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Optimus Climb Coaching & Training, Sequatchie, TN (2026)

11/23/2022

The feeling when you finally clip the chains on your longest project which is also your hardest route to date.

I’ve lost count of the total attempts, but for someone who used to only want to climb routes and boulders I could finish in a handful of tries at most, sieging one route almost exclusively for two and a half seasons over the course of a year was a big commitment.

I spent all summer training specifically for this route.

I made new high points on the first two sessions of this season, coming heartbreakingly close.

I had to refine my beta in seemingly minuscule ways about a dozen more times from those high points early in the season that left me feeling certain “it could go any try now”.

I almost called it quits for the season twice. Actually said it out loud. Immediately changed my mind of course but I share that just to illustrate there were some frustrating moments.

Today it finally all came together. One last micro adjustment of how I held onto a hold to control the foot cut and I finally got to do the last two moves that remained and clip the anchors on The Big Empty. My first 5.13b, or 8a. Big deal? It was to me.

I love quick sends but this process was more rewarding on a lot of levels. It taught me a lot. I get to pass that knowledge and experience on to everyone I get to work with. I love being able to support athletes achieve their goals at whatever grade is a big deal to them.

Reach out if you’re in need of support with your own process, I’ve got room to take on clients again for 1 on 1 coaching with 8 or 12 week custom training blocks. DM me for info!

04/25/2022

💪 So, part of the shift into dad life has meant a pivot of mindset and priorities. First of all, our nearest outdoor crags are just over 1.5 hours away. Not a bad drive, even for a day trip. Easy to manage consistent outings prior to becoming parents. This is temporary, but the early days of parenthood have proved to be wonderful and full of challenge and less so of energy, so while we have had a few outside days with the family, most of those were short on pitches climbed and high on stress (crying baby on a long drive = grinding teeth and cortisol through the roof 😂). It’s already getting easier though as Wylder is almost 8 months old, sleeping better (in the car and at home) and hitting his developmental milestones left and right.

💪Two side effects of this past 8 months have been that 1) I didn’t really get to pursue consistent effort on hard outdoor climbing all winter or spring, and 2) my training block was on a weird schedule because I knew this would be the case. But I planned for it and made the most of it. I knew sleep and energy would be inconsistent, and that there were a ton of things I couldn’t predict or plan for, so I just planned to do what I could when I could and give myself some grace about my own training, performance, and even this new coaching business. Continued below 👇

04/24/2022

Very excited to get this certification. I think breathing is the missing link of wellness and performance for everyone who isn’t practicing it with purpose and intent. We may breath automatically but most of us don’t do it optimally unless we train to do so. For climbers in particular there is great opportunity to increase performance by practicing Breathwork and using specific patterns and techniques before, during, and after climbing. It can ramp up and ready the body to perform, optimize the use of oxygen heart rate and blood flow during high intensity efforts, and help us recover more quickly after doing hard work and give us the opportunity to have higher quality subsequent efforts. Not to mention recovering optimally on route when there’s a rest or fluctuations of intensity. I’m going to be speaking about this a lot soon. In lots of detail, and including breath work into the coaching and programming I use with all my athletes. Big things coming!

04/06/2022

Long one here but just trying to jump back in to having a social media presence! Even though this isn’t climbing or training specific, I hope it’s helpful to anyone who’s struggled with hesitancy to honestly and transparently share themselves or their process on social media. Especially if sharing those things is important for you in your business, or even just for fun. Becoming a father has left me with a lot less time and energy than I expected, but I could have still been more active here. Mostly, being a perfectionist and wanting to make everything look a certain way has been paralyzing me from sharing useful and helpful content. But I want to share the reality of what being a coach, dad, husband, weekend warrior climber who’s always trying to get better and stay healthy happy and strong is really like. So this is just a post for ME to get over my own self consciousness and get back to sharing what I know and love. And I hope I get the chance to help other people going through their own versions of a similar journey.

04/06/2022

I’m very happy to have been able to participate in and complete the most recent .strong Virtual Performance Climbing Coach Summit. While there is still no official “certification” to be a climbing coach or trainer (though it sounds like that is currently in the works, and I’m also eagerly awaiting the opportunity to acquire that certification ASAP), this was a great way to immerse myself in the community of coaches who are innovating and sharing ways to help us all become better climbers and coaches and absorb lots of valuable information. I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned with everyone I get the opportunity to work with! #

02/26/2022

First of all, long time no see Instagram! I’ve been focusing on fatherhood since my son was born, as well as continuing to work with athletes 1 on 1. Now I’m ready to jump back in and be an active participant of this awesome climbing/training community again!

