17 April 2018

Patrick Matros - Lifestyle climbing trainer

Patrick Matros, a professor for sport and educational science and one of of Alex Megos mentors, shares his view on training, in regards Olympics and that the youngsters are at risk. The 44 year old has learnt the hard way and has now a more holistic playful climbing lifestyle approach. Read more and follow him and his counterpart Dicki Korb through, Gimmekraft, Instagram and Facebook. "I started climbing 25 years ago and we all had this strange training approach, copied from other sport disciplines: In winter season we did a lot of pull-ups, front-lever and campus-boarding first phase was more for hypertrophy and after that we went for maximum power. It was normal, that it took minimum one month to get used to rockclimbing again when outdoor season started. Nowadays I am happy to finish this stage injury free and improved with my knowledge of training in climbing. One risk with the Olympics is that we will see climbers training much more intense and structured at early age and this will have a huge impact on kids and youngsters approach to sportclimbing and bouldering. In the last years I recognize more and more that kids are playing less, as the coaches and parents put more pressure on them in early years. Instead they focus way too much on short term and performance oriented goals like gaining strength with intensive bouldering on tiny holds or making too much strength exercises. Often it is all about climb harder and harder as fast as possible. I have a 6 year old daughter and it breaks my heart when I see coaches and parents pushing young kids too much and I am sure we will see more injuries e.g. an increase in epiphyseal (growth plate) injuries. Our approach is different: We have actually had the opposite focus with a more holistic, long time and task oriented approach when it comes to training Alex Megos. The fun to make climbing moves and do the sport is the core! This means that only the intrinsic part of motivation with a playful approach is able to give you the energy for a long (life) time motivation. And which sport fits better to this idea than climbing? You have so much variations and disciplines, you can climb outdoor and indoor and you can travel around the world to fantastic places! Should you sacrifice a lot of that just for saying that your son or daughter or athlete was able to get some good comp results and then got injured or dropped out because of monotonously training regimes? I think competition can be nice and it can enrich a climbing career, but especially with kids and young adults it is not all around focusing just on the next comp result and it should never be! Of course, some kids and youngsters like to compete and have fun doing it and it is okay for them to have performance oriented goals beside the task oriented ones. But as parents or a trainer you should never forget, that climbing is more than that: it is a lifestyle and a great way to learn about life and have adventures in beautiful areas of the planet. So don’t put too much extrinsic pressure on them. And be careful, as this often happens in a very subtle way!"
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