There comes a stage in every climber’s life where they feel like they have hit a ceiling. This can happen to anyone, irrespective of experience. For example a new climber might be struggling to step up from V2 to V3, or a top athlete might never have quite enough in the tank to get an F8c done...
It’s situations like this where doing a little bit of training can help. Be it going for a run once a week to slim down a little or hanging off a fingerboard in every spare minute of the day! In the following sections I hope to give people who feel they have hit a ceiling some tips, ideas and motivation to break through it and reach new heights (pun intended!) Let me state now that the best form of training for climbing is climbing. If you climb more often, you will get better. Simple. However, this is often expensive and can take 2-3hrs a session, time that people don’t have. So below are a range of tips for complimenting weekly climbing, and when used in conjunction with actual climbing they will help you improve.
Warning: Some of the training tips described below can lead to injury if done incorrectly.
Always ask someone if you are unsure about anything, if in doubt don't do it!
General Fitness...
This one is the simplest forms of training! Go for a run once a week or go to uni on your bike rather than getting the bus. All this will help your cardiovascular fitness and help with the endurance side of climbing. This will also help with your strength to weight ratio, which is crucial in climbing. As an aside, have you ever thought about what a good build for a climber is? Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to every body shape either way. Adam Ondra is widely regarded as the best climber in the world right now, and he is VERY tall and VERY skinny! On the other hand Chris Sharma is also a world class climber, but is way way WAY more muscly than Ondra. This is because Sharma HAS to have that muscle to pull his weight up, whereas Ondra is a lot lighter and so can get by with less muscle. As always, exceptions do exist!
So don’t have the impression that going to the gym and doing dumbbell lifts all day will improve your climbing, it won’t (on its own anyway).
Weights...
That leads me nicely onto weight training. As I said at the start, the best training for climbing is climbing. However some really struggle with overhangs, or never have enough in the tank to do those big dyno moves. It is here where you can work on these weaknesses specifically with weights. By increasing the strength of the relevant muscles it may make a difference.
However, bear in mind that any extra muscle you put on will adversely affect your strength to weight ratio as you’ll weigh more! Also, you’ll only improve your climbing if you climb as well as supplementing it with weight training. A far more useful extra to climbing in my opinion is using your own body weight to train instead...
Sit ups...
Core strength is definitely crucial in climbing. It’s most obvious when climbing steep routes, where you need to keep your feet up on the holds. Core strength will also help stabilise any moves you make and help your climbing massively!!
Sit ups are a great, free way to improve you core strength. Little and often is key. Don’t bash out 150 because you feel guilty and then not do any more for a month! It’s better to do 10 a day, every day. The plank is good for core as well (basically get into a push up position but with your forearms flat on the ground, hold it for 30secs ish).
The pull up bar...
In my opinion this will be the best training aid for most climbers looking to improve. They are cheap, easy to put up (even in rented accommodation) and you can do an incredible variety of things with one.
Starting with the obvious, pull ups! Bear in mind what I said above, any weight you put on in muscle will have to be pulled up the wall. Is being able to do 100 pull ups in 2 minutes good training for climbing? No. How many pull up movements are there in a normal boulder problem? Maybe 10-15? Therefore train to be able to do 10-15 pull ups. Any more than that is overkill. Make sure you do them with a forward grip, like you grip a hold when climbing.
Good technique: go quickly on the upstroke of the pull up, and go slowly on the downstroke. Don't fully lock out at the bottom, always keep a little bend at the elbow (explanation below after the repeaters section). Really try and control the swing of your body, this is really good core training again.
If you get a climbing sling/prussic loop you can try some off-set pull ups. Put the sling round the bar, grip the bar with one hand and the sling in the other. This trains the arm on the bar more. Always repeat the other way around to make sure you train symmetrically. As you improve, try gripping the sling with only the middle 3 fingers of one hand. Be careful though; don’t go too hard too quickly.
You can also do leg raises to work core, and vary the width of your hands on the pull up bar. Hands close together trains the arms, wide hands trains the shoulders and back. Try wide hands, get to 90 degree lock and pull your weight from one side to the other. Variety is the enemy of stagnation!
“Encores” are my favourite exercises for a pull up bar – taken from here: http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/Grip-article.htm
The technique is based on repeaters. These involve hanging on the bar for 7 seconds, then dropping and resting for 3 seconds. Then repeat it, hence the name! With encores, instead of just hanging you do a pull up to a certain angle and then hold it there for 7 seconds. Drop and rest for 3 seconds. Then pull up to a different angle and hold for 7.
The "hold for 7, rest for 3" cycle is meant to simulate actual climbing more accurately. Imagine you are on a route, and you move to a hold. You then grip that hold while you reposition your body. Until you let go of that hold you are gripping it. This is the 7 second hold in encores. Inbetween holds the muscles will get a bit of a break, or when shaking out. This is the 3 second rest in encores.
If 7s to 3s is too difficult at first, try 5s to 5s. What's important is to be strick with yourself and actually use a stopwatch. If you have to drop sooner than 5s, you get a bigger rest and so are more likely to succeed on the next hold.
I’ve adapted the table from Beastmaker for what I do:
1: nearly straight
2: full lock
3: ¼ lock (angle between forearm and bicep is 135 degrees)
4: ¾ lock (45 degrees)
5: ½ lock (90 degrees)
It’s important to remember not to do a hang at full extension, always keep a little bit of bend at the elbow. This is because in full extension the weight is just going through the shoulder joint capsule and ligaments, and not so much the muscle. It is easy to injure yourself if you're constantly flopping down to full extension and suddenly loading all these shoulder ligaments.
If you can do 3 sets of these you then you probably have the strength to climb V6-7. If you still can't, you need to target technique...
Fingerboards...
And so we come to the final item on the list. Fingerboards are expensive and difficult to put up in rented accommodation but they can work wonders for your climbing.
I’m not going to say much about it, as you can do the same stuff on a fingerboard as you can on a pull up bar. So: pull ups, dead hangs, offsets, leg raises, repeaters, encores etc. It’s just that it works the fingers as well as the arms.
Caution: when you start using a fingerboard properly always go carefully. Fingers are easy to injure and take a long time to recover. Always warm up with a few sets of pull ups and a few dead hangs to get the blood flowing. If anything hurts STOP! If you’re serious about fingerboard training read up on it, places like the Beastmaker website are great: http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/training%20page2.htm
I will make a passing mention of campus boards. I’ve never used them and I only see them at the climbing wall where it is much better to make use of the wall! If you have the space to build a campus board at home, build a wall instead! Campus boarding is easy to do wrong and if done wrong it is easy to injure yourself. I’m by no means an expert, and if you’re interested in campus boarding go and speak to someone who knows more about it!
Congratulations if you’ve made it this far! I’m at the end now, I hope you’re a little wiser and have some ideas about what to do. Always remember that these exercises are supplements to actual climbing that when used properly can help you improve. Remember that motivation is the key to all training.
Little and often, look after yourself and get training!
By Martin Davies
