The most truthful truths are the ones that draw ire and accord equally. This is a telling indication that I’ve got a hot potato this time around, one that’s sure to either devastate or affirm all our existences evenly. With that, I begrudgingly and gladly would like you to know this: There is no proof that Training does anything.

Some of you will be happy to know that you can continue guzzling gallons of beer and see no drop in your climbing performance whatsoever. Others will be upset by the awful prospect that all your time spent in the Training dungeon as a miserable calorie-counting ascetic could just as easily yield the same results had you done nothing at all.

The issue of Training came up recently in the presence of my friend Bill, who is a Doctor of Training. As we polished off cold glasses of vodka, Bill asserted that present-day climbing is akin to gymnastics of 50 years ago, a time when nothing more than good genes got you to the Olympics (as opposed to today, where the best gymnasts must not only possess good genes, but spend 10 hours a day in the gym, every day, from age 3 to 15). The good doctor continued to theorize that in as few as 15 years, the best climber in the world will be the most genetically endowed athlete who possess the neuroticism of needing to train like a psycho on The Boards: your hangs, systems’, campus’, etc.

The vodka was putting my head in a dark but lucid state, and I countered Bill by saying that the two best climbers I know—Dave Graham and Chris Sharma—don’t train; they eat whatever they want, ignore The Boards and simply climb all the time. Bill countered by saying that if Sharma or Graham actually trained, they’d be climbing four hundred letter grades harder. Then I threw my vodka glass against the wall, it shattered, and I went to bed, thus winning the argument.

Unfortunately, I’m a hypocrite …  and a coward. I’ve recently begun Training more than Partying on Tuesday Night. TNB used to be all about celebrating the irreverent hedonism that I associate with bouldering. But now, I feel overcome by the powerful desire to get better. It’s fear-driven, of course, because even though I know that there is no logical reason to Train, I will do it only because … well, what if it works? This is the same sort of panic-driven behavior that causes people to believe in heaven and act accordingly, so I’ve said nothing new here. Adding Training to TNB, acronymically and otherwise, is really only The Next Best Thing (TNBT) to climbing—not as good as the usual revelry at the boulders, but a good substitute for weak cowards like myself.

TNBT is a weird phenomenon. It’s something you settle for, and sometimes, in extreme cases, lust after with insane irrationality. Look at Boulder. With no good outdoor climbing venues within a 100-mile radius of Pearl Street, most people are happy to settle for TNBT and go to Movement, or CATS, or the Boulder Rock Club, or any of the other Front Range gyms. After all, what else could explain a packed gym on a sunny spring Sunday?

TNBT appears in other areas of life as well. One time, I saw The Next Best Thing cause a mob of otherwise nice women in expensive dresses to turn into monsters and fight each other. I was at my friend’s brother’s wedding, an extravagant celebration in an Aspen ballroom. My friend Dave Roy’s brother Adam, and his new wife, Sarah, were the center of everyone’s attention. But Dave, of course, being the groom’s handsome single brother, was TNBT.

When Dave entered the dance-floor, he was always circled by at least three to 10 women, batting their painted lashes at Dave, and flashing cold red eyes at each other like demon hell-beasts. One time, Dave somehow found himself without a dance partner. The moment was short-lived: Three beauties went in for the kill, tearing at the fabric of their enemies’ dresses hurtfully in order to get to Dave. That’s no exaggeration, either; TNBT had caused these women to go completely insane.

Where was I? Oh yes, Training. Who knows? Maybe it works, maybe it’s the next best thing, or maybe it’s just a waste of time. OR, maybe I have everything completely wrong, and TNBT is better than the original article—especially if it works; that is, gets you off. Either way, it’s splitting hairs since climbing is a crazy sport that will never be fully understood or explained. The only lesson that I know for sure comes from the sagacious, fair precepts espoused by lotto: That is, you can’t Win unless you play the game.

This article first appeared in the TNB eBlast in 2007, but because not much has changed, I reposted it today. Please visit www.rockandice.com to sign up for the eBlast.