The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast

New Nutrition and Training Program: Reach Coach Alex Stiger and Neely Quinn are hosting an integrated climbing training and nutrition program starting on August 8th, 2022 for 4 weeks! If you want to up your game in nutrition and in climbing training (and learn more about what Alex talks about in this article), you can check it out in the link below. In the program, you'll get a 4-week training pro...

Free Masterclass on the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Training and Climbing Next Tuesday we're doing a free, live masterclass on zoom to talk about the 5 most common training and nutrition mistakes climbers make and how to avoid them. When:  Tuesday, July 26th at 6-7:30pm Mountain Time Where : Zoom call Hosts : Alex Stiger and Neely Quinn What : 60-minute presentation and 30 minutes of Q&A from live a...

Allison Vest is a 27-year-old climber who lives in Salt Lake City. She's originally from Minnesota and moved to Canada when she was 7, where she fell in love with climbing. She had a lot of success competing as a Canadian, winning the Canadian Bouldering Nationals in 2018  and 2020 and winning Canadian Lead Nationals in 2019. In August 2019, Allison became the first female Canadian climber to send...

Work with Matt or Alex as Your Climbing Coach Matt Pincus and Alex Stiger are both experienced climbing coaches who will work with you from anywhere in the world to help you create and reach your climbing goals. They can either consult with you on making your own program or they will create a detailed program for you based on your lifestyle and equipment availability. WORK WITH MATT OR ALEX   How...

Erin Ettenger is a 25-year-old software engineer who lives in Seattle, Washington. I asked Erin to be on the show because she uses our Route Climbing Training Program and has had some amazing success on it, so I wanted her to share her story with you all.  Through using the program (and adapting it intelligently to her own needs), she gained work capacity, meaning she can now climb more routes in...

In the episode, Coach Matt Pincus talks about how he trained all winter/spring for his 5.14b project in Wyoming this summer and some mistakes he made along the way. While Matt is a seasoned coach and climber, he was under some various constraints that made training challenging this year. One of those constraints was that Matt was working at a restaurant and coaching for a total of about 70 hours p...

Katie Lamb is a 24-year-old boulderer out of the Bay area who has proven her abilities over and over with consistent sends of V14 boulders. Included in her resumé are The Swarm (V13/14) in Bishop, New Base Line (V14) in Magic Wood in Switzerland, Jade (V14) in Rocky Mountain National Park, Direct North (V14) in Bishop, and so many more. She's a Stanford graduate and works half time as a data scien...

In this episode, Tyler explains the most common youth finger injuries, what ages are at highest risk, how to mitigate them, and what to do if a youth climber has a finger injury. Once again, Tyler pored over the research and is sharing this information with us so that youth coaches and parents are better equipped to understand these injuries and avoid permanent damage to their kids. Tyler Nelson h...

Dr. Jared Vagy is a physical therapist and he's a climber who's incredibly motivated to help other climbers heal their bodies. In this interview, we talk about new research about common finger injuries in climbers and how that's affected his protocols for healing them. We did another interview about fingers a long time ago in  Episode 116 , but this is an update to that information and a deeper di...

6-Week Team Training Program Starts April 18th On April 18th, Coach Alex Stiger's 4th cohort of her Team program will begin! This is a group training program that ALSO provides you with a training program built just for you. You'll be getting to know a small group of no more than 12 people, talking with them every week. You'll get a lot of one-on-one time with Alex, and you'll also get everything...

In the episode, Coach Matt Pincus discusses the common issue of not having the energy to execute a programmed session. I'm sure you've been at the gym with the intention of projecting routes or doing some limit bouldering, only to find that you can hardly get off the ground on your warm-ups. Whether you have a training program written by another coach or by yourself, Matt goes over some alternativ...

TBP 197 :: Lillian Chao-Quinlan, President of Sportrock, on Sending 50 5.13's by the Age of 50 Lillian Chao-Quinlan is a climber in her early 50's who is also the president of  Sportrock Climbing Centers in Virginia . She began climbing when she was 30 years old and soon realized it was what she wanted to spend her life doing and teaching, so she quickly moved up the ranks at her gym, landing in t...

