“Everything is training.”
Alex Lowe
Imagine a climber on a steep rock face. The contact points—her feet and hands—connect her to the wall. Her calves work to support her feet, and her quadriceps and hamstrings push her body upward as she climbs. Her forearms contract to keep her fingers gripping. Her biceps and lats pull to hold her on the rock, her core strength—abdominals and back muscles—works to keep her feet on the rock when the footholds are bad or when the rock overhangs. Minor muscles throughout her body keep her in balance. To keep these muscles working, her lungs pump oxygen into her blood and her heart pumps blood through her body. Her brain orchestrates all of this action, deciding which handholds to grab, where to stand, how to keep it safe, and whether to back off or keep climbing. Climbing truly requires a full body-and-mind effort.
Many books have been written on training for climbing. The information here will help you get started with a basic training program. For more advanced training information, refer to the books listed in Appendix B, Climbing Resources.
Climbing pushes the limits of your technique, strength, endurance, and psyche. A comprehensive training and nutrition program addresses each of these areas to help you achieve your potential as a climber. The payoff to hours of gritty workouts is feeling strong and confident on the rock and climbing at higher levels of difficulty. These benefits only come with a disciplined effort, however. Every climber must choose his own goals; climbing harder may or may not be one of yours. If you do aspire to climb harder, a well-designed training program is the ticket to get you there.
Quality of training brings more results than quantity—train smart to get the most for your effort. Do your research and create a program that’s suited to your individual needs. Be prepared to push beyond your mental and physical comfort levels, gradually increasing the intensity of your workouts and difficulty of your climbs to make progress. At the same time, keep the climbing and training fun so you’ll stick with it.
Proceed with caution when starting any new training program. Start off easy and gradually increase the intensity and duration of your workouts. Listen to your body and back off if you feel any tweaks or injuries surfacing. If you have any health concerns or have been inactive for some time, consult a doctor before beginning a climbing or training regimen.
The good news is that the best training for climbing is . . . climbing (though supplementing it with aerobic conditioning, resistance training, and proper nutrition helps, too!). Most climbers would like to climb better so that they can climb harder routes. Progressing to higher levels allows more opportunities to climb spectacular terrain. Routes can be harder for many reasons: the moves are more technical or sustained, the protection is tricky, the wall is steeper, the rock type is unfamiliar, or the climb is long or in an alpine setting where the environment adds to the overall challenge. The best strategy for progressing is to gradually move up to higher numbers. For a beginner, lead some 5.4s and 5.5s and then add a few 5.6 routes before the first 5.7. Then climb several 5.7s before attempting a 5.8, and many 5.8s before you move up to 5.9. (Experienced climbers should adjust these numbers upward.) This way you gain the experience you need to climb at higher levels and hopefully avoid the epics and accidents endured by many climbers who try to progress too fast.
Especially when you’re starting out or climbing at the intermediate level, the biggest gains come not through gains in strength, but rather from the improved skill, technique, and confidence that result from more time on the rock.
Incredible gains can also come from climbing in a gym, where you can really control the workout and train when it’s too dark, too cold, too hot, or too rainy outside.
Several times in this book warming up has been recommended before cranking on hard climbs. The warm-up also goes for your training sessions. Always start off with easy exercises to get your muscles loose and warm, and then perform several minutes of stretches. The stretches will help you avoid training injuries, and they’ll make you more limber, which helps on many climbs.
A thorough stretching routine works through most of your muscle groups. This is beneficial for all-around flexibility and fitness. If you lack the time for a complete stretching routine, focus on the climbing muscles to prepare yourself for a climbing or training session. Stretch the fingers, forearms, triceps, biceps, shoulders, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves.
Stretch mildly, and hold each stretch for 10 to 20 seconds. Don’t “bounce” as you stretch, or push a stretch beyond your comfort level; you can injure cold muscles this way. After stretching, spend more time doing moderate physical activity to further warm up before you start increasing the workload. You’ll also benefit from stretching after a climb or workout to “warm down”; this is the best time to work on flexibility.
You hear it so much in training circles that it almost sounds like a cliché: “Work your weaknesses.” Cliché or not, the greatest leaps in skill often come from improving the things you do worst. It’s more fun to work your strengths, but many climbers get in this rut and never improve their weak spots. Dozens of possible weaknesses exist. Make a thorough self-assessment to find yours and then work on climbs, boulder problems, and strength-training exercises that will improve them.
