How to Train with Greater Intention, Recover Better, and Keep Climbing Hard into Your 40s, 50s, and Beyond.
One of the interesting things about getting older as an athlete is realizing how much time and energy you wasted when you were younger.
I certainly did.
In my twenties and thirties, I could train for hours, pile climbing on top of strength work, throw in some running, sleep less than I should, and somehow come back for more. A young body gives you a remarkable margin for error. Eventually, that margin begins to shrink.
Last year I recorded a podcast with Dr. Thomas Cunningham—a physician, functional medicine practitioner, longtime climber, husband and father who still climbs 5.14—to talk about what we've both learned from decades of climbing and training. The overriding lesson was simple: the older and more experienced you become, the more intentional your training needs to be.
Thomas described one of the biggest changes in his training as becoming much more deliberate about where he spends his time and energy. When we're young, he pointed out, we can often get away with plenty of “garbage mileage.” We go to the gym, climb whatever everyone else is climbing, mix bouldering with routes, hang around for hours, and call the entire thing training. That can certainly be fun, but it's not necessarily effective.
As Thomas put it, “Putting in time or volume that's not going to get me my end goal or my end enjoyment piece is not worth my time.”
This becomes increasingly important for climbers in their 40s, 50s, and beyond. Before starting a workout, decide what you're trying to accomplish. If today is a maximum-strength day, warm up thoroughly and attack your finger training or limit bouldering while fresh. If it's an aerobic endurance day, train that system without turning the workout into another maximal sufferfest. More isn't necessarily better. Better is better.
Strength and power deserve particular attention because these qualities become harder to maintain with age. Consequently, your highest-intensity training deserves your freshest nervous system. Don't trash yourself with hours of random climbing and then expect a maximum-strength hangboard workout to produce great adaptations.
For me, this sometimes means splitting what once would have been a two- or three-hour workout into two shorter sessions. I might perform a high-quality strength or power session in the morning, eat and recover for six to eight hours, then perform relatively easy aerobic climbing later in the day. The objective isn't to squeeze more suffering into the day. It's to produce more high-quality work with less destructive fatigue.
Thomas and I also strongly agree on the importance of specificity. If you're an outdoor sport climber, most of your training should prepare you for outdoor sport climbing. If you're a boulderer, train accordingly. If you're preparing for modern competition climbing, then dynamic jumps, coordination moves, and unusual body positions may be highly specific and important. But don't blindly perform exercises or climbing styles simply because they're fashionable.
Every exercise has a cost in fatigue, recovery time, and potentially injury risk. With age, the question becomes: Is the adaptation I'm seeking worth the cost I'm paying for it? Advanced climbers should ask themselves this continually.
That leads directly to what I've jokingly called Rule Number One of Eric's Training Club, particularly for older climbers: Don't get injured. Climbers violate this obvious rule all the time. They attempt a one-arm pull-up while cold because friends are watching, give the project another burn despite knowing their fingers and shoulders are cooked, or force an awkward move that simply doesn't feel right.
Thomas offered the appropriate prescription: “Leave the pride at the door.”
At age 22, losing a month to injury can seem like a temporary inconvenience. At 52 or 62, that month carries greater value. I'm much more willing today to step off a problem, avoid an unnecessarily risky movement, or end a session one burn early. That's not weakness; it's athletic maturity. And if you do get injured, Thomas offered some perspective from his own history of pulley injuries: “The chances are you're going to be fine.” Respect the injury, rehabilitate it intelligently, and work your way back.
Perhaps my favorite insight from Thomas came when we discussed mistakes we made as younger athletes. When performance declined, his instinct used to be to train harder. Sound familiar?
His perspective today is very different: “Rarely are your poor gains because you're not training enough.”
That's a statement every serious climber should remember. If you've had several bad workouts in a row, don't automatically add training. First investigate recovery. How much are you sleeping? Are you eating enough? Are you consuming sufficient protein and carbohydrate? What's happening at work and at home? How many hard training days have you accumulated?
Training stress doesn't exist in isolation. Your body must also absorb professional stress, family responsibilities, travel, lack of sleep, illness, and everything else life throws at you. Sometimes the breakthrough workout you need most is no workout at all—or perhaps just an easy walk, mobility session, or light aerobic activity.
That same back-to-basics philosophy applies to nutrition and recovery. We discussed the endless parade of performance and longevity “hacks”—fasting, cold exposure, supplements, technology, and whatever happens to be dominating social media this month. Thomas's conclusion was refreshingly simple: “Consistency is key.”
For an athlete, adequate calories and protein, quality food, intelligent training, and sufficient sleep remain enormously powerful. We also discussed the increasing importance of maintaining lean muscle with age and the potential downside of restrictive fasting if it compromises protein intake, training energy, or recovery. Something may theoretically promote longevity yet still impair athletic performance. Those goals aren't always identical.
This may be the lesson I most wish I could send backward in time to my younger self. For years, I believed supplemental training could compensate for insufficient climbing. It can't.
Finger strength matters. Pulling strength matters. Aerobic fitness matters. But climbing remains an enormously complex skill sport. Footwork, movement efficiency, sequencing, pacing, body positioning, proprioception, confidence, route reading, and tactical decision-making are developed primarily by climbing.
For many years, I probably had the equation backward. I sometimes spent too much time trying to get stronger and not enough time actually climbing. Today, I'd much rather see a serious climber climb three days per week and hangboard once than hangboard three days and climb once. Supplemental training should supplement climbing—not replace it.
There's one final lesson that becomes increasingly obvious the longer I spend around elite climbers: the best aren't merely gifted. They're disciplined. They sleep, eat well, warm up properly, fuel while climbing, and limit the behaviors that interfere with recovery.
I like to think of training as pushing the accelerator. Every good workout moves you toward improvement. Poor sleep, excessive alcohol, inadequate nutrition, excessive training volume, and chronic stress put another foot on the brake. Trying to drive with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake isn't particularly efficient.
So ask yourself: What can I remove from my life that is quietly putting the brakes on my climbing?
The goal as we age isn't simply to survive more training. It's to become better at identifying which training truly matters—and then give our bodies the resources to adapt to it. Train specifically. Train hard when hard training is called for. Recover seriously. Keep climbing. Protect yourself from needless injuries.
And don't forget one final piece of wisdom from Thomas: “Maybe climb more for fun.”
After all, climbing harder is a wonderful goal. But climbing well, staying healthy, and loving the sport for decades is an even bigger victory.
--Eric Hörst
(Photo: The author on the first ascent of "Born on the 4th of July" at the Tyrell sector of Ten Sleep Canyon, WY. 📷 Jon Hörst)
Related articles:
© 2026 Copyright Eric J. Hörst | Horst Training LLC | All Rights Reserved
