So, I would like to start this blog post by saying while I am a VORACIOUS consumer of training info(for better or worse) I am not a training/coach in climbing or lifting. With that said, I am someone that has well over a decade of experience in Manufacturing and in using Lean concepts. I actually have heard some coaches bring up lean but it’s been pretty surface level and it’s always along the lines of “The word Kaizen means continuous improvement and we’re trying to continually improve when we train”, bleh.

What I’m going to lay out is really just meant for food for thought. A lot of this was hard for me to put into words and I feel I've left out many other examples. I do these things intuitively and thinking back to what concepts I’m actually pulling from was more of a stretch than I anticipated. With that said, hopefully what I have to say is thought provoking enough to get some value from. 

Much of what I design is with some of these things in mind and this article(and future ones coming) will help build on some of the concepts and constraints I use for design.

Principles of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing originated from Toyota's production system in Japan and focuses on maximizing value while minimizing waste. Here are the key principles:

1. Identify Value

In the context of a process value is typically thought of as something that the customer is actually willing to pay for. Everything else is potentially waste. In training I think we can look at it in terms of exercises or even drills. If they aren’t providing us with benefits, why are we doing them?

2. Map the Value Stream

“Examine all steps in your production process and identify which ones add value and which don't. Eliminate steps that don't add value whenever possible.”

In practice this is usually following a process and documenting it to understand it(way oversimplifying it here). Then seeing what can be eliminated but you may also find you can bring more value to a certain step or the entire process. I think of Nate Drolet's Power Company Climbing recommendation to add movement practice into your warm-up. You do need to warm up but lower level climbs are typically of little value to intermediate to advanced climbers without bringing some additional value to the process.

3. Create Flow

“Organize production as a continuous flow without interruptions, delays, or bottlenecks. This helps minimize work-in-progress inventory and reduces lead times.”

If you work even adjacent to manufacturing I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “single piece flow.” Which is when- rather than work in batches of say 100 per operation, you would take a single piece through all the operations. This way you can react more quickly to defects if the finished piece is determined to be scrap at the end(and many other benefits). It also can cut down on overproduction due to needing large batch sizes(another form of waste).

When I think of this in the context of training I think Steve Bechtel’s “Logical Progression” is what best exemplifies this concept to me. You work on essentially all aspects of your training year round which can help you better perform year round rather than have “peaks” but also can give you quicker insight on parts of the program that may need tweaks.

4. Establish Pull

“Produce only what customers want, when they want it. This "pull" system prevents overproduction by making products based on actual demand rather than forecasts.”

If we substitute “what customers want” with “what the climber actually needs to improve at this moment” then we may find that our training includes things some people might need or you might have needed before but not now.

5. Seek Perfection

“Continuously improve processes by involving everyone in eliminating waste. This creates a culture of constant refinement and innovation.”

I’m not going to elaborate on this. I think this is the one concept people from all over latch on to and understand intuitively.

Common Types of Waste (The "8 Wastes")

Lean identifies eight types of waste (sometimes remembered as "DOWNTIME"). After going over the above I’m going to leave these here for you to interpret how these things may be making their way into your other’s training sessions:

• Defects: Products that require rework or scrapping
• Overproduction: Making more than is needed
• Waiting: Idle time between process steps
• Non-utilized talent: Underusing people's skills and knowledge
• Transportation: Unnecessary movement of products
• Inventory: Excess products and materials
• Motion: Unnecessary movement of people or equipment
• Excess Processing: Doing more work than necessary

Lean Tools and Techniques

Several methods help implement these principles:

5S: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain

Sort: In my home gym I have a lot of stuff that I may use again but it’s not being used currently. If it’s been years since I’ve used something then I have to strongly consider getting rid of it. Anything that isn’t going to be used is just making for a cluttered gym and possibly making it harder to work out.

Set in order: This sounds obvious, especially after sort however setting in order may involve placing things into little workout “cells” rather than say putting the 45lb plates back with all the other 45s. For example, I may have a workout I do once a week that is- Squats, Pinch pick-ups and a chest stretch. So to make setup for this quicker and easier I may leave the warm up weight on the bar, then my next two weight increments right beneath it ready to be placed on the bar more easily. I would likely keep my loading pin(I actually keep multiple to allow for different setups) close by and also with my warm up or working set weight pre-loaded onto it. This saves time and for me makes the workout more enjoyable!