Have sketchy footwork? Practice setting your feet with precision and holding them steady on the footholds. Don’t trust your feet? Climb slabs and boulder problems with tiny footholds to learn the limits of modern climbing shoes and gain confidence in your feet.
Have weak fingers? Work on finger-intensive boulder problems and train on a fingerboard, campus board, or system board to strengthen them. Don’t try to progress too fast, though, or your weak fingers may become injured fingers.
Give up too easy on hard moves? Focus on cranking, and don’t give up until you complete a problem or fall off trying (provided it’s safe to do so).
Bad at high-stepping when the footholds are high? Purposely work on moves involving high steps to increase your flexibility, balance, and leg strength for high steps.
Prone to tendonitis? Work to strengthen your antagonistic muscle groups, take rest days between hard climbing or training days, and ice inflamed areas after climbing.
It’s all about refining your ability in order to create a balanced palette of skills from which to draw. Many climbers put too much focus on getting strong when they could actually improve faster by working on technique and mental power. Continually make self-assessments so you can adjust your training as your climbing evolves.
Mountaineering is often portrayed as brave climbers “conquering” the mountains. But a climber never conquers a climb or a mountain; it’s solid rock, and you’re flesh and bones. Instead, a climber discovers and exploits the weaknesses and opportunities of the climb. In rock climbing, these are the handholds and footholds to which you must adapt yourself and your technique. In essence, the climber strives to be one with the rock, to work with the features, rather than fighting the rock. To do this, you need good climbing technique.
To improve your technique, review Chapter 1, about face-climbing technique, and Chapter 2, if you’ll be climbing cracks. Watch climbing videos and good climbers whenever you get the chance. Notice how the climbers move smoothly, always placing their feet with precision and supporting the body with their legs. Notice the dynamic way that they move, sometimes subtly and other times powerfully. Watch how they often bounce lightly off the lower foot when moving it up. Notice how they stay calm and never get panicky or frazzled. Try to emulate their style, focusing on your feet, minimizing the weight on your arms, and keeping cool.
Climb relaxed and avoid overgripping. If possible, sign up for a technique clinic at a climbing gym or guide service, or hire a guide or climbing trainer to observe you climbing and coach you toward better technique.
Strength is the amount of force a muscle or group of muscles can apply. More important than strength is strength-to-weight ratio. A very strong climber who’s heavy may be disadvantaged over a smaller, moderately strong climber who has a higher strength-to-body-weight ratio. Once they start training, lighter climbers may experience more climbing improvement as a result of the same strength gains.
Power is the speed at which the muscles generate force—for example, during the cranking phase of a dyno or when latching onto a small hold as your weight rapidly comes onto it. Power reserves get depleted rapidly. A good climber draws on power only when needed rather than because she’s using poor technique. Extremely difficult climbs also often require the climber to have immense finger, arm, back, and core strength.
Training for power requires climbing hard problems (especially on steep terrain) and intensive finger training. An overhanging indoor bouldering wall is great for power training, because you can create the level of intensity that you need by changing the holds. In a commercial gym, you can choose the appropriate routes that will add to your power reserves. Your body needs extra rest time to recover after power training.
Endurance is the ability of the muscles to keep working at much less than maximum strength for an extended time, which requires good support from the cardiovascular system. In climbing, this translates to the strength required to keep moving on moderately strenuous terrain, where no single move is hard but the cumulative effect of the moves can get you pumped, which is the case on many traditional and sport routes.
Improve your climbing endurance by climbing long bouldering traverses or circuits, doing laps on top-rope, and climbing challenging, sustained routes. Try to climb faster so you get more climbing in, and to increase your climbing speed, which can save energy on steep terrain. You can also increase your endurance through aerobic exercise such as hiking (the steeper the better), trail running, cycling, mountain biking, and backcountry skiing. Adding a loaded pack adds to the workout by increasing intensity, but don’t overdo it. Aerobic fitness is especially important for climbers who do long routes or alpine rock climbs with long approaches and descents.
TECHNIQUE TRAINING
Use the first hold: Pick a climb that is a couple of number grades below your limit. Try to use the first hold you touch—not feeling around for a better hold. In a crack, use the first jam you grab instead of wriggling your hand around for the optimal position. This teaches you creative body positions as well as how important it can be to look before grabbing the next hold or jam.
Climb silently: on any difficulty, see if you can execute the climb without making any noise with your hands or feet against the rock. This teaches you to place your feet carefully and control your body motion precisely.
Downclimb: Practice downclimbing on terrain two number grades below your limit. This teaches you to lead with your feet and to study the movement of your body on the rock in a way that opens your mind to new possibilities—it also makes you better at escaping sticky situations on lead.
