UKC

So there's a lot of stuff on here about training to do at home for climbing, but most of it seems to refer to strong adults who can already do 100000's of pull-ups, push-ups etc, and obviously a lot of stuff like fingerboarding isn't really suitable. I was wondering what suggestions you had for a 15yr old (not-so-strong) girl as to training to do at home to improve. I have access to a pullup bar( but be nice, I can only do around 3!) and not much else...so bodyweight only I guess!
Thanks!

In reply to ClimberGirl:

Honestly - I doubt I'll be the only person to say this - climb loads and focus on movement. Climbing specific training ie. finger boarding, campussing etc is the way to injury for developing tendons!

I know this isn't the answer you want but injury sucks!

In reply to ClimberGirl:
I agree with Bouldery Bits, get out and climb as much as you can. The greater the variety the better. You're already at a pretty high level so I think a fingerboard should't be a problem as long as you take it easy. If you can't get out on rock there are loads of body-weight exercises you can do, push ups, dips, core stuff and pull ups.

In reply to ClimberGirl

I'm afraid I don't know anything about strength training specific to your age so sorry I can't help with that. However whilst your at the wall here's a couple of suggestions.

Climb easy routes perfectly (with as little strength as possible) to improve technique.

Watch this video!
youtube.com/watch?v=Usee0F_Ya98&

Don't focus on grades. Just enjoy climbing that's what it's about. (If your profile is right you climb hard grades anyway)

In reply to ClimberGirl:
Here's an article that has some detail for you.

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/should-u18s-use-campus-boards-finger-injuries

It says under 18s should avoid the following-

£ Campus board
£ Additional weight (As in a weight vest-GP)
£ Extreme bouldering
£ Too many dynamic moves
£ Constant use of the crimp position

In reply to ClimberGirl:

You need to speak to a decent knowledgeable climbing coach (not a general wall instructor) and get some specific advice. Nothing that is posted on here will be of much benefit as it won't be specific to you. All of the general advice about no campussing, no finger boarding, even no extreme bouldering??!! It is just too vague. There is obviously good intentions behind the advice but if you really want to improve then you need to be doing all of these things, your training just needs to be managed carefully.

Are you training for anything specific? Do you want to be a comp climbing hero? Or do you just want to get a bit better?

Simon

In reply to maybe_si:
No she really doesn't need to be campussing and neither do the vast majority of people who do, but at her age she shouldn't go anywhere near it.

In reply to maybe_si:

>... All of the general advice about no campussing, no finger boarding, even no extreme bouldering??!! It is just too vague. There is obviously good intentions behind the advice but if you really want to improve then you need to be doing all of these things, your training just needs to be managed

I stress again using a campus board under age is a really bad idea. That's not my opinion it's advice coming from Prof. Dr.med. Volker Schöffl approved by the BMC.

http://www.climbing.ethz.ch/index.php/program/2-uncategorised/28-v-schoeffl

In reply to ClimberGirl:

Thanks for all the advice! With regards to the 'just climb more and enjoy it' type advice I can definitely see where that's coming from, and I definitely don't want to get injured. Having said that, I can only climb 2x a week for about 2.5 hours, and I seem to have stopped seeing any improvement from that (and possibly gone a little bit backwards!) . I would infinitely prefer to just go climbing loads!
I won't be fingerboarding (my parents refuse to buy one) or campussing ( I am so rubbish at it that it is pointless because I fall off before I get more than about 2 rungs up - matching both hands on each one!) so I was just looking for other stuff to do. Obviously working on technique as well is important (and I think people tend to just blame poor technique on a lack of strength) but I tend to fall off most things because I get too pumped - if the hard moves were the first move of a bouldering problem it would be a different matter! Having said that, having better technique and using less energy like Greasy Prusiks says would solve this problem!
I'm not sure what extreme bouldering is meant to be??? If it just means bouldering at your limit i can't see how it is possible to improve at all without doing it?
Not training for anything specific, although I'd mostly like to get a bit (/a lot!) better. My short-term goal is onsighting 7a regularly but obviously over a longer time I'd like to be better than that. Comps are fun but not the only thing I'm interested in - I just like climbing and want to get better!

