My team has practice every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. As much time as that may sound like, after everything else is stripped away, there isn’t much time for true training. If you take out “orientation”, or the talk at the beginning of each practice, that’s 45 minutes less for climbing and training per week. The last 15 minutes on Mondays and Fridays are left aside for stretching- which takes out another half and hour. That leaves under 5 hours each week and an average of only 1.5 hours each practice for the coaches' exercises.

The coaches spend hours planning out each practice and placing them in our training pyramid. Each type of training, whether that be strength, endurance, power, technique, or power-endurance is important to every climber. If you miss too much of one training type, then your pyramid is weakened. Missing even one practice affects more than you would think. Climbing is a blend of several styles, some fitting one body type and others fitting a different group of people. A climber that is incredibly strong on open-handed, "slopey" route that can't hold any sort of crimp, is not that strong of a climber. Unlike many sports, climbing requires all-around strength. In soccer, football, basketball, and baseball, players are specialized and split throughout their team. As a climber, you have no one to depend on while you're on the wall except yourself.

One of my favorite climbing books gives extremely helpful advice on the dilemma of "try-hard".Giving our 98% doesn't produce 98% results... That two percent less effort gives 50% fewer results. Anybody can give almost all they have- what sets us apart are the ones willing to give everything. No matter how bad you feel that day, how badly you want to stay at home and rest, it doesn't compare to how bad you will feel when you're at a competition knowing you could have trained harder and climbed better.

Being an athlete as a child or young adult gives you a first-person experience of the failures you will face in life. It teaches you that you can decide your own fate. As much as I hate to say it, my mom's favorite saying about bad choices is completely accurate. Every choice you make, even the small ones, will influence you later in life. Deciding to skip one practice, or give up on a particularly difficult workout builds up and does effect you in the long run.