We tend to think that as our effort increases in our training, so do the returns. Early on, we see amazing improvements in our ability, and develop at a rapid pace. We assume that this rate will be constant, that with the same level of effort, we will continue to get the same level of improvement. Upward and upward we go.

But that’s not how it goes, is it? As we approach mastery, we realize that we will never fully achieve it. This is the law of diminishing returns, which states that adding one more unit of input (in this case effort), and holding everything else constant, will at some point yield lower (or even negative) results.

What’s this mean for climbing or your training?

It means that if you continue your training exactly the same, eventually you will achieve the maximum results of that training and plateau.

To prevent that point of diminishing returns, you have to grow and evolve your training as you develop. This is fairly easy to do in climbing, because we can just start working harder routes, and develop more strength on those.

But there comes a point, even doing that, when your training may only take you so far. There may come a day when you will eventually have to supplement your training.

In 2008, when I burned out (see the post on Burnout), I was solely focused on redpointing my project. I was giving the route three attempts per day, three days a week. I would sprint up the route, and got really good at getting up to the last crux. I was inching my way closer and closer, but it was always out of reach.

The problem was my training. I was only getting on that one route, rather than doing a variety of routes and exercises to train for it. I had plateaued. It didn’t matter how much effort I put into the route, I just couldn’t do it. And rather than changing my training, I got frustrated, burned out, and walked away.

This is what is so deceptive about progress: you assume that you are doing better, because you are flowing through the moves faster and everything feels easier each day. But that might not necessarily be because you are getting stronger. Perhaps you’ve simply developed the muscle memory to do the movement more efficiently.

Sometime this works, sometimes this gets us the send. But sometimes we plateau. It’s a tough call, because the closer we get to our project, the more effort we want to put into it, the more attached we become. But this focus and desire to push to the end of the route may prevent us from pushing ourselves in our training.

We assume we are making progress on projects, because we’re doing everything I have talked about. You are trying hard, you are showing up, you’re getting on your projects, and giving it everything you’ve got. But the thing is, because you’re only getting on that one route, you’re not developing new strengths.

As Einstein told us, insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results.

When I returned to climbing outdoors, I had changed my perspective, my training, how I approached my projects, and my attachment to the outcome. I watched how other professionals trained, and incorporated those elements into my own training program.

To prevent hitting the point of diminishing returns and plateauing, you may need to change the way you are training. See what other people are doing in your field. Start incorporating different techniques and increase over time. Don’t get fixated on the result, focus on the process that you love.