Roman Krajnik has coached Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret to two Olympic gold medals, the most recent of which was won in thrilling fashion earlier this summer in Paris. Since then, Garnbret has been quick to say that Krajnik is “the reason winning is even remotely possible.” So, with Garnbret widely considered to be competition climbing’s GOAT—Greatest of All-Time—it’s fair to dub Krajnik “the Guru to the GOAT.”
We sat down to chat about his approach to climbing and coaching.
Climbing: How did you come to coach arguably the greatest competition climber of all time?
Krajnik: I started climbing when I was 18 years old, in high school, by accident. In my school, in the gym, there was a small bouldering wall from the local club. I went one day with one schoolmate, and I tried it, and I went to the top on my first go. Immediately I wanted to join the local climbing club. I was super motivated. I even started to compete a bit. But at that time, it was actually pretty hard, because I was competing with the seniors and our seniors were pretty good. There was no coach who would help me or even just tell me what would be good to do. So I said, “OK, I will change this, and I will start coaching.” We had a group of three or four guys; we climbed together all the time; and I started coaching, testing different things, and we all improved a lot. I read about coaching and training—about everything. This was, I think, in 1993 or 1994. And then, in 1998, I got my first group of kids for coaching. In that group were Katja and Maja Vidmar, and it just expanded. Maja won her first World Cup in 2005, and then I started also coaching Mina Markovič. Then, in 2019, Janja asked me, “Hey, would you be my coach?” Janja was already something; everyone was talking about how she was the best and had nothing to improve on. After thinking about it, I said, “OK, let’s do it,” because that’s for me the best challenge, the biggest challenge—when someone says there’s nothing to improve on.
Climbing: What were some of the things you identified that Janja could improve upon?
Krajnik: First of all, one big thing was that she started to have a lot of problems with injuries—with sore shoulders, knees, and so on. That was a sign for me that we had to change something. At that time, we started working with our PT on prevention, making her body ready for all the hard training—especially bouldering. When we had our first session, Janja was pretty good on crimps, but I said, “Let’s check how you are on slopers.” I made up a boulder with slopers, and I was, like, “Woah, you’re not that good!” She just wasn’t able to use her body and her momentum on slopers, when she wasn’t able to dig into a hold. So, I thought, “OK, now we have something to work on!” And I checked her slab abilities—also pretty bad. I was super disappointed, but that was also because of her shoes. Her shoes were too hard [i.e. stiff] for her, and she wasn’t able to stand on the volumes or on super small, slopey footholds. So these were definitely the first things where I said, “We have a lot to work on.” And then it just kept on going because Janja is a perfectionist, and I’m pretty much a perfectionist, too. I could always find something, one little thing, even one specific move that I didn’t see Janja—or someone else, the athlete—comfortable on, and I just wanted to improve it. For me, it’s a never-ending story. Even now, I can say there are a few things that we still have to work on.
Climbing: How much do you think a climber achieving greatness is contingent on talent, and how much is contingent on hard work and training?
Krajnik: Good question. If you ask me, talent is definitely something. But I can say that talent without training is nothing. You could be super, super talented, but nowadays in a World Cup there are hundreds of people like that. With just the talent, you might have a good result or two, but you will never be a top, top climber. So if we have to put it into a percentage, I would say, like, 20 or 30 percent is talent, and all the rest is training and hard work and motivation and dedication and mentality.
Climbing: How do you measure success? I mean, is it through World Cup accolades?
Krajnik: No. For me, the biggest success is if the athlete is happy with the improvement that she or he is making in the training. If she feels good, and if she feels stronger every single month, every single year, that is the biggest success. The medals at the comps are just little rewards for that. The real success is when I see the athlete feeling good and feeling happy that they improved how they wanted, or at least close to how they wanted. That’s the only success, actually.
Climbing: It sounds like you believe in ongoing communication between the athlete and the coach. How else would you describe your coaching style?
Krajnik: That’s one thing that people ask me: What’s my coaching philosophy? And it’s hard to put it into words because it depends, first of all, from athlete to athlete, and then from country to country. For sure, I’m the kind of coach who just wants to fall into the environment that the athlete is in, and then try to get the best out of that, if that makes sense. If you have, for example, an athlete who is not fully dedicated, fully 100 percent in, then I’m a different coach. If I don’t get what I give, then I am a bit more passive. Otherwise, I’m 100 percent in the game all the time, if I see the same on the other side.
Climbing: Is there something that you notice some other coaches doing wrong?
Krajnik: There is one thing. What I’ve noticed a few times is coaches just following one training plan, or the same training philosophy—the same coaching philosophy—for every athlete. That’s definitely one thing that simply doesn’t work. But it is an issue that is common for many coaches, in my opinion.
Climbing: You’ve undoubtedly taught Janja a lot over the years. But is there something that coaching Janja has taught you about human performance?
