Versante Sud Up Climbing #21 - training

The concept of training is as ancient as sports itself: in ancient Greece, there are countless examples of athletes dedicating time to specific preparation in their discipline, in gyms or outdoors. But even in the art of climbing, since the early 1900s, detailed and documented methods to improve performance on rock and, more broadly, in the mountains, have been well known: from Paul Preuss, attentive to psychological aspects, to Eugenio Fasana, who trained with weights at Forza e Coraggio in Milan, to Emilio Comici's specific gymnastic exercises in the thirties, the common thread of preparation for vertical movement has never been lacking, and it is also quite easy to identify and follow.

In the sixties, in the USA, John Gill surpassed everyone in this regard, developing an almost scientific calisthenic training, with many exercises imported from artistic gymnastics, and achieved extraordinary results in bouldering. The advent of sport climbing on cliffs then gave a strong boost to endurance training, both on the bar first and then on the beam, with endless pull-ups and suspensions with natural or weighted load. "The whole world does a pull-up," the French used to say in the eighties. Some were able to do it on their little finger with their arm outstretched. How useful this was in relation to the grade is another matter...

Today there is a strong need for clarity and order in a very delicate field, not only for inexperienced beginners but also for more advanced athletes and competitors, without forgetting the training of young people. Hence, a issue of UP CLIMBING entirely dedicated to the debate on climbing training, with many different opinions, proposals, methodologies, experiments, and suggestions, sometimes opposing but always very well motivated. For this issue, we have called upon some of the best Italian experts, from Alessandro Lamberti to Andrea Gennari, Tito Pozzoli, Roberto Bagnoli, Sergio Cocco, Fabio Palma, Eloisa Limonta, and Vincenzo De Luca, to name just a few, as well as several important figures in the international scene, from Eva Lopez to Arno Ilgner, Tom Randall, Ned Feehally, accompanied by the authoritative opinions of top-level climbers like Stefano Ghisolfi and Alexander Megos, not forgetting a section on mountaineering with Sean Villanueva.

A magazine issue that aims to be a small but useful contribution for those who want to delve non-superficially into the latest ideas and methodologies related to climbing training.

A specific focus is then dedicated to training injuries, with a dense and punctual intervention by Mirella De Ruvo. As always, an enjoyable generalist part will take us around cliffs, routes, and reflections on the world of climbing, just to remind us that, as Patrick Edlinger already argued towards the end of the fabulous eighties, the essential thing is still "to climb."