This article is a completely unsolicited review. No one at Power Company asked for my feedback, and frankly, they may not want it. I paid full price for their Custom Training Plan, and there are no imbedded affiliate links in this article.
Training for climbing has many parallels to pursuing financial independence: You can hit the low-hanging fruit and see huge gains early on, but then it’s a game of stacking small short-term gains for long-term growth.
If you’ve been following this site, you know by now that we are very intentional about our spending. After watching from the sidelines for several years, I recently jumped on board a personalized training plan with Power Company Climbing. Here’s what I thought…
Meet Mr. CC, The Climber
I’m not a good climber, but I’m decent at building strength. I muscled my way through the grades for several years until hitting a ceiling just at the cusp of the 5.13 range. For you non-climbers, 5.13 is the grade that most Boulder, CO middle school children use as part of their warm-up circuit. 🙂
I’ve been training for several years, and sure, I’ve certainly seen improvements. But if I wanted to push through this like Jim Carrey through that Rhino ass (remember??), I needed to get back to the basics. I needed to learn how to move.
My Training Past
I’ve been following a roughly periodized training plan since about mid-2014, largely modeled after the highly successful Rock Climber’s Training Manual approach.
You will get damn strong and powerful on the RCTM program. The performance climbing community should feel indebted to the Anderson brothers. If nothing else, today’s omnipresent hangboarding culture is, at least in my mind, 80% attributed to their devotion to small cramped spaces, dehumidifiers, and polyurethane sloping edges. Mark and Mike, we salute you. For more on Mark Anderson, check out last week’s feature post.
All that aside, I felt that I needed to return to the fundamentals. Less focus on getting stronger, powerful, leaner, and more focus on subtle movements, body positioning, and tension.
Power Company (as I know it)
Power Company is largely the brainchild of Kris Hampton. Kris began writing a blog and designing training plans for friends based on self-experimentation. These early training plans grew into a more professional venture in recent years with the introduction of his podcast. Kris has since brought on a few crushers to round out the training team, including Nathan Drolet, Paul Corsaro, and Blake Cash.
I discovered the Power Company podcast a bit over a year or so ago. I was immediately pleased to hear countless discussions on deliberate practice of movement skills and the constant pleas to wage war on one’s movement weaknesses. These conversations were largely missing from the training ethos at the time, and still are today.
Get on that damn sloper problem. You know you hate slopers.
Keep falling in front of the strong youth team and that cute girl.
Find ways to learn how to be a good climber. Fail often.
I listened and applied what I could to my own training. Basically, I just wasn’t quite committed to spend money on a personalized plan.
Mr. CC Spends Money
I sold my truck back in June, which generated a little bit of extra play cash. We’re all about value spending over here, so I discussed with Mrs. CC my desire to try out a personalized training plan and allocate a bit more money towards climbing. She reluctantly agreed, knowing the depths of my obsession all too well.
Suspecting that movement skills were my primary weakness, I reached out directly to Nathan Drolet. Undoubtably the other trainers at Power Company know plenty about movement, but have you seen Nate climb? Smooth as melted Normandy butter. I’ll do you a solid and post a video. You’re welcome!
Interrogating Mr. CC
Nate and I exchanged many emails. He peppered me with thoughtful and insightful questions ranging from how I warm up to how I sleep. Nate reviewed several videos of my climbing. He poured through my short climbing resume, training history, and even partner relationships before landing on the same conclusion:
I move like a sack of bricks (my words, not his).
There was no sales pitch in here anywhere, which didn’t go unnoticed. I practically had to finally ask Nate to train me in exchange for my dollars!
The 12-Week Custom Plan
I signed up for a 12-week remote personalized program to begin in August and end in mid-late October. With funds exchanged and an (incredibly detailed) intake form completed, I downloaded the training app.
Nate graciously offered a handful of drills (gratis) to practice in the intervening month until we agreed my plan would begin, and he was available via a text messaging portal in the app for questions or comments about the plan.
Training Load
My first thoughts after the first phase of my plan hit in August: Nate is here to kick my sorry ass.
My plan specified two climbing-specific training days, two outdoor “performance” days, two strength sessions (weights and the like), and three core sessions per week.
