Training

One of the most important things is to know what you are going to do before you try and do it.

So this is the new and improved training basics page!

Training for climbing is not boring and is well worth your while. Read on to see why!

You may have found that you have slowly progressed up through the lower grades into the middle grades simply by spending time at the climbing wall and practicing. This may seem fine until the time comes where you seem to be stuck at a certain level, this is where a slightly more organised approach to your training may be required.

There are may areas to training so i have split them up to make things much easier for you.

Page Contents

Periodized training

Physical training principles

Structuring your training

Strength and power

Endurance Training

Anaerobic Endurance

Aerobic Stamina

Periodized training

Climbing can be considered different to many sports in the respect that you need to have a certain degree of technique. Although of course in climbing it is often said that "The best training for climbing is climbing" although this is true there are many other things that can supplement climbing as training.

Progressive Overload

Many people can be easily tempted to start a new phase of training by jumping straight into harder routes or bouldering problems. You should start your session with light work which will help your body prepare for the intense training to follow. As well as helping to avoid injury, doing this enables you to reach your peak and stay up at that level for longer with out burning out so quickly.

Under-Resting

This is also known as over training, however this term has become less used as coaches are worried that this can be a deterrent from hard training. The real secret is that you can train hard, but you must rest well too. You need to allow enough rest between climbing sessions, this means taking into account the type and intensity of the session, most climbers find that they need to rest longer after strength training than endurance training.

Structuring your training

It is an important principle to structure your training with various different types of workout into a chronological order so that you maximise the training benefits. For example many climbers find it beneficial to have a stamina training session after a relatively hard bouldering session. However if you were to undergo a bouldering session after getting pumped on longer routes would be a waste of your time and you wouldn't achieve anything.

PHYSICAL TRAINING

In this section you need to forget about your technique and think about the improvements we could make to our body's different but relevant energy systems. Our energy systems provide us with specific localised muscular strength and endurance which can be used to assist our climbing techniques.

STRENGTH AND POWER

These are physical components of climbing performance, these are required to perform short and hard crux moves or boulder problems. The main muscle and tendon groups affected here are the fingers, forearms, upper arms, shoulders, upper back and possibly the lower torso.

CLIMBING POWER

Power in climbing is the ability to perform extreme dynamic moves at high speed when required. In situations that this is required you need to move with enough momentum not only to gain the height but also to have a split second of weightlessness where you can take hold of the hold. This technique is known as deadpointing.

Strenghth and power