David Rowland

When the first Philadelphia Rock Gym opened in February of 1994, it was not only the first climbing gym in the Philadelphia metropolitan area but one of the first in Read More

What is a Roof in Climbing? A roof in climbing is a severely overhanging face. There is no hard and fast rule, but a steep face typically becomes a roof Read More

What are Repetitive Stress Injuries Along with overtraining, repetitive stress injuries (RSI) are the most common cause of performance declines during training. In fact, repetitive stress injuries are frequently an Read More

What is Over-Training? Perhaps the single most common risk to athletes during the season is overtraining. In this article, we’ll examine its causes and effects in detail and discuss how Read More

The Warm Down: Neglected But Needed The warm down is the least appreciated (and least used) element in a workout. Coaches and climbers alike frequently neglect it. This is unfortunate. Read More

4 Workout Rules How do you build sets to target the goals you want to achieve in your climbing workout? We start with the simplest sets first and then we’ll move Read More

Why Warm-Ups? The foundation of a good workout starts with a good warm-up. This is a principle that we have all likely heard in various forms, dozens or hundreds of times Read More

The Big Four Let’s learn about the four most important grades every climber should know. It is important to note that these “grades” are specific to the individual climber, not Read More

Fitness Goals Explained The motivation for our training model came from years of watching climbers on both routes and boulder problems. We examined in detail the different types of “fitness” Read More