PCC Fort Collins 2019 (77 of 121) (1)

Our seminars feature both hands-on programs and lectures. You can expect to learn about all facets of climbing coaching, both for groups and individuals.

The 2019/2020 curriculum includes:

  • Program Design – Steve Bechtel – Good programming is the foundation of successful training. This lecture will cover planning everything from a single training session up to sketching out one to four year programs. We’ll cover the pros and cons of various structures of programs and how to integrate successful climbing with a demanding training plan.
  • Endurance – Steve Bechtel – More than any other facet of climbing training, endurance training is confusing. Is it better to just boulder and ignore endurance? Climb at a super-low intensity all the time? Get ridiculously pumped at the end of each session? Developing endurance is hard, but the principles are relatively simple. This course will cover the fundamentals of how energy is provided to the muscles, how we can best improve energy availability and use, and how training endurance can mesh with all the other training we seem to need.
  • Performance Pie: A Tool To Assess A Climber’s Mindset – Christina Heilman – Dr. Heilman will help the coaches build a simple assessment tool to use on themselves and their athletes to see where their mindset is limiting them. Long before we reach our physical limits, there are limits to overcome in our minds. Learning what these are and the basic steps to addressing them is an important part of coaching both groups and individuals. Dr. Heilman will discuss performance anxiety, effective goal-setting, and athlete motivation.
  • Nutrition for Performance – Neely Quinn – In this talk, Neely will cover the nuts and bolts of successful nutrition planning. She’ll cover optimizing caloric intake, ideal protein levels, meal timing, and planning eating at the crag and at home. She will cover the most common nutrition questions she gets from climbers and interventions for climbers with problematic eating habits.
  • Program Design & Four-Month Planning Scenarios – This hands-on work session is designed to help participants plan and build a successful 8-16 week training program for themselves, their athletes, or their team. With guidance from the presenters and other coaches, each person will have the opportunity to discuss desired outcomes, facility options, and potential major issues with the plan. As the weekend progresses, we’ll revisit the plans and adjust them as needed.
  • Growth Mindset – Kris Hampton – How an athlete approaches a problem can mean the difference between success and failure. Drawing from years of coaching athletes and observing learning behaviors, Kris will discuss re-framing mindset, how to create meaningful dialogue, and how to apply a more functional mindset to training and performance.
  • Success vs. Mastery – Kris Hampton – In today’s training for climbing world, we are fascinated by what we can and should measure, how to measure it, sets, reps, concentric vs. eccentric vs. isometric, and linear vs. undulating vs. nonlinear periodization. All of these things are important, but first and foremost, climbing is still a movement skill sport practiced by humans. As such, there are a few key areas that are difficult, if not impossible, to measure.  We’ll be looking at two areas that can encompass several of those “unmeasurables”, Deliberate Practice and Mindset.
  • Methods of Practice – Kris Hampton – This hands-on section will cover basic movement practice all the way up to advanced techniques and how to structure practicing movement. He’ll cover useful on-the-wall warm-ups and how these can optimize the training that follows.
  • Athlete Testing – Tyler Nelson – How can you tell if your training is really working? What metrics, besides climbing harder grades, can you use to assess your athletes. Tyler will dive deep into the research and will provide science-based testing and assessment tools for coaches that can be applied to teams and individuals to track progress right away. He’ll discuss today’s most valuable and applicable testing tools, and will detail the best way to gauge strength, endurance, and power in your athletes.
  • Fundamentals of Strength – Charlie Manganiello – It’s understood that strength is the master quality. Strength is displayed through hard moves, powerful ones, and over time when asked to hold on for a long time. How do we train it and how often? This session has it covered.
  • Power – Charlie Manganiello – In climbing, power can be defined by any explosive or dynamic moves. This is usually found at crux sequences. It’s the snappiness we feel on the wall or out at the crag. It’s the feeling of almost floating through hard moves. It’s also the feeling like we could do it all day long for multiple attempts on a project. The very foundation of power is force production.
  • Athlete Management & Compliance – Steve Bechtel – Building great training plans and knowing how to teach skills can only take a coach so far. Learning to work with athletes on how to change habits, track progress, and manage their lives is another thing entirely. On top of that, effectively run a coaching business means learning what you are worth and how to get paid for your expertise. In this lecture, we’ll explore the back-end of the coaching game.
  • Coaching & Cueing – Alex Bridgewater – This hands-on practice is aimed at helping coaches learn effective coaching methods for athletes on the wall. How much coaching should we do? How should we talk to our athletes after they step off the wall? Coaches will learn about talking to their athletes as well as useful self-assessment tools for bouldering and training.
  • Advanced Training Methods – Tyler Nelson – Once you know how and when to test your athletes, there is more to getting better than climbing more. Dr. Nelson will cover the latest in training research and will touch on ways that coaches can apply the latest science has to offer to their climbers. Tyler will discuss adapting training to limited resources, training while traveling, and the latest tools that should be in your arsenal.
  • Mobility for Climbing – Mercedes Pollmeier – This session will cover specific exercises for climbers and setters to increase strength and flexibility for improved climbing movement and physical longevity.
  • Quality of Movement – Mercedes Pollmeier – Using on and off the wall drills, you will learn how to change and integrate different qualities of your movement. Taking ideas from martial arts and dance to adopt different mindsets on how to use tension in the system, how to discharge tension and how to move more gracefully.
  • Hands-On Athlete Scenarios – This group discussion is built around giving real-world coaching and planning scenarios to the group and helping them build plans for addressing the problems and goals of real-life athletes.

The 2018 curriculum includes:

  • Fundamentals of Physiology
  • Cultivating the Growth Mindset
  • Session Design
  • Movement Prep, Warming Up, Mobility
  • Methods of Practice / Coaching Movement
  • Athlete Management and Compliance
  • Progressing and Regressing Exercises
  • Testing Athletes
  • Program Design
  • Fundamentals of Strength Training
  • Purposeful Nutrition
  • Performance Nutrition
  • Weight Loss
  • Bouldering Coaching and Cueing
  • Hands-on Program Design and Session Planning
  • Coaching Scenarios and Group Discussion

Although this course is designed for coaches, about half of our attendees are simply climbers looking to better understand training programming.

This 2.5-day course will feature both lectures and hands-on practice.  Tuition for the seminars is listed on the events page. For more information, just send an email.