Workout to Improve your Climbing Fitness

26th October 2017

Whether you’re a serious or recreational climber, climbing fitness is just as important as climbing skill, to help you improve performance and remain injury free.

Introduction

In recent years, climbing has grown in popularity from a niche sport to a widely accessible activity for all ages and levels. The health and fitness benefits of climbing are now widely known, and while climbing largely remains an outdoor sport, modern gyms are beginning to offer a controlled environment in which to focus on building and enhancing skill, technique and physicality for outdoor climbing.

Gym design

At EVO, our training zones are designed around the philosophy of natural movement – skill, purpose and play. From an early age, we want to climb on everything – our powerful grip, natural strength and mobility make it a challenging and playful activity as young children. With this in mind, many of our clubs have a traverse wall, and some of our newer clubs have now Incorporated peg boards, climbing burgers, ropes, and cargo nets – designed to nurture and condition natural climbing skill.

Fit for purpose

A fit for purpose climber needs to be highly skilled in many components of fitness, ranging from flexibility and balance, to high levels of bodyweight strength. Key areas to focus training on include grip strength, unbalanced body positions, long limb reaches, and pulling movements.

With these goals in mind, we’ve picked out 5 of our favorite exercises that will challenge general strength and endurance, core stability, balance, coordination and flexibility. You can incorporate these exercises individually into an existing workout, or perform them in sequence as a climbing conditioning workout.

5 Climbing training exercises

Perform each of the following exercises as many times as possible in 30 seconds, focusing on control over speed. Take 20-30 secs rest before moving onto the next. Once you have completed all exercises, rest for 1 minute and repeat two more times.

1. TRX row

Hold onto the handles of a TRX and position your body at a 45° incline.
Initiate the row by squeezing the shoulder blades together, then pulling the chest towards the handles.
Pause at the top for 2 seconds, before slowly returning and releasing the shoulder blades.
Repeat for time.

2. Crawl

Drop onto your hands and feet, keeping the knees low to the ground.
Crawl slowly forwards for a few meters, paying attention to your balance and maintaining a strong core.
When you get to the end, crawl backwards.
Repeat continuously for time.

3. Jump pull-up

Stand under a pull up bar.
Engage the core and jump up to grab the bar in an overhand grip.
As soon as you grab the bar, pull the chest towards the bar – try to use the momentum you have generated from the jump to pull as quickly as possible.
Pause briefly at the top.
Lower yourself slowly and repeat for time.

4. Push up with rotation

From a push up position, lower your body to the floor.
As you push up, reach one arm towards the ceiling, as you continue to push on the opposite arm.
In the top position, both arms should be straight, and the chest turned to one side.
Lower and repeat on the other side.

5. TRX knee pull

Start in a push up position and place your feet into the TRX straps.
Engage the core, and maintain the hips level with the shoulders.
Keeping the shoulders over the hands and the core tight, pull the knees towards the chest, without losing shape or balance.
Return under control and repeat for time.