Training solo sucks. I don’t care how excited you are, no one wants to do it.

We all try it. We set up home gyms, thinking that we are going to train all the time, that it will be more convenient for us, that it’s going to be awesome.

And everything goes well for the first couple of months (if that long) and then … nothing.

We all have abandoned walls at home — training facilities that we thought were going to take us to the next level, until we lost motivation. If you are able to get a crew together and train at your home wall, great. Otherwise, it takes a very special (read: obsessive) kind of person to be able to train solo.

I need partners to keep me accountable. Some external forces to get my ass in motion when I don’t think I have the energy to train.

With partners it is easy to set up and stick to a fairly rigid training schedule. There are no excuses, no flaking out. You are more likely to show up for a campus session every Thursday if your buddy is waiting for you than if you’re just going it alone.

And even on the days we don’t want to go, we feel a whole lot better once we’re there and doing the work.

It could be the worst day, a day when you feel like crap, but after a training session you forget all about that. It doesn’t matter anymore. You showed up for that day, you tried hard, and put in your time and effort.

You will always be able to bargain your way out of a session if it’s just you against you. One day becomes two, then three, then you are off the program all together.

Find yourself an accountability buddy, someone to check in with routinely, once a week, twice a week, whatever your schedule allows, and stick to the program you set up. Someone who won’t listen to the bullshit because they know that you really do want to stick to the schedule.

Gains in climbing come from building the training schedule and sticking to it, and to do that you almost certainly will need a little help from your friends.