In reply to ClimberGirl:

I always found it funny at my old wall, all the guys did extra strength stuff and all the girls did extra stretching : should be reversed!

Some suggestions:
- Squats, body weight. Progressing to single leg squats on chair. Then on ground with free leg straight ("pistol").
- Pressups. knees on ground to start. Then regular. Then with one foot hovering off the ground.
- Tricep dips on chair, legs out straight, heels on floor.
- Abs. L hang. crossover crunches (bicycle crunch). lying leg raises. Plank.
- Ideally you'd get a Theraband or some Dumbbells to do shoulder presses, v good for shoulder stability and strength. You could use a couple of 2 litre bottles (full) until you upgrade.
- reverse wrist curls with same 2l bottle (will save you many tendinitis issues later!)

I'd do 2 sets of each to start, then 3 sets after a couple of sessions. If you can't do 6 reps of anything it's too hard, make it easier Or skip it.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

As with the above advice please find a decent coach to help you. There is a lot of stuff you can work on with them from ironing out technique problems, to stability issues that will then let you train and climb harder. Trying to progress with out these being resolved is a quick way to injury. Where are you based? I might be able to recommend a few coaches.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

As Siderunner has mentioned, general body and core strengthening exercises should see you a massive benefit. Focusing on technique is obviously very important however all too often people just need to get stronger. I also noticed that your profile mentions that you love to top rope routes, this is all good fun, but don't forget to get on lead otherwise you may end up just top roping all the time and never actually leading anything hard!

Best of luck

In reply to maybe_si:

If only I had had that last piece of advice earlier.....I realised the other day that that has exactly happened! Time to start working on leading too I think!

In reply to maybe_si:


Noooooo! They really don't. All too often people need to get better technique. Get bomb proof technique and a strong head will take you a lot further than just getting strong. Ignoring the technique will also get you injured no matter how strong you are.

In reply to biscuit:


They're interlinked, technique and strength. And if people want to improve their grades, they should try to do both. Not saying you're contradicting this BTW.


I reckon that's a very good piece of advice. Something that's talked about in 'Make or Break'.

In reply to ClimberGirl:


A lot of people seem to have missed the "at home" bit in their replies. Whilst technique (and, if your profile grades are right, fitness) is crucially important, its not very easy to work at home with a pullup bar.

Taking as given that you'll be addressing those aspects at the wall, things you could do at home would be pullup and lockoff strength with the pullup bar, core exercises (remembering that whilst your abs are great for lifting your feet back onto the wall its not your abs which keep them there in the first place), general conditioning, antagonists, and maybe fingerboarding (you can hang some types from your pullup bar if your parents objection is cosmetic, although you should also check given your age on the literature as to when fingerboarding is recommended against - its less aggressive than campus boarding but on the other hand safer in many respects than limit bouldering)

In reply to ClimberGirl:

Did you read this?
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=6269

Detailed article on training for younger climbers with loads of advice for training at the wall and at home and avoiding injury.

In reply to AJM:
I didn't miss it. If she can progress to 25 pull ups and one arm lock offs, whilst not paying more attention to the other aspects of climbing, that's what she'll use to climb. Bad habits will become engrained and much harder to overcome later and injury likelihood will be increased.

My advice would be to do general conditioning at home AND either get a session with a coach or get on a squad at a nearby wall. If you can't get on ask what you need to do to get on and get them to give you direction. We have aspirant members of our squad who come to training sessions for three months and get coached.

One session with a good coach can work wonders.

In reply to biscuit:

I take the general point, but it's always possible to pick climbs which are difficult enough that you're forced to climb with good technique. The whole "it's an advantage to be weak because you're forced to learn good technique" thing implies you're trying to learn technique on the same grade of route as someone weaker than you.

In reply to AJM:

She's young, not been climbing long and has got to a decent standard. Without having an in person assessment it's impossible to say whether she's 'strong' enough for whatever her goals are; which we don't even know other than get better. At what? Steep, bouldery, outdoors, indoors, slabby or stamina routes.

