TBP 227: How to Stay Motivated (Almost) All the Time with Alex Stiger
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
Release Date: 03/15/2023
TBP 235 :: How to Get Better at Climbing by Watching World Cups
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
In this episode, I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about what she learns from watching all of the Climbing World Cups and how she uses those videos to teach her clients about their own climbing. You can passively watch any sport you want, but if you’re actually an athlete in that sport, you can turn those viewings into active learning sessions by asking yourself a few questions and being really observant. Here’s what we talked about: Why she chose this topic right now Why it’s important to have heroes in your sport What World Cup climbers can teach you What good climbing actually looks...
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TBP 234: Thomas Cunningham on Biohacking for Climbing Performance
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
Back in April, I published an episode with Thomas Cunningham all about how he trains efficiently as a busy dad and ER physician to be able to send up to 5.14c projects in only 10-15 days outside climbing per year. You can listen to that episode in the link below: In that episode, we started talking about how he uses the Whoop (a wearable bio tracking device), continuous glucose meters, and some other biohacking type stuff, but the interview would’ve been reallllly long if we’d gone into all of it in details. So I asked him to come back for a second interview to talk about all of that....
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TBP 232: A Roadmap and a Checklist for Sending Route Projects Faster
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
In this episode, I sat down with Coach Matt Pincus to talk about his infamous “checklist” that he uses when he’s projecting a route (or a boulder – but usually routes). As a coach, often Matt’s job is less about creating strength training programs and more about using tactics to get people up their projects in an efficient way. He’s found that he’s been having a lot of conversations with clients lately about how to approach their route projects, now that it’s climbing season in a lot of places. This episode is dedicated to helping people approach hard projects (and sometimes...
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TBP 231: Common Sense Energy Systems Training with Alex and Matt
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
In the episode, I sit down with Coaches Matt Pincus and Alex Stiger to discuss how they go about training their clients in the different energy systems. The “energy systems” we’re talking about are power endurance, endurance, strength, and power. Basically, they both feel like these things are extremely confusing to climbers, and they wanted to simplify what those systems require, what it takes to train them well and efficiently, and what workouts they prescribe for each of them. The thing is that it’s not super clear-cut because in climbing, we’re constantly switching from energy...
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TBP 230 :: Alex Stiger on How to Approach the Different Angles of Climbing
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
Steep Climbing Workshop May 2nd, 2023 Coach Alex Stiger is hosting a 2-hour presentation + Q&A on how to train for steep climbing on the wall and off the wall. She’ll be using a series of videos and other resources to describe some climbing drills, strength training tactics, and mindset shifts to help you feel less intimidated and more confident on steeper angles of climbing. Alex will show you all the drills, all the strength exercises, and all the mindset practice you need to unlock steep climbing for yourself. You’ll find out exactly what to incorporate into your training plan and...
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TBP 229: Thomas Cunningham Climbs 14c as an ER Doc and Father of 3
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
A couple weeks ago, Sam Elias texted me and said, "Hey. This ER doctor here in Louisville just sent his first 14c... He's SUPER intelligent and really researched about training, nutrition, and personal optimization. I think y'all should have him on the podcast. He has a lot to offer." Turns out this was his second--not first--14c, which I found out in my interview with him, but everything else Sam said about Thomas was spot on, and I was psyched to reach out to him for an interview. Thomas is a 36-year-old emergency medicine physician and father of 3 children from Louisville, KY who's been...
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TBP 228 :: Majka Burhardt on Being a Pro Climber while Raising Twins
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
In this interview I talk with professional ice and mixed climber, , about her new book, . In it, she describes the transition she went through from being a full-time pro climber to having twins and balancing her life with her two children as a new part of it. The book is a compilation of letters she wrote to her kids through the first 6 years of their lives about the emotional rollercoaster she went on trying to balance it all. Not only is Majka a climber and a mother, she also founded an international non-profit called that works with indigenous cultures to make sure they...
