Speed and the importance of breathing

Steve Townshend, the fastest 8c+ climber in the world, has always used speed to do hard routes and here he explains the importance of breathing. Adam Ondra, known for his Speed, agrees with Steve and have also given some comments in the end. "Generally fast is better as long as you don't sacrifice efficiency. On some hard moves or sequences I have discovered I need to force myself to slow down. I also have practiced a lot of yoga, where you time your breathing with your movement, and I've learned to apply this same concept to climbing and that really helps. I used to fall off at the crux sometimes but other times I wouldn't and I couldn't figure out why? Until I applied this "breath with movement" idea and discovered that if I was breathing in during the crux I would fall. I needed to take air in just before the hardest moves and then either hold it in during the crux or exhale during the crux. This is why Adam Ondra and Chris Sharma scream (and tennis players and Bruce Lee) during the hard moves: it enhances your power. A hard part about this "rest" or with climbing slowly in general, is letting other thoughts enter your mind. You want to stay in the "zone" and not start to over analyze things. Sometimes if my mind starts to wander I just focus on my breath to keep those thought out. Deep breathes seems to be a key to climbing at your max. Just listen to Adam and you'll see he's figured that out too. I'm making a conscious effort to get better at breathing deeper and louder and times with the moves better when I climb at my max and at "full speed"." We asked Adam Ondra if he could comment Steve's interesting article and climbing style. I definitely try to breath as much as possible, because why do you get pumped (ie. get lactic acid)? Because of lack of oxygen. The more you breath, less lactic acid. What I usually do when I get to the jug or any rest - breath a lot at the beginning of the resting period, then slower to let my heart rate go down and just before going for it breath deeply a few more times again to motivate myself and "wake" myself up. Steve's climbing style is very impressive, but I would guess he could try to find a few half-a-second- or 1 second-shakeouts while climbing the first section of the route up to the rest. He has a very good pace with a generally relaxed body, but there is not even one second when he would shake either of the hands completely. He just keeps going. And that is tiring. Or the route is too long to be climbed in this style. Of course for somebody as fit as Ramonet it is not efficient to climb as fast. For Steve or me it could be the most efficient to climb that fast. But if we decide to train like horses, we could be fitter, our ability to shake out while climbing would better and it would be more efficient to climb slower and find more short rests. Other climbers have this fitness naturally, or due to long-life training, ability to rest almost everywhere (weight-dependent and genetic too). For these climbers, it is probably useless to start climbing faster."