Ep. 160: Matt Fultz | A New Breed

It used to be that training for climbing was out in the open. Wolfgang trained for the hardest route in the world. John Bachar and the Stonemasters turned Camp 4 into a training gym. Tony Yaniro made no secrets about how hard he trained.

Then sometime in the 90’s it became cool to NOT train. I’m not sure exactly when that was, but by the time I was climbing in the late 90’s there was a fairly large faction of climbers who were disgusted by the fact that some people chose to train.

Recently the tides have changed, and Matt Fultz is one of the pro climbers who has led that charge. He’s not at all shy about his training habit - even going beyond the extremely climbing specific training that most pros will allow to be seen. What I didn’t expect was how much thought and deliberation Matt has put into his training. It kind of blew me away.

A new breed of boulderer, Matt’s training shows up for him in big ways. A glance at his 8a scorecard shows nearly 500 double digit boulders up to V15/16. That’s no accident.

In this episode Matt and I sit down a week before his annihilation of the Hueco Rock Rodeo (video below) for a wide ranging discussion on training, grades, weight loss, and more.