all costs. I will never tire of coaching when the person finally unlocks something or achieves a move that they thought was impossible. In fact, the coaching environment is designed to push your limits by exploring movements that some would have thought too difficult for them. Coaching is certainly not magic, but by applying the concepts and putting effort into it helps a lot.
mastering the basics
To contrast with my last point, it is also the coach’s role to make sure that the basics are well acquired for each climber. It becomes difficult as we move up the grades to think that our basic movements could be reworked. However, mastering these improves our climbing skills and, at the same time, optimizes our energy expenditure.
This is also the time to take a close look at your technique. The way you position yourself and pull on the holds greatly influences your progress. The most egregious example would be someone who full crimps all the holds when he should half crimp them. The coach can easily guide you in your choice of grip and the optimal positioning to adopt in training.
support in the process
This point is more for climbers who divide their attention between the training room and the climbing wall. It is difficult, if not impossible, to climb hard at the same time as you are training physically. I admit that some sessions are very difficult on your morale, but it is also the role of the coach to support you in this process and allow you to tame these moments by preparing yourself for them.
From a personal point of view, coaching is a way for me to share my passion for climbing and my desire to constantly improve myself. It is truly a vocation based on the pleasure of offering the tools to others to enable them to achieve their goals and to push them in the right direction. Hoping that you will have found meaning in my words and that you better understand the place that coaching can have in your lives. Whatever your goal, coaching is a relevant way for you to work on your climbing!
For any questions about coaching, do not hesitate do contact me at dchoq@blocshop.com