Training Concepts: The Taps Edition

The Enormocast, the original climbing podcast hosted by Chris Kalous, occasionally features an episode called “Taps” which, as you might guess, is all about the sundown of climbing trends. Here, I suggest the Taps Edition of training concepts which should be abandoned forthwith.

The idea for this issue of the blog came from this podcast which features the words “intuitive,” “holistic,” and “balanced” so many times that one begins to think holistic, intuitive and balanced training is a new religion. Speaking of religion, I am reminded of one of the many critiques of George W. Bush that surfaced during and after his presidency, and that was the number of times GW referred to God in his speeches. Anyone who is not a believer becomes uncomfortable when listening to the devout – be it to the religion of training or Christianity – engaging in over-use of certain words and concepts.

• Holistic: Due to overuse, this term should be retired from everyone’s vocabulary. It is meaningless jargon and simply informs the reader/listener that you have not had an original thought in decades.
• Intuitive: See “holistic” above. Another meaningless term. Intuition is all things to all people from “I think I’ll lie on the couch, binge watch Game of Thrones and eat Tim Tams all day” to “I’m really good at running, ergo I’ll go for a run.” Should be replaced with consistency, reasonableness and occasional over-reach.
• One Rep Max: Unless you are a power-lifter or olympic lifter and competing on an actual platform in front of an real life judge and audience, you have no method of determining your one rep max and no business trying. This concept becomes especially ludicrous when trainers prescribe such things as a total of 24 reps at 90% of your one rep max (happened in podcast linked above). If 100 pounds is your one rep max in what universe is that same person lifting 90 pounds 24 times in a row?
• Any talk of acidic versus alkalinic internal biologic environments. This is firmly the land of pseudoscience. The human body is driven to homeostasis, whether that be blood sugar levels or pH balance. Simply put, any condition which results in a disturbed acid-base balance over time is associated with death.
• Balanced training: see points 1 and 2 above. A healthy and functional human being should not require nine hours of sleep every single day in a dark room of a certain temperature with zero ambient noise, nor the exact balance of nutrients, special salt water drinks in the morning accompanied by clover leaf teas in the afternoon, or pockets full of EMF Grounding Rocks. We should all be resilient enough to go balls to the wall sometimes after a bad nights sleep and dinner of pizza and beers.

Here is the week in review: seven days mobility work, three days strength, three days core training, two days on the climbing wall, one day actually climbing – yay, 42 kilometres and 1300 metres gain on foot, and a sad 14 kilometres of paddling with an extra day rolling the kayak.