Physical

Climbing is seen as a sport where getting the best power to weight ratio can help, up to a point. If you drop weight too much then you will lose muscle mass which in turn will not help you climb harder.

When we are training physically we will be tiring both the muscles and the central nervous system every time we train. Dependent on the intensity and duration of that training we will need time to recover.

Whilst we have covered a more specific way to develop climbing muscles and energy systems. There are many muscles that are not climbing-specific and we need to exercise them to keep our bodies functional.

This is not the ability of climbing muscles to work aerobically, but the general fitness of your heart and lungs. As this is the engine that helps us drive the rest of the body through maintaining a well-oxygenated supply of blood throughout the body.

Being flexible in the right places can help both your technique and even where you can find rests. This is achieved through increase what might be referred to as our ‘effective range of motion’.

Strength and Power Endurance are generally what we require to climb at or close to our limit. Whilst strength endurance is for climbing up to around 70-80% of our top effort, Power Endurance is more 80% and above.

Power is our ability to utilise our strength as quickly as possible, as such you need to work on developing strength before developing power. For the majority of route climbers, power will not be of great consequence.

The lower body strength of climbers helps for specific issues though. Strong quads and glutes helps us to rock-over, strong caves help stop us getting disco leg and a strong foot help use the smallest of footholds.

This is how strong we are in our core, it also goes beyond pure strength as one of the keys to maintain tension through our core is our ability to breathe whilst holding body tension. As such this section is split into various exercises that target the deep muscles in our core.

This is the strength of our upper arms and shoulders, which are about pulling up on holds rather than the ability to hang on a hold. As such for most people, unless you are climbing very steep rock then upper body strength will not be as important as finger strength.