Don't Stop Training When You Go Climbing

Most climbers think training and climbing are two separate things. They're not.

A little backstory. With each Sequence subscription cancellation, we send a follow-up email asking them why they're cancelling. A pattern I've seen over the last few years is responses like this:

• "I'm going on a climbing trip. I will restart when I return."
• "Taking the next month off to travel and climb in Europe. I'll pick things up again when I'm home."
• "I'm spending the season projecting outdoors. I'll resume structured training once the weather craps out."
• "Heading overseas for a climbing trip through Southeast Asia. Expect me back on the app in about six weeks."

Maybe this is just a polite way of saying they don't like Sequence and that's cool. But I hear the exact same thing at the crag, and I think it's a completely backwards way of thinking, especially if you want to improve as a climber and get to the top of your projects.

The irony is real. "I'm going climbing, so I'll pause my training" essentially means the thing you're training for isn't part of the training.

But logging outdoor sessions, tracking project attempts, noting conditions, reflecting on what worked is the most valuable data you'll ever capture. A climbing trip isn't a break from training. It is the training. It's the only time you get to practice the actual thing you're supposedly training for.

Forget Sequence for a second. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you actually reflected on a climbing session? Do you know why you fell off your project? Do you remember what beta worked and what didn't? If you can't answer that, you're not training. You're just climbing.