Do it differently: on a climb you’ve just done, climb it again but do as many of the moves as you can differently than you did them the first time. You’ll realize that many times there are easier, less obvious ways to do some sections; and you’ll learn to flow over the rock rather than obsessing over doing the moves “right.”
Power-endurance (also called anaerobic endurance) is required to crank several powerful moves in a row. This strength is required on many high-end sport routes where you must make multiple hard moves, one after the other. Climbing progressively harder sport or gym routes will improve your power-endurance.
To train power-endurance on a bouldering wall, find a circuit that takes 1 to 5 minutes before you experience muscle failure. Rest 1 to 2 minutes and then perform another set. Several sets of this will put the burn on.
A hard boulderer needs tremendous strength and power, a high-end sport climber requires high reserves of power-endurance, and a climber who prefers long traditional routes relies more on endurance. For good all-around fitness and performance, though, a climber must train all three of these types of strength across several muscle groups. Neglect one area and you’ll start to lose that type of strength. This physiological fact places quite a burden on the aspiring hard climber.
Climbing requires a full range of the muscles in the body, with an emphasis on the fingers and forearms; on steeper routes, the arms, shoulders, back, and core strength become increasingly important.
Finger strength is often the weak link in rock climbing. Few (if any) activities require finger and hand strength the same way that climbing does. Once a climber has developed decent technique and confidence, the next area to improve—slowly—is finger strength, including: contact strength, the strength required to latch onto a hold, and grip strength, the strength required to keep grasping a hold.
Bouldering is a great way to increase finger strength; you can do laps on problems with small handholds to get stronger and improve your technique at the same time. Once your fingers are reasonably strong you can accelerate the strength gains by training on a campus board, fingerboard, or system board. Seek a training book to develop a safe program—you can seriously damage your fingers if you overdo high-intensity finger strength training, or if you start before your tendons and ligaments have adequate base strength. Your muscles will develop strength much more quickly than your tendons and ligaments, so many climbing injuries happen right at the point when intermediate-level climbers gain the strength to start doing advanced climbs—but their connective tissue isn’t ready for the forces created by their newly developed muscles and enthusiastic technique.
System board
Lock-off strength is the ability to hold your body position with one arm while reaching with the other. Locking off is particularly strenuous on overhanging terrain or when the footholds are poor, and it requires strong biceps, deltoids, and lats. You can work your lock-off strength by holding your chin above a pull-up bar as long as possible for a few sets, with a 1- or 2-minute rest between sets. Once you get strong enough, you can do the lock offs with one arm.
Pulling-down strength allows you to move your mass upward, assisted by pushing from the legs. Pulling-in strength is required on severely overhanging climbing, when gravity is trying to pull you out away from the wall. These both come from the lats and biceps, aided by core strength and the legs.
Core strength comes from your abdominals and lower back. It helps you maintain body tension, which is important on everything from thin slabs to overhanging problems. The steeper the climbing, the more you’ll need to use your arms in concert with your feet to make the holds work, and good core strength allows you to do that.
Climbing develops the pulling muscles—forearms, biceps, and lats. The pushing muscles—triceps and pecs—receive only mild workouts during most climbing, so they lag the pulling muscles in strength. Such muscle imbalances stress the adjacent joints, often leading to shoulder and elbow injuries. As you develop your climbing muscles, also spend some effort to develop the opposing (antagonistic) muscles. The shoulder joints also suffer stresses during climbing, so the deltoid and rotator cuff muscles should be strengthened to avoid injury.
Weight training is also used by modern climbers to develop mutant superhero power. A smart weight-training program does not need to increase your size, and it’s efficient for strengthening the antagonistic muscles and balancing your body’s muscle groups. Choose free weights over machines to fine-tune your smaller muscles. Dumbbells in particular require you to balance the weights, working a broader group of muscles. Seek help from a trainer or a book to learn weight-lifting exercises that develop the pushing muscles. It’s especially important to incorporate the reverse wrist curl into your program to develop the back of the forearm, and work the triceps, deltoids, and pecs. Two weight-training sessions per week for three to four months will help balance your muscle groups.
Being balanced well over your feet is a tremendous asset for a climber, especially when the footholds are slim, and is mandatory for the higher levels of the sport. Climbing on slabs and standing on progressively smaller holds improves balance and helps you find the limits of your shoes. You’ll be amazed at how you can stand on a dime-size edge if you keep your feet steady.