Krajnik: Quite a lot. I keep on learning from each athlete. That’s important because from every athlete, as a coach, you can get something that could maybe help other athletes. What Janja has taught me is definitely how she prepares to work hard in every single session. It is super unique. Every single session for her is like the first session. Every single session it looks like she’s never achieved anything before. You can’t imagine how pissed she can be. For example, we have a longer circuit—maybe 70 or 80 moves—and she might fall, let’s say, two moves from the top, and she’ll says, “Disaster! This is not good!” blah blah blah. Sometimes we’ll argue for a half an hour or more, with me saying, “You did nothing wrong—this is the perfect session, with just one little mistake at the top!” But if Janja feels that she didn’t give everything on that specific circuit, she won’t be happy. I won’t say this is the best thing in every single situation, but I think it has helped her in many, many competitions. Even in the Paris Olympics, because she didn’t want to let it go on that lead finals route, even with the situation with her injured finger. It wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t want to let it go.
Climbing: It sounds like Janja’s perfectionism, along with your perfectionism, is the secret formula. But are there times when being a perfectionist is not good?
Krajnik: You have to know when it’s good to be a perfectionist and when it’s not good to be a perfectionist. In the normal world, you cannot be a perfectionist—you will be suffering a lot. Somehow, somewhere, perfectionism could kill you if you are exaggerating it—like I said, when Janja is at every single session like that, that’s why we argue quite a lot, especially in the past two years. She is on such a level where she doesn’t need to be that hard on herself at every single session.
Climbing: There’s always been some pushback to competitions, with a certain cohort of climbers feeling like comps somehow take the soul out of climbing. And climbing in the Olympics receives some of that same criticism. How do you respond to that?
Krajnik: I don’t hear that that often, but I can say for myself, when climbing became an Olympic sport, honestly I wasn’t 100 percent happy because I was sure that climbing would lose a bit of this romantic thing that it had before. Luckily, there is still rock climbing, outdoor climbing, so there is still pure climbing, if we could say it like that. But competition climbing became just like all the other sports—it became a real sport, a professional sport, an Olympic sport. I still don’t know if I really want this, or if I like this. I mean, of course it’s good for coaches and for athletes, and maybe one day there will be a bit more money in it, so it will be easier to live with this sport. But, I don’t know: many times I still think about whether this is still the climbing that I met back when I was 18, or if it is a completely normal professional sport?
Climbing: Right, climbing has a romantic past, as you say, and a heritage that is unique compared to other Olympic sports. It sounds like the questions that some other climbers wrestle with about the sport’s evolution are the same questions that you—as one of the most successful coaches—wrestle with.
Krajnik: Yeah, and that’s probably because I started when climbing was still climbing; there was still that romantic path. I’m pretty sure that younger climbers nowadays don’t know about that. They start indoors, in gyms. Even here in Slovenia, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same all around the world, a lot of kids and younger climbers don’t know about rock climbing. And that’s a pity. Every time I think about that, I’m sad, actually.
Climbing: The movement for outdoor rock climbing and competitions is pretty different. Janja is the perfect example. It’s almost like being an elite comp climber nowadays requires elements of gymnastics, acrobatics, and, of course, parkour.
Krajnik: In bouldering. For example, in the past two seasons, lead actually went a bit back into pure climbing. Even at this Olympics, it was the perfect example—there were no bouldering moves in the lead route. Zero. It was pure lead endurance climbing, and I was happy because it was a bit closer to the romantic climbing path. And I really do hope that at least lead climbing will go in this direction. I would love to see even bouldering go in this direction, too, because nowadays comp bouldering, I don’t know if I’m happy with it. I don’t know if you actually need to be a super good “climber” to be a good bouldering competitor, which, again, is a bit sad, I think.
Climbing: What will competition bouldering look like in, say, 2028 for the Olympics in Los Angeles? How much more dynamic can it become?
Krajnik: Honestly, I really hope that it won’t go in this direction. I’m all good with, let’s say, one boulder like that, but the other three boulders or four boulders are something else, like a bit more technical, a bit more physical, whatever. If we see a bouldering final with four boulders and three of them are somehow coordination, electric, or whatever, plus one slab, there is nothing of climbing. Nothing. If it will go in this direction until 2028, then in LA, it will be “parkour-climbers.” Or, I don’t know, probably they will cancel the rule that you’re not allowed to wear tennis shoes and everyone will be wearing normal shoes. But I really hope that it won’t happen like that—that it will stop a bit and the setters will somehow try to find other new moves, different moves, because I’m pretty sure there are still other moves and other ways of climbing. But let’s see, let’s surprise ourselves.
Climbing: You’re so busy with all your researching and coaching—do you ever have time to climb?
Krajnik: Less and less. In the past three years, I climbed a few times. Usually I spend, I don’t know, seven or eight hours or more per day in the gym, and after that I just don’t want to see holds anymore. [Laughs]. But this year I started a bit—I said to myself that I will climb once a week, just for fun. But it didn’t last long. But I really hope I will start again—I would be super happy.
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