I’m a loving husband married to a non-climber, so this training load demanded a serious commitment of time. Here’s how long it took me to complete a general session:
Climbing-Specific Gym Session: 2.5 – 3 hours
Strength Session: 45 minutes
Core Session: 30 – 45 minutes
Outdoor Session: Variable, but generally 6+ hours
During peak training phases, I was training or climbing more than 20 hours a week, nearly 20% of my waking life! YMMV.
This training volume required careful planning to (1) not burn out, (2) not piss off my boss, and most importantly (3) not piss off Mrs. CC.
Thankfully I have access to a decent gym at work for core and some strength work over my lunch break. I also have a 24-hour pass to my climbing gym for some (very) early morning or après-outdoor sessions, as well as some home equipment to help manage the load. I would have been forced to cut corners if the climbing gym was required to complete every session.
The Meat
My training was split into two 5-week phases with an intermediate de-load week. The first phase was heavily weighted towards strength and power, with a focus on hard bouldering and repeater hangboarding.
All outdoor climbing was on a rope, so I was “simmering” some degree of endurance all along during this phase. The second phase leaned more towards power endurance, but still heavily weighted towards bouldering. I suck at bouldering, if you can’t tell. Nate could tell.
Movement Practice
Sub-maximal movement practice was the primary focus of each climbing-specific session. This is what I was really paying Nate to do for me. I’d seen the Power Company drills on YouTube, but without a clear plan to address my specific weaknesses — which required another set of eyes – I was grasping at straws.
I was that weird guy filming himself in the gym, but with no hope of Insta-fame. A weakness of any remote training plan is the lack of immediate feedback, but the next best thing is video review. Nate’s feedback, however delayed, was still instrumental in getting me to slowly change the habits of my past.
Hell, even watching video myself is immensely useful. I’m still filming much more than I ever did in the past. It’s not at all creepy to have a slightly hidden iPhone perched on kid’s team day. Not at all.
The Feedback
When Nate reviewed my videos, he didn’t just tell me what to do, he asked questions. He made me think about how I was climbing, whether I was improving, or how I felt when shifting weight on that arête. As much as I wanted him to just come out and say it, he wanted me to find my own answers using his questions as a guide.
Devoted coaches and teachers, these guys use methods that force the individual to take ownership of their own progress. I could tell from the questions Nate asked – from those initial emails up until the last text messages on the app – that there is a philosophy here of taking the science on learning and coaching and applying it to the small world of climbing.
Performance
Even with the high training volume, I climbed surprisingly well in August and September. I was far from peak condition and in no way fully rested for any given outdoor session, but I was knocking back low to mid 5.12 routes in 2-3 tries with a surprisingly high degree of regularity. I was even sporting a bit of a Bavarian sausage and beer gut from my summer travels! As I moved into the second phase I started to dig my heels into some harder projects, putting down a 5.12d in record time.
My hope is to enjoy a nice performance boost as I lighten the training load and focus more on fully-rested outdoor climbing for the remainder of 2018. Have I broken through to 5.13 yet? Nope. On Nate’s advice, I’m primarily focused on building a better mid to upper 5.12 base before going big on something more substantial.
Summary
In the end, was it worth it?
The CC Family doesn’t just toss around money, so spending $350 for training is not something we take lightly. You might say that because I’m still a lowly 5.12 climber and have not yet “clipped the chains” (the name of the website yo!) on 5.13 means that the goal was not achieved and the training is therefore for naught.
Nate probably dreaded seeing my pathetic videos — perfecting movement skills doesn’t happen overnight. For instance, getting a good climber stronger can be a relatively quick fix, but making a good climber from an “a’ight” one is a more involved affair. Will I go from being a stiff board with no flow to climbing like him in 12 weeks? No way! But by giving me a solid foundation on which to build, I already feel that my climbing is improving. To fully reap the benefits of my training plan I’ll need to be constantly focused on deliberate practice in the months and years to come.
The Verdict
So yes, I give the Power Company training plan my seal of approval. I’m now beginning to understand what it’s like to try and build something. I admire what Kris has done to take a passion and turn it in to what seems to be a successful business. Plus, any team that can bring in folks like Trevor Ragan or Dan John to discuss the nuances of learning and skill acquisition are doing it right in my book. Gone are the days of just chugging beers and climbing for climbing’s sake. Climbing is now a sport and we are athletes, like it or not.
December 2019 Update: I have broken through the Rhino ass. More on that here: Obsession and Performance Don’t Always Mix.
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