This video is a run down of the testing I like to perform on myself before any training phase, and what I ask most of my athletes to do before and after every phase to make sure things are improving in the ways we’ve been targeting with our training.

The video goes into much more detail, but generally speaking, as climbers we should always be trying to improve our strength and power, and many of us should also maintain a moderate to high level of endurance (yes even you boulderers 😉).

By performing some tests like max weight hangs, max duration hangs, and max weight pull-ups (to name a few), an athlete can identify if their systems are all in balance, or find if there’s a particular aspect of their fitness that could use some extra focus for a phase (or several).

So no matter what your goals, your style of climbing, your strengths or weaknesses, we should all be performing some tests to check in on our progression at least a few times a year, especially before starting a training phase. Otherwise we might miss the opportunity to target a weakness, or fail to realize how far we’ve progressed!

08/24/2021

RECOVERY
Working Breaks You Down
Resting Builds You Back Stronger

💪When you expose your body to strain, such as climbing or performing resistance training, the muscles being used break down.

💪Your muscles repair themselves (and with certain training stimuli, also grow) when you are resting and recovering from that strain. For those muscles to be rebuilt, you must give them an appropriate amount of rest, as well as the appropriate nutrition. Optimizing your protein intake and hydration are crucial to your recovery.

💪That is a large part of why it is so important that you get 8 hours of sleep every night. Especially as an athlete. And taking that a step further, optimizing your sleep is important so that you get QUALITY sleep. A detailed post on sleep optimization is forthcoming.

💪It is also important that an athlete has an optimal number of rest days, which will vary from athlete to athlete based on what phase of training and performance they are in, and what their goals and schedule look like. You can move your body every day if the volume and intensity is balanced for recovery and performance. One example of this is training strength and climbing one day, and then training low intensity cardio on the “rest” day from climbing. The key is optimizing the intensity so as to still be recovering from the climbing training and to also be able to perform well on the next scheduled day of specified training (or performance).

💪If you go too hard every day, your body will always be in a state of fatigue, some degree of broken down, fighting to recover, but never fully recovered. If this is the case, your performance will be sub optimal, your training will yield less optimal results, and you put yourself at risk of injury and overtraining.
Continued in comments below 👇

08/23/2021

RECOVERY
Working Breaks You Down
Resting Builds You Back Stronger

💪When you expose your body to strain, such as climbing or performing resistance training, the muscles being used break down.

💪Your muscles repair themselves (and with certain training stimuli, also grow) when you are resting and recovering from that strain. For those muscles to be rebuilt, you must give them an appropriate amount of rest, as well as the appropriate nutrition. Optimizing your protein intake and hydration are crucial to your recovery.

💪That is a large part of why it is so important that you get 8 hours of sleep every night. Especially as an athlete. And taking that a step further, optimizing your sleep is important so that you get QUALITY sleep. A detailed post on sleep optimization is forthcoming.

💪It is also important that an athlete has an optimal number of rest days, which will vary from athlete to athlete based on what phase of training and performance they are in, and what their goals and schedule look like. You can move your body every day if the volume and intensity is balanced for recovery and performance. One example of this is training strength and climbing one day, and then training low intensity cardio on the “rest” day from climbing. The key is optimizing the intensity so as to still be recovering from the climbing training and to also be able to perform well on the next scheduled day of specified training (or performance).

💪If you go too hard every day, your body will always be in a state of fatigue, some degree of broken down, fighting to recover, but never fully recovered. If this is the case, your performance will be sub optimal, your training will yield less optimal results, and you put yourself at risk of injury and overtraining.

💪In any of those states, fatigued, overtrained, or injured, you will not be able to fully express your strength or skill, nor will you be developing them further, because you are always digging the hole deeper and never recovering enough to climb out of it.
CONTINUED IN COMMENTS 👇

08/09/2021

This is probably the most foundational component of successful strength training. To get stronger, you have to overload your system that you are trying to stimulate. To make anything stronger, it’s important to expose it to more strain that it is already used to, but only at an appropriate intensity so as to not injure or overtrain yourself.

Progressive overload is a method of exposing your body, specifically the musculoskeletal system and the central nervous system, to specific and strategic amounts of strain. The types of strain are intensity, volume, frequency, and time. You can overload any of them, but some combination of overload will usually yield the best results, and it will be different for each athlete depending on what their current strengths and weaknesses are, as well as their specific goals.

The continual increase in the total workload placed on these systems will stimulate muscle growth (with the appropriate stimulus) and/or strength gains. This improvement in overall performance will in turn allow the athlete to keep increasing the intensity of their training sessions in one or more of the measurable stimuli.

