How to Avoid Getting Sore After Climbing

The Warm Down: Neglected But Needed The warm down is the least appreciated (and least used) element in a workout. Coaches and climbers alike frequently neglect it. This is unfortunate. The warm down won’t prepare you for training like the warm-up, nor will it directly contribute to your performance gains like the training sets. However, […]
The Perfect Climbing Warm-Up

4 Workout Rules How do you build sets to target the goals you want to achieve in your climbing workout? We start with the simplest sets first and then we’ll move into more complicated areas. Here are the four general rules of a climbing workout. First, all climbing sets have a similar structure. They consist of […]
Why Climbers Need Warm-Ups Before a Workout

Why Warm-Ups? The foundation of a good workout starts with a good warm-up. This is a principle that we have all likely heard in various forms, dozens or hundreds of times from our coaches and other fitness experts. The trouble is that it’s much less likely that anyone has ever explained why. The purpose of a […]
The 4 Most Important Grades Every Climber Should Know

The Big Four Let’s learn about the four most important grades every climber should know. It is important to note that these “grades” are specific to the individual climber, not to a particular problem or route. Individualizing our grades is the first step toward crafting workouts that allow sufficiently accurate performance measurement. Let’s start! The […]
The Best 4 Fitness Goals for Climbers

Fitness Goals Explained The motivation for our training model came from years of watching climbers on both routes and boulder problems. We examined in detail the different types of “fitness” they need in order to complete their projects. After much research we found that the number of core fitness goals for each discipline (bouldering and […]
Why Performance in Climbing is Difficult to Measure?

The Relative Nature of Grades Climbing grades are relative more than they are subjective. What’s the difference? Subjective issues are those based entirely on individual perceptions or opinions. In other words, subjective issues occur almost exclusively in our minds, not in the world outside our minds. That is the land of the objective. Relative differences […]
5 Tips on How to Train on Climbing Routes

What to Train On? The most significant performance gains come from training that is sport specific. Runners run, swimmers swim, and, of course, climbers climb. However, just as trail running requires a different set of strengths than running on a track, and swimming across the English Channel requires a different set than swimming in a […]
Rock Climbing Training (Part 2)

How Do We Train? In Rock Climbing Training (Part 1), we gave you the concrete idea of what and why we need to train. Now we can begin to look at how we train. In Part 2, we will discuss the foundational principles of training fitness, and how we can begin to adapt them for […]
Rock Climbing Training (Part 1)

Why Do We Train? The simple answer is, of course, “we train to get better.” In terms of climbing, it means to send harder climbs. But, while this answer is accurate, it is not terribly helpful. That’s because while it explains what motivates us to train, it does not tell us how training actually leads […]
Exaggerated Weight Shifting in Rock Climbing

Refined Core Skill Exaggerated weight shifting is considered a refined core skill. Because of the problems with relying on “feel” at steeper angles, climbers need to be almost over-focused on weight shifting, all for front-stepping, twist locks, and flagging. Front-Stepping In front-stepping, climbers have a tendency to short the swing. This simply means they fail […]