Alex Honnold Breaks Down His 5.15 Training Routine

how do you structure your training knowing that if if you're specifically focusing on uh finger strength as well in your training what does that look like part of the problem for me is that I climb full-time and so you know anytime you do a training program it's generally focused around the training so you basically rest for your training days and and if you're trying to train finger strength you basically should be rested for your fingers during sessions so you basically should be prioritizing your whole life to revolve around hangboard sessions which for me is just not it's just not acceptable basically you know like I'm willing to hang board I'm willing to work hard as a climber I'm willing to do all the training but it's like realistically I want to climb more than I want a hangboard like as you said I worked with the lattice guys a couple years ago and I found that incredibly helpful while I was doing the free solo film tour because I didn't have access to actual rock climbing for six months and so it was really helpful for me psychologically to have sort of a spreadsheet a training basically like to be on a program to have some reason to get out of bed every day like I'm actually working towards something right now I've sort of adapted the the lattice type of program you know basically I'm climbing outside three or four days a week I'm climbing inside once a week mostly just a moon board like to do some like limit bouldering I'm doing a bunch of supplemental stuff at the house uh so like some hangboarding some one-on pull-up stuff and then a bunch of just you know core uh like you know leg lifts front levers uh planks things like that basically all the like supplemental things like stretching you know and then on the days that you're climbing outside are you also like are you doing two a days are you climbing outside and then coming back and and six hours later doing loading the Fingers um I mean occasionally like I'll skip my last pitch of the day at the Crag let's say I'll skip that the random pitch that you would do is like the endurance burn or like the extra thing and I'll save that energy and go home and do a bit of a hanging session or do a bunch of you know pull-ups and Legos and things like that which and I know that this isn't like an optimal way to train but it's a nice way to live you know it's like I'm still getting my climbing I feel like I'm improving it's a nice like it's working well for me I don't know it's kind of of like the long term I think I mean we'll see but um and I've kind of gotten into this because I'm looking at fatherhood now and I'm kind of looking at uh not traveling quite as much for the next many months basically and so it makes sense to sort of Take the Long gradual approach to like steady gains you know where like each three or four week cycle I just improve a little bit and I'm like you know over the course of many months like it is starting to work for me you've at least alluded to a desire to climb 15a is that the focus of training up right now like is that is that the goal yeah I mean that's kind of the obvious like in my life I would love to climb 515 and I kind of feel like as a professional climber I feel like almost a slight obligation to climb 5 15 at some point you know I wouldn't say it's a Concrete goal because there's no set route and there's no time frame for it and there's no um there's nothing obvious I mean there are a handful of 515s around my home in Las Vegas the problem though is that a couple of them if I did them they wouldn't be 515 because uh because I'm using e-bars basically it's just like I'm doing the style a little bit differently and then the other establishment is like jumbo love which is 15b which I haven't tried but it does seem like a bit of a jump you know it seems a little daunting this thing looks gnarly yeah yeah yeah it like it seems impossible uh but you know maybe something else you go try there's something relatable that you don't have admittedly you know superhuman tendon strength you know maybe the things that like Sharma or Tommy or whatever we're kind of like they just like have been able to pull hard no I would say Tommy is actually much the same as me though he started climbing earlier and started training hard sooner but um but I actually think Tommy is more of a is not like a physical specimen the way some people are Chris Sharma I think is a good example of just physically gifted I mean you say the way he climbs and he dangles from Holes and you're like what him as a teenager climbing necessary evil with horrendous beta like campusing the Crux type of stuff I mean and that's a root known for tiny tiny holes and uh and I still can't climb it you know it's like uh I just like geez you know he climbed that after a year and a half and he was a kid with terrible technique terrible footwork and he could just claw his way up that wall and it was like that is a gift but how I think how cool for the rest of us Mortals out here to know like it is a long game finger strength and and the skills that that are required for I mean it's a three-legged stool and so there's tactics and or technique rather and uh the mental side of course in the physical side but Tommy shows that you don't have to be born with Chris sharma's tendons um you know you can just you can just be a friggin Monster uh at training and and get what I mean so honestly not even a monster you can just stick with it for a long time because I mean so many things in climbing like a stronger tendons and ligaments you know connective tissue takes a very long time to adapt to stimulus like if you can consistently grind away at something uh and avoid injury and basically maintain like a relatively healthy lifestyle like you will see long-term gains and it's just you know slow and steady progress like one way to look at it is that if you can improve by one grade A year which doesn't really feel like that much if you're training consistently you know within decade you're climbing the hardest route in the world like that's that's something you know it's like it just long slow steady progress yeah that's something to get psyched about now that you just said that like I think that's like that's pretty rad I'll be climbing into the 14s in a uh in five or six years so yeah that's great isn't that kind of wild that is really wild to think about um and and I do love that about climbing because you you can find so much efficiency in um proper technique as well so that even as you in your 50s you know your your top end power might start to decline you can make up for that and there's plenty of uh people in their 50s and 60s who are who are crushing into the you know 14 so I mean right now I'm climbing with a 61 year old who's who still could climb 514 he hasn't technically sent it any recently but basically he's like a 514 climber he has much stronger fingers than me objectively like he hangs with crazy amounts of weight I'm sort of like slightly embarrassing when you're like oh I'm getting burned off by the 61 year old but you know that's Bill Ramsey he's a he's an incredible economy so obviously you're training up your weaknesses a lot focusing on finger strength and some of these sport Roots out at Vegas but then like when you were preparing to solo the Free Rider I had read that you really shifted away from that and just started focusing on uniquely what you were good at with regard to that route and in that big wall and so like where does that line get drawn or how do you look at that concept you know it's not a unique idea that that if you want to improve you work on your weaknesses if you want to perform you play to your strengths you know it's like so I spend most of the year working on my weaknesses you know like training fingers doing all those things but every once in a while you want to go out and do something rad and those are the times where you should cater to the things that you're just uniquely good at or you know the things that you're best at yeah that's great man I think that's really valuable advice for for again us Weekend Warriors where um we spent a lot of time training a lot of time at the gym or a lot of time you know just at the home little Woody um but when we want to perform we want to get into that send season and push our grade we should be looking at Roots yeah yeah like if it's like you're a good endurance climber like go climb the really long endurance route you know because I think it's easy to get sucked into like what you've been training and all that but it's like realistically do the thing that you're good at doing and do the thing that you like doing you know it's like if you like big trap routes go work on a travel route you know it's like you can spend most of the Year forcing yourself to Boulder or train or hang board or do all those things to improve but but long term it's like what do you want to do and what do you enjoy doing yeah I love that thank you I I think that's that's really good advice um I just gave you permission to go back to Joshua Tree and do some track coming I can leave the red yeah that's kind of that's I think one of the interesting things in climbing is that something that is was a weakness you know when you work on it long enough eventually you start to see it become like if not a strength then at least something that you're totally comfortable with and and feels pretty good and I'm actually seeing that on on some of things like I've lived in Las Vegas long enough now and I've been climbing on overhanging pockets all the time and overhanging Pockets used to be everything I was worse at in the world like open-handed Pockets that was just like I just couldn't couldn't really do it and now I wouldn't necessarily say it's a strength but but it's getting close like it might actually be a string soon where I'm like you know I feel pretty good at this and like it's you know it's just like slowly changing [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The Struggle Climbing Show

Views: 142,659

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Id: vfs4ptSyrNE

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023