ALL ABOUT STRENGTH TRAINING

Have you ever tried to high step on a climb, managed to place your foot on a hold that is close to your hips, but couldn’t stand up on it? Chances are you are pretty flexible, but your squat strength is lacking. Or maybe you have worked on a route where you had all the moves memorized, but you just couldn’t stay on the tiny hold at the crux long enough to move past it. Your strategy is strong, but your finger strength could be preventing you from sending. 

There are so many elements of climbing to master, and time spent on the wall is the most important part of any training plan. At some point though, you’ll likely discover a factor that causes you to plateau, strength being a common limitation. While you won’t automatically send your project if you start lifting five days a week, including strength training in a well-rounded climbing training plan can make a big difference in your performance. 

What is “Strength” and Why Should I Train It? 

Strength can be defined as the maximum amount of force you can exert in a given exercise or against an object. That could be measured in your ability to complete a hard move, like pulling on a small hold with one arm, or it could be measured by the amount of weight you can pick up. Strength is as much about our brain’s ability to recruit muscles as it is about how big our muscles are. 

Strength training will help you complete the hardest moves on a climb and allow you to climb more efficiently by using less energy on each move. It also can be key to preventing injury, especially for aging athletes. Incorporating strength training that targets all of our major movement patterns can help us avoid imbalances and improve our ability to climb without getting hurt. Finally, strength training can be super helpful when you don’t have access to climbing terrain and you want to maintain some fitness! 

Training Functional Strength: The Four Major Movement Patterns  

Our bodies are meant to move in every direction, through all ranges of motion. Climbing often requires complex positions and strength in the end ranges of movement. (Think high steps or wide compression moves!) By focusing on training functional movements that require coordination across muscle groups, you’ll learn skills and build patterns in your nervous system, rather than just building muscle mass. Try to hit these four basic movement patterns during strength training sessions. Here are some examples of exercises for each pattern: 

 1. Squat: 

• Pistol squats
• Split squats
• Kettlebell squat 
• Front squat
• Back Squat

2. Hinge:

• Deadlift 
• Romanian deadlift 
• Single leg deadlift

3. Push: 

• Push-ups
• Chest press
• Overhead press

4. Pull 

• Pull-ups 
• Dumbbell rows
• Horizontal rows
• Wide pull ups

+ Core:

You also want to include some hard core work in addition to the four patterns. A lot of commonly used core variations aren’t difficult enough to create the tension we need to get stronger. Choose from the hard core progressions below to build strength:

• Hanging leg raises
• Dragon flags
• Front levers
• Hard-style planks
• Lying leg raises
• Compression leg raises

Planning Your Strength Training: Basic Principles

The first part of any training program should be learning the movements before adding weight or difficulty. If you’re brand new to strength training, it’s a good idea to work with a strength coach to learn proper form and technique. Once you get the technique dialled, climbers will want to focus on doing more difficult movements with lower repetitions. This will train your nervous system to recruit more muscle fibres, rather than just increasing muscle mass, which is key for climbers. 

To understand how to structure your strength training, it’s helpful to define a few concepts: 

• Repetitions: The number of times you perform a given exercise in a set.

• Sets: Several repetitions (reps) of a certain exercise grouped together. For example, in a strength training session, you may complete 3 sets of 4-6 reps of squats. 
• Periodization: A set of training phases that help an athlete build to a performance phase and prevent burnout. Each phase focuses on a different goal and each phase builds off of the previous one. 
• One Rep Maximum: The maximum amount of weight that you can lift for a certain exercise. This could also be the most difficult version of a move that you can perform (i.e. a one-arm pull-up or wide push-ups). Reps are often defined as a percentage of your one-rep maximum (i.e. 6 reps at 75% of 1RM).
• Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE): This is a scale from 1-10, 1 being the easiest effort and 10 being the hardest effort.  

Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) 

What’s great about RPE is that you can shift the weight/variation used based on how you feel that day. Many other strength programs use a percentage of your 1 rep maximum. But this method does not take into account how you feel on a given day. However, RPE does! And this is great because you can learn how to adjust exercises based on how you feel. 

How you feel on a given day is often based on recovery. If you had a stressful day or didn’t get enough sleep, an RPE of 8 will yield a different outcome compared to an RPE 8 on a day you feel fully recovered. 

One way of understanding your own RPE is to know roughly how many reps you have left in the tank. For example:

• RPE 10 = Max effort, very slow movement (grinding reps), no reps left in the tan
• RPE 9 =  The last rep is hard, but you have 1 rep left in the tan
• RPE 8 =  Last rep is getting slow, but you have about 2 reps left in the tan
• RPE 7 = Last rep is still fast yet challenging
• RPE 6 = Moving quickly with moderate effort
• RPE 5 = Warm up reps
• RPE 4 = Can do roughly 20 reps, makes the muscle burn

Anything lower than 4 is ineffective for training. In general, for improved strength gains in any program, shoot for an RPE 8 or above. An example of RPE 8 for 3 sets x 5 reps, you pick a variation that allows you to complete 3 sets of 5 reps with 2 reps left in the tank you could do 7 reps. 

Basic Periodization Plan 

Phase 1:

Start by learning the movements and focusing on good technique. Build good habits and practise consistency! This phase will also help you build a base of strength and conditioning. Choose 1 exercise from each pattern.

• 3-4 sets of each exercise, at 8-10 reps each
• 70-85% of one-rep maximum or RPE 7-8
• 4-6 weeks long, aim for 2 sessions/week 

Phase 2:

Lower your reps and increase the weight or difficulty of the movement. During this phase, you’ll build strength and patterns in your nervous system to complete more difficult movements. 

• 3-4 sets of each exercise, at 5 reps each 
• 75-85% of one-rep maximum or RPE 7-8
• 4-6 weeks long, aim for 2-3 sessions/week 

Phase 3:

This is the maintenance phase during your climbing season. Your strength training shouldn’t impact your climbing performance; the goal is to avoid losing too much strength during this period rather than trying to make gains.

• 3 sets of each exercise at 3-5 reps each
• (75-85%) of one-rep maximum or RPE 8-9
• 4-6 weeks long, aim for 1-2 sessions/week 

Strength Isn’t Everything! 

Strength is not the only thing you should focus on to improve your climbing. Working on climbing technique is super important, and including other training elements like hangboarding or campus boarding can also help you improve, especially if these are weaknesses for you. Even climbing on different terrain, especially styles you tend to avoid, can help you build strength on the wall. 

Think about incorporating strength training as one part of a well-rounded climbing program. Strength training shouldn’t take up a ton of time during your training week. Try to keep the strength session length to 30-45 minutes. During heavy strength training cycles, this can be up to 60-75 minutes, but this may only happen a few times a year. As you start to practice strength training, make sure to move with intention and progress slowly. 

Listen to your body; if you are experiencing pain, you may be increasing your load too quickly! Focus on quality of movement over quantity and perform each movement with good form! If you do a high volume of poor-quality movement, you’ll just train your nervous system with bad habits that will translate into your climbing. Master the movements and add weight slowly. And, as always, consistency is key!