Rock climbing weight training program

If you only perform 6 reps in each set, not only will your strength increase but so will your muscle size and muscular endurance. The above table simply serves as a guide to maximize the training benefit received in relation to the others i. It is important in climbing to maximize how strong you are obviously but also how long you are able to perform at a high level. That is why you should aim to increase your strength in the compound exercises pull-ups, squats and planks. Getting stronger in these will allow you generate more power when climbing and will help you perform moves that you could only dream of before.

In my opinion, increasing your muscular endurance in your forearms is more critical than increasing overall strength. This is because you are constantly grabbing holds over, and over, and over again when climbing.

Overall strength will help you grab harder holds but increasing your endurance will prevent you from getting pumped early and will let you climb for longer. The longer you are able to climb, the stronger you will become in every other aspect of climbing. This will help you improve your technique and footwork as well as improve your cardiovascular endurance. You will not be maximizing the potential benefits of lifting weights.

The best way to determine how heavy to lift is to go out and pick up a weight and perform the exercise to failure or close to failure. Failure is when your muscles are not able to complete the rep with proper form. Once you have a general idea of when you will reach failure, you can plan your workout around that number of reps and weight.

For beginners in the gym, you will want to leave more reps in reserve before reaching failure when planning your workout. This is because your muscles are primed for getting stronger and you do not need to put in as much effort to improve as more advanced lifters.

I recommend when picking weights that you stop approximately 3 reps before failure. Most likely you will have a short trial and error period to find the right weight and reps. More experienced lifters will need to train harder than newbies to get the same benefits. I recommend stopping your set when you have approximately 1 to 2 reps left before failure. Training to failure may be needed if you are very experienced in the gym. Going to failure in every set is not ideal because it will take a longer time for your muscles to recover from the beating.

Once you have found the correct weight to perform your training, you will want to increase your intensity overtime. Progressive overload is necessary to keep improving and getting stronger. It can be done by either increasing the weight, volume amount of reps and sets or frequency of your workouts.

The easiest way to progressively overload your muscles and what I personally recommend when starting out is to increase the weight of your exercises. Once you have reached a plateau, you can start to increase the amount of sets or training frequency.

We do not want to alter the rep schemes too much at the start because they were specifically picked to increase the strength of your compound movements and endurance of your forearms.

As you may have noticed, the exercises presented above have been presented in the same order: pull-ups, squats, hammer curls, wrist curls, cardio, planks. This is the order you should perform these exercises in. These were chosen in a specific order to maximize your workout intensity and the benefits you will receive from each exercise. Before getting into these however, I recommend performing a brief warm up and stretching.

Ideally you will break a light sweat during this time. Stretching out your muscles after your warm up will help prevent injuries when lifting weights and will increase your flexibility. After warming up and stretching out, it is time to perform the heavy compound exercises pull-ups and squats. These exercises recruit the largest number of muscles and require the most energy.

Due to this, you will be able to lift the most weight when performing these exercises. Lifting more weight will help you progress and get stronger faster. Doing these at the start of your workout when you are fresh will maximize this benefit. Because isolation exercises target specific muscle groups, these do not require as much energy as compound exercises.

Therefore, it is better to perform these exercises after doing your compound exercises. It relies a lot on momentum and movement, but also on explosive force. If you can do 10 normal pull-ups, you can probably do muscle-ups. The reason why these are better than normal explosive pull-ups is that our brains work better when they have a goal in mind. The l-sit is another great static exercise.

It can be done in all kinds of bars and also on the floor. Grab the pull up bar with hands at shoulder length, and raise your knees with your legs bent. If one leg bent l-sits becom easy, try to stretch both legs. This exercise is less calisthenics specific, but it is also highly used by calisthenics athletes. Both these sports require strong grip, upper body, and core strength and they and should be practiced in conjunction.

This a popular regiment for athletes preparing for events such as the ninja warrior. Home Routines. Always warm up and remember that your health and longevity are the most crucial aspect of any training routine. Similarly, if you can squat lbs, a lbs squat might be your warm-up.

But most people have no reason to pick up weight anywhere near that heavy. Gaining size and muscle mass is often a priority for people training in a traditional gym.

More muscle means more weight that you have to drag up climbing routes, and bulky muscle is going to hinder your ability to climb difficult routes. As a general rule, performing sets of more than five reps are for bulking up. Muscular or joint pain quickly leads to lasting injuries. Immediately stop performing the activities causing you any pain and assess why your pain is occurring.