Coaching for Climber Parents

Any newer parents out there using coaches who are great at planning training around a time limited schedule? I have been pretty slowly progressing for about 8 years and want to see if paying a pro to look at my climbing will help speed that up by telling me, constructively, how I suck and can improve.

My background:

• Full time engineer (so is my wife) w/1.5 hrs daily commuting
• 9 mo old wee baby
• 2 homewalls, squat rack, hangboards, etc available
• Able to train 60-90 min 3-5 times a week, but mostly solo
• Extremely limited amount of time on rock, esp rock at my top end
• Progressed from redpointing soft 12a to extremely soft 13a over 7 years self coached, but still pretty much a 12- climber (trad and sport)

Following

John Clarkwrote:

My background:

• Full time engineer (so is my wife) w/1.5 hrs daily commuting
• 9 mo old
• 2 homewalls, squat rack, hangboards, etc available
• Able to train 60-90 min 3-5 times a week, but mostly solo
• Extremely limited amount of time on rock, esp rock at my top end
• Progressed from redpointing soft 12a to extremely soft 13a over 7 years self coached, but still pretty much a 12- climber (trad and sport)

At first I thought your background included that you were 9 months old and I thought, "12- is really good for 9 months old."

John RBwrote:

At first I thought your background included that you were 9 months old and I thought, "12- is really good for 9 months old."

Updated for clarity. Still curious to see if anyone has any good coach recs….

Hey John, congrats to you and the wife! Three on my end, but somehow am climbing more than pre-kids.

Luckily I'm able to go to the gym for about 90 mins after some of the kids go to bed. Hope it's the same for you.

No coaching tips to offer, but if time is a limiting factor perhaps virtual coaching would be ideal to maximize your time?

J Lwrote:

Hey John, congrats to you and the wife! Three on my end, but somehow am climbing more than pre-kids.

Luckily I'm able to go to the gym for about 90 mins after some of the kids go to bed. Hope it's the same for you.

No coaching tips to offer, but if time is a limiting factor perhaps virtual coaching would be ideal to maximize your time?

Yes, looking for a virtual coach. My reading/writing clarity has always been an issue.

Just for some context: I am not a parent, and I have all the time in the world.

I found it difficult to find someone who can be both great at prescribing training (getting stronger) and helping with getting better at climbing, at least for most climbing coaches. It's easy to prescribe a hangboard protocol but harder to know why you aren't progressing or getting injured or whatever. So anecdotally I found the coaching experience to be helpful but at the end of the day not as paramount to progression or getting better as I thought. Maybe 10% helpful? But if you are strictly looking for training help then I would say a coach is great. If you are wanting a virtual coach to critique your climbing so you can improve I found that to not be helpful at all. Climbing with better, more experienced, or thoughtful climbers (in person) is what I think is extremely helpful for understanding what on the wall things you can do better. I had one good experience with Justen Sjong in person, the other coaches I've had evaluate my climbing has been too surface level. I know that now especially when I hear really good baseball/tennis coaches/trainers talk about form. Other sports have a lot more insight/thought that goes into technique and how to get better that don't rely on just 'getting stronger'. 

That being said... I've used climb strong and I find them to be the best at offering training programs that don't end up with you being at the gym for >2 hours, and their coaches are better at making sure the priority is you becoming a better climber and not chasing some metric. They are definitely on the pricey side, but I can attest to the high quality. With your allotted training time on a given week and equipment you have you could do 100% of the things I've been prescribed through climb strong. I believe they can review climbing footage for you as well - but I am not sure how useful that is IMO.

I would go with a custom training plan from either Lattice or Power Company. Not their “off-the-shelf” plans. With Power Company you might be able to get it sooner. (Since you want a virtual coach, not just a plan, there is limited availability, they only take on a certain number of clients at a time).

Whichever one you go with, They ask you as part of the initial assessments what equipment you have access to, and what are your time constraints.  I think what you have available is plenty.

Hi John, your schedule is about the same as mine.  I also have similar home equipment.  Baby is on the way, so I'll be in your situation very soon.

If for some reason you can't find an in-person or virtual coach, I'd highly recommend The Rock Climber's Training Manual.  The schedules and programs in there are designed for the time-poor climber.  And if you already have a good idea on how training works, you can simply augment the plans to suit your needs.