Shine: Do I really need to explain this one? 

Standardize: Standardization is another simple concept. One example I have in the weight room is I personally only do deadlifts with 25 or 45lb plates. I find any of the smaller sizes can be avoided by manipulating my amount of sets and reps. For other lifts I have similar arrangements. This might not be for everyone but works very well for me!

Sustain: Do I really need to explain this one? 

Kaizen: Continuous improvement through small, incremental changes

Kaizen: I mentioned before I always hear Kaizen being used in the context of “working out” to be something we’re applying to ourselves. Fine, that’s cute. Where it’s actually useful is to think of it as constantly trying to make our workouts more effective or maintain its effectiveness but complete it in less time.

Kanban: Visual scheduling system for just-in-time production

Kanban: I am yet again going to oversimplify an explanation. We’re going to just call them “Visual cues.” Meaning rather than keep track of something be it by writing it down or remembering it in your head we’re going to leave visual cues. This might be easy by just knowing that a particular weight will be used each set. We can also use the microloading plates for this, which usually come in different colors to be easily recognized when we’re doing multiple sets of the same weight. For example, green is set 1, red is set 2 and so on..

Standard Work: Standard Work is a fundamental lean manufacturing practice that establishes the best, most efficient method for performing a process or task. It's essentially the documented "current best practice" that serves as the foundation for continuous improvement.

Standard Work: Okay, so this is the point in this article where I realize perhaps I’ve bit off a bit more than I can chew to take these concepts, simplify them and apply them to training. Standard work could be a blog post in and of itself so I can’t go too in-depth without getting lost in it. One thing that I think about a lot though is the idea of bringing a notebook around with me while training to log everything I do. There’s obviously plenty of great reasoning behind this as any trainer will tell you. In my world(outside of training) you never want that. We’ll document our tasks, sure, but on the whole we aim to standardize our process so that we can perform our work without the need for keeping our own little journals of everything. Anything that falls outside our process(which we still have our process plan or our training plan in this case) should be swiftly updated so that we don’t end up with a bunch of tribal knowledge that can be lost. Now, this is not a perfect comparison and I haven’t quite come up with a training comparison to the “tribal knowledge” dilemma in manufacturing, but I said at the beginning that this won’t be perfect.

SPAGHETTI DIAGRAM!!

Truth be told I wrote this entire article just to bring up a reason to say SPAGHETTI DIAGRAM..

Here’s an easy one to explain and ties into much of the above. All it is is you would follow a process(or workout in this case) through all its steps. Then map it out on a drawn up floor layout of the building. All the movement from one step to another will end up looking like spaghetti. The less spaghetti the better! Again, the most important thing here to remember is how fun it is to say spaghetti diagrams and the more you bring it up the more fun it is!

I worked with a guy that every time I talked to him he brought up spaghetti diagrams. “Man, if we made a spaghetti diagram of this place it would be CRAZY.” “First thing I would do if I was in charge of this place is I would do a spaghetti diagram.” “At my last job we used to always do a spaghetti diagram.” I don’t know what he was talking about because he was the shipping guy but it just never got old hearing someone say spaghetti diagram so many times.

Oh and also they’re quite intuitively useful:

To minimize wasted movement time in the gym, here's how to apply spaghetti diagram principles:

1. Start with Movement Mapping:

• Track your current path between exercises
• Note the distance and frequency of travel between equipment
• Identify any crossover or backtracking patterns

2. Optimize Exercise Order:

• Group exercises by equipment proximity
• Plan supersets with nearby equipment
• Consider vertical movement (avoiding trips between floors)

3. Equipment Selection Strategy:

• Choose exercises that use equipment in close proximity
• Use multipurpose stations where possible
• Consider alternatives that don't require equipment changes

 

So that's it for now. This is something I would love to discuss more if anyone has any interest and something that will certainly become more well defined in my head as time goes on. My ability to put these thoughts into words will hopefully also improve. Next, I intend to do an article on design practices which I am hoping to bring concepts from my first two articles together with design theory.

Thanks for reading!