Volume is the total number of repetitions and/or sets. How many times can you lift a weight before failure? How many moves can you do on the system wall before failure? How many laps can you climb of that route? How many seconds can you hang on that edge? If I climbed 30 boulder problems in a one hour density session this week, I’ll try to increase the volume by completing at least 31 problems in the same time next week. And more the following week, until it becomes necessary to increase the INTENSITY (in this case, the difficulty of the boulders I’m climbing) and lower the volume back down and start the process again. Instagram… your caption limit just doesn’t cut it sometimes… 🤦‍♂️ continued in comments 👇👇

08/07/2021

We’ve examined who needs strength training and why, now let’s talk about HOW.

Strength is an aspect of athleticism that is slow to gain, but fortunately it’s slow to lose as well. Once you teach your body to handle strain, it stays ready for that strain until it hasn’t had to endure it for a long time (this varies for each athlete, but missing a week of training won’t make anyone “lose their gains”). Not in any meaningful way at least. It takes a long absence from training or performing to have significant drops in strength.

For that reason, while some aspect of strength training should always be part of your training if you are an athlete of any kind, it doesn’t need to make up a majority of your training.

For climbing specifically, which is a skill sport, the strength training is supplemental. Actual climbing develops strength AND skill.

But it is also beneficial to spend some amount of time doing specific strength development off the wall.

The amount will vary for each athlete, but a series of tests can identify where you may have a deficiency or imbalance, and that should become your focus. It is the low hanging fruit and a wonderful opportunity to make a noticeable improvement in your performance.

If you have a high work capacity and skill, but your finger strength or pulling strength are your limiting factors, you could devote a larger percentage of your training time to developing those. Perhaps two days a week for a block or two of training.

To gain strength, it is important to have a structured plan using measurable progressive overload at the appropriate intensity. Every workout, some aspect should be overloaded. More reps, more weight, more time under tension, more routes or boulders. What and how you choose to overload depends on the response you hope to elicit from the training. But generally speaking, to force your body to react by getting stronger, you must consistently put it under incrementally higher amounts of strain. (Continued in comments 👇)

07/22/2021

Strength: Who Needs It?

Everyone!

Strength is fundamental for athleticism. It’s also the foundation upon which you build power AND endurance.

Power is strength with velocity (speed), so no matter how fast or dynamic you learn to move, you’re only able to move with that speed at the limit of your strength.

Endurance is work capacity… such as how many moves you can do or how many reps you can lift before exhaustion. When you get stronger, every move or rep becomes easier, so you are able to do more of them at your previous ability level without fatigue.

Impossible moves become possible (but difficult), difficult moves become moderate and moderate moves become easy. You level everything up when you get stronger.

Power and endurance both deserve specific and dedicated training, but strength should always be the foundation upon which they are built. Get stronger and you’ll have more potential power and more capacity for moves at the intensity that were once difficult.

Check back for the next few posts. I’m going to go into detail about how to know how to gain strength, how much YOU need to prioritize strength training (hint: it’s different for every athlete), and when in your training cycles to include it for OPTIMIZED results.

07/06/2021

Endurance is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time as well as its ability to resist & recover from fatigue.

The type of climbing you want to do will determine how long you need to be able to endure, and what your training should look like to achieve that capacity.

There are lots of pieces in this puzzle, especially in climbing specific terms:

STRENGTH - POWER - SKILL - AEROBIC CAPACITY

Increasing your strength and power are two important and often overlooked facets of endurance, but consider this: if you are stronger, you use less of your energy move by move, and therefore can do more moves before getting too pumped. Makes sense, right?

That's part of why we train strength & power: those are your first 2 gears, and they should be improved and optimized.

Climbing more easy moves, or being able to do more light reps of an exercise will only fill in part of the puzzle… it’s just as important to be able to do HARDER moves. Overloading the INTENSITY of your climbing and resistance training is a crucial aspect of training. Don’t forget this and only overload VOLUME. When it comes to training, more is not always better. Appropriate volume and intensity must be balanced to elicit your desired results.

Gears 3-5, used for climbing short routes, long routes, and climbing all day, should also be trained appropriately by any athlete who wishes to climb long routes and/or all day. That’s the 2-10 minute zone, the 10-60 minute zone, and the 60+ minute zone.

CONTINUED BELOW👇

Optimus Climb Coaching & Training

11/23/2022

04/25/2022

04/24/2022

04/06/2022

04/06/2022

02/26/2022

08/24/2021

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08/09/2021

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