The Gimme Kraft new message

Archon 8b on trad gear

New Orleans Heavy Weight Division 8c

Alexander Megos: "For me it was definetly important not to climb at my limit all the time when I was young. That's exactely what it was. I never climbed at my limit until recently and that was maybe the reason why I could keep my high motivation and never dropped out. A loss of motivation is more likely when you always climb at your limit. If you choose to proceed step by step it's a lot easier to keep fun and motivation alive. That's exactly what I learned from my two trainers."

Here is how Patrick Matros explain the new concept of their training book - Gimme Kraft. For several years he and Ludwig "Dicki" Korb have been the trainer for Alexander Megos. 

Our main goal was, to create a user friendly and easy to understand collection of exercises. We missed that in the recent literature of climbing. There are already many good books on the market, which teach you climbing technique and how to structure your physical and mental training.

The gap was for new and fresh exercises which can be done in completion to a usual boulder or climbing session. "GimmeKraft" means "give me strength", so our focus was on strength training. But that doesn't mean, that we consider strenght training as the main factor in climbing performance. Mental abilities for example are so important. 

We just noticed, that this kind of training should get a more complex approach, especially the part with balanced strength training in order to prevent injuries. This type of training is underestimated by far in climbing training and you see so much young climbers who don't care about. So, the danger of injuries due to overstrain and unbalanced impact rises. Shoulder surgeries among climbers due to a SLAP-Lesion or a damaged rotator cuff rise and not only the "old guard" is affected!  
 
Considering the training of your climbing technique for example, there is another aspect to mention: What can you impart with a book or DVD? Technical training is a very individual thing. You have some standard movements, but every individual climbs different due to its physis and mental attitude. It's very complex! For my opinion a solid technical training is done with a real person and it would be best with a good trainer. Exercises for strength training are much easier to impart with a book or DVD, because the movements are much less complicated, even our complex exercises.

Planning your training or get into a periodization is another aspect, which is very individual. We already have written a book, which enables an easy access to this topic: Wettkampfklettern (Competition climbing). There you will find an easy and practical way to structure a systematic training. Unfortunately it is sold out and we don't know if there's a new edition planned.

There's another problem, too: "<i>We noticed that the average climbers and boulderers, even if they are performance -orientated, don't have the time to plan and structure their training with a time consuming periodization and often they don't have the motivation. We are doing proper periodization in micro and macro cycles with the top climbers at our federal center. There is a need especially when you want to excel in competitions. It is not so important for a rock climber.

The competitions force you to do that because you have to be in top shape exactly to the point. Rock climbing doens't force you to do that so much and long vacations or road trips make it even more difficult. I think rock climbers have a periodisation, too but it is much more flexible and many good climbers without trainers may do this intuitive. 

With athletes like Alexander we drive a middle course because periodization is good to prevent performance barriers at a high level but when you are traveling pretty much you have to be flexible.

Concerning training for climbing and bouldering for the average but still performance-orientated climber we think they should not think so much about perfect periodizied training plans but should focus more on a training done in a healthy, motivated and not too complicated way and exactly that should be the message of our book!"