What kind of home walls do you have? I have a 15deg, a 2016 Moonboard, and a hangboard.  Those keep me in shape, although I find that familiarity with the project route goes a long way.

Lena, that is encouraging for the big name brand coaches. I do think I mainly need coaching, but wouldn’t hurt to have someone look at my training to see if there are things I could add or cut out. As a cheapskate myself I have to ask, did you find those worth the money?

Charlie, i have an 8x10 adjustable grasshopper in my living room and a 8x10 30° spray wall in the garage. Wish I had a moon board or TB2 though instead of the grasshopper

John Clarkwrote:

Lena, that is encouraging for the big name brand coaches. I do think I mainly need coaching, but wouldn’t hurt to have someone look at my training to see if there are things I could add or cut out. As a cheapskate myself I have to ask, did you find those worth the money?

I got the Power Company 12-week custom training plan with coach support as a gift a few years ago (good-husband points were definitely accrued with that gift!), and yes, I think it was worth the money.

I haven’t had tried a Lattice custom plan, but a friend had it as a gift from his wife (are you sensing a theme here?), and also thought it worth the money.

We had compared notes, lol, and I’ve done Lattice Lite plan for one cycle, not the custom-with-coach-support kind, so I have a pretty good idea of what’s offered by lattice, too.

Having done a custom plan for 3 months, I could then use the framework on my own going forward. But I have to say, having someone to talk to on a weekly basis was really helpful, much more so than just having a training plan.

At the end of the day, I feel like all decent training plans are more or less the same. It’s not like there is some secret exercise you can only access via secret handshake.  The devil is in sticking to it, and in the little hard-to-figure details. And that’s where having someone for accountability and troubleshooting is great. 

Lena, how much feedback did you get from your Power Company coach?  I did a custom plan in 2020, and my experience was that the coach interaction was extremely minimal. I was not exactly disappointed. The initial assessment was valuable, and I did absorb some valuable training methods that allowed me to self-coach more effectively. However, post assessment the coach communication and feedback was minimal and pretty much limited to “here is the program for the next four weeks.” Ultimately, I kind of don’t really see a big difference between the custom plan and one of their off-the-shelf plans. I did make gains, but that just boiled down to actually training in a systematic way and making my own adjustments as needed. 

Frank Steinwrote:

Lena, how much feedback did you get from your Power Company coach?  I did a custom plan in 2020, and my experience was that the coach interaction was extremely minimal. I was not exactly disappointed. The initial assessment was valuable, and I did absorb some valuable training methods that allowed me to self-coach more effectively. However, post assessment the coach communication and feedback was minimal and pretty much limited to “here is the program for the next four weeks.” Ultimately, I kind of don’t really see a big difference between the custom plan and one of their off-the-shelf plans. I did make gains, but that just boiled down to actually training in a systematic way and making my own adjustments as needed. 

Maybe my experience wasn’t typical, because I knew the coach personally, but I got a lot more than that. Everything from reviewing my form on kettlebell swings, to suggestions such as “here’s a list of not-reachy problems  on 2018 Moonboard to try for limit bouldering”, and video feedback like “spend more time on that yellow problem, you can make the monkey (for the sloth/monkey drill) a lot smoother than that, try to use the momentum you generate on the 2nd move to swing right into the next move”. The coach knew all my project routes, so I got a lot of specific suggestions. 

your experience sounds more like the coach support that comes with off-the-shelf plan

"9 mo old wee baby "

you gave up climbing when this occurred. how many pro climbers are parents? the opposite is always true, however, strong climbers stop climbing when they become a parent. fast cyclist, strong swimmers, etc. however, watching your child progress will likely be the substitute.

