12 Ways to Train for Rock Climbing
1. Climb More
The best training you can do for rock climbing is to climb more. As they say - "practice makes perfect". Indeed, this is exactly the case when it comes to rock climbing. One of the most common perceptions about rock climbing is that you need to be strong in order to climb well. This is probably true to a certain extent but not entirely. An excellent example to demonstrate the fallacy in this statement would be the "weaker" female climber who is able to climb better than a "stronger" male climber.
How is a "weaker" person able to climb better than a "stronger" climber? Technique, or rather being smart about the moves you make on the wall. How can you improve your technique? Through experience. And how do you gain experience? You climb more.
At some point, strength will definitely come into the picture, but guess what? The more you climb, the stronger you get purely by default. You don't have to go to a gym and pump iron. In fact, weight training at the gym is an inefficient way to train for climbing because the effect on your body is symmetrical. When you do a lat pull down, you pull equally with both arms. You don't use your legs to help you and you certainly don't have to balance on tiny footholds while you're at it. Climbing moves are rarely ever symmetrical. Additionally, time spent at the gym is time you are not spending climbing. Since our bodies can only take so much weight training (rock climbing included) a week before the risk of muscle injury arises, you lose out on the opportunity to hone your other climbing skills, such as balance, finger strength and footwork.
2. Practice Down Climbing
What is down climbing? When you are climbing at an indoor rock climbing gym, instead of just climbing up the walls, try climbing down them as well. If you want to get better at climbing then you really need to do this. Why? Down climbing helps you focus on the one thing that most climbers (especially beginner climbers) often forget - your feet. When you down climb, the first thing you think about is, "Where am I going to put my foot?"
Many climbers often underestimate how much their legs can help them when they climb. Why are your legs so important in climbing? The more weight you can transfer to your feet, the less mass you have to haul up with your arms - this is especially important if your upper body strength is poor.
Sometimes you are unable to make it to the next hold because you cannot reach it or you are unable to get a good grip on it because your body is positioned too low. Being able to move your body up a few centimeters can be the difference between making it to the next hold and falling off. The way to move your body up is to move your feet up.
The greatest virtue of down climbing lies in the fact that it forces you to think about your feet and it helps your train your footwork.
3. Practice Traversing
What is traversing? It is the art of moving horizontally across a wall as opposed to climbing vertically, which is the most common direction of climbing. This can be done as a warm up before you start climbing. At a rock climbing gym, just pick a section of the wall and try to climb horizontally, no more than a meter above the ground, for as long as you can. When you first begin traversing, you may find yourself unable to stay on the wall for very long. Keep practicing until you can make your way around the gym easily or do laps across a short section.
Practice traversing with different holds and finding different rest positions that allow your arms to recover without coming off the wall when you need to take a break. If you are traversing as a "warm up", practice only until you feel your muscles warming up and stop well before the lactic acid builds up in your forearms. If you traverse until your arms are pumped, you won't be able to do much climbing, especially if you're new to the climbing scene.
What are the benefits of traversing? It is another way to train your footwork and to get you to remember your feet. Additionally, it helps you think of different ways to move on the wall, which builds your technique. You can learn which moves are easier for you. It also allows you to work through a problem close to the ground which means you don't have to waste energy climbing the parts you can do easily.
As you get better at traversing, try working on more difficult moves, such as skipping holds, using fingertips only, one foot only or one hand only. Vary the exercise. Once you're a pro at traversing, you can graduate to bouldering, which will also help you build strength as well as train your technique, but more about this later. Beginner climbers should master the art of traversing first.
4. Add Variety to Your Climbing
They say that variety is the spice of life. It is also the key to getting better at whatever you do. Always try to climb something new and different - work on different routes, climb at different crags, go to different rock climbing gyms.
How does this help?
- It improves your route-reading ability. In other words, your ability to look at a new route and figure out how to climb it before you actually get on the wall.
- It improves your repertoire of rock climbing moves and your overall technique because every new route you climb will train your muscles in different ways. If you climb the same routes over and over again, you body won't learn anything new. The repeated moves become easier because your muscles have "memory".
Eric Horst, writer of several excellent training books for climbing better, once described a climber who would climb at the same crag every weekend. This climber got so good that he could dance pirouettes around every single route at the crag. One day, another climber accidentally broke one of the holds on a route and the "expert" climber could no longer climb that particular route any more. Don't let this happen to you.
Add variety to your climbing sessions.
- Try climbing with only one hand, or one leg.
- Practice traversing on a slab without hands, balancing with your feet. This is excellent for training your footwork and your balance.
