[Fiend]

I should be more clear: I meant SM09's example was a good example of a simple change of mindset that could lead to a clear improvement without any other structure doctrine or complexity (but with a bit of common sense about warming up, resting, avoiding injury, etc), if, say, said VS climber was pretty good at doing all sorts of non-challenging moves, but struggled a bit with harder moves beyond their flashing limit.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/how_to_improve-2648 is the article I wrote, be warned it's for those VS leaders and it was written 13 years ago and when I was very much part of UKC (incidentally 20,000 views of an article is a pretty good context for the fact I'm still banned because I haven't apologised to AJ for his false and unjustifiable ban for me criticising a Franco article on headpointing, without any swearing nor abuse, and with my "ban-worthy" reply being kept up......).

[petejh]

An essential aspect of any sort of teaching/coaching is imbuing self belief. Causing the person to genuinely believe that yes they do need to pay for this training programme.

Having a professional expert asses someones current climbing ability and physical attributes, hear about their lifestyle etc and then give a plan tailored to all of that and express an informed opinion that it could get them climbing 7a -That would be just what was needed to make a successful business.

Ftfy.

Tongue in cheek, lattice are good at what they do etc., but true.

A typical man or woman without significant disability who aspires to climb 7a, who believes it would make a significant difference in their chances of success to pay a company to get them there - ‘learned helplessness’ is a term that springs to mind.

[dunnyg]

I've always thought a big driver of these plans is that an 'expert' tells you if you do X you will achieve Y.

The result is that as well as the physical/skill/whatever improvements, and the improved self belief (already mentioned), the trainee feels accountable to the coach. The accountability is key, and often what people are paying for with coaches/physics/dieticians or what we brand of expert you are after. The resulting consistency is probably one of the major driver of gainZ.

[slab_happy]

In the interests of adding a bit of context:

My "running" is basically an extremely slowed-down version of Couch To 5K, because the steepness of the curve on the regular version would break me.

And I'm in no way sedentary, just 49, dyspraxic (so "learning how to run" is a thing), have weird fatigue issues, and have been avoiding running for my entire life. And want to have a bit of energy spare for things like climbing.

Because the demographic of this forum inevitably skews towards people who climb a lot and tend to be pretty strong, I think there's a tendency to overestimate what you think the average person should be able to "just do" without any specific training.

Even before you start to bring in people who are in some "not average" (and of course it's extremely common to be "not average" in ways like being middle-aged, having minor physical problems, etc. etc.).