It's like trying to give advice for the often asked " I've got shoulder pain, what should I do?" on here. The only sensible advice to that is go see a physio. In her case the only sensible advice is go see a climbing coach. Even if it's the academy route I mentioned there's very few who wouldn't give some time to someone wanting to improve, I would hope.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

If you can do 3 pull ups you can train pull ups and improve. The trouble with exercises where you can only do a low number of reps is that it can be hard to generate enough intensity to improve. With pull ups you can concentrate on the lowering part of the pull up (the negative) by going down more slowly (say 5 - 10 seconds). You can even do sets of negative only reps by using a box or stool to stand on to cheat your way up to the top of the bar, then lowering down slowly. Always do these in control and never drop down onto your elbows. You need to push yourself pretty hard but always keep perfect form. Probably want to start with 3 sets and build up to 4 or 5 over a number of weeks or months.

Pull ups are usually easier with palms facing you (chin ups) or with palms facing across the bar so your shoulder on one side touches the bar at the top. These variants are worth doing especially if they help you get more reps per set. You might find it easier if you tape the bar with finger tape to make it more grippy. Use chalk too.

Top Japanese climber Miho Nonaka is about your age (16 or 17 now?). She says she weight trains on her 'rest' days. She looks like one of the stronger competitors at the moment. And as others have said building up a strong core is definitely worth doing.

Main danger for younger climbers is the plates in the fingers. If you concentrate on routes/problems with larger holds, ie. the steeper problems, and don't do too much crimpy small hold stuff, learn to climb open handed, you should be fine. Be prepared to drop your grade a bit at first if you're not used to these. It can take a while to build up both the strength and technique if you're not used to these.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

A lot of good stuff here. I agree with all of it especially the fingerboards and your young age. Lets not damage yourself before you have gone far.


However, if you only have a pullup bar, you can do variations of Pullups and Chin ups. If you can only do 3 pullups, work on the Forced Negatives (as someone already mentioned) after you have maxed out. And rest a bit between sets.

You could vary the grip, from a Chin Up (Palms towards you) to Pullups (Palms away, and vary the width of the pullup to hit different parts of your back more) for example a wide arm pullup will focus more on your lats. This may sound a bit weird, and I remember when someone first told me, instead of thinking "pulling yourself up" to the bar, "Push" your back up towards the bar.
You can try mixed grip pullups, (one palm away, one palm towards and swap).

Try wrapping a towl over the bar aswell and grip onto the two folded sides with one hand, to work on your grip.

And of course you can do deadhangs.

Obviously, this is just for reference, and from my experience. so take your time, research and be careful with your training. Your still young, and you are still growing, lets not get injured.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

You will always find that you will hit plateaus in your climbing. This in essence is a good thing as it allows a gradual approach to improvement, if you keep climbing like you are twice a week for 2.5hrs you will find the you will still see some good improvement. In a way you just need to be patient and it will come, try not to rush anything. Do not use fingerboards and campus boards as you are risking long term tendon damage at your age.

Keep plucking away at it, if you get chance per week to add another session in do but be careful to leave enough time for recovery. You may also benefit from dropping grade for a session and focusing on strength endurance by dropping the grade and climbing the route coming down and climbing the route again a few times you may find this will help on both longer route and delaying the 'pump' on the grade you are already climbing.

hope that makes some sense

In reply to ClimberGirl:

Pull-ups - really, you could do with working more than 3 reps. There are ways to get your reps up to 10 - putting some weight onto a foothold or two (lump of wood screwed to door frame) is probably the easiest, you can also use pulleys and weights to help you . Also, work your antagonistic muscles, e.g. press ups.

If you get good advice from a good coach, it can be O.K. to use a fingerboard with care (my 14 year old son does). There are also plenty of worthwhile core exercises, but again, I'd strongly recommend a session or two with a good coach who can assess where you are now and tailor an appropriate exercise programme.

In reply to ClimberGirl:

It doesn't address the "at home " part of your question, but get a copy of 9 out of 10 climbers. 5 hours at the wall per week is a lot and you should be able to make that really count for improvements, if you use the time well. Anything you do at home is fluff round the edge in comparison.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:


Yep, well put. This whole "it's all technique" stuff is BS and really gets my goat. It seems to be an excuse for so many British climbers to be out of shape, do little training, drink lots of beers, and bemoan the fact that they're still crap.

