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+Before I got into climbing, I used to lift weights, and I've carried over some
+concepts from that experience into my climbing training. I'll attempt to summarize
+some of that here.
+
+Lets start by defining some basic terms relevant to climbing:
+
+**power** The maximum force you can exert (how quickly can you do work).
+
+**strength** The ability to exert force.
+
+**endurance** The ability to continue to exert force.
+
+**power endurance** The ability to continue to exert maximum force.
+
+**isometric strength** The ability to exert force while not contracting or
+lengthening a muscle.
+
+**contact strength** The ability to begin exerting isometric force quickly.
+
+These are basically the things we as climbers want from our muscles.
+
+# The force/duration spectrum
+
+Exertion exists on a spectrum. With the highest levels for force generated,
+it's not possible to continue generating that force for long, so the duration
+of exercises at this level of force is limited. As we decrease the level of
+force generated, we can generate that force for longer periods of time. As a
+very loose rule of thumb, we can guess where we are on the force/duration
+spectrum by how many reps we're doing:
+
+1. 1-2 reps: power.
+2. 3-5 reps: strength.
+3. 6-8 reps: hypertrophy.
+4. 9-20 reps: endurance.
+5. >20 reps: cardio.
+
+However, the number of reps doesn't tell the whole story. There are some
+exercises which are by nature ballistic: in these exercises, the force is
+primarily generated for a brief period during the lift, and while there might
+be some continued force after that, the weight is carried on primarily by
+momentum. We can sometimes contrast these lifts to similar lifts that are slow
+and controlled throughout the movement:
+
+* Deadlift or kettlebell swing: ballistic, good morning: slow and controlled.
+* Pendlay row: ballistic, forward row (bar not touching ground): slow and controlled.
+* Jerk: ballistic, overhead press: slow and controlled.
+* Clean: ballistic, curl: slow and controlled.
+* Box jump: ballistic, squat: slow and controlled.
+
+In the case of the box jump, we literally can't exert force after the initial
+exertion because we're no longer in contact with the ground. In the other
+ballistic motions, it's common to simply drop the weight after completing the
+motion, because attempting to control the weight on its way down would
+practically guarantee injury. This is worth reiterating: while people might
+complain about the noise or sound the lunk alarm at certain gyms, with many
+power lifts, *dropping the weight is the correct form*. It's possible, of course,
+to deadlift and set it down in a slow and controlled manner, and this is a valid
+exercise, but critically, it's a *strength* exercise, not a *power* exercise.
+A slow, controlled motion can build strength, but it simply cannot build the
+ability to exert that strength *all at once*. It also doesn't build the
+coordination necessary to contract large muscle groups in sequence quickly.
+There's some translation between strength and power, but maximal power can only
+be reached by training power directly.
+
+Power exercises are rarely worth doing in sets of more than 5. Coordination
+breaks down and you're risking injury. If you can do more reps of a power
+exercise, it's probably better to do more weight instead.
+
+The next thing that jumps out about this spectrum is *hypertrophy*. What's that?
+Hypertrophy is muscle volume. This is something body builders care about, but
+for climbing, it's actually a *downside*; muscle size is loosely correlated with
+some of the properties we want, but maximal muscles size focuses in on the
+outlier, a muscle which is disproportionately large in relation to the power,
+strength, and endurance it can give us. This size comes with a big downside:
+weight. As such, you'd think climbers wouldn't ever want to work in the 6-8 rep
+range, but it turns out that range can be useful for working power endurance.
+More on that later.
+
+Cardio isn't directly climbing related, but it's not a bad thing. First of all,
+it's healthy. And while it may not directly contribute to climbing, it can
+help avoid fatigue: good cardio means that you may arrive at your climb less
+tired from the approach hike. As long as you're not burning nutrients necessary
+for climbing on your cardio, cardio is mostly a good thing.
+
+All this is to come back to the elephant in the room: strength. Even without
+training power or endurance, strength translates well into power and endurance.
+
+There's some effects to power training which are not achieved by strength
+training, such as building different energy systems and fast twitch muscles,
+but often power is a matter of coordinating the strength that is already there
+so that muscles fire in sequence, rather than building some new property of the
+muscles. Coordination can be trained more quickly than muscle adaptation;
+strong muscles can be made powerful easily.
+
+Likewise, strength translates well to endurance.
+A study I saw (TODO: find that study again) said something like that if you
+are operating at 20% of your max effort, you don't fatigue significantly over
+repetitions; if you're 5 times as strong as you need to be, you don't need
+endurance. And while it's often unrealistic to be 5 times as strong as you need
+to be to perform a climbing move, there's some evidence (TODO: look that up too,
+I think it's from Eric Hörst) which shows that endurance can be trained quickly:
+while strength for a climb might take many training cycles over years, it's
+possible for someone with the required strength to train endurance to near-maximal
+potential with a two week training period before their intended performance
+period.
+
+All this gives us a focus: while we'll spend some time training power and
+endurance, our primary focus is strength: as we near a performance goal,
+we can test and fill in gaps in our power and endurance as needed if we
+have the requisite strength.