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TBP 227: How to Stay Motivated (Almost) All the Time with Alex Stiger
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
Climbing Fitness Breakthrough Series Before we get started, Coach Alex Stiger is hosting a 4-part series all about how to increase your overall climbing fitness. She will do 4 weekly 90-minute zoom calls starting March 21st all about how to use efficient, quick sessions in the gym to reliably make you feel stronger and have more endurance. The cost is $147 (2-payment option available), and you’ll get all of the recordings of the zoom calls, a group Slack channel where you can ask Alex questions for the month, plus a bonus recorded coaching session with one of the participants. How...
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TBP 226: How Bridget Roell Went from 13a to 14a with Coach Matt Pincus
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
This episode is a bit different in that Coach Matt Pincus is the interviewer/coach and I (Neely) am just in it to introduce Matt and his guest, Bridget Roell. Bridget is a long-time climber who was working her first 5.13b when she first reached out to Matt a few years ago to coach her. Through the training and tactics they employed, she was able to send her first 5.13b's, her first 5.13c’s, and her first 5.14a, which was her long-term goal. In this conversation, they talk about the changes they made in her physical training and her redpointing tactics that helped her the most. They also...
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TBP 225 :: Dr. Tyler Nelson on Unlevel Grips for Finger Injuries and Training
The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
In this episode, Dr. Tyler Nelson talks about a small but very effective change to make in your finger training protocol to help you get stronger and avoid injuries. Last year, Tyler saw over 600 patients with finger injuries, and he believes that using unlevel edges that are bigger than what we’ve been told to use could have, in part, prevented those injuries while still making the climber stronger. This interview was really fascinating to me. I didn’t even know what an unlevel edge could possibly look like, but Tension Climbing has created a board with them and it’s called the...
info_outlineClimbing Fitness Breakthrough Series
Before we get started, Coach Alex Stiger is hosting a 4-part series all about how to increase your overall climbing fitness. She will do 4 weekly 90-minute zoom calls starting March 21st all about how to use efficient, quick sessions in the gym to reliably make you feel stronger and have more endurance.
The cost is $147 (2-payment option available), and you’ll get all of the recordings of the zoom calls, a group Slack channel where you can ask Alex questions for the month, plus a bonus recorded coaching session with one of the participants.
How to Stay Motivated in Your Climbing
In this episode, I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about the ways she stays so motivated in her climbing almost all the time. It’s actually really amazing to me that she’s so psyched so often…
Alex is a firm believer that if we are enjoying what we’re doing, we will make the most progress in whatever we’re doing. AND we’ll have an amazing happiness-building activity for the long haul.
These are some of the questions we pondered in this episode
- Should training be torture??
- Why is that concept so romanticized
- Why do we treat climbing and training like two separate things?
- How did old school mentalities shape how we are approaching our sport today?
- How can we stop believing that doing things we don’t want to do will make us better?
- How did our childhood sports and gym class shape the way we think about climbing and training?
One of Alex’s superpowers is staying psyched 80+ % of the time, and she thinks that partly comes down to her being homeschooled and always being able to choose what she was doing with her time. We talk about how her habits and her great success with horsemanship in her younger years really shaped how she thinks about climbing now.
- She doesn’t do what she doesn’t want to do. She gives herself freedom to choose between structures and that works really well for her.
- She knows exactly what is on her “love to do” and “don’t love to do list” and she checks in regularly because it changes.
- She recognizes that what might affect her climbing and training psych the most is life factors and she takes that really seriously. Her desire to enjoy her sport is a driving force to de-stress, optimize, create space, and in general increase her well being. Stress is a big enemy of motivation!
The Tools She Uses to Help Keep Motivation High
We talk about all of these tools in detail in the interview.
- Other people
- Routine
- Timers
- Measuring progress
- Setting mini goals
- Having a hard session time stop
- Regular “want” weeks
- Fueling for my sessions
- Strategic planning to avoid feeling late or rushed
- Mental check ins (green, yellow, orange, red)
- Acknowledging “druthers” out loud
- Gratitude practice
You’ll find a lot of common sense tactics to make our sport sustainable, but also some surprising little hacks that Alex has come up with to make it fun for herself almost all the time. I loved this talk with Alex 🙂
Show Links
- Enroll in Alex’s Climbing Fitness Breakthrough Series
- Work with Alex as your coach
- Have questions? Email [email protected] or [email protected]