When I was starting climbing back in the day the general idea for training was "keep climbing until you can't move anymore". We would do pull ups, pushups, crunches and traversing for warm up, climb for hours and then do more pull ups, pushups and campus. Repeat couple of times a week. There was progress at the beginning but people plateaued fast and injuries were common.
Since then a lot of research was done on climbing training and we have books like
After reading this book and applying what I learned, my first trainings look silly. So here's a short summary of what I learned from it and what I wish I knew 10 years ago:
- Best way to improve climbing and avoid injury is to get strong. The stronger you are the bigger the safety margin you have. If you climb well below your max strength you will have less chances of getting injured.
- To get stronger you should train close but below your max level. Strength training recipe is basically 1-3 reps and 90-95% of your 1RM (1 Rep Max, the max weight you can lift one time).
- To work at 90-95% of your 1RM you have to be rested. Instead of working out until you can't move you should focus on doing the work you have planned for the day. Then you should make sure you're rested before your next training.
That's pretty much it. The rest is training periodization and planning which is a more complicate story. So what my typical training looks like now?
- Good warmup (joints, rubber bands, roller, light pullups, cardio, traverses). Nowhere near pump levels.
- Focuses strength training: for example 3 pullups at 60% 1RM, 3x at 75%, 3x at 90% (with 3 min rest between). Then same for finger strength (3 series of weighted hangs on 20mm ledge, at 60%, 75%, 90% 1RM).
- Light-medium bouldering for maybe 30 minutes
Stretch, go home. Half of the work but noticeable results.
So what does your training look like?