- Climb using "first touch" rules, meaning that once you have placed your hand or foot onto a hold, you cannot shift its position even if the position is awkward. This forces you to think about how you use a hold so you optimize your moves and reduce the number of unnecessary moves (which obviously wastes energy).
- Try bouldering with a group of friends and give each other boulder problems to work on. Bouldering tends to be a shorter, more powerful sequence of moves that is guaranteed to improve your footwork and your strength.
- Do laps up and down a route that you can complete but still find challenging. Don't pick one you could climb in your sleep - you must feel like you are really giving your muscles a good workout. This will help to build your endurance.
5. Monkey See, Monkey Do
A terrific benefit of climbing in a group is being able to see how others climb. It gives you ideas for new moves that you can try when working out a problem on the wall. Sometimes another climber may have a better move that conserves more energy and it makes better sense for you to follow that move rather than the one that you figured out yourself. You can learn a lot by watching other climbers.
Sometimes watching another climber climb a route helps to make climbing the route feel more achievable. Have you heard that old adage - "see it to believe it"? Here is an example that took place in a climbing gym:
A group of climbers were working on a bouldering route. Each climber took it in turns to attempt the problem but no one could complete it. After a while, all the climbers became convinced it was "impossible". Suddenly, one climber succeeded in completing the problem. Shortly after that climber completed the route, the other climbers were also able to complete it. It was as if the mindset of the other climbers had been opened to the possibility that the route could be completed after they were able to see it being done.
There will always be climbers better than you and those that are weaker than you. Regardless of their climbing ability, you can always learn something from all of them by watching. With stronger climbers, even if you aren't physically capable of copying their moves, your brain is always storing information for further use. Weaker climbers remind us how best to conserve energy when climbing because a lot of the moves they make do not require as much strength purely because they don't have the physical ability to make powerful moves. One of the biggest problems with getting stronger is that there is a tendency to "waste" energy with powerful moves just because you have the physical ability to make them. Watching a weaker climber helps to bring you back to the basics.
6. Get Help from Your Belayer
The rock climbing purists would probably shoot me down for writing this but I do believe that this really helps you to get better at climbing. Every now and then, push your limits and try climbing more challenging routes on top-rope - even if they are physically beyond your current ability. Have an agreement with your belayer that when you attempt a new route, you get three attempts to work out the crux on your own. If you fail after the third attempt, allow your belayer to "help" you by giving "tight rope". How much help your belayer should provide depends on how much you need to make it all the way to the anchor.
What is the point of struggling up a route when it is clearly beyond your ability? Remember when I mentioned "muscle memory" earlier? Well, it happens regardless of whether the effort is entirely your own or even if someone helped you through the motions. Your body learns the moves just by going through the actions. Don't believe me? Try it. You will find that the next time you try the route again, you will struggle less. You may require less tight rope from your belayer or you may require none.
Please only practice this at the climbing gym and not when climbing outdoors. When your struggle on natural rock, especially limestone, you can destroy the rock surface which is very annoying to the climbers who are physically capable of climbing the route.
Another thing you can do, which helps you psychologically, is to touch the next hold. Even if you need help to get there, just make sure you don't get lowered off before you've touched the next hold.
7. Project Route
What is a project route? It is basically a route you are trying to red-point. It is usually a grade or two above the grade you are comfortably climbing. For instance, if you are comfortably climbing French grade 6A, try working on a project route that is a challenging 6B or even a 6C. The route must have a crux you cannot complete but with a bit of work, you can eventually nail it. Please note that a route where you can get to the anchor, albeit you have to hangdog, is not a suitable project route - this one is too easy for a project.
How does a project route help you? It helps you to refine your climbing skills and work on an area that you are weak at. For instance, you may be lousy at holding slopers and your project route has lots of them. Alternatively, the crux could be short series of moves that is currently beyond your physical ability. Given enough time, you should be able to work through it and red-point the route.
If you have been working on your project route solidly for a couple of weeks and you are not making any progress, drop the project and look for another one. It may be that the route you have chosen is too difficult. You can always return to this project again when you have clocked up more climbing hours.
One of the great things about a project route is that it helps you to "see" your improvements. When you are climbing every week, sometimes it can feel as if you aren't making any progress at all. It may feel that your climbing has hit a plateau and you can't improve no matter what you do. This is usually only temporary. Keep working at it and you will eventually improve with a leap and start climbing beyond your perceived abilities.
When you feel you've hit a plateau, it may be a good time to go back to an old project route which you shelved for some time and try it again. You will be surprised to find it seems easier than you remembered. Project routes bring enormous satisfaction when you are finally able to climb them. Never rule out anything as impossible. Be willing to give it a go and see how you go. Just remember to know when to quit and call it a day.
