UKC

Away 'home'. No wall or anything but my brother's set of barbells and dumbbells.

What easy to learn exercises that would help forearms and shoulders would be good?

Hand curls with dumbbells?
Straight arm front lift?

Ideas welcome

dumbbell finger rolls are great for forearm / finger muscles that are specific for climbng grip strength.

"heavy finger rolls" are traditionally done with a barbell, but I think work even better with a dumbbell (and the other hand available to help start the motion from out closer to the tips of the working fingers, to make it more specific for climbing grip.

Scapula retraction (while lying prone on a bench) could be important for preventing injury (ir you might be pre-disposed to that by the genetic structure of your shoulder).

Ken

In reply to Flinticus:

Forearms:

Stack some of the plates together for static pinch grips
Hammer curls
Reverse curls

Shoulders:

Shrugs
Military press / Arnold press
Lateral raises
Upright rows

In reply to Flinticus:

Agree with Kenr on the finger rolls. There was a recent video by I think the German team regarding a secret exercise which turned out to be dumbell finger rolls.

Another great climbing exercise would be renegade rows. Get in the plank position with hands on the dumbells on the floor. Then row with one arm then the other. Increase the weight to an appropriate level. Might work better with fixed plates or those dumbells with flat sides.

If the plates are round and spin freely you could also use them for ab wheel roll out type of exercises and also incorporate fly type exercises that are normally done with rings.

Kettlebell swings can also be done perfectly fine with dumbells, a posterior chain exercise working the same muscle group as deadlifts.

Eric Horst recommends the dumbell snatch as a good core exercise. Explained here at about 7.5 mins in:
http://nicros.com/training/videos/video-core-training-for-climbers/

There are also straight forward one arm dumbell rows for a basic pulling exercise.

In reply to Flinticus:

If it’s just for Christmas I wouldn’t bother.

If you are desperate you can include Zottman Curls into the above list of exercises.

For core everyone neglects the seated pike lift and wonders why they are crap at toe-hooks or bicycle moves that don’t fit their natural shin or leg length. This move will crush your ego and improve your roof work.

In reply to Flinticus:

A nice one for shoulder stability that's also very fun is the turkish get-up. Also one of the best core exercises you'll find.

In reply to Flinticus:

Thanks all. Will work on some of these and carry them on after I get home.

In reply to Flinticus:

Man makers.

Get to it.

In reply to Flinticus:
>...Straight arm front lift?

There's quite a number of back and shoulder destroying exercises you can do with dumb bells, that's one of them. Side lat raises are another depending on how you do them. If you're injury prone or not used to using weights then make sure you use good form for whatever exercise you do and google any exercise that's new to you to check whether there's a safer alternative.

Unless you're body building then going for compound exercises where you're standing up and using a range of muscle groups are probably going to be safer and more useful than specifically targetting one muscle set which a lot of popular weight lifting exercises do.