"Able to train 60-90 min 3-5 times a week "

most warmups are 30 min which is why most sessions are 120..180 min. training at 60% or less is useless. at this point, you're lucky to maintain your current level. ie you should expect to lose progress at a steady rate. and this is why most parents stop climbing - training a few times a week and losing progress is discouraging. at some point you'll be fighting to send projects that were once your warmup. comparing this feeling with spending more time with your family, and the choice becomes amply clear for basically every parent. you can cultivate strong climbing and drastic improvement in your child, for what it's worth. 

if you weren't a parent, the many professional coaching videos are all well known and public. at 5.12 ish, you are climbing v5. you should be able to hang your full weight on a 20mm edge with both hands for 5..7s. you should be able to do 135 on a standard campus board. unfortunately, good data is from thousands of data points, not anecdotal. this is why training plans are so homogenous. the side effect is that you will climb similarly to all pro climbers, which should be appealing or at least satisfactory. if you hired a competent coach, it would tell you the same anyway. in fact, most of my friends have hired coaches (alex pucio, nonetheless), and none of them broke out of their plateau. in fact, another thing to consider is that a lot of research indicates that without the correct genes, you will be stuck at v7..8 (5.13+) anyway. any efforts to improve will simply result in injury instead. which is incidentally a good reason not to push kids too hard as well.  

What a defeatist attitude towards something you love.

Dite Tebewrote:

 a lot of research indicates that without the correct genes, you will be stuck at v7..8 (5.13+) 

Dear bot,

Would love to see this research

Daniel Winderwrote:

Dear bot,

Would love to see this research

Probably not bot, just angry troll based on their 3 posts on this site.

I would love to get “stuck” climbing 5.13+ though. Lot of yosemite climbing tops out at 13+

…at 5.12 ish, you are climbing v5. you should be able to hang your full weight on a 20mm edge with both hands for 5..7s. you should be able to do 135 on a standard campus board.

I’ll bite though, in case you are not trolling. I climb 12s pretty quickly (on average less than 4 attempts), but I have climbed a few V8s outside. Last I checked, I can hang BW +65 lbs on a 20mm for 5-7 seconds and campus 1-4-7. This discrepancy between route and boulder grade/strength is why I want to see if a coach can help me bring my route grade into balance with my bouldering level. If you want to see my training for the last 4 years, I have a spreadsheet linked in my profile and i have logged 99.99% of my outdoor climbing on this site as well. 

Re. coaches who know how to help folks with limited time and tiring non-climbing commitments, I'm reminded of an article about Justen Sjong helping Paige Claassen come up with a training plan within the constraint of '1 hour per day, 5 days a week'. It seems like he's still active as a coach: https://www.climbing-sensei.com/ . I don't personally know anyone who's worked with him, but he seems like the real deal, and based on his resume probably has a lot of ideas about Yosemite/granite training if that's where your goals are.

Three posts is out of the norm for bots I agree, but something smells very robotic about that post to me nonetheless. Even if it is a human the advice is crap.

I have a baby on the way and am hoping to continue my steady albeit slow progress as well.

I did a three month custom plan with lattice a few years back and found it helpful. It wasn’t a revelation in how I train or anything, but it exposed me to some different ideas on capacity work. I think their app is pretty good and being able to train without having to think about what to do was pretty nice.

I don’t have any experience with movement or technique coaching and have also been curious as to how helpful that might be.

My plan for the next year or two is to just try and be really consistent with short focused training sessions.

You should check out Adventure Fit Dojo. Zach is a great coach and dad!  He also has a active IG account (@adventurefitdojo) with training videos to check out his style. He has a small gym in Round Hill, but also will do video training. 

Also a parent and a self coached climber. My kids are a bit older now (oldest 15 and youngest 8), so I have been through the baby years trying to get a workout in in the basement during naps and trying to get outside whenever possible. Different busy now that the kids are older and usually still only have time for 2 or 3 sessions per week. I've never gone the coach route, thought about it a few times, so I'll be interested to see what you decide and if you do it, what you get out of it. Hope you respond back eventually with a follow up.

Not to steal your thread, but on another note, based on the replies here and in other training threads, I wonder if there are three or four of us here that have been either self coached and/or people who have done a short stint with one of the coaching platforms that would be interested in forming a group for a winter's training cycle. Ideally people that have been trying different things for at least 3-5 years. Not where everyone does the same thing (though there could be some of that), but more you lay out what you've done for the past years that has/hasn't worked, what you're plan is moving forward based off your history and goals and then the others could give thoughts/feedback. It could be a small e-mail group or something different. Maybe it wouldn't work or no one is interested, but I think it could be kind of cool and could be a chance to learn from each other. If anyone is interested, DM me and we can see if we can piece something together.