Keenan Takahashi is a 30-year-old professional climber who has sent boulders up to V15. Originally from Davis, California, he started out as a skater and transitioned to climbing at about 17 years old. I wanted to talk with Keenan because–let's be honest–I love his moustachio… and because I wanted to understand what sets him apart from other climbers. He's climbed all over the world, he's in count...

How to Assess and Improve Your Skill Set in Climbing In the episode, I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about how she assesses her clients' and her own skill level and then how she helps her clients (and herself) improve upon it with drills and objective learning. This is a big one, and I walked away from this conversation sort of blown away by how much I've been missing in my climbing training all the...

Matt Pincus and Alex Stiger are both experienced climbing coaches who will work with you from anywhere in the world to help you create and reach your climbing goals. They can either consult with you on making your own program or they will create a detailed program for you based on your lifestyle and equipment availability. WORK WITH MATT OR ALEX   Goal Setting in Climbing In the episode, I sit dow...

Where to start about Bobbi Bensman?? Bobbi has been climbing since 1980 and was basically the Alex Puccio of her time. She was a professional climber for 21 years until she transitioned to a full-time job as a sales rep for outdoor companies and became a mother to two daughters. In her time as a pro climber, she helped forge the way for strong female climbing by doing one of the first 5.14a female...

Elyn Lytton is a 68-year-old climber from Colorado who started climbing in her early 50's and is still regularly crushing 5.12's (indoors and on toprope). She is also my mother-in-law and I'm constantly impressed by her. She's a really good example of a person who does things in the name of sustainability, meaning, she LOVES climbing and will do whatever it takes to be able to do it for many more...

TBP 191 :: Matt Pincus on How to Navigate Training Options if You're in a Plateau   25% Off Bouldering Program  Our Bouldering Training Program is on sale for 25% off the normal price (regularly $27/month and now $20/month) with coupon code "bouldering." The program consists of 3 levels, depending on your training experience, and it will help you get stronger, more powerful, and have more all-day...

In this episode, I talk all about how to time your meals and snacks to help your climbing performance, energy levels every day, overall mental well-being, and body composition. You might think that  when  you eat food isn't really that important – or maybe you haven't given it much thought. But the truth is that it can be almost as important as  what  you eat when it comes to performance, recovery...

TBP 189 :: Lucie Hanes- Running and Climbing and Eating Disorder Recovery Lucie Hanes is a 27-year-old climbing coach out of Eagle, Colorado, who is pursuing her Master's of Science in Applied Sports Psychology. I met Lucie in the Wicked Cave in Rifle last summer, and the next time I heard from her was when she reached out via email in response to the episode I did with Matt Pincus  about running...

About Matt Pincus Matt is a boulderer and a sport climber based out of Wyoming. He splits his time between training at home in Jackson and traveling to pursue his climbing goals around the world. Matt is also a  coach  at TrainingBeta and he's been seeing clients from around the world since 2017. He's currently taking new clients, so if you'd like to work with him, you can sign up  here . Matt jus...

  Matt Samet is the editor of Climbing Magazine, the author of several books, a prolific route developer, and a very strong and dedicated climber. He's also a friend of mine and someone I respect a lot, so I've been wanting to interview him for a while. He's a father of 3, works full-time, and just sent a 5.14 project a couple days before his 50th birthday, which is the same max grade he was sendi...

Dr. Tyler Nelson's New Injury Prevention and Warm-Up Protocol In the episode, Tyler explains how we should be warming up our youth teams (and ourselves) in order to make climbing sessions more effective, and more importantly, for injury prevention. Once again, Tyler pored over the research and came up with a very progressive way of doing things – much differently than what we're used to. Gone are...

Running for Climbing Fitness: Does It Work? And How to Avoid Common Mistakes In the episode, Coach Matt Pincus and I talk about running for climbing fitness. In our practices as a coach (Matt) and a nutritionist (me), we see a lot of people who run in the name of climbing training. But there are some common mistakes we see people making in their training schedules, their nutrition practices, and t...

TBP 184 :: Carbs for Climbers – How Much, What Kinds, Timing, and Why In this episode, I talk all about carbohydrates and how to use them properly in your diet to help your climbing performance, energy levels every day, overall mental well-being, and body composition. Carbs are a tricky topic because we've been taught to fear and hate them, even though in reality they're what fuel strength and pow...