Ingo Filzwieser explains the Japanese boulder domination

Ingo Filzwieser has been an Austria Bouldering Coach the last seven years. He finished with a training camp in Tokyo last December which made great impressions. On the picture from Mumbai last year, Ingo is standing next to Jakob Schubert, one of the few Europeans that could challenge the Japanese boulderes last year. In the WC 2017, there were five male Japaneses among the Top-8. - There are some 200 boulder gyms in Tokyo and they run them with 12 levels of difficulty including some much harder than in Austria. The gyms have more different types of holds and volumes, even European ones, that I see in Austria. Rei Sugimoto (#6 in the WC 2017) was working on one where he could not do the single moves, then three local guys come along topping out. I think the Japanese domination will continue. You have so many dedicated guys that see bouldering as a way to get away from their hard working life and enjoy a bit of travelling and competing at the top level. Many seems to train eight hours straight like 5 days a week. They start by stretching for two hours, followed by doing hard boulders for two hours, which they later repeat once. It is hard for us to understand how they can continue this regime and still seem to be like children just playing around. I guess you can only understand their success if you fully understand their culture with team thinking, humbleness at the same time they are very goal oriented, hard working and pleased. Often they have coaches filming their tries or simulation of a competition which they later analyse together. My motto is that you can not train like the last winner... you have to train like the next winner. (We will follow up with Ingo's thoughts on this.)