Try short sections of a few routes or problems 5 or more grades harder than you usually climb, preferably with beta from a video so you know what the requisite technique looks like. When you can't even pull on using most of the holds, tell us again that it just needs more technique.

In reply to biscuit:


All to often people need both.

In reply to Siderunner:

This is a sure fire way to engrain bad movement patterns which will hold you back no matter how strong you get. Global muscles will start to act as local stabilisers Injury risk increases greatly and you will plateau very quickly.

When trying to develop a new level in any sport the skills must be developed first, especially in the young. Otherwise you end up overly strong, but with bad technique which leads to injury and drop in performance/leaving the sport.

And yes if you can hold the holds put not pull on, it's likely to be a technique thing. I used to be hopeless at sit-starts, until i worked on the technique of them, then suddenly i could do them. I could have done lots of weighted pull ups or something but i would probably have just injured myself; either through the pull ups or trying to haul my full body weight onto a problem with tiny holds rather than learning the chain of movement needed, and techniques, to deal with it.

In reply to ianstevens:

I thought i needed to get strong recently.

Went to my coach to help me with this year's goal, as it involved a route with a steep, fingery, V6 at the end of 7b+ climbing. That's always been my weakness. " I need stronger fingers" i thought. Turns out i didn't. Bad movement patterns (not engaging 'core' when hitting bad holds) and a non-firing glute was the problem. Just concentrating on core activation went a long way to solving the problem in a couple of weeks. How much stronger would i have had to get, how long would that have taken, how much would my injury risk have increased by?

When the knowledge wasn't available widely (pre-internet) everyone got strong and learned technique by watching others (if they were lucky enough to be around technically good climbers) and trail and error. But i've been making this error for years and never knew, despite being around many good climbers. What's happening now is getting strong is still in vogue. Why? Because its measurable and you can sell it via the internet in programmes to follow. What you can't do is teach/sell technique via the internet as you need someone to watch you climb. Robin O'Leary is trying atm where you send him a video and he analyses it. Not perfect, but better than him selling fingerboard programs on-line.

I agree that both are important, but specific strength gains can easily be made whilst climbing/training as part of a structured plan that puts skills first and the physical stuff second. If you don't do it that way round you're wasting many of the gains you may make through a strength/fitness increase.

The impressive videos around now of climbers doing lots of climbing training tend to be the elite whose technique is already top notch. Then a strength increase allows them to apply that increase to its maximum effectiveness.

In reply to biscuit:


Just to be clear - and I accept it wasn't - I was suggesting this as a one-off experiment, not as part of regular training. I think in that light it's unlikely to engrain anything, other than the impression that being strong is pretty useful.

Doing endless pull-ups is a dumb way to get strong and a good way to get injured. Doing an all round strength training programme for a block of time is a useful way to build strength in all the main muscles of the body. And as such is a useful precursor to trying to push into new performance territory without injury IMO. At least for me, before my strength training regimes started I used to get injured a lot; and after I now get injured rather less often.

I completely agree that technique, including learning to activate the right muscles and finding the right (often subtle) movement patterns, is very important.

But I still think strength training is useful bang for the buck in terms of returns on time invested, especially for those who have been climbing many years and are relatively weak (me a couple of years ago). It *is* important to avoid getting obsessed by the easily measurable and relatively gains, and not let a 4-6 week block become a year. Another advantage of strength training is that I can do it in 45-60' at home, whereas my round trip travel and changing time to even get onto the climbing wall is close to that.

I come back to "it's both", and I think that's a reasonable way to think about planning training, devoting a bit of time to both types of activity.

In reply to Siderunner:
I may well have misunderstood your post then, sorry.

I think we're pretty much along the same lines. Technique with below par strength/strength with below par technique are both problems that need solving in an holistic, structured, considered, individual way.

In reply to Siderunner:


Maybe, though I got the impression from one video this what Dmitry Sharafutinov does.



Absolutely and I'd add that its also a way to promote muscle activation.

A classic example of strength helping injury is where you jump of a hold and catch with one hand and cut loose. A fun move for the strong but a good way to get injured if your shoulders aren't up to it.