Many climbers train by walking a slackline—a line of webbing stretched supertight between two trees (with protective padding where the webbing contacts the tree). This improves balance and focus.
Practicing yoga or Pilates can help a climber in multiple ways: It improves balance and flexibility, corrects muscle imbalances, improves body alignment, encourages good posture and circulation, and helps mental focus.
Time spent on the rock honing your skills, increasing strength, and becoming adept with protection systems will help you climb with confidence. Many climbers, beginners and experts alike, fail to achieve their potential because they lose focus when things get hard. Rather than relax and concentrate on the moves, they get flustered, wasting mental energy on distractions such as fear and doubt, even when falling would be completely safe. The doubt becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—losing focus causes failure on the climb.
When the climbing is safe (such as on a top-roped climb or well-protected lead), learn to find your inner calm. Breathe deeply and relax. You might even try to “blank out” your mind for a moment, then return to a centered state where your only focus is on making the moves. Making a quick smile can help relieve stress and bring you into a positive focused state. Even taking the time on a rest to look around at the exceptional arena where the sport of climbing takes place can often bring you back to focus happily on the challenge in front of you.
Sometimes fear of failure becomes more debilitating than fear of falling. A climber may even avoid challenging routes because he does not want to fall in front of others. Keep things in perspective—it’s only rock climbing. It’s okay to take safe falls! Falling doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means that you’ve given a full effort on the route and have made a successful step toward completing the climb later. If you aren’t falling sometimes, you aren’t trying your hardest.
Visualizing a climb is a technique where you mentally rehearse the moves of a climb to improve your chances of climbing it. You can also use visualization to overcome bad technique habits. (See Chapter 8, Sport Climbing, for more on visualization.)
In order to climb your best, your body needs to function at its best. Drink lots of nonalcoholic fluids throughout the day, and consider drinking an energy drink before, during, and after a workout to fuel and resupply your muscles. Eat a diet of wholesome foods and, unless your research tells you differently, consume a good balance of protein, carbohydrates, and unsaturated fats. Most weight-loss diets are not suitable for climbers. Eat a big meal the night before a long climbing day, and refuel throughout the day with high-energy snacks such as energy bars and fruits and nuts. Gel energy packets can really help you kick it into gear when you’re fading on a long day. Refuel immediately after a climbing or training session. Waiting even a couple of hours increases the time it takes for muscle recovery. Each climber must listen to his own body to learn its nutritional needs.
The world’s best climbers in the 1980s established 5.13 and limited their food intake and avoided leg workouts to stay whippet thin. The world’s best climbers today have established 5.14 and 5.15 by training—and eating—like Olympians. Lots of the right food and a full-body view of fitness is now standard fare at the top levels of the climbing game.
Sometimes enthusiasm can lead you to climb or train hard many days in a row. This path often leads to a physical (and sometimes mental) breakdown. The body needs rest days in between hard physical days so it can heal and gain strength. Everyone’s body is different, but in general, every day or two of hard climbing, bouldering, or training should be followed by a rest day. A seriously hard day might get two rest days or more. Physiologists now know that after a severe power workout it takes your muscles nearly four days to achieve full recovery. If you feel an injury coming on, take a few days off. Listen to your body; it will tell you when to push hard and when to rest. The longevity of your climbing and bouldering career depends on it. So does your improvement as a climber and boulderer: Muscles and tendons need rest between hard workouts to repair and gain strength. Without enough rest days, your performance will decline and injury will lurk around every corner. With the right amount of training and rest, you’ll become a far more powerful climber.
EXERCISE: VISUALIZATION
Pick a route that’s fairly difficult for you, and work the moves and sequences over and over until you can remember them all. Later, in a relaxing place with a calm mind, mentally rehearse the moves. Think about taking each hold in sequence, visualize each foot move, even think about the texture of the handholds and the exact hand position. Climb the route from bottom to top in your mind, over and over. Do this several times before returning to the route. Now when you get there, after warming up, visualize it two or three more times as you look at the holds. When you’re ready: relax, find a calm space for your mind, and climb the route. There, see how much easier it feels?
EXERCISE: BREATHING THROUGH THE MOVES
You can practice this anywhere. Keeping your eyes open, focus on your breathing: Breathe in to the count of four; breathe out, more slowly, to the count of seven. Next time you’re in a solid rest spot on a climb, focus on your breathing before your next move, and watch how your energy builds before you attack that dyno. This is also a good exercise for overcoming fear while on the rock: Focusing on your breathing takes the focus off your fear and onto pure movement.
