Performance Rock Climbing

Although it has been written 15 years ago it's anything but antiquated (apart from the cover maybe). Easy to read and very descriptive. I read it first when I started climbing 13 years ago and it has accompanied me ever since.

I bought this book about five years ago and have used it extensively. If you are looking for a book on how to climb, this is not the book. If, however, you are looking for a book that will maximize your physical performance and prevent injury, this is the book for you. Packed with hundreds of pages of insightful text, detailed photos and illustrations, and illuminating charts and tables, this book takes twenty-first century sports medicine and science and condenses it into a practical format for the modern climber. I highly recommend this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the blend of pure science and application to on rock performance.

The authors are world renowned climbers with a clear enthusiasm for the sport and lucid understanding of it's foundations.

Succinctly, the authors view performance climbing as a harmonious blend of physical and psychological factors, the former subdivided into co-ordination ( technique ),balance, endurance, strength and flexibility.

The book is premised on the concept of the weak link which determines the greatest hinderance to climbing.

For example a body builder who climbs should not work on strength but rather flexibility and technique.
Similarly, a ballerina should not work on balance and flexibility but rather strength and technique.

The key to pushing the grades is to identify your weakest link and train to improve it.

The book is replete with training regimens, exercises, and techniques which address each area stated above.

The single best strategy implicit in the book is to identify when you reach a plateau and to realize that you are now training incorrectly. You should now strive to identify what is now your weakest link and train it. This cycle should continue as long as climb and wish to improve.

A four grade improvement is possible and should be expected within 3 months of adapting your current climbing strategy to this book.

This book will not tell you how to hold onto a tiny crimpy hold with one finger while your feet hunt for somewhere to stand. It WILL tell you lots of things about how muscules work, what good training looks like, and what good climbing feels like.

This is not a recipe book, because in climbing, there is no recipe. Everyone climbs under a different set of constraints - strength, weight, skill, etc. This is a book that will give you the tools you need to watch your own climbing and improve it. Read it cover to cover.

Imagine a pursuit that requires bloody fingers to excel at, a life or death commitment to succed in almost any areas of, and then take a look at this book. The cover alone conjures up teen romace rags, the horrendous pink and orange looks like some bizzare lesbian cookbook recipe collection. Don't let the cover deceive you about the content of this book. I've invested a lot of time and energy in texts that only added one more Everest story to my knowledge. NOT SO THIS BOOK. Concepts in this Performance Rock Climbing have been endorsed and used by most major climber you've read about. The back cover features an endorsement from a certain Mark Twight, and if you need any more information than that to take advantage of this book's massive potential for improvement, I suggest trading in your rack of gear for a bigger TV-you'll be more comfortable during your muscle decay, and that's one less person kicking down rocks on my head while answering a celphone halfway through a climb.

To reiterate, this book is one of about five key texts that can supercharge your rate of growth if you'll invest the time to read it. Also get Heather Sagar's book, and Eric Horst, and any John Long from the How To Rock Climb series. And leave the celphone in the car next time, SUV guy.