TBP 227: How to Stay Motivated (Almost) All the Time with Alex Stiger

The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast

Climbing Fitness Breakthrough Series

Before we get started, Coach Alex Stiger is hosting a 4-part series all about how to increase your overall climbing fitness. She will do 4 weekly 90-minute zoom calls starting March 21st all about how to use efficient, quick sessions in the gym to reliably make you feel stronger and have more endurance.

The cost is $147 (2-payment option available), and you’ll get all of the recordings of the zoom calls, a group Slack channel where you can ask Alex questions for the month, plus a bonus recorded coaching session with one of the participants.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FITNESS BREAKTHROUGH SERIES How to Stay Motivated in Your Climbing

In this episode, I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about the ways she stays so motivated in her climbing almost all the time. It’s actually really amazing to me that she’s so psyched so often…

Alex is a firm believer that if we are enjoying what we’re doing, we will make the most progress in whatever we’re doing. AND we’ll have an amazing happiness-building activity for the long haul.

These are some of the questions we pondered in this episode

• Should training be torture??
• Why is that concept so romanticized
• Why do we treat climbing and training like two separate things?
• How did old school mentalities shape how we are approaching our sport today?
• How can we stop believing that doing things we don’t want to do will make us better?
• How did our childhood sports and gym class shape the way we think about climbing and training?

One of Alex’s superpowers is staying psyched 80+ % of the time, and she thinks that partly comes down to her being homeschooled and always being able to choose what she was doing with her time. We talk about how her habits and her great success with horsemanship in her younger years really shaped how she thinks about climbing now.

• She doesn’t do what she doesn’t want to do. She gives herself freedom to choose between structures and that works really well for her.
• She knows exactly what is on her “love to do” and “don’t love to do list” and she checks in regularly because it changes.
• She recognizes that what might affect her climbing and training psych the most is life factors and she takes that really seriously. Her desire to enjoy her sport is a driving force to de-stress, optimize, create space, and in general increase her well being. Stress is a big enemy of motivation!

The Tools She Uses to Help Keep Motivation High

We talk about all of these tools in detail in the interview.

• Other people
• Routine
• Timers
• Measuring progress
• Setting mini goals
• Having a hard session time stop
• Regular “want” weeks
• Fueling for my sessions
• Strategic planning to avoid feeling late or rushed
• Mental check ins (green, yellow, orange, red)
• Acknowledging “druthers” out loud
• Gratitude practice

You’ll find a lot of common sense tactics to make our sport sustainable, but also some surprising little hacks that Alex has come up with to make it fun for herself almost all the time. I loved this talk with Alex 🙂

Show Links

• Enroll in Alex’s Climbing Fitness Breakthrough Series
• Work with Alex as your coach
• Have questions? Email [e-mail] or [e-mail]