Specificity drives adaptation — but excessive specificity kills long-term progress. Climbers often get strong in exactly one context and then wonder why performance stalls elsewhere. The goal is not maximum specificity. The goal is strategic specificity over time.

Not all strength is the same. Neural adaptations happen fast. Tendon adaptations happen slowly. Metabolic adaptations depend on volume. Most climbing injuries and plateaus are not effort problems — they are timing mismatches between these systems.

Most climbers think training means getting tired. It doesn’t. Training is a biological negotiation between stimulus and recovery. If you understand that adaptation — not exhaustion — is the goal, your progress becomes predictable instead of random.