TBP 007 :: Steve Bechtel on Training, Power Endurance, Running, Weight Loss, and More

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I was honored and excited to interview the great Steve Bechtel, a long-time climber and trainer who knows his stuff when it comes to getting strong, honing in on individual training needs, and staying lean, among many other things. Steve runs ClimbStrong.com, a website where he writes articles and training programs for climbers. You can subscribe to the site to get full access to all of his info. He also runs a gym in Lander, WY called Elemental Fitness, where he works with climbers and athletes of all kinds.

I've been following Steve's stuff for a while, and I post his articles on our own Facebook page because I consider him an expert in a field that has very few experts (climbing training). But I wanted to interview him partially for selfish reasons - I'll be honest ;) We took a few minutes of the interview to use me as sort of a guinea pig. I asked him what he'd do with me right now while I'm trying to send a powerful, pretty short route at my limit. He gave me some great advice.

I also asked him as many other technical questions as I could, and tried to make those questions applicable to as many people as possible, so you can take some usable advice from this conversation. After all, that's the mission of TrainingBeta: practical training advice. Steve has worked with a lot of climbers through the years, so he doesn't have any problems rattling off big scientific words and answers to all of our common climbing training questions. Hopefully we'll talk again on the show soon!

What We Talked About

• How and why he learned so much about training
• How he approaches new training clients
• How to train power endurance and overall fitness
• What he'd do with me as a client to help me send my current project
• Whether or not running is good for climbing
• How to lose weight for climbing
• That our conversation was really awesome and we want to do it again soon

Related Links

• Steve's website is Climb Strong at www.climbstrong.com
• Climb Strong on Facebook: www.facebook.com/climbstrong
• Steve's gym in Lander is Elemental Performance and Fitness at http://lmntl.net
• Steve's book (on Amazon) about training power endurance: LINK

Support The Podcast

• This podcast is made possible by the training programs on TrainingBeta here. Check 'em out if you need some help sending!
• If you'd like to sponsor the podcast, just email us at info@trainingbeta.com.

Listen on iTunes

• Link to the TrainingBeta Podcast on iTunes is HERE.
• Please give the podcast an honest review on iTunes here to help the show reach more curious climbers around the world ;)

Music

Intro and outro song: Yesterday by Build Buildings 

Photo

Portrait of Steve Bechtel by Mei Ratz

 

Thanks for listening!