8. Strength Training
If you have been in the climbing scene for a while, you have probably heard about people who talk about training with campus boards and hanging on your fingers for as long as you can. Please, forget this. If you aren't capable of doing a chin up, this is completely useless. Instead, try these methods for strength training:
- Climb overhangs. It doesn't have to extreme, even a mildly overhanging incline will do.
- Boulder
As I mentioned earlier, if you do any amount of climbing on a regular basis, you will get stronger regardless of whether this is your intention or not. However, if you want to specifically get stronger, consider tackling an overhanging route as a project on a regular basis.
9. Training Regimen
If you want to get good at anything, you have to put in the hours. Climbing is no different. However, rather than clocking hours haphazardly, it is a good idea to set up a training schedule you can stick to. Here is an example of a training schedule:
Day 1 - Traversing warm-up. Climb 20 routes in blocks of 5 - that is, climb 5 routes in quick succession then take a break.
Day 2 - Take a break.
Day 3 - Traversing warm-up. Climb a few routes. Work on a project route. Boulder.
Day 4 - Take a break.
Day 5 - Climb whatever you want. Just enjoy yourself.
Day 6 - Work on a project route.
Day 7 - Take a break.
Follow your training schedule and adjust it as necessary to address your weaknesses. For instance, if you detect a weakness in your footwork, include some training time to tackle that weakness.
10. Optimal Strength to Weight Ratio
Although your initial strength and weight don't really matter when you begin climbing, at some stage, you will want to start focusing on it. No matter how strong you become, there is only so much weight that your fingers can support before they give way. And if you want to start climbing the harder routes, you will need to be able to pull up on very small handholds.
For a rock climber, what you want is not to achieve beef-cake status, but to reach an optimal strength to weight ratio. What you are targeting is lean muscle mass.
There are a few ways to achieve this. Here are some recommendations to try:
- Take on "The Workout from Hell". This is a highly targeted strength training workout intended to increase your strength to weight ratio. It was devised for competitive rowers who require good upper body strength with a relatively light-weight body. Since that is exactly what rock climbers are also trying to achieve, the end justifies the means.
But didn't you say that the best training you can do for climbing is to climb more? Yes, that is true, especially at the beginning. However, as you get better, you will find that sometimes taking a break (like a sabbatical) can offer you a refreshing insight to your sport that you have been missing. It is like they say - when you work on a problem for too long, after a while, all you can see are the trees. Taking a break helps you to see the forest again.
When you feel you are ready for it, use the Workout from Hell as your sabbatical from rock climbing. Click the link to find a detailed description of it.
- Lose weight. I think it is quite obvious that the other way to improve your strength to weight ratio is to lose weight. You can try reducing your calorie intake and eating less fat. Other obvious and healthy habits to adopt are to eat more fruits and vegetables, drink plenty of water, and limit junk food. It is important not to go overboard with a weight loss diet program and cut out too many calories because you still need some calories to have the energy to climb. If your calorie reduction is too great it will weaken you and make it harder to climb.
11. Recovery
Rock climbing is an intense weight training activity, therefore it is important to give you body sufficient recovery time between your climbing sessions. Just as body builders don't pump iron everyday, you shouldn't be rock climbing everyday either. You will risk muscle injury which will put you out of commission for longer.
You can facilitate recovery by performing a series of stretching exercises after each climbing session and increasing your protein intake. Most exercises require muscles to contract. Stretching helps to extend and lengthen the muscles to return them back to their normal resting positions.
Consuming enough protein in your diet is necessary to help rebuild torn down muscles after an intense activity like climbing. This is especially important if you are vegetarian. You don't necessarily have to eat meat, but it is advisable to at least include a protein shake into your diet. Without sufficient protein, your muscles will not be able to recover sufficiently for your next climbing session. Believe it or not, this can make a difference in the kind of climbing grades you achieve.
12. Visualisation
The power of visualisation lies in the fact that the mind cannot differentiate between a real memory from a visual image that has been made up. If you create enough visual images and store them as memories, you can fool your mind into believing that these are past memories rather than created images.
Here is an example from a book called, "The Mind Gym". In one chapter, the author writes about a golfer who had been stuck in a POW camp for many years. The only way that golfer survived the torment he had to endure was to imagine himself playing golf. He would visualise the golf course right down to the breeze that blew through his hair. When he finally escaped from the POW camp, he played golf again and discovered that his handicap had improved despite the fact that he had not touched a golf club in years! His improvement was the direct effect of having played golf in his mind all those years.
Summary
Regardless of whether you follow all of these training tips or whether you just follow some of them, you will eventually get better at rock climbing. At the end of the day, it all comes back to the fundamental first rule - climb more.