Climbing is unique in that it requires a high amount of both strength and skill, working in conjunction. These are 2 polar opposite concepts. Strength is purely physical, and is gained through the process of breaking down and rebuilding muscle tissue. Skill is mostly mental, and must be learned through hours upon hours of practice and instruction. Climbing is an extremely high skill activity because of the enormous amount of variability in movement. In many cases, a change in body position can make a move immeasurably easier. In contrast, pure strength can allow a climber to simply power through a move without the need for proper technique.
This basically creates two distinct methods for completing a move: one which minimizes the necessity of strength by using good technique and clever body positioning, and another which relies entirely on grabbing and pulling really hard, making technique irrelevant. Obviously, everyone climbs somewhere on the spectrum between the two, and specific moves may force one style over the other. Many people are geared more towards one side of the spectrum or the other, but to really reach your full potential as a climber, its necessary to be good at both. It seems reasonable that if having a high amount of either skill or strength will help you complete more difficult moves, then being really good at both will maximize your ability to do hard moves.
The problem is that technique is extremely difficult to improve. It takes tons of practice, and, above all, tremendous patience. We all want to improve and get better at climbing, and training your strength and power is the most straight-forward and tangible path to doing so. Many beginner climbers get caught up with the idea that they just aren’t strong enough to climb well, and they look for training methods to get stronger. While its true that it takes some time for your shoulders, forearms, and fingers to get used to the heavy load that climbing puts on them, jumping on the pull-up bar isn’t usually the answer for beginners. Its usually much more beneficial to slowly learn good movement and let the strength come with time. As the climber progresses, strength training becomes more and more important, but there should always be some emphasis on climbing smart and developing good movement habits.
The thing about technique is that its easiest to learn when you’re forced to use it. When you can do a move by powering through it and ignoring technique, you’re going to do it that way 10 times out of 10. If you’re not strong enough to do it that way, you’re forced to figure out how to finesse your way through the move so that it’s less strength-dependent. This is how technique is learned: by being forced to use it, and the advantage of being weak is that it does just that. Many climbers who depend mostly on strength struggle with technique, because they are rarely forced to practice it. The best climbers are the ones who have very high levels of both strength and skill.
I think this is a super important concept for how people progress in climbing. Training strength/power is attractive because it offers very tangible progress, and it can be extremely effective at improving your climbing ability in the short term. But technique can’t be ignored. The most successful climbers will be the ones who, towards the beginning of their climbing career, take the time to really learn how to move efficiently and effectively, and then start focusing on the strength element later.
Zach Groenwald Bouldering 