Dan Mirsky: How I Trained for Fat Camp

Dan Mirsky is one of the most passionate and driven climbers I know. When it comes to putting his head down and working his projects, Dan is as dedicated as they come. Dan is also calculated and driven with his training. If he thinks something is going to improve his climbing, he’ll put the work in. This dogged approach both to training and trying his projects has given Dan a tick list most of us can only dream of. While Dan has amassed 5.14 ascents all over the country, Rifle Mountain Park is his home and primary stomping grounds. Having worked his way through the majority of the routes in the canyon, Fat Camp, one of Rifle’s hardest, was an obvious next step for him. This point, however, is where this story leaves the typical script of “such-and-such strong climber had a goal, trained hard, tried harder, and sent.” Having been there for a lot of Dan’s campaign on Fat Camp I can safely say he wasn’t failing because of some physical shortcoming or because he wasn’t trying hard enough. What he had run into was a point where what had worked for him in the past was no longer working. This is a really hard place to be and it’s easy to default to thinking that doubling down and doing more of the same is the answer. After all, it’s worked for so long, why won’t it work now? In this installment of the TrainingBeta How I Trained For Series, Dan digs into the process he had to go through mentally to get himself back to a point where he was ready and capable of trying a hard route in a positive and productive way. I was there during a lot of the